Lawrence and McCowan Station to handle 4,480 bus transfers

CANADA: Construction has started at Lawrence and McCowan Station, where Toronto’s Scarborough Subway Extension is planned to handle 5,290 riders in the busiest hour and 4,480 daily bus transfers.

Crews have begun piling and excavation at the second of three new stations on the Scarborough Subway Extension. The supplied project update puts passenger interchange at the centre of the station’s role, while the current Metrolinx station page refines the forecast to 5,290 customers in the busiest travel hour and 4,480 daily transfers to and from buses in 2041.

Metrolinx says the station will include a bus terminal with connections to express bus services on Lawrence Avenue and provide a subway connection to Scarborough Health Network General Hospital.

Bus transfers shape the station plans

Metrolinx’s February 2020 Preliminary Design Business Case gives an early view of how those transfers could work. It described side platforms straddling Lawrence Avenue East, a four-bay bus terminal in the southwest quadrant of Lawrence Avenue East and McCowan Road, and a short-turn loop in the Hydro One corridor for the 54 Lawrence East bus route.

The same preliminary document placed station entrances in the northwest quadrant for westbound bus transfers and walk-in passengers and in the southwest quadrant for eastbound transfers and walk-ins. It also said the concept did not include passenger pick-up and drop-off facilities or commuter parking.

Those details should not be treated as the final station layout. Metrolinx’s current project material says station designs and renderings are conceptual and subject to change, with finishings, signage and accessibility features to be informed by further planning and consultation.

Don’t miss…RITES develops standard-gauge locomotive for Australia

Underground station forms part of the SRS package

The physical station is being delivered through the Scarborough Subway Extension Stations, Rail and Systems package. Infrastructure Ontario said in January 2025 that Metrolinx signed a $5.7 billion Target Price Agreement with Scarborough Transit Connect for that package, whose scope includes three new underground stations and a bus terminal at each station.

The wider Scarborough Subway Extension will extend TTC Line 2 by 7.8 kilometres from Kennedy Station to Sheppard Avenue and McCowan Road. The Government of Canada is investing more than $2.25 billion in the extension.

For Lawrence and McCowan Station, the confirmed forecasts show that the future stop is being planned not only as a subway station but as a major transfer point between Line 2 and surface bus services. The precise bus-terminal layout, however, remains subject to the project’s continuing design process.

News on railway transport, industry, and railway technologies from Railway Supply that you might have missed: