Hitachi Rail Opens $30-Million Canadian HQ in Scarborough, Anchoring 1,100 Jobs

Hitachi Rail officially opened its new Canadian headquarters in Scarborough on Friday, a $30-million technology centre the company says will house more than 1,100 employees and about 100 paid interns a year. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and transit leaders attended the ribbon-cutting, CBC News reported.

The 125,000-square-foot building — about 5.5 floors and the size of more than seven NHL rinks, according to the company — will be the centre for Hitachi Rail's signalling and systems business in Canada. It is also home to the firm's global digital signalling work for subways. Arnaud Besse, managing director of Hitachi Rail in Canada, told CBC the technology was pioneered in Toronto and that locating the headquarters in Scarborough makes business sense.

Toronto-built tech on 150 lines worldwide

"We invented this technology in the middle of the 70s. Fifty years ago, we started on Scarborough line, we continued on the Vancouver SkyTrain line," Besse said after the opening, per CBC. "And now it's a technology that is deployed across the world in 150 lines. Seventy cities around the world are running our technology today." Hitachi's own release says SelTrac communications-based train control, developed in Toronto, is now on more than 150 lines in 70 cities.

Chow framed the opening as a bet on Scarborough's talent. "Hitachi chose Toronto and they chose Scarborough — $30M for the new Canadian headquarters right here," she said, according to CBC. In Hitachi's release she added that Toronto engineers have built the technology that keeps trains moving safely in cities around the world and that the company is "doubling down." Ford thanked Hitachi for its confidence in Ontario and said three levels of government working together make the province "unstoppable," CBC reported.

Ontario Line, Hazel McCallion Line and TTC Line 2

Hitachi Rail is involved in delivering Toronto's Ontario Line and Peel Region's Hazel McCallion Line, and in modernizing signalling on the TTC's Line 2 Bloor-Danforth subway, CBC noted. In July, the TTC awarded Hitachi Rail a $400-million contract to install communications-based train control on Line 2. The TTC says automatic train control monitors train location more accurately so more trains can run closer together, increasing frequency and cutting signal-related delays.

In a July statement, Hitachi said the upgrade would enable capacity of up to 33,000 passengers per hour on Line 2 — up to a 40 per cent increase from about 23,400 today — and that the same technology would support the 7.8-kilometre Scarborough Subway Extension. Friday's headquarters opening puts that design and testing work under one Scarborough roof: Hitachi says 35,000 square feet (1.5 floors) are dedicated to engineering simulators and digital twins of metro networks, including lines in London, New York, Singapore and major Canadian cities.

$105 million for the next SelTrac generation

Alongside the building, Hitachi said it is investing $105 million to develop the next generation of SelTrac digital signalling with AI, 5G and edge computing. The company puts its wider Canada footprint at more than 1,300 employees with offices in Quebec, B.C. and Ontario, and says the LEED Silver headquarters will also host university partnerships with Ontario Tech and McMaster for railway engineering programs, Canadian Manufacturing reported.

For riders, the near-term stakes are practical: signalling work on Line 2, the Ontario Line and the Hazel McCallion Line is supposed to make more trains run more reliably. For Scarborough, Friday's opening is a concrete $30-million vote of confidence — more than 1,100 jobs and a global competence centre — in a borough that already helped invent the technology now running under cities worldwide.