This past weekend it was announced that ground has been broken (i.e. construction has started) on the new Ontario subway line that will connect Exhibition / Ontario Place to the Science Centre by way of the light purple line labeled “C” on the above map. (The other image is a rendering of the proposed Exhibition station.)

This transit line has gone through many permutations over the years and was previously called the Downtown Relief Line (but that was seen as too downtown-centric); the Yonge Relief Line (still too specific); the Relief Line (not Ontario-specific enough, I guess); and probably a bunch of other names corresponding to various lines on a map.

So it is exceedingly easy to be cynical when you hear of an announcement like this. Is it really happening? Are we actually building new and much-needed transit? And as you might imagine, if you read through the chatter on Twitter, you will find an overabundance of this sort of cynicism, along with what appears to be a general dissatisfaction with the current state of everything.

But in my simple view, I reckon that it is far better to be starting construction on an important new transit line than not starting construction on an important new transit line. So this is exciting! Let’s go! If you’d like to learn more, I also tweeted out the initial renderings for the 14 stations that are planned for the Ontario Line.

Images: Province of Ontario