Ever find yourself on a TTC escalator and catch yourself wondering which station is the deepest?
It’s a question I asked myself on a recent commute, and one with an answer that wasn’t quite as simple as I had envisioned. The TTC’s deepest station has changed a few times over the years, and it’s a title that will once again change hands in 2025 — or at least that’s what we’re told.
But first, a quick glance back at the previous and current title-holders.
Lawrence Station on the Line 1 Yonge–University long held the distinction of being the deepest subway station in town.
With a depth of 18.3 metres below the intersection of Yonge and Lawrence, the station was the furthest commuters could descend below street level from its opening on March 31, 1973, until the Toronto–York Spadina subway extension (TYSSE) opened on December 17, 2017.
This extension into the northwestern suburbs was carved out by tunnel boring machines at a lower average depth than the eastern leg of Line 1. The deepest station on the TYSSE — and anywhere else on the TTC, for that matter — is Highway 407 with a depth of 21.1 metres below street level.
Other TYSSE stations are not far behind, like York University, which extends 18 metres below the surface.
But a new deepest station is set to snatch away this obscure distinction later in 2025, or at least that’s what Metrolinx tells us.
The embattled Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s initial phase through midtown Toronto is finally expected to open in 2025. Thanks to the changing slope of Eglinton Avenue, the station set to open at Avenue Road and Eglinton will be the deepest transit station anywhere on the TTC.
The TTC’s Stuart Green confirms to blogTO that Avenue Station will extend 32 metres (or 105 feet) below street level, a sizeable leap over Highway 407’s record.
But remember when I said the answer wasn’t so simple?
While Avenue Road will soon be the deepest station relative to street level, it is not the deepest in terms of absolute position relative to sea level.
Green explains that “Relative to sea level, the deepest station is Union,” adding “Everything is uphill from there.”
However, even Toronto’s furthest subterranean stations have nothing on the world’s deepest overall.
Arsenalna station in Kyiv, Ukraine’s metro, had long held the record for the world’s deepest at 105.5 metres, though two newer stations of the Chongqing Rail Transit network in China opened in 2017 and 2022. The deeper of the two, Hongyancun station, stretches a staggering 116 metres below the surface.
That means that even Toronto’s deepest transit station is just a fraction as far below ground as the world record-holder. For a local reference point, Hongyancun station’s depth below ground is comparable to the height of the iconic Fairmont Royal York Hotel’s giant neon sign above Front Street.
