Commuters Fume & Walk After Subway Shutdown

They grumbled under their breaths, thinking about how late they were for work and how annoying the congestion was.

And then they remembered that a life was lost and somehow it didn’t seem as serious.

Commuters stuck coping with a partially shuttered subway on the Yonge-University line Monday have been forced to endure huge delays and even bigger crowds, after an accident inside a tunnel between Eglinton and Lawrence left one worker dead and two others seriously injured.

That closed the subway from York Mills all the way to Davisville, leaving passengers piling into engorged shuttle buses that mixed in with already heavy traffic on Yonge St., creating huge backlogs.

And while Davisville re-opened at the tail end of the morning commute, the endless waits continued.

As so often happens during a subway emergency, passengers complained of confusion and a lack of help knowing where to go.

Many arrived at Finch station from the GO train without being aware of the situation, and that made things even worse.

“I don’t know if I have to wait here or I have to wait inside,” complained one man. “There’s no conductor out here. There’s nobody to tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

A few weren’t feeling sympathetic.

“The TTC sucks,” a recalcitrant rider grumbled as he began the long trek to work by foot.

And some gave up altogether.

“I’ve got to grab a taxi,” noted one man as he looked to hail a cab in the midst of the rush hour.

Even TTC brass admitted they could have handled it better.

“Obviously the bus service here is not adequate,” agreed TTC Chair Adam Giambrone. “We want to thank people —  I see them walking by here in huge hordes as they try to get down to Davisville station where they can hop on the subway — and I just want to thank people for their understanding, noting that, you know, it’s just been a really difficult morning.”

By the afternoon rush, most people had heard about the shutdown and knew it was still on.

Attitudes had changed from anger to quiet resignation that getting there wouldn’t be half the fun.

And the TTC seemed better organized to deal with the problem.

“It’s more inconvenient but these things happen and just have to kind of get going,” shrugs one passenger. “They’re getting better with it.”

Some people are angry that their schedules have been altered. “It’s been hard, because your time is important,” one man fumes. “I was thrown off.”

“You leave early because you’ve got an early appointment,” echoed another. “It kind of takes the purpose out of it, doesn’t it?”

There were about 84 shuttle buses in the fleet running up and down Yonge St. That created even more traffic than normal on the already busy street, but it wasn’t the only effect.

Alternate routes got worse as people took to their cars to escape the blockage.

And many parked their cars at Spadina stations, and headed downtown that way. That swelled those lines, making them busier than normal as well.

And the morning rush on Tuesday? No one’s looking forward  to a potential repeat performance, if the Commission can’t get the affected tunnel cleared by then.