Gimme shelter from the rain, TTC riders say
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, especially when a transit shelter goes missing during the heaviest rainfall in months.
The last gasp of hurricane Patricia rolled into the GTA early Wednesday, pelting us with non-stop rain for about 24 hours and thoroughly dousing everyone who had to slog through it.
It was an ordeal for transit riders, particularly those who ride buses and streetcars and had to wait outside for their ride to arrive.
But when TTC customers are accustomed to waiting it out in the confines of a transit shelter, and that shelter vanished and has not been replaced, it is no surprise that they’d be miffed, to say the least.
Sonja Topolinsky emailed to say a transit shelter at the northeast corner of Mt. Pleasant Rd. and Broadway Ave. was removed last summer for sidewalk levelling work.
“Since then, no shelter has been put back in,” she said.
“There are usually eight to 10 people waiting for the Express 141 or the 103 (bus), so on days like (Wednesday), with all the rain, we are wide open.
“They put a shelter on the southeast corner, where if two people are waiting, that is an exaggeration.”
The location rang a bell with us. Back in 2012, a reader had complained that a full-sized shelter in the same place had been replaced with one that was only a single wall with a canopy on top.
At the time, the city and its street furniture partner, Astral Out of Home, had decided to erect the one-walled shelters in locations where they didn’t think there was enough room for a full-sized shelter.
The one-walled shelters were not very good at shielding transit users from the elements, but were excellent at angering people, especially those whose full-sized shelters were removed.
“There are usually eight to 10 people waiting for the Express 141 or the 103 (bus), so on days like (Wednesday), with all the rain, we are wide open.”
SONJA TOPOLINSKY
The hail of criticism was so intense that Astral decided by the end of 2012 it would not erect any more, and even took down some of those already in place, including the one at Mt. Pleasant and Broadway.
A full-sized shelter eventually was returned to that corner, the one that has since gone missing. Status: Carly Hinks, who’s in charge of Toronto’s street furniture, looked into it and told us it is scheduled to be replaced by the end of November. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. To contact us, go to thestar.com/yourtoronto/the_fixer, call us at 416-869-4823 or email jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.