TTC: Other Items (catch all)

[gabe]

People often forget or don’t know that the main reason was emergency services were pretty much paralyzed. If I recall correctly, there was at least one death attributed to a delay in emergency services getting to them.

Toronto calling in the army to "shovel" has become a comedy meme now, but it was a serious event. Over 100 cm of snow, we had back to back storms. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the roads. EMS couldn't get through the snow. I remember my dad and neighbors, armed with shovels digging out a police car and other vehicles stuck on the road.

 

[smallspy]

i thought they have special maintenance trains with plows that clear the lines. i cant imaging there's huge crews of works with shovels. can they not just keep running the maintenance trains?

They do have special snow clearing rail equipment, and they're using them.

But they also don't work particularly well on switches. Those need to be done with more specialized equipment - which the TTC doesn't own - or by hand.

Dan

 

[turbanplanner]

Wasn't the 1999 event multiple days of sustained snow?

Anyway, the dunking on Toronto for calling in the army has always bugged me. The army should be helping places shovel out when there's substantial snowfall.

Personally, the people I know who say stuff like that have never gone north of Front street!

Toronto calling in the army to "shovel" has become a comedy meme now, but it was a serious event. Over 100 cm of snow, we had back to back storms. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the roads. EMS couldn't get through the snow. I remember my dad and neighbors, armed with shovels digging out a police car and other vehicles stuck on the road.

Fun fact, in my experience Toronto police only seem to have all season tires, From what I've seen many were over 8 years old

 

[chrisw]

From Reddit, TTC workers digging out a stuck subway at Davisville, the subway was there since Sunday evening.

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/1qnnkvq/line_1_rescue_underway_at_davisville

 

[JasonParis]

Wasn't the 1999 event multiple days of sustained snow?

Anyway, the dunking on Toronto for calling in the army has always bugged me. The army should be helping places shovel out when there's substantial snowfall.

Yup—two massive storms in the same week, followed by a deep plunge in temperatures. Calling in the army was the best decision Mel ever made, if you ask me. It was genuinely serious.

What always stuck with me is that a year or two later, when Jack Layton was running for the federal NDP leadership, he mocked it in his speeches to put distance between himself and Toronto—at one point even revising the snowfall down to “10 cm.” I was generally a fan of Layton, but that move irked me to no end.

 

[nfitz]

Yup—two massive storms in the same week, followed by a deep plunge in temperatures. Calling in the army was the best decision Mel ever made, if you ask me. It was genuinely serious.

What always stuck with me is that a year or two later, when Jack Layton was running for the federal NDP leadership, he mocked it in his speeches to put distance between himself and Toronto—at one point even revising the snowfall down to “10 cm.” I was generally a fan of Layton, but that move irked me to no end.

And a third dump of 30-cm five days later when they called the army. Which arrived two days later - just as there was a 27-cm dump.

118.4 cm in the month, mostly from January 2 to January 15 with very little melting. The most snow in an entire month Edmonton has had in the last century is 79 cm in 1942. 81 cm in Winnipeg in 1955. And only 70 cm in in May 1903 (bonus points for being May - but I wonder how much melted); these are the places that whined about the army. How many times a decade does Winnipeg call in the army, because they keep building in flood plains?

 

[txlseries4]

Just saw this graph in a CBC article comparing the 1999 storm to yesterday's and our snowfall so far this month

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-snow-military-help-9.7061297

 

[nfitz]

It looks like they are using downtown measurements for 1999, and Pearson measurements for 2026. Pearson only got 107 cm in 1999, compared to the 149 cm downtown.

 

[urbanclient]

Just in case anyone was ready to continue dismissing this volume of snow, note that Toronto got the brunt of this storm, and Environment Canada's predictions were nearly spot on.

Toronto City Centre got 56cm; Pearson 46cm.

You all were right about Toronto downtown and many other places. But I wasn't lying when I said I got about 30 cm either.

 

[Johnny Au]

You all were right about Toronto downtown and many other places. But I wasn't lying when I said I got about 30 cm either.
View attachment 711260

Looks like snowfall record for downtown Toronto has been broken!

The previous record was 58.4 cm on December 25-26, 1872. The new record is 61 cm on January 25-26, 2026!

Source for the previous record:

https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2018/eccc/en58-22/En58-22-14-50-eng.pdf

 

[evandyk]

What is with closing from Broadview to Keele because of a trespasser on the tracks? Can’t they turn around between?

 

[Richard White]

What is with closing from Broadview to Keele because of a trespasser on the tracks? Can’t they turn around between?

The issue is at Bay.

Cutting power at Bay knocks out the St George Crossover. The Ossington centre track is offline making Keele the next available turnback point.

Edit: Given how long this is going on and where it is, I suspect they are chasing someone through Lower Bay

 

[81-717]

What is with closing from Broadview to Keele because of a trespasser on the tracks? Can’t they turn around between?

The issue is at Bay.

Cutting power at Bay knocks out the St George Crossover. The Ossington centre track is offline making Keele the next available turnback point.

This bears repeating in situations like this:

In spite of various arguments against having crossovers on both sides of every single station, this is definitely an argument in favor of same.

 

[Richard White]

This bears repeating in situations like this:

You can't.

The stations were not designed to accomodate them and retrofitting them would be prohibitively expensive.

 

[evandyk]

Shutting down the core of the subway for over an hour at rush hour for a trespasser seems like another failure.