Sheppard Ave. transit shelters are late on arrival

Jan. 15, 2020
Thestar.com
Jack Lakey

TTC riders who catch the bus on Sheppard Ave. are longing for the good ol’ days, when they could wait for their ride in a transit shelter.

Now that winter is here and likely to stick around for a while, transit shelters are value-added for people who have to wait for up to 15 minutes for their bus to arrive.

And many riders don’t have one to protect them from the weather. Of the city’s 9,500 TTC stops, just 5,500 are blessed with shelters, which means a lot of people are left out in the cold and rain until their buses roll up.

So you can imagine how dispiriting it is for riders who for years enjoyed a shelter at their local bus stop, and then had it taken away and not replaced before the arrival of winter.

Parag Bhandari emailed to say several shelters were removed last summer for sidewalk repairs in the area of Sheppard Ave. E. and Morningside Ave. and have yet to return.

One vanished from the southwest corner, as did another, on the north side of Sheppard, just west of Morningside. A third was removed from the north side of Sheppard, just east of Morningside, while a fourth was taken away from a stop at the northeast corner of Morningside and John Stoner Dr.

“After the construction was finished they never put them back,” said Bhandari, adding that the Sheppard and Morningside buses served by the shelters travel along high-volume routes.

I went there on a blustery day and found pylons where the shelters had stood, west of Morningside, while it appears that the shelter on the northeast side was removed because the TTC stop was relocated to the west side.

The one at John Stoner, north of Sheppard, has a temporary stop post, an indication it’ll soon be relocated to the south side of the intersection.

It’s worth noting that the Sheppard-Morningside intersection is wide open and allows the wind to get a good cut at anyone who has to stand there to catch the bus.

STATUS: Antonia Markos, who deals with street furniture issues for transportation services, sent an email confirming that the stop on the northeast side of Sheppard and Morningside has been moved the other side of the intersection. As for the ones on both sides of Sheppard, west of Morningside, Markos said the shelter on the north side requires a new concrete pad that can’t be poured until spring. The shelter on the south side will be reinstalled on the existing pad, which she said will happen by the end of the month. She added that “where construction work is completed in the fall, arrangements can be made to get the required permits and pour new concrete before the start of winter and shelters can be reinstalled. However, if construction runs into November or later, pouring of a new concrete pad is scheduled for the following spring.”