Bloor West residents complain of worsening subway vibrations

Imagine sitting down to dinner and being interrupted every two to three minutes by a constant rattling and shaking from nearby subway tracks.

This is a problem Julie Thomson and several other residents who live along the Bloor subway line face and they say the increasing vibrations and noise from trains is disrupting their lives.

“When the subway goes by the dishes start rattling, the windows start rattling, my front door rattles, the ground shakes, the wall shakes,” she said, “and it’s particularly bad during both rush hours, morning and evening.”

“It’s insane around here.”

Thomson and her family live four doors up from Keele subway station. She moved into the house seven years ago and said the shaking has gotten increasingly worse over the past few years. She only noticed the odd rumble when she first moved in.

Thomson’s mother and father-in-law lived in the home for 30 years before her and they didn’t experience a problem with shaking, she said. About 70 other residents along the subway line between Keele and Old Mill stations have reported the vibrations have grown increasingly worse over the past few years.

She said her father-in-law has Alzheimer’s disease and because he is noise sensitive, he can no longer visit the home.

Thomson and fellow neighbours began lodging complaints with the TTC about two years ago, and said it took a year for the commission to even acknowledge the problem.

“The TTC intrudes my house all the time … I can’t lock a door, lock a window to make it go away, it’s infiltrated my home,” she said.

Unfortunately the problem isn’t an easy one to fix. Two engineers’ reports (read them here) issued this past summer back up residents’ claims and show the vibrations and noise have steadily worsened. The problem could be corrugated tracks and subway wheels misshapen by wear and tear.

“There is increased noise and vibration levels,” TTC spokesman Brad Ross said. “We’re trying to find out where that is coming from, what has changed and once we understand that better we then we can work to find a solution.”

That solution likely won’t come cheap. Thomson says the city should consider the problems on existing tracks before it proposes building new ones.

“If you’re planning on building subways in a residential area then you have to take care of the subways that are already there,” she said.

TTC CEO Andy Byford, commission chair Karen Stintz, local city councillors Sarah Doucette and Peter Milczyn, and concerned residents will meet to discuss the issue on Oct. 18.

Doucette told CityNews she and residents at the meeting will want to know what work will be done to fix the problem and when it will be performed. She also said that a similar problem of trains rattling homes came up five or six years ago and she wants the commission to address the issue quicker next time.