Bus shelter’s vanishing act is not cool
It’ll be a shivering winter for students who catch the bus at a windswept TTC stop, now that their transit shelter has vanished.
And if the city’s schedule for returning the shelter holds, it is unlikely it’ll be back before spring, leaving those who for many years have relied on it out in the cold.
Winter had so far been quite tolerable around here: A couple of small snowfalls and a few chilly days. There was a time when hard winter would have set in by now, but not any more. Blame it on climate change.
But there is still plenty of lousy weather to come between now and March, which makes a transit shelter look pretty darn good to people who have to stand outside to wait for the bus.
Not many people who motor past TTC stops in gleaming SUVs with heated seats and steering wheels have any idea how important a glass-walled shelter is when the snow is blowing sideways or a cold rain is pelting down.
A student at the Centennial College campus at Morningside and Ellesmere avenues said a shelter on the southeast corner of the intersection was removed several months ago for no apparent reason.
She thought it was taken away in preparation for construction, but so far there’s been no activity, she said, which makes its removal even more curious and hard to justify.
“It’s really windy and cold to wait for a bus at that stop, and everybody wishes they’d bring it back right away,” she said, adding, “there is no reason that we can see to take it away.”
She noted that the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus is just one block east of the intersection, at Ellesmere and Military Trail, which adds to the students who wait for the bus at that stop. Status: I sent a note to the city and got a reply from Hakeem Muhammad, a spokesperson for transportation services, with bad news about the future.
“The transit shelter was removed to facilitate construction related to storm sewer relining work on Morningside, from Military Trail to Ellesmere,” said Muhammad. “Work on this project is currently behind schedule due to an industry-wide material shortage. The project is now expected to be complete at the end of February 2022. The transit shelter will be reinstalled once new concrete has been poured and construction has been completed.”