Things got a little heated at city council this week
Councillors argued over a motion to refund TTC users for delayed rides
A story published today by the Toronto Star sheds light on some city councillor drama that unfolded regarding a motion to refund TTC users for delayed rides.
Councillor Brad Bradford, who represents Beaches–East York and has announced plans to run again for mayor, introduced the motion earlier this month, seeking a new policy that would give Toronto transit users their money back for trips delayed by more than 15 minutes.
Related: City council passed a motion to speed up the Finch West LRT
“I think Toronto transit riders deserve better than what they’re getting today,” Bradford told city council this week, according to the Star’s Mahdis Habibinia. “When someone is paying for a service, that service ought to be delivered.”
Well, we’re with him there, and we should note that the well-timed suggestion came alongside the grand opening of the Finch West LRT, which proved to get riders from one end to the other a whopping 18 minutes slower than if they’d jogged to their destination.
City councillor Jamaal Myers, who also serves as TTC board chair, said Bradford was “attacking the symptoms and not the heart of the issue,” which is really that “the TTC is chronically underfunded.”
Per the Star, “the TTC is predicting a budget shortfall for this year of nearly $34 million, and has said it needs more than $2 billion over the next five years just to maintain the system’s current reliability.”
The TTC’s chief strategy and customer experience officer, Josh Colle, called Bradford’s idea impossible, arguing that there would be no way to know when a rider started waiting for their transit vehicle to arrive.
“If you vote against this, you’re the type of people who accept mediocrity,” Bradford informed his fellow councillors. Paula Fletcher told him he was being “disrespectful,” which is when speaker Frances Nunziata really threw down, saying, “You can’t expect anything more from Councillor Bradford.”
Ultimately, council voted to have the TTC assess the feasibility of Bradford’s idea, which launched another debate about whether Bradford’s motion was being sabotaged.
The Star has the whole back-and-forth laid out like a meticulous municipal screenplay, which we suggest reading in full.
Our only remaining question for now is what happened with the Toronto vs. Doug Ford “big sign” battle? You know what, let’s save that for 2026.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
