Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie has pledged to install platform barriers at all Toronto subway stations, increase crisis intervention teams and hire more constables for transit services across the province.
Crombie did not release the cost of the proposed plan she would enact should she become premier, but said it will come during the campaign.
"We want people to ride public transit and I want to make it as accessible and safe as possible," Crombie said at a subway station in Toronto's east end Friday morning.
Should her party win the snap election called by Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford, Crombie would hire 300 special constables for transit operations in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area.
Crombie said she will announce transit plans for other cities soon as part of her plan to increase ridership across the province. She would also invest in more security cameras and safety equipment.
Subway platform barriers at all stations in Toronto would cost $4.1 billion, the Toronto Transit Commission's latest capital budget plan said.
Experts say platform barriers in cities around the world have reduced the vast majority of injuries and death on the tracks. It is particularly helpful for reducing suicides.
There have been 816 suicides on Toronto's subway system since 1954, the TTC said, and another 915 people have attempted suicide over that time. In 2023, the last full year of data available, 11 people died by suicide and another 33 people attempted suicide, the TTC said.
Toronto Public Health recommended the platform barrier system in 2014 in a larger report on suicide prevention. The TTC has also said it would save lives.
The issue became prominent in 2018 after a 56-year-old man pushed a 73-year-old man onto the tracks in front of a moving train at Toronto's busy Bloor-Yonge Station. The man pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Then-mayor John Tory agreed that barriers would save lives, but did not know where the money would come from to install them. At the time, the TTC estimated it would cost over $1 billion to install barriers on every platform.
When asked by a reporter Friday about the billions that system would now cost, Crombie seemed surprised.
"If that is the cost of safety, then so be it," she said.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles said Crombie's proposed measures are good, but she also wants to see more transit projects actually come to fruition.
"I think a lot of people right now are struggling with the cost of using public transit and we have a government under Doug Ford and the Conservatives that have promised transit projects, bungled them and never opened many of them," Stiles said.
Friday marks the third day of the election campaign, with Ford set to make stops in Hamilton before an announcement in Niagara Falls, Ont.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner will be in Chesley, Ont.
The budget for the Feb. 27 election is $189 million. The opposition has said that Ford called the early vote due to good polling numbers, getting ahead of a federal election and using U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff threats as an excuse for personal gain.
--with files from Allison Jones in Toronto
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 31, 2025.
Liam Casey and Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
