It may be a chilly day, but the frigid air didn’t stop Torontonians from getting excited as they boarded a new train along Line 5 on Sunday.

The controversial Eglinton Crosstown LRT opened 15 years after first construction began. The TTC said there would be no fanfare or merchandise like that seen when the Finch West LRT opened last year, but crowds of people wearing hoodies and Toques packed the platforms at Kennedy and Mount Dennis stations.

“Line 5, Line 5, Line 5” chants rang out as the first Crosstown passengers waited to board.

“This represents the end of the suffering that everyone in this city has been through,” Toronto resident Rockwell Cui said. “And finally, we don’t just have four lines.”

He said they camped outside Mt Dennis from 9pm on Saturday to celebrate a “major milestone” for the city that will last for generations to come.

It’s also a big moment for TTC employees. Seeing the excited crowd, one employee joked to CBC News that he was ready to go into battle on the first day of the war.

Despite delays and frustrations around Line 5, the first train departed to cheers and westbound trains departed a minute early.

Gavin Elliott, the driver of the first train out of Kennedy Station, said he was transferred to end his career on the new line.

He added that he has worked for the TTC for 27 years as a streetcar and Line 1 driver, and said he was “honored to be the first driver and the first person to name the line along with the passengers.”

At each stop, passengers waved through the screen doors and praised the train’s progress. The first journey was also difficult as people flocked to the historic finish.

But the trip wasn’t all fun and games. Passengers monitored how fast the train was going and how many red lights stopped the carriages on the road.

Some of the most high-profile critics at the time had passengers who were much younger than the new LRT.

Isaac Mandelzees, 11, said he couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate his birthday than by riding the new train. He said he has been watching the station being built “all his life.”

His first impression was that the train was much faster than he expected, especially compared to Line 6.

“Even without transit priority, it’s very fast. I think Bombardier’s Flexity Outlook is also very fast,” he said.

Meanwhile, his friend Luis Mario Carrington, 12, said he was “ecstatic” that the new line had finally arrived.

“I think it’s much faster. I remember it being around 30km/h on the Finch, but this one looks like it’s going up to 70km/h,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a reliable, fast service. It’s going to get people where they want to go.”

The first train took 55 minutes from Kennedy across the city to Mount Dennis, 12 miles away. That’s about the same amount of time it took to traverse Line 6, which was about 10 kilometers long when it first opened.

When Elliott got off the first train, he said the ride was “very comfortable” and expressed hope for improvements in the future.

“There were no problems, no pickups, we made it on time today,” he said.

However, there were already some ups and downs on the first day, with mechanical problems occurring just 30 minutes into the launch.

The TTC announced on social media that a mechanical issue caused westbound delays at O’Connor Station. Thankfully, service resumed after a few minutes.

On Sunday night, the TTC said in a social media post that service on Line 5 was suspended again, this time between Pharmacy and Birchmount stations, due to an investigation. He added that there is a shuttle bus on the way.

In an update 10 minutes later, the TTC announced that normal service had resumed.

Among the flock of down jackets was transport enthusiast Marcelo de Oliveira Medina, who said the new line would cut his weekly commute to his father’s house from an hour and a half to just 30 minutes.

“I can’t believe it…Line 5, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this,” he said, adding that he was only 2 years old when the project started.

The TTC confirmed the phased opening of Line 5 earlier this week, saying it would be free on the first day of its official opening.

A phased rollout means the service will be provided on an undisclosed time-limited schedule, running Monday through Saturday from 5:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eventually, trains will run on the entire line until 1:30 a.m.

While the first train headed back in the opposite direction, there was a fun atmosphere along the line.

The Lady Godiva Memorial Bunado was on board, the misspelling was intentional, and it entertained riders with a variety of music featuring a kazoo.

Flutist Ketin Trinh said the ride was smoother than he expected, but he was still wary due to problems on Line 6.

“Well, it’s TTC, so I’m not too hopeful,” she said, adding that she was worried it would be faster to take a car or bus instead of the above-ground portion of the train.

“It’s always a what-if, what could go wrong. But I have high hopes for this.”

A soft launch means the TTC did not have free swag for first-day riders. So Chris Drew took matters into his own hands and created the buttons to hand out to the first Kennedy Railroad commuters.

One of the buttons even had a throwback reference to the short-lived Transit City project.

Looking back at the project

In 2007, then-Toronto Mayor David Miller introduced the infamous Transit City Plan, an ambitious idea to build a network of seven LRT lines across the city.

But the plan wasn’t necessarily sound and quickly “became a political game” between political parties, transport advocate Steve Munro said. That project was eventually scrapped Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Although the network was decommissioned, the Eglinton project survived until a groundbreaking ceremony at Mt Dennis in 2011, which promised completion of the line by the end of 2020.

But even at the time, there was uncertainty as to whether the project could be completed by a “very aggressive company.” [finish] According to a 2011 CBC News interview with former TTC general manager Gary Webster.

“When Metrolinx acquired it, the project became bloated,” Munro said. “Consultants came in and the project ended up not being the size the city originally had in mind.”

As of last fall, the project’s price tag had reached more than $13 billion, up from the $11.78 billion expected in 2018, according to a Metrolinx report.

Munro said any challenges with the new line will only impact Torontonians who rely on transit.

“Eglinton could open. It could be beautiful and wonderful and everything we’ve ever dreamed of,” he said.

“But the problem is, if it doesn’t, it’s another big black eye.” [on Toronto’s transit system] And that will only set us back further. ”

The City of Toronto and the TTC are implementing an “enhanced” traffic light priority system that will be up and running by the end of February, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said.