Toronto is preparing to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors as the FIFA World Cup 2026 comes to town in June, and the City, as well as TTC, have been getting in gear to ensure they can handle the increased traffic on the roads and on transit.
On Friday, the TTC announced that 600 event ambassadors will be deployed across the system to help visitors navigate transit and the city.
The ambassadors will be wearing bright red soccer jerseys that are branded with “Team TTC 2026” logos to make them easy to identify. They will have iPads equipped with translators to help assist people in different languages.
Ambassadors will be positioned in high-traffic areas during the tournament and will answer customer questions, provide directions and offer other support.
They will come from within the TTC ranks by volunteering for the role and will be trained in customer service and support. This will be in addition to an increase in supervisors, special constables and operators across the system.
“Extra subway services, extended hours and staged trains ready to take fans home on match days,” said Mayor Olivia Chow during Friday’s announcement. “More frequent streetcar service on Bathurst, King, and Harbourfront, including new overnight service on Bathurst and Harbourfront in case you’re partying longer.”
But the confidence from city officials isn’t being echoed by the city’s residents, who rely on the TTC every day.
“We have a hard time getting the TTC to go to work to come home and everything, imagine all these thousands of people coming to Toronto,” one woman tells CityNews.
“They can’t handle it, they cannot handle it. Definitely, they cannot handle it. If they can’t even handle the amount of people we have in our city, how are you gonna handle another two million? Look how many times the TTC subway breaks down on us.”
And that is the big concern: if Line 1 or Line 2 goes down during the World Cup, there is a backup plan in place, but it’s the same backup plan as always – shuttle buses.
“[Woman laughing] Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, that’s even triple worse, that’s even triple, triple worse. Shuttle buses? Matter of fact, let me ask this one question to the TTC, do we have enough buses?”
TTC CEO Mandeep Lali says they have enough vehicles and operators to drive those buses.
But advocates worry that a massive shutdown could be unavoidable, given the TTC’s current reliability issues.
“The one big concern that I have is that the TTC right now does have a pretty massive state of good repair backlog, their infrastructure is not in spectacular condition,” said Andrew Pulsifer with TTCriders. “We saw last month two hydraulic fuel leaks that shut down the system during rush hour, if something like that happens, that’s what I’m worried about.”
The TTC has previously announced other planned improvements to service ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026, including increased frequency on streetcar routes 509, 511 and 504, bus route 29/929 and increased service on subway lines 1 and 2.
This coming weekend will provide an opportunity for the TTC to stress test their plans as Toronto FC takes on Inter Miami. This event is being considered a “full-scale dry run” by the TTC to ensure that their infrastructure is ready, service levels and response times are up to par, and coordination across teams runs smoothly. They say lessons from this dry run will be used to further refine plans ahead of the first World Cup match in Toronto on June 12.
Lali says that they’ve also been running such tests over the past few weeks, and all systems, infrastructure and personnel are holding up to the stresses.
“We’re not doing [these tests] in isolation, we’re doing them in collaboration with our City partners, with our emergency partners and also jointly with Metrolinx – as we’re helping them, they’re helping us. Collectively, when we do this together, we will be successful,” he said.