Transit officials insist confusion and chaos around subway timing after the Toronto Blue Jays lost in extra innings to the Los Angeles Dodgers was a problem with communication rather than the level of service they provided.
On Monday, Toronto Transit Commission Chair Jamal Myers apologized for a social media post that urged riders to scramble to make the last subway trains of the day about 10 minutes before Game 7 of the World Series wrapped up at the Rogers Centre.
A repost from the City of Toronto’s official accounts shared a message about subway service from the TTC.
“Reminder: we know the game is running late, but transit won’t wait,” the city wrote. “The final GO train leaves Union Station soon, and the last TTC train is around 1:30 a.m.”
Myers said the message wasn’t correct, with contingency plans in place and the last train not leaving until 1:45 a.m.
“Unfortunately, that night, a TTC communication suggesting that subway service would end at 1:30 a.m. was posted to the TTC social media, which was amplified by the city’s social media, leading to confusion for our customers,” he said.
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“The TTC deeply apologizes for this mistake.”
Mandeep Lali, the TTC’s CEO, similarly apologized for the communication but said repeatedly he thought the service offered, and the plans for if the Jays had won, were sufficient.
“This is a learning point that we’ll take forward,” he said. “That tweet wasn’t picked up, we just didn’t pick it up. As I said to you earlier, we’ve taken that forward and during events we will be addressing that.”
Frustrated scenes in Union Station after the Jays lost the game weren’t limited to the subway, with questions about Metrolinx’s GO train service.
Metrolinx said it had added additional late-night trips to accommodate fans heading to and from games throughout the Blue Jays’ post-season run, and added additional UP Express and GO trains on the Lakeshore West and East lines, the Barrie line, the Kitchener line and the Stouffville line for Game 7.
The agency said it had held these trains as long as “operationally possible” after the game ended and every train departed at full capacity.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the provincial government was listening to feedback, but defended how service had been rolled out.
“We had a significant amount of people that came into the city, we provided additional services on all those lines,” he said. “Of course, we’ve definitely got to continue to work to see how we can improve that.”
He said there were some lines where trains couldn’t operate late because of track constraints on lines owned by CP or CN Rail.
On the Lakeshore East and Lakeshore West lines, which Metrolinx owns and operates independently, Sarkaria said trains were held late and one departed around 1:15 a.m., an hour later than scheduled.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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