Acting TTC boss apologizes to commuters at Bloor-Yonge Station for subway issues

TTC hit with more delays after 'terrible' week After a particularly messy week for TTC subway lines, a deliberate act of vandalism prompted a lengthy service suspension to end the week.

The acting head of the TTC and a number of other senior executives were at Bloor-Yonge Station to speak with commuters on Friday morning following a series of rush-hour subway service interruptions earlier this week.

Subway service ground to a halt on both Tuesday and Wednesday morning amid a myriad of issues that included a cracked rail north of Bloor-Yonge Station, an emergency alarm being triggered on a train at Museum Station and a disabled train north of Finch Station.

Speaking with CP24 on Friday morning, Acting CEO Rick Leary conceded that it was a “very tough week” for commuters and vowed to do better.

He said that while some of the issues were the result of aging infrastructure, he said that “a number of mistakes" were made, including the “questionable judgement” shown in moving the disabled train from a storage area north of Finch Station to Davisville Yard during rush hour. Service had to hold for 16 minutes on Line 1 after that train ended up emitting smoke at Eglinton Station.

“What people really want to know was what happened. This was a very tough week and we are very open about that,” Leary said. We have a lot of good hard working people here and they get the message and they know what we have to get done. We are going to continue talking to our customers and improving the system and when we see things happening we are just going to be transparent and we are going to talk about them.”

Tory had criticized communication during subway issues

Leary and other TTC executives were at Bloor-Yonge station in the wake of criticism from Mayor John Tory.

Tory told reporters on Thursday that the TTC fell short of its own standards in communicating the subway issues to commuters as they were happening.

He said that some of what happened was a “mystery” to him in “light of the successful efforts that have been made in recent times to communicate more effectively.”

For his part, Leary told CP24 that the TTC will focus on being “transparent” when service interruptions occur. He said that investments are also being made to improve the TTC’s aging infrastructure in order to ensure that interruptions like the ones that happened earlier this week don’t keep occurring.

“There is a lot of investment going on at the TTC right now. We have about 50 weekend diversions coming up in 2018 to work on replacing our signals and our switches and upgrading our track beds. There is a lot of progress that will be made or has been made but there is a lot to do over the next couple years as well,” he said.