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The World Series final, Bruno Mars and Inter Miami versus TFC.
For the Toronto Transit Commission, they were all dress rehearsals. Some went better than others, but each offered lessons on the road to hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Now that test — new TTC CEO Mandeep Lali’s biggest since taking over the system — is just days away.
“Not only are we ready, we’ve practised that, demonstrated that year after year,” he told Global News, sitting in an upstairs office of the transit agency’s control centre, its nerve system.
“All of the accumulation of all our experiences now is what we’re going to demonstrate. We’re going to demonstrate our serviceability, we’re going to demonstrate our customer service perspective and we’re going to demonstrate our resilience.”
The World Cup officially kicks off in Toronto on Friday at 3 p.m. when Canada hosts Bosnia and Herzegovina in the nation’s opening match, taking place at the newly-renamed Toronto Stadium.
A total of six games will take place in the city from June 12 to July 2.
The city’s plan to get thousands of fans around relies almost entirely on transit.
A staff report drawn up in the spring assumes 70 per cent of people will travel to the stadium or fans zones by either TTC or GO Train. Thirteen per cent will walk and another 10 will cycle.
Many of those will be new to transit in Toronto and unfamiliar with its stations. That’s a reality that’s pushing the TTC to send out waves of ambassadors and representatives to help get people around stations and onto vehicles.
And it is effective, nimble communication, one expert says, that could make or break the World Cup transit plan.
“The World Series seemed like a failure of planning,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the infrastructure institute at the University of Toronto, referring to the chaotic scenes after the Toronto Blue Jays’ historic run last year.
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“You can have a plan, but you know, to use that old Mike Tyson quote, ‘Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.’ And Toronto’s plans have been brittle, and the way that we communicate when things go wrong is not very good.”
To try and keep a handle on communications, and because the system will also rely on police for road closures and Metrolinx to handle GO Trains, a centralized command centre has been set up.
If a subway train breaks down or a streetcar is stuck behind a parked car, the urgent alternative arrangements will be communicated through that central team.
“There’s a joint information control communication group which manages all the information in respect to service closures, diversion, incidents,” Lali said.
“It will be filtered through that mechanism in real time so we can make dynamic decisions, decisions which are fully understood through the plethora of agencies.”
At the heart of Toronto’s plan to get people in and out of the World Cup zone are its iconic streetcars.
The bright red light rail vehicles may be synonymous with the city, but they also boast the worst on-time performance of any mode of transit and repeatedly prove to be the least popular with riders.
The streetcar from Union Station to the stadium will complement the Bathurst streetcar, which is set to be a key spine of the World Cup transit plan.
To accommodate massive crowds, the TTC has set up a new loading and unloading zone for the vehicles, which it plans to run every five minutes.
To keep the Bathurst streetcar running amid congestion, Lali said traffic agents will be on hand to stop cars driving into priority lanes following a detailed, line-by-line review of the route.
“We’ve broken every single intersection down,” he explained.
“Within that intersection, we’ve ranked them in terms of rating, in terms of impact upon performance. And following that, we also then put that within our plan. Then we allocated officers or traffic agents during the peak times for the matches to ensure we have seamless service.”
The move could be critical because streetcars across the city often suffer delays due to drivers, pedestrians or crashes blocking their route, rather than purely a mechanical breakdown.
Toronto’s World Cup matches are different from many games that came before them for one key reason — there’s no new stadium being built and precious little infrastructure will be left behind when the full-time whistle goes.
For the TTC, however, the games represent a major legacy moment.
If the agency can prove its enhanced streetcar plans are a success or reap the benefits of months of closures to get the system ready for the games, there could be a positive effect for the city.
“One of the questions is, what’s the legacy of these works? And I’m very keen to ensure that we capture that,” Lali said.
“Whether it be performance, whether it be reliability, whether it be asset improvements, we’re doing that in an incremental manner with respective (key performance indicator) metrics. So post the World Cup, we can look at the actual cost and the performance benefits of. And then we’ll see what we can do and how we can flourish the entire system.”
Siemiatycki said the benefit of the World Cup is that it has set Toronto a deadline to get its transit system in order — a deadline that will hopefully be marked by a massive, city-wide celebration.
“That’s why we’re hosting this thing and spending all of this money — because this is meant to be fun. And the transit should be the afterthought,” he said.
“It should be crowded, but not chaotic. We do this regularly. And I think what I would love is for the TTC and transit just to show confidence and perform and just do this like it’s the backbone, so that it doesn’t have to become a talking point.”
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