TTC shuts down subway service for emergency repairs in latest transit failure

The TTC was struck with yet another major issue that caused chaos on the transit network this week, giving Toronto commuters quite an unlucky start to their Friday the 13th.

The transit agency announced just after 10 a.m. on Friday that subway service was halted between Victoria Park and Kennedy stations, citing emergency track repairs at Warden Station. 

According to a TTC statement, shuttle buses are operating along the closure, and “a reverse GO protocol is also in place, which means you can travel on a GO train from Scarborough, Kennedy and Danforth GO Stations to Union Station with your TTC fare.”

The sudden closure comes just two days after service ground to a halt across the entire Line 1 route from Finch to Vaughan Metropolitan Centre, causing pandemonium during the Wednesday morning rush, and a similar outage blamed on signal problems the evening before.

In response to those high-profile outages, new TTC CEO Greg Percy issued a statement apologizing for “another difficult day for TTC customers.”

“We know thousands of customers were inconvenienced, and we sincerely apologize.

The TTC is committed to running a system that is, above all, safe. But also one that is reliable. This morning’s issue is similar to one we experienced last night at around 7 p.m. – a server that operates the routing of trains on our ATC signaling system went offline for unknown reasons,” said Percy.

“This system is designed with a failsafe mechanism that stops service when an operating anomaly is detected. In these cases, the system worked as designed.”

He explained that on top of these two outages, “last Wednesday and this past Monday, we had two other ATC signal issues on Line 1 that caused delays of 60 and 20 minutes, respectively.”

In addition to the other major outages in the last week, this latest TTC hiccup follows a series of delays experienced on Line 1 during the Friday morning rush.

Transit rider advocacy group TTCriders took to X following Wednesday’s outage with a thread documenting the many issues that have caused recent delays on the rapid transit network.

Friday’s outage is occurring along a stretch of track that has already required multiple planned full-weekend closures and weekday service reductions to accommodate ongoing repairs.

UPDATE: TTC subway service fully resumed just after 11 a.m. on Friday.