Presto change means station shutdowns
Installing fare gates will require closing early and on weekends at eight downtown subway stops
The TTC will close eight downtown subway stations during evenings and weekends between September and December to install new Presto fare gates.
In a statement released Wednesday, the transit authority said new paddle-style fare gates with Presto will be installed at the 25 stations and more than 50 entrances that still have turnstiles, some of which date back to the 50s and 60s.
Forty-four stations and 75 entrances already have new gates, which the TTC said improves the flow of people. Many of the stations that are still waiting for the gates will remain open with ongoing construction, but the busiest stations need to be closed, the statement said.
“The next wave of construction takes place in some of the TTC’s busiest stations where the fare lines are more physically constrained, necessitating some weekend closures, as well as early closures, both on weekends and week nights, where subway trains will pass through, and not stop, at the affected stations,” the statement said.
Brad Ross, the TTC’s director of communications, said the work is necessary and because the downtown stations are so close together, customers will be able to walk one or two blocks to reach the next station.
“We need to do this work and the reason we need early closures or one weekend, is to expedite the work, this heavy, dirty work,” Ross said. “Yanking out the turnstiles and cutting open the floor and doing all that work, it really helps to speed up things so we can get the station back to normal and get those fare gates up much more quickly.”
Ross said the alternative is to keep the stations open and put up barriers, but that could become a problem in an emergency, and the construction would take longer to complete in that case.
The last time the TTC closed an entire station for construction was three or four years ago, Ross said, when Pape station was shut down for 11 days. Locations, dates and times of station closures are as follows: Dundas Station: 11 p.m. nightly, Sept. 10-14 Weekend closure from 11 p.m. Sept. 15 until 6 a.m. Sept. 18 11 p.m. nightly, from Sept. 18 until the middle of October King Station: 10 p.m. nightly, Sept. 19-23 Queen Station: 11 p.m. nightly, Oct. 18 and 19 Weekend closure from 11 p.m. Oct. 20 until 6 a.m. Oct. 23 11 p.m. nightly, Oct. 23 until the end of November Museum Station: 10 p.m. nightly, Nov. 1-2 and 6-7 St Andrew Station: Weekend closure from 10 p.m. Nov. 10 until 6 a.m. Nov. 13 College Station: 10 p.m. nightly, Nov. 14 to 16, and Nov. 20 Osgoode Station: Weekend closure from 10 p.m. Nov. 17 until 6 a.m. Nov. 20 Queen’s Park Station: 10 p.m. nightly, Dec. 6-7 and Dec. 11-12