Ontario Line tunnel boring machine reaches future King West station
Libby has travelled about 1.3 km from its April launch, and a second machine, Corkie, is due at King West Station in December.
Sources · Ontario Newsroom
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Libby, the first tunnel boring machine on the Ontario Line, has broken through at King Street West and Bathurst Street, the site of the future King West Station.
It launched in April 2026 from a shaft east of Exhibition Station and has travelled about 1.3 kilometres, installing roughly 780 tunnel lining rings. Its next task is testing and maintenance before it tunnels toward the future Chinatown Station. A second machine, Corkie, is excavating a parallel tunnel and is due at King West Station in December.
The province projects the station will serve about 27,000 residents and 24,200 jobs within walking distance and handle roughly 5,100 customers in its busiest hour, with 2,400 transfers, including connections to the TTC 504 King and 511 Bathurst streetcars. Across the full line, it projects nearly 390,000 daily boardings and says peak crowding on TTC Line 1 between Bloor-Yonge and Wellesley could fall by up to 15 per cent.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said, "Every kilometre of tunnelling brings us closer to delivering a new subway line that will transform how people travel across Toronto." Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson said, "By working together, we are building the first new subway line in Toronto in decades."
The elevated sections still lack a contract, so the final cost is not set. The opening is now targeted for the early 2030s, and no contract-backed date has been set yet.
