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.”

The union also cited a poll it commissioned that found 66 per cent of respondents opposed removing the guards. However, a plurality of respondents (33 per cent) to the Mainstreet Research poll said they believed the primary reason for having a guard on the train was to respond to medical emergencies or fights, which the TTC says is not the guards’ responsibility.

TTC spokesperson Brad Ross called Kinnear’s comments about terrorist attacks “alarmist and uninformed” and said that having single operators wouldn’t endanger TTC customers.

Ross said the number of “eyes and ears” on the subway system will be increased under the TTC’s new staffing model, which will deploy more employees to common areas of subway stations.

He added that switching to OPTO will make subways safer by reducing the number of incidents in which inattentive guards open doors before the train has fully pulled into the station. Making the subway operator responsible for both stopping the train and opening the doors makes such mistakes less likely, Ross said.

“We know that this is a safer way of operating and a more efficient way of operating. Transit systems around the world have been doing this for a long time,” he stated.

“It is a proven, safe technology that the TTC as a modern transit organization must begin to adopt.”

The TTC plans to spend $62.3 million on modifications to platforms and trains that will allow drivers to operate the doors and monitor them via CCTV cameras. But the investment will pay off quickly, because cutting the number of subway workers on Line 4 from 30 to 19, and on Line 1 from 359 to 190, will save the transit commission about $18.6 million annually. The guards make an average of $103,400 a year, including fringe benefits.

Ross said that there will be no job losses because the guard positions will be eliminated through attrition.

The TTC eventually plans to convert Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth) to single-person operation, but the T1 trains that run on that line are much older than the Toronto Rocket models operating on Lines 1 and 4. The T1 models will reach the end of their service life within the next 10 years, and Ross said it wouldn’t be cost-effective to retrofit them with OPTO systems now.

Going solo

The TTC is a late arrival to one-person subway operation. Other systems have been using one-person crews for decades, and some even have driverless trains.

Scarborough RT

Model: One-person operation since it opened in 1985

Ridership: 39,000 per day

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Number of stations: 6

Vancouver SkyTrain

Model: Fully automated and driverless since it opened in 1986

Ridership: 425,000 per day

Number of stations: 47

London Underground

Model: OPTO phased in between 1968 and 2000

Ridership: 4.8 million per day

Number of stations: 270

Chicago Transit Authority

Model: OPTO on some lines as early as 1964, and full conversion made in the late 1990s

Ridership: 1.6 million per day

Number of stations: 145