The “Dufferin Street Jog” has been eliminated, and with it, a century-old planning oversight has at last been rectified.

A new stretch of Dufferin St. between Queen St. and Peel Ave. opens Thursday, marking the end of the three-year, $40 million “jog elimination” project.

“I’m tickled pink,” said Councillor Gord Perks, whose Ward 14 is bordered on the east by Dufferin. “What could have been a plain and frankly ugly piece of transportation infrastructure has been transformed into a really attractive urban space.”

For as long as there have been cars on Dufferin, drivers have had to navigate under the Queen St. railway bridge and around the jog via Gladstone and Peel Aves.

Now, a 72-metre tunnel running under the rail lines fills in the Dufferin St. gap, allowing drivers to head straight up the west-end street.

The correction has been on the city’s to-do list for years.

The kink was created when the Queen underpass was built in the 1880s to separate the roadway and rail lines. Planners didn’t foresee Dufferin becoming an arterial road, so it remained unconnected north of Queen.

The city recognized the need to straighten out the jog in 1966. The project finally got underway in 2007, the incredibly complex construction phase beginning a year later.

“It was almost like building a Swiss watch,” said Jim Schaffner, senior project engineer for structures and expressways with the City of Toronto.

The rail lines in active use by GO Transit and CN Rail were lifted and shifted to allow for tunneling underneath. The official opening, originally scheduled for August, was delayed while adjustments were made so the rail lines could be reset.

While the tunnel is now open to cars, lane closures can be expected as finishing touches are made, Schaffner said.

“It’s been a long process and the end is in sight.”

Perks said the new tunnel wasn’t just a traffic project, but successful urban regeneration in a “formally dead pocket of land.”

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Design features such as an amphitheatre-shaped parkette on the west side — built using limestone from the old underpass — and a public art installation lining the tunnel’s walls have attracted two midrise development proposals, Perks said.

That, in place of “chain link fence, scrubby trees and illegally dumped garbage,” makes the area worth investing in, he added.