That was a mess
Mayor calls for clearer communication when transit is delayed
Derailment on TTC leads to morning chaos,
Thousands of frustrated TTC subway passengers had their morning commute disrupted Thursday because of a derailment, the second such incident in less than a month.
Subway service didn’t resume on Line 1 until about 1 p.m., nearly seven hours after a TTC work car derailed near St. George station forcing riders to take shuttle buses from St. Clair West to Union Station.
Exasperated riders were urged to stay patient during the disruption that affected thousands of passengers and began at about 6 a.m. Riders were urged to head over to the Yonge portion of Line 1 to head downtown in the morning.
“We’ve added extra bus service to the 97 Yonge, and extra streetcars to the 510 Spadina and 512 St. Clair routes,” TTC head of customer service department Sue Motahedin tweeted at about 8:30 a.m.
“(Six) subway cars were moved from Line 2 on to the Yonge side of Line 1 to help deal with the volume of customers.” Mayor John Tory told reporters Thursday morning that the disruption “happened at the worst possible time.”
Tory said details of the delay weren’t shared with transit workers or members of the public quickly or effectively enough.
“Clearly there is an inadequacy, especially in the digital age, in the communication of that information the minute that those kinds of things happen,” the mayor told a news conference Thursday morning.
“There’s less and less excuse nowadays. In days gone by, you didn’t have this kind of digital communication and instantaneous information being conveyed. There really isn’t any reason anymore.”
Tory said he could see passengers getting off buses and heading for subway stations where service had already been cancelled at 6 a.m.
“Obviously that bus driver didn’t know, because had he or she known, they would’ve said ‘Please don’t get off the bus,’ or ‘Understand when you get off the bus, there’s no train running at the moment,’ ” he said.
He added that the TTC should look into refunding customers who used a Presto card to pay for access to the backed-up system.
“When it’s easy to see where people swiped and what time people swiped … it should be possible to do that,” Tory said.
A TTC spokesperson said it will not be reimbursing passengers who were affected and have no current plans to implement a reimbursement system in the future.
Tory said he is looking forward to a full report into why this happened.