Transit loop moves forward, but no word on when LRT line will open in Mississauga

Mississauga officials say they’ll soon have more details about a light-rail transit loop to be built in the city’s downtown core as part of the $4.6-billion Mississauga-to-Brampton Hazel McCallion Line.

Word came earlier this year the province would once again include the “downtown loop” as part of the largest transit project in Mississauga’s history after having dropped it from plans in a cost-cutting move in 2019.

Since then, details have been slow to come from Metrolinx, the provincial agency overseeing the major transit initiative. Initially scheduled to open by fall 2024, the LRT line that’ll whisk passengers 22 kilometres from south Mississauga into Brampton (and back) via Hurontario Street is now expected to be completed sometime in 2025.

Responding to questions from Mayor Carolyn Parrish at Wednesday’s meeting of general committee, city manager Geoff Wright said he expects more information from Metrolinx in the next couple of weeks or so.

Wright, who noted the provincial government has committed to paying for the “downtown loop,” said officials with the transit agency overseeing the project told him “they would be coming back to us this fall with an implementation strategy for the loop in addition to the discussion about the extension of the Hazel McCallion Line into Brampton.”

The city manager also said he hopes Metrolinx officials soon provide a completion date for the Hazel McCallion Line, which will feature some two dozen stops between Port Credit GO in Mississauga’s south end and Brampton.

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“The original timeline associated with the Hazel McCallion Line was that completion would be done by 2024,” he said in response to a query from Ward 7 Coun. Dipika Damerla. “I have yet to receive a formal update from Metrolinx in terms of the updated schedule.”

Wright added staff will present a report to councillors in the next few weeks updating them on the LRT and “hopefully, we’ll have word from Metrolinx at that time” about a completion date.

Metrolinx told INsauga.com in mid-September it isn’t yet prepared to set a firm — or even loose — completion date.

“When construction nears completion and we move into the testing and commissioning phase, we will be in a better position to provide a specific opening date,” a Metrolinx spokesperson said in an email to INsauga.com on Sept. 17.

After learning this past January that Mississauga was getting its “downtown loop” back, city officials noted how vital the project is to the city’s future.

Wright, Mississauga’s transportation and works commissioner at the time, said the “downtown loop” has been one of the city’s top transit and city-building priorities for many years.

“This critical piece of infrastructure supports our housing targets as the downtown is expected to more than double in population in the next 30 years as towers continue to rise,” Wright said in an earlier email to INsauga.com. ” The Downtown Loop also supports our climate change and transportation goals to move more people on public transit. The business case for the Downtown Loop is very strong. With the construction of the Hazel McCallion Line and now the Loop, residents in Mississauga and across the GTA will have more transit options available to them, and these projects will help to ease congestion and gridlock in our city.”

Some 75,000 people who are expected to be living in highrises around Square One in the coming decades will now have additional public transit right at their doorstep via the “downtown loop.”

That’s in addition to the thousands more people working at businesses in Mississauga’s downtown.