Since 2010, Toronto’s Union Station has been the centre of endless renovations, upgrades, and restorations aimed at expanding the hub’s capacity and improving its often congested flow.
While the construction has often resulted in frustration for customers, crews are luckily making great strides to bring the latest phase of work — the Union Station Enhancement Project — closer to completion.
In an update posted on Wednesday, Metrolinx revealed that construction crews completed the concrete pour for the first base for new wider platforms and track earlier this year, noting that this track slab is a major part of the work to upgrade the station to support increased service levels across the GO rail network.
Over the next year, crews will be working on new, wider platforms and enclosing the new concourse below, which will pave the way for the installation of new tracks.
Once these upgrades are complete, Metrolinx says Union Station will have the capacity to run up to 80 trains per hour during peak periods, which is four times the current level.
Artist’s rendering of the new future Union Station enhancements. Photo: Metrolinx.
The original platforms at the station were installed all the way back in 1929 and were built to meet much lower ridership levels. Platforms 24/25 and 26/27 were officially added in 2009, but there has been no significant work on the original GO platforms aside from repair work and heritage restoration.
To modernize the station even further, crews will reconfigure the current platforms and add stairs and elevators, which will allow more passengers to cycle through more efficiently during boarding and disembarking and also help reduce crowding.
Along with the wider platforms, crews are building a new south concourse at Union Station spanning from Bay to York Streets that will provide connections into the York, VIA, and Bay Concourses, Union Square, and Scotiabank Arena.
