Dozens of digital screens meant to display real-time info on TTC bus arrivals are broken
CBC
Sixty of 300 digital screens that are meant to display when the next Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) bus is coming are not working, with some not functioning for weeks, according to the TTC.
Shoshanna Saxe, an associate professor in civil engineering at the University of Toronto, said while the broken screens may seem like a small problem, it's indicative of wider transit issues across the system stemming from years of budget cuts that's led to the erosion of infrastructure.
"I've noticed some of the signs aren't working, or they're saying a bus is coming, but the time isn't right," Saxe said.
"But it's a symptom of a bigger problem that we're seeing more and more of in the city. For the last 10 years and longer, we've under invested in taking care of our infrastructure," she said. "So, little things are looking a little less good or working a little less well. And that's adding up."
She said that widespread tax cuts in Toronto's Rob Ford-era have led to the slow, but steady, denigration of the city's infrastructure, and the TTC bus signs is one small element of that.
Ford, who was mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014, repeatedly voted to make services cuts to the TTC and often railed against any kind of tax increases, including potential tax increases that would fund an LRT expansion, a project that Ford campaigned against, according to previous CBC Toronto reports.
"We made a decision to have lower taxes rather than enough money to maintain our city," Saxe said. Maintenance gets delayed, investments are a bit less, and the impacts of those cuts don't become clear for several years, she explained.
"If your roof starts to leak and you ignore it for a little while, you just have a small leak. But eventually, you've got a really big problem with rotting," she said.
In a statement to CBC Toronto, the TTC said the broken signs are the result of weather or vandalism, and that it is in the process of getting them fixed.
But the agency said "there's no correlation whatsoever between these signs and larger funding issues."
"They were put in shelters as a pilot and no more are planned to be installed given the availability of next vehicle arrival features like apps and text to stop," it said.
On average it takes two to three days for the vendor to repair one depending on availability, the TTC said.
Maron Gilbert Stewart is a rider who frequently takes a northbound bus at College and Ossington to her job. Inside the nearby bus shelter the digital screen displays no information.
It's "pretty useless," she said. "I usually don't notice them, and if I do they are usually broken. I didn't even know it was here," she said.