Toronto's Subway Stations Severely Neglected

[Jaye101]

Now, if you ride the subway its kind of hard not to notice. After taking my first trip to Montreal and seeing the good condition their stations are in, it makes me upset that Toronto's system is in such shape. At Islington Station there is yellow water leaking onto the platform with no signs warning passengers. At Bloor Station there is orange goop soaking up an unknown liquid in the middle of the station. There are broken signs, uncovered cielings, etc... Some of the neglect seems to simply be a result of laziness.

The Fixer: What's with the ooze at Yonge station?
By: Jack Lakey

Yonge St. is in need of tidying up, but at the TTC's Yonge-Bloor subway station, a total redo of Yonge is long overdue.

Toronto's main drag has a forlorn air about it, which persists despite gussied-up storefronts and rehabilitation projects like Yonge-Dundas Square. A hike from Bloor to Queen Sts. provides ample evidence.

A lot of strollers on Yonge are from out of town and get there by riding the subway. They form an impression of the city and its transit system based on how these areas are maintained.

Michael J. McKeown sent us a photo of a tiled wall across the tracks from the westbound platform of the Bloor subway line, with the word "Yonge" on it at intervals to alert passengers they're rolling into the Yonge-Bloor station.

The photo shows something oozing out from between the tiles that so thoroughly obscures the Yonge, it looks like the tiles are melting. Lord only knows what it is.

McKeown's email, sent from his BlackBerry, had not a word in it, other than to name the location. We assume he thought the photo was worth a thousand words.

We went there Tuesday and found the soiled tiles across the middle of the platform, where riders gather.

It's not an issue that affects the operation of trains or the convenience or comfort of riders. Nobody has been delayed by it.

But it goes to the heart of a problem that dogs the TTC: A perception that its managers have become indifferent to the rundown appearance of stations.

To be fair, the TTC is renovating some stations and washrooms on an ongoing basis, and has been starved for upwards of 15 years of operating capital that transit systems elsewhere take for granted. But for a lot of things, it is no excuse.

STATUS: We reported the problem to Jessica Martin, who deals with media for the TTC. She's getting back to us about the cause of the stuff on the tiles, and what the TTC intends to do about it.

Post your pictures of Toronto Subway Stations experiencing neglect.

Dundas West

Yonge (the one spoken of in the article)

Islington

 

[Jaye101]

Can a mod merge the threads... I somehow failed to see the other one.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

There's a section of Sheppard station, on the first level as you walk down from the street level, that has had hoarding around it for at least three years. It's right next to a photo booth on the way to the collector booths. The bizarre thing is that I never see any activity within the hoarding, but the hoarding *itself* has been replaced and they even maintain it by regularly painting over graffiti, etc.

 

[noctis]

all i can say is that the toronto subway is slowly turning into the new york subway system. if anyone has ever taken the NY subway, u kno what i mean.

 

[nfitz]

Maintenance certainly suffered, particularly after the huge Harris budget cuts in 1995. But generally, I thought things have been getting better in the last few years. TTC's budgets for routine maintenance have increased, more staff have been added, there's been a focus on this at the Commission. In the stations, many have been repainted, the light covers have been replaced, and many stations are much brighter than they used to be on the Bloor-Danforth. Doors are being repaired, escaltor routine maintenance seems to have increased. Some of the worse stations are clearly being ignored - presumably as they are part of upcoming large-scale work, such as Pape, Dufferin, Bloor-Yonge, Coxwell, etc.

But things seem to be improving of late, not getting even worse.

 

[junctionist]

It took them several months to install automatic sliding doors at Runnymede Station. Not days, months! It takes the TTC exponentially longer to do any renovations. It's disturbing and it isn't normal.

 

[nfitz]

Agreed ... these projects do seem to take an unusually long time. And quite frankly I don't get it, as the subcontractor is generally the low bidder. To keep costs low one tends to be efficient, and get in and out quickly ... not these start/stop for months things.

Maybe there should be a clause about timeframes added to the standard TTC contract language.

 

[Dan416]

I really don't get why the TTC takes soooooo long to do anything. I definitely agree that it's not normal. It's more like insane.

 

[Agram]

Well if it goes out to tender, these things take a few months. Major work requires a budget, if it is not factored in this year they have to wait till next year. Its a big system, all projects are put on a priority basis.

 

[Northern Light]

Agram,

I think I feel safe is suggesting that where timing is concerned, tendered or untendered, people are complaining about the length of time spent on projects once they actually start.

Particularly what makes people mad is an out-of-service door for 4 months; something that almost never happens in the private sector.

Most of us here are both TTC users and defenders, and sympathizers with the public sector.

But there are times when the seeming failure of the TTC to fix something, in a timely way is just unfathomable.

If you look at those automatic doors, we've heard, in one case, parts from overseas are the excuse; and later @ Main Street, I was told, the TTC is fed up with the door so we need to wait for a completely new design.

Most of us look at this and go; you don't stock your own parts for doors? There's no North American distributor/dealer and you don't stock your own parts? What? Huh? (not at you Agram, just at the TTC)

And then if you decide, oops, we chose a bad door design (and one wonders how that happened unto itself, if you go with a proven design and builder...but I digress); then once you decide, you immediately order the new door, and get it installed rush; not after six months; its not as if it takes six months to build a door (in the factory) or to install it.

People just get exasperated, and rightly so I think with a mentality that seems to suggest "we will get around to it, maybe, kind of, in awhile, if your lucky"

 

[Second_in_pie]

all i can say is that the toronto subway is slowly turning into the new york subway system. if anyone has ever taken the NY subway, u kno what i mean.

New York Subway, without the coverage to make up for it!

I've never seen any of those places that the article has pictures of, but it's not hard to imagine it. The dirty, grey, exposed ceiling at Y-B leaking water about a month ago is a good example of just a totally disgusting state of disrepair.

 

[nfitz]

Well if it goes out to tender, these things take a few months. Major work requires a budget, if it is not factored in this year they have to wait till next year. Its a big system, all projects are put on a priority basis.

I can see that there may be delays starting a project ... but even once the project starts, even a simple project seems to take forever. The replacement doors at subway stations for example; the one door at Main has been boarded up for over 6 weeks now. This kind of stuff doesn't happen in the private sector.

And I certainly tender stuff in the private sector ... it doesn't take months for smallish $100,000 to $250,000 projects. Generally you can issue the tender and award the contract within 3-4 weeks, when you don't have the red tape to deal with.

On the other hand, the big danger for this type of stuff is corruption, and Toronto - compared to many other similiar sized cities, does very well to keep that under control - compare to Montreal or Chicago!

 

[urbanfan89]

In the past, some governments have mindlessly pursued tax cuts at the expense of maintenance of infrastructure. Maintenance costs therefore increase for latter years, permitting the system to deteriorate.

What Mr. Harris and Eves did was to fund their tax cuts by stealing from the future.

 

[TTC12]

I posted this link on my topic. Its basically a cleanliness project and they give updates once in a while http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Co...mber_17_2009/Reports/SUBWAY_STATION_APPEA.pdf

 

[lead82]

The link is not working for me. Not sure if the TTC took down this document.