After growing at a snail’s pace for decades, Toronto’s subway system is set to burst through the city’s northern border.

In less than one month, the Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension will open with six stops on Line 1 up into York Region.

On Friday, Toronto Mayor John Tory, Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca and others gathered at the new Downsview Park station to start the clock ticking down to what Del Duca called “probably the single greatest transit achievement of my lifetime.”

“It’s amazing to see what we can achieve when we work together,” Tory said of the three levels of government, adding that a 15-year wait since the launch of the last subway extension is “not acceptable to the people, it’s not acceptable to us.”

York University growing to the point where 50,000 people, most of them students, visit every day without rapid transit shows past political failure, he said.

The new York University Station will replace a parade of buses into the heart of the campus, while Pioneer Village Station will take students, faculty and staff to York’s northernmost buildings.

Tory told reporters it’s not an oversight that Downsview Park, amid barren fields near Sheppard Ave. W. and Keele St., will have no dedicated parking lot.

“The ideal is that people will use bikes or their feet or buses to get to the transit station … but we’re mindful of the fact that there is concern that has been expressed about this and we’re looking at this on an ongoing basis,” he said after a tour of the airy station designed to let light flow from a roof skylight all the way to tracks below.

Other riders will flow in and out from GO Transit’s Barrie line, which will stop at a platform in the station.

Del Duca said he plans to ride the first subway train on Sunday Dec. 17, heading south from Vaughan Metropolitan Centre at 8 a.m., with his two daughters. He urged people to ride the line and visit the new stations, predicting they will “fall in love” with them.

Along with enthusiasm and anticipation, the extension has experienced some growing pains, including delays and cost overruns.

The cost more than doubled initial estimates, to $3.2 billion including $500 million not attributed to the addition of extra stops. Funding is split between Ottawa, Queen’s Park, York Region, and Toronto, with the city’s contribution at roughly $900 million.

Ridership on the 8.6-kilometre extension is expected to reach 26.3 million a year.

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The last subway extension opening was Nov. 22, 2002, when then-mayor Mel Lastman and other VIPs officially opened the $1-billion Sheppard line.

With files from Ben Spurr