Walk east on Queen past Broadview this month and you'll see something new: rebar cages going up, concrete forms taking shape, a construction fence that wasn't there in the spring. This is the visible start of Leslieville Station, the elevated stop Metrolinx is building for the Ontario Line directly above Queen Street East between Broadview and Carlaw. Crews began assembling the first of sixteen columns on September 7, and that work is scheduled to run through May 28, 2027, split between a work zone at Queen and Strange to the south and one at Queen and De Grassi to the north.
Most people who live along this stretch will read that timeline one way: another year and a half of fenced sidewalks and concrete trucks. That reading isn't wrong. But it misses the part of the story that Metrolinx's own engineering documents tell about what happens on the other side of the fence. Once this phase wraps, four named parks along the corridor come out larger than they went in, and the same reports say the trains running past them will be no louder, and often quieter, than the trains that pass today.
What's Actually Going Up At Queen And De Grassi
The station itself has had a naming change worth knowing if you've been following it under its old name. It was originally called Riverside-Leslieville, marking its spot on the boundary between the two neighborhoods, but Metrolinx renamed it simply Leslieville in April 2026, the same week the province announced that tunnelling had begun on the broader line. The station will sit on an elevated structure over Queen Street East, with one entrance planned for the north side of Queen under the rail bridge and a second on the south side near the railway embankment.
The contractor doing the work, Trillium Guideway Partners, is currently in the foundation stage: eight columns in the south work area at Queen and Strange, then eight more in the north work area at Queen and De Grassi. Most of the pouring happens on a Monday-to-Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. schedule, though Metrolinx has noted that some concrete work may need to run without interruption once it starts, since pours can't simply pause partway through and preserve the integrity of a column.
Here's how the timeline breaks down, based on the staged construction schedule Metrolinx has shared with the City and the detailed stage-by-stage effects transit writer Steve Munro has tracked:
| Phase | Timeframe | What changes on the ground |
|---|---|---|
| Pile construction | July–October 2026 | Piling for the station foundation; temporary closures on De Grassi Street north of Queen |
| Pier construction | October 2026–April 2027 | Pier caps rise above grade; east sidewalk of Strange Street south of Queen closes; Queen's north curb lane closes to create a pedestrian walkway around the work |
| Column pours | September 7, 2026–May 28, 2027 | The sixteen columns supporting the elevated station go up in the two work areas described above |
| Superstructure | Late 2027 | Station structure erected above and flanking Queen Street East, a phase expected to take five to seven months |
No part of this schedule includes a full closure of Queen to vehicle traffic. The disruption is real but it's staying at the level of sidewalks, curb lanes, and the two side streets flanking the station footprint.
The Park Math Nobody Expects
Here's the part of this project that doesn't match most people's assumption about what a rail expansion does to the green space next to it. Because Metrolinx is keeping the bulk of construction inside land it already owns along the existing rail corridor, and because new noise and retaining walls are being built closer to the tracks than the current chain-link fence line, the strip of land between the old fence and the new wall doesn't stay with the railway. It goes back to the parks.
Metrolinx's own figures on this, laid out for the Lakeshore East Joint Corridor, work out like this once the project is finished:
- Jimmie Simpson Park gains roughly 700 square meters of new green space, the largest single addition of the four
- McCleary Playground gains roughly 300 square meters, made possible because retaining walls can be built on Metrolinx land closer to the tracks than the fence sits today
- The Gerrard-Carlaw Parkette, next to the dog park at Gerrard and Carlaw, needs some of its existing footprint to build the station entrance there, but still comes out roughly 500 square meters larger once the surrounding land is factored back in
- Combined across all four spaces along the corridor, the total addition comes to nearly 2,600 square meters of new park land
That last number is worth sitting with. A project that looks, from the sidewalk, like it's eating into public space is documented to leave the corridor's parks with more of it than they had before construction started. The disruption phase and the finished footprint are two different shapes, and the second one is bigger.
The Noise Question, Answered Before Anyone Asked It
The other assumption worth checking is that adding a second rail line next to an existing one means more noise for the houses and parks along it. Metrolinx commissioned a Noise and Vibration Report as part of the Lakeshore East Joint Corridor Early Works package, and the finding runs against the obvious guess: transparent noise walls, at least five meters high and running roughly from Eastern Avenue to east of Pape Avenue, are expected to make the sound of every passing train the same or lower than what residents hear at most points along the corridor today.
That claim rests on more than the walls themselves. The plan also calls for continuously welded rail with no joints, which removes one of the more common sources of clatter on older track, along with quieter Ontario Line trains and, where needed, rubber mats placed under the track structure to cut vibration. None of this erases the fact that construction itself is loud in the near term. It does mean the finished corridor isn't necessarily louder than the one that exists now, which is a different outcome than most people expect from a project that's visibly doubling the amount of rail running through their neighborhood.
What This Actually Looks Like On A Weekday Walk
If your regular route runs along Queen East between Broadview and Carlaw, or you cut through on De Grassi or Strange to reach the streetcar, here's what changes through the spring. The east sidewalk on Strange south of Queen is closed for the duration of the pier work. Queen's north curb lane is closed too, replaced by a marked pedestrian walkway around the construction zone. De Grassi north of Queen has intermittent closures tied to the pile work that preceded the current column phase. None of this touches car traffic on Queen itself in a full-closure sense. The adjustments are at the sidewalk and curb-lane level, concentrated in the same two work areas where the columns are going up.
The superstructure phase that follows, expected to start in late 2027 and run five to seven months, is when the station's above-ground structure actually gets built across and alongside Queen. Metrolinx hasn't committed to a specific opening year for the Leslieville stop or for the Ontario Line as a whole. The province's current language points only to a general early-2030s window for civil construction on the full line, so anyone treating a firm opening date as settled is working from a guess rather than a published schedule.
The Read For Right Now
What's fenced off on Queen East this fall isn't the final shape of the block. It's the phase where the visible cost shows up before the documented benefit does. The same engineering reports describing sidewalk closures and truck movement also describe four specific parks ending up larger than they are today, and a noise study concluding that a second rail line running past them doesn't automatically mean a louder one. Both of those outcomes are on the record now, well before the fences come down.
If you're trying to picture how the finished corridor lines up against your own block, or you're weighing what a stop at Leslieville Station eventually means for a specific street, I walk this stretch of Queen regularly and I'm glad to talk through what I'm seeing on the ground. Reach out to Toronto City Realtor any time you want a local read on how this project is actually progressing.
