A full 48 hours after a blizzard of epic proportions blanketed Toronto with snow, the TTC is still dealing with the aftermath of the historic storm. Getting around the city was practically impossible on Monday, and the situation had barely improved by Tuesday’s morning rush.
As of Wednesday morning, the TTC still has a triple-digit number of buses stuck or waiting to be picked up, while an entire rapid transit line is still out of commission.
TTC spokesperson Stuart Green revealed that there were 132 buses waiting to be removed as of 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning. This number may seem like a lot, but it was still a vast improvement over the previous day’s bus shortage.
That’s an alarming number of buses out of service, though the situation has been quickly improving since the peak of the crisis, when a staggering 540 buses had been halted by the snow. By Tuesday evening, the count had improved to around 300 buses, this number slashed down to 132 by the time the commuter rush began on Wednesday.
And it’s a good thing the TTC has more buses at its disposal today; The Line 3 Scarborough RT is once again at a standstill and replaced by shuttle service, the transit agency attributing the continued outage to — you guessed it — weather conditions.
Commuters out in Scarborough are understandably perturbed by this inconvenience, arguing that the TTC has had plenty of time to get Line 3 back into service.
There have been other issues, too, with Line 1 — the backbone of the TTC’s rapid transit network — facing on-and-off outages since Monday.
Line 1 Yonge-University: No service between Sheppard West and St Clair West due to weather conditions. Shuttle buses are not available. Issues will remain until the end of service.
— TTC Service Alerts (@TTCnotices) January 19, 2022
It feels like a game of commuter whac-a-mole, outages popping up and disappearing faster than they can be reported on, leaving would-be passengers in confusion.
Mayor John Tory has warned Toronto residents that the storm will take days to clean up, though the TTC is facing growing pressure from angry commuters to get things back up and running.