The southernmost part of the Gardiner Expressway, which lies between Union Station and Lake Ontario, provides easy core access to GO Transit buses.

Brookfield Place is home to the Allen Lambert Galleria, a six story high pedestrian thoroughfare, as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame, which holds the Stanley Cup.

Union Station will soon be linked via a Path bridge on the east side to the Backstage Condominium building at the corner of Esplanade and Yonge Street.

[9] The bilaterally symmetrical building comprises three connecting box masses facing Front Street West, with the main structure in the middle.

[10] The exterior Front Street façade is laid out in an ashlar pattern, constructed with smooth beige Indiana and Queenston limestone.

The colonnaded loggia which faces Front Street features 22 equally spaced Roman Tuscan columns made from Bedford limestone, each 40 feet (12 m) high and weighing 75 tons.

The flat-roof illusion, together with the axial symmetry, classical detailing in both structural and decorative elements, heavy ornamentation, and formal setting is typical of the Beaux-Arts style.

Passengers can connect with GO Transit services through the 62,000 sq ft (5,800 m2) York Concourse, which opened on April 27, 2015, west of Union Station.

[19] The Bay East Teamway provides indoor access to platforms 4 to 13 directly from the Union Station Bus Terminal.

This renovation came with plans to have a green roof installed, reducing the urban heat island effect and stormwater runoff; however, with the project being almost eight years behind and multiple times over budget, along with the fact that plant-watering logistics would clash with the planned overhead wiring for electrification, the addition of a green roof was cancelled.

Allowing a lower, lighter shed roof in the age of steam, the smoke vents over tracks 1 and 2 are a preserved heritage feature of the platform 3 area; these were restored.

Once the north tower of the CIBC Square is completed, stair and elevator access will be reinstated between platform 3 and the Bay East Teamway.

[32] The resulting construction saw the elimination of Lorne Street located between Simcoe and Bay from Front to Esplanade with tracks leading west of the new station now in place.

He proceeded to the Canadian Pacific Railway's wicket, where he was given a first-class fare from Toronto to High River, Alberta, where his ranch was located.

It was fuelled by coal delivered by a CNR siding and was the largest such facility in Canada when it opened in 1929; it produced 150,000 kilograms (330,000 lb) of steam per hour and 270,000,000 kilograms (600,000,000 lb) annually to heat the station; the passenger cars in the train shed; CNR and CPR yard facilities in the area now occupied by the Gardiner Expressway, Rogers Centre and Scotiabank Arena; the CPR's Royal York Hotel; the Dominion Public Building; the federal post office building adjacent to the station; and the CN/CP Telecommunications building on Front Street.

The third Union Station's future was looking bleak by 1972, when both railways sought to increase return on their underutilized waterfront rail classification yards which was being viewed as valuable real estate.

Both CN and CP began to abandon their extensive waterfront rail classification yards south of the passenger station to make way for urban redevelopment.

Local opposition to the proposal was successful in having the city council's decision to support the Metro Centre development overturned and Union Station was saved.

The GO Transit commuter rail agency which was established on May 23, 1967, had been undergoing unprecedented expansion which was seeing Union Station see passenger levels that outstripped some of the busiest airports in the world.

[citation needed] The CN Tower had revamped the vision of Toronto's waterfront rail yards and proposals were made to construct what would later become SkyDome (1989) and Air Canada Centre (1999), resulting in further changes to the Union Station trackage.

A subsequent announcement on May 24, 2006, addressed several issues for commuters including: constructing a direct connection from the GO Concourse to the Path pedestrian tunnel system, a new eastbound platform for the Union TTC station, improved access to streetcars at Union TTC station, and improved capacity for inter-city railway passengers.

Additional aesthetic points include glass roofs over the moat space around the north sides of the building, and a tall atrium over the central portions of the platforms.

[46] In February 2019, charges were laid by Toronto Fire Services against contactor Bondfield Construction and the city for an over-crowding issue where doors had been blocked.

[47] In March 2019 it was reported that Vaughan-based contractor Bondfield Construction had applied for bankruptcy protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).

[6] This heavy usage is partly due to Union Station's position at the centre of Canada's busiest inter-city rail service area, the "Corridor", which stretches from Quebec City in the east to Windsor in the west.

Westbound Via Rail trains from Toronto connect directly to most major cities in Southwestern Ontario, including Kitchener, London, Sarnia, and Windsor.

Union Station is also the eastern terminus of The Canadian, Via Rail's transcontinental service westbound to Vancouver via Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton.

The terminal currently serves GO Transit regional buses as well as Coach Canada, TOK Coachlines, and Ontario Northland long-distance bus services.

The opening of the line allowed Metrolinx to achieve its goal, announced in 2010, of operating an airport rail link from Union Station in time for the 2015 Pan American Games.

The UP Express Union Station has a dedicated customer service counter, ticket vending machines and flight check-in kiosks.