Man filmed holding up bus shares his frustrations with TTC accessibility

A transit rider is sharing his experiences riding the TTC as a person with a disability, after another passenger captured his frustrations with riding the bus.

As CityNews reported on Friday, the video shows Mark Farell, who uses a wheelchair, at the front of the No. 54 bus on Lawrence Avenue and Don Mills, refusing to move until a TTC supervisor is called to the stop.

Farell claims he was left waiting in the rain on Thursday afternoon, after not being able to board several buses.

“I’m asking the reason why I was left off the bus, when people could walk onto the bus before me,” Farell can be heard telling passengers in that video. “If I don’t handle my situation, nobody on the bus is going to handle it.”

“It was the ride that broke the camel’s back,” he tells CityNews.

He says he arrived at the stop around 3 p.m. on Thursday and waited until finally getting onto the bus a little before 6 p.m. In between that time, he says there were two packed buses that passed by him and two others where passengers boarded the bus before he did, not leaving any room for him.

“The driver let everybody on the bus and I said, ‘Aren’t you supposed to let people with a visible disability onto the bus first, before you left anyone else on the bus?’.”

He claims the second bus came and the driver said there was nothing he could do about it and left Mark in the rain.

When he was finally able to board an empty bus, he wanted answers.

“I was wet, I was frustrated,” Farrell said. “I wasn’t even angry at that point, it’s when I looked outside the bus and saw two other people with visible disabilities, I started getting mad.”

The Toronto Transit Commission wasn’t available for an interview on Saturday, but tells CityNews, a route supervisor did speak with Mark, and the event leading up to the incident is now being investigated.

The TTC says it will follow-up with Mark early next week, and adds that it does have bylaws in place to assist people in scenario’s like this.

“Operators are to politely ask customers to clear the priority seating area to accommodate a customer with a mobility device,” a spokesperson said in an email statement to CityNews. “If the bus is full, the Operator will notify Transit Control who can tell them when the next bus is coming, if there is adequate space to accommodate, and dispatch Wheel-Trans when needed.”

Mark says he wants more to be done towards enforcing and advocating for priority boarding.

He tells CityNews he filed a report with the TTC, but also wants to draw attention to the experiences of people with disabilities who use public transit.

“Is the public going to acknowledge that there’s somebody in a wheelchair that needs to get on the bus as well and stop rushing past,” he says. “And are the drivers going to do their jobs and say I’m going to let this man on the bus first?”