Jaye Robinson (Ward 25) presided over an informative town hall meeting to discuss “transit and transportation” tonight (Tuesday, February 25, 2014). Her three-person panel was Andy Byford, Chief General Manager of the TTC, Bruce McCuag, CEO of Metrolinx and Stephen Buckley, Toronto GM of Transportation People being people, it was probably predictable that when question and answer time came, most questioners had concerns based on their personal problems with TTC service or policy. Thus most of the work went to TTC boss Byford. One man asked about unmanned trains, said to have operated without a problem for decades in Paris. The answer was unmanned trains are coming but you can’t launch them without a “train screen”. That’s the glass wall seen in modern subways in Europe and the Orient that keeps people from falling onto the tracks and permits the train to stop automatically where the screen opens in co-ordination with the train doors. What about that “19th century technology” known as the streetcar? Byford could happily say that the decision to keep streetcars (and buy yet more) pre-dated his arrival at the TTC. What good was it to denounce the inevitable. The issue might be resolved Byford said diplomatically when the recently purchased trams wear out in a couple of decades. Another man suggested the need for the much discussed Downtown Relief Line to take pressure off the Yonge subway would be eliminated if only the TTC ran all trains the same way at rush hour. Truly outside the box. Everything goes south in the morning and north in the evening. But here again, Byford had heard the idea before. Problem was, he lamented, the signal system was not reversible. End of story. The meeting was held in the chapel of the Lawrence Park Community Church, 2180 Bayview Ave., a venue which is said to have meeting rooms available to a variety of uses.
