Sound the alarm — train’s washroom has no toilet paper
Metrolinx publishes list of 10 bizarre excuses riders give for pushing the emergency alarm
Catching someone clipping their toenails on the GO train may be gross, but it’s not a reason to push the emergency alarm.
Nor is realizing you’ve forgotten your lunch. Or seeing someone put their feet on the seats. Or being annoyed by the smell of another passenger’s food.
Yet amazingly, these are all reasons that riders cited over the past year for why they hit the emergency strip and stopped the train, according to Metrolinx, the provincial agency that operates GO Transit.
Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins published a list of 10 bizarre excuses in a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday.
They were culled from a canvass of GO control centre employees, transit safety officers and train staff that she performs each year.
Other strange justifications included passengers talking in the train’s “quiet zone,” the washroom running out of toilet paper and “testing to see if it works.”
The list is unscientific, but Aikins makes it public each year in order to educate passengers about the consequences of not using the emergency strip appropriately.
Each time someone presses the strip, it can cause a delay of five to 10 minutes, as staff attend to the coach and make sure nothing is seriously wrong.
Pulling the emergency brake, which brings the train to a sudden stop, can cause delays of 30 minutes or more.
In 2016, there were more than 650 train trips affected by emergency alarms or emergency brakes, causing close to 150 hours in delays.
It’s not clear how many of the alarms were for illegitimate reasons, but Aikins said a majority weren’t genuine emergencies.
“Honestly, it’s pretty shocking,” Aikins said of the excuses passengers give. She said one man who recently pushed the strip told train staff he simply wanted to test their response time.
“He congratulated our staff that they arrived very quickly, and he got an appropriate lecture,” she said. “He was very apologetic.”
That passenger got off with a warning, but not everyone is so lucky. Customers who hit the alarm without legitimate cause can be fined at least $150.
The penalty can be into the thousands of dollars for more serious cases, such as if pulling the brake results in an injury to a passenger.
Some people who mistakenly pull the alarm are genuinely confused about what it does. Customers often say they were trying to request the train to stop at the next station — which is appropriate on a TTC bus or streetcar but not on a GO train, which only makes scheduled stops.
In other cases, passengers seem to instantly regret what they’ve done. GO staff report that in many instances when they attend to an emergency alarm, no one wants to own up to pressing it.
“You get there and everybody’s looking out the window, up on the ceiling, down on the floor,” Aikins said.
There are legitimate reasons to press the alarm or pull the train’s emergency brake, such as if a passenger needs medical attention, witnesses vandalism or a fight, or sees a suspicious package.
But if the situation doesn’t fall into one of those categories and customers are still considering pushing the alarm, Aikins has a message: “Don’t do it.”
“All it’s going to do is delay everyone, including yourself. It can cause a dangerous situation, and you could be fined. It could cost you money.”