The Toronto Subway is falling apart, and Mayor Chow really doesn't care.
We elected her to make things better, and now they're getting worse.
For every Torontonian about to ride the subway, there are four deadly words guaranteed to ruin your day:
shuttle buses are operating
No. NO! I don’t want a shuttle bus! I want the subway to work properly! I want to get where I need to go on time, and not two hours late! Could the TTC please, for once in their history, get their shit together?
Unfortunately, no. It doesn’t matter how much we beg or plead with City Council to fix these problems; Mayor Olivia Chow can barely muster the energy to acknowledge these problems exist.
Forget the shuttle bus. In Toronto, all of us are about to ride the struggle bus. And it’s getting even worse.
Behold, the current Reduced Speed Zone map for our Toronto Metro:
Currently, Line 1 is plagued by a smattering of slow zones. While Line 2 is solely afflicted eastbound from Coxwell to Woodbine, Line 1 has a plethora of the RSZs on both branches north of Bloor:
Both directions between Davisville and St. Clair
Southbound between St. Clair and Summerhill
Northbound between Bloor-Yonge and Rosedale
Northbound between Dupont and St. Clair West
Southbound between Yorkdale and Lawrence West
Northbound between Yorkdale and Wilson
Both directions between Sheppard West and Wilson
Northbound between York University and Pioneer Village
Some of these stations aren’t even a decade old! York University and Pioneer Village opened in 2017! Both the Sheppard West and Wilson stations below that 2017 extension are also important; Wilson Yard is located in-between those two stations, and this yard is where most Line 1 trains are stored overnight.
Riding through one of these slow zones is excruciatingly painful as a rider. There is a feeling of being trapped, while thinking you could literally walk faster. In fact, I’ve thought that so many times, I decided to test it in real life.
A few months prior to writing this column, while a slow zone was in effect between North York Centre and Sheppard-Yonge, I pulled the live location of the train from the TTC data feed, and when it was about to depart North York Centre southbound, I raced it on foot.
I won. An electrified TTC metro train, versus a lanky nerd in poor shape, and I won. That’s pathetic. And it’s entirely because the tracks have become so unsafe, that the train isn’t allowed to move faster than I can walk with my own pair of legs.
Because of former Mayor John Tory’s austerity budgets, the state of the tracks on the TTC has grown decrepit. The track derailment on Line 3, causing the line to close months earlier than planned, is a symptom of a wider decline in track safety across the entire TTC metro network.
There has been a consistent refusal by the City of Toronto, regardless of which mayor has helmed City Council, to properly fund the TTC and provide passengers with the safe ride they are entitled to.
I want to scream at City Council for treating passenger safety like it can be ignored. Track repair and maintenance is not fucking optional! They are necessary to keep trains from derailing and killing everyone!
When it comes to rider safety, individual slow zones are no longer the primary issue; the greater concern is the malfunctioning automation system forcing Toronto’s metro to repeatedly shut down the entire network.
A slow train is nothing compared to the entire subway network forcibly shutting down without explanation or warning, for hours at a time.
Why is a brand-new Alstom Urbalis 400 automated control system, used on countless other metro systems around the world, including in Romania, The Netherlands, China, and Chilé, solely experiencing catastrophic failures in Toronto alone?
Indeed, that semi-automated control system, which allows the train to stop precisely in the same place on the platform every single time, is necessary not only to run more trains closer together at quicker frequencies, but also for platform screen doors that correctly line up with the train.
How many times can a major section of Line 1 be shut down due to a “trespasser at track level” before we finally decide that platform screen doors are worth the money? How many delays could we prevent in our network if we just buckled down and paid this one-time fee to keep people safe?
The TTC’s new automation system required years of weekend subway closures in order to give crews the time to install it. The fact that it is already starting to have catastrophic failures which cause the entire subway line to failsafe and shut down?
This has happened multiple times in a single week, and Mayor Chow will barely pretend to care. Her appointed lackey, TTC Chair Jamaal Myers, boasted about being a TTC Chair that actually rides the TTC, and now claims that these massive shutdowns are nothing but a minor inconvenience.
I can no longer blame John Tory alone for the current fate of the TTC, not after he’s been gone so long. Mayor Chow and TTC Chair Myers have held their positions for over a year, and in that time the subway system has only gotten worse.
She cares about shiny new trains, but she doesn’t care that the tracks they run on are dangerous enough to kill. Olivia Chow is more than happy to give the Toronto Police unrestricted budget increases, yet when it comes to actual safety, keeping the trains and the buses we ride in good repair, Olivia Chow is a cheapskate.
If anyone has shown actual leadership in this situation, it is Councillor Josh Matlow of Toronto—St. Paul’s, a member of the TTC Board, who has proposed concrete action to City Council:
Engage a third party to audit the Line 1 signalling system, and uncover why a new system is repeatedly failing and shutting down.
Improve communications with riders during shutdowns, including clear and timely updates on those shutdowns, as well as communicating those shutdowns in more visible places.
Improvements to the efficiency of shuttle bus operations, including the creation of permanent BRT priority lanes on the streets above Line 1 and Line 2.
Source funding from partners for the implementation of platform screen doors at the busiest stations in the network.
For disclosure: I worked on Josh Matlow’s mayoral race last year against Mayor Chow, and I clearly have a bias towards my former employer. Nonetheless, Councillor Matlow is acting at City Council to provide actual solutions, while Mayor Chow is sticking her head in the sand hoping that she can ignore the problem until it goes away.
I’m sorry that Mayor Chow is afraid to raise property taxes to fund the budgets that she writes for her own government. I’m sorry that, like Mayor Sutcliffe of Ottawa, she is pretending that her city is too poor to pay for their own shit, like every real city does.
Let me be even more blunt with Mayor Chow than I already have been: If she cares more about the political blowback of a tax increase, than she does about the increasing likelihood of a deadly tragedy on the TTC?
If that is truly the case, then she is a coward of the highest order. As Toronto’s mayor, she will not have an independent legacy; she will join the dubious company of every Mayor of Toronto before her, another link in the chain of mediocrity which binds our city.
Groups like Progress Toronto slavishly devote themselves to false progressives like Chow, at the expense of real leaders who want to change our city for the better. Olivia Chow may be our elected mayor, but someone who only seeks to uphold the status quo will never be a leader.
It is time for the progressive left in Toronto to find a true leader, someone willing to fight for our future rather than hide from a challenge. It is time for false progressives like Chow to stop lying to supporters to win elections, only to govern like a conservative.
It is time for the status quo in our city to change. It is time, for Mayor Olivia Chow to go.