[URBAN NOTE] "TTC forging ahead with one-operator subway trains"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Ben Spurr reports on this noteworthy development. I wonder about the consequences for jobs, in the TTC and the wider job market.

The TTC is going ahead with plans to eliminate guards on its subway trains despite claims from the transit agency’s union that the decision will compromise passenger safety.

Since the TTC’s first underground line opened in 1954,the transit agency has operated all of its trains with two-person crews: an operator who drives the vehicle, and a guard who’s responsible for opening and closing the doors and ensuring passengers are clear of the train when it departs.

But starting Sunday, Oct. 9 trains on Line 4 (Sheppard) — the TTC’s least-used line — will be converted to one-person train operation (OPTO). The transit commission plans to convert trains on its busiest subway, Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina), by around 2019.

One-person operation is used by transit agencies around the world and on the TTC’s own Scarborough RT, but Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 claims it’s unsafe and opposed by the public. In a Sept. 28 news release, union president Bob Kinnear went so far as to raise the spectre of terrorist attacks against trains without guards.

“(TTC CEO) Andy Byford holds up London and Madrid as examples of cities with one-person operation but obviously forgot that hundreds of people were killed and thousands injured by terrorist attacks on those two cities’ transit systems,” he said.

“TTC management tells employees: ‘If you see something, say something,’ then cuts the people who could see that something. It makes no sense.”