The other day I was in a subway delay due to smoke at track level. They announced there were shuttle buses, so everyone hurried over to the bus garage. I wasn't anywhere near close enough to make the first shuttle bus, but it looked like I might be able to jockey my way onto the second shuttle bus, so I waited around. We waited rather a long time with no second shuttle bus in sight, then there was an announcement saying service had resumed. The whole delay took maybe 10-20 minutes, making it hardly worthwhile to get on a shuttle bus. I wish I'd known that it was going to be so short - I would have grabbed a quick bite of breakfast instead of swarming the bus platform.
I asked TTC communications director Brad Ross if they've ever considered giving ETAs on subway delay announcements. I know it's not especially easy, but even just a rough idea would help us plan our next move. Under half an hour? Grab a coffee, do an errand, come back when the subway's ready. Over an hour? Get in line for the shuttle bus, call work and tell them what's up. Three hours? Go work from home for the morning. He replied that they do give ETAs when they have them, but it's difficult to tell. And I totally see where they're coming from on that. You don't always know exactly what the problem is, you don't always know how long until it's fixed, you don't want to underestimate the delay because people will get pissed off at you, you don't want to overestimate the delay because then you have the bad optics of frequent announcements saying "There will be a one hour delay on the Yonge-University-Spadina line" when it really ends up being only 15 minutes...
So what I think we should do, as a general social agreement among the people of Toronto, is ask the TTC to give us their best estimate based on the information they have, and in exchange we agree to accept their estimates as non-binding. It's like the download countdown on your computer. You know it isn't going to be accurate, you know the ETA is going to change weirdly multiple times, but that's okay. Really you just want to know if this is a good time to get up and go pee.
I think it would be helpful if the TTC could give us whatever information they have in terms of ETA, e.g. "We are currently experiencing a delay due to smoke at track level. This type of problem typically takes about 15 minutes to resolve, but our workers are still on their way to investigate so we aren't certain yet at this point." (Note to googlers: I completely made up that 15 minutes number and have no idea how long smoke at track level typically takes to resolve.)
And in exchange for this transparency, we, the people for Toronto, won't complain if it ends up taking 20 minutes or half an hour, or even an hour as long as they inform us once they've discovered it's more complicated. Because what we really want to know is should we line up for shuttle buses, or should we grab a coffee? Should we walk the rest of the way, or should we just wait for service to resume? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd go for this arrangement.
What do you think, Toronto? Could we make this work? Would you rather have a possibly-inaccurate best guess?
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