Chances are you haven’t met Sue Bigioni or Cheryl Bomé, but if you’re a TTC customer, you have certainly heard them.

They are the voices of the TTC — Bigioni’s recorded voice being played at all the stops on subway trains and Bome’s on the streetcars and TTC buses.

Soon the reassuring human voice will be gone from the Yonge St. subway line as the new Toronto Rocket trains are introduced, all featuring computer-generated voices. However, the women will continue to be heard on the Bloor-Danforth line as well as surface routes for years to come.

Bigioni, a mother and TTC employee who works full-time in the communications and planning maintenance department, said she was shocked in 2005 to learn her voice had been chosen out of several that had been played to people in a focus group.

“One day one of my colleagues had asked me to do a public service announcement because it was an emergency and there was nobody else around. So I filled in and at the same time, I quickly recorded the Sheppard subway stations because I knew they were beginning their search for the voice,” she said.

About a year later, she was told she had been selected.

Bomé, 48, was just surprised to find her own voice also made the final cut.

“I recorded stops as a sample and it went to a focus group, I was shocked when I learned I was selected. I mean, I don’t even like hearing my own voice,” she laughs.

Next was the task of doing all the recordings in a small booth in one of the TTC buildings. Neither woman had any previous vocal training.

For Bomé, the process took a few years of because of the thousands of streetcar and bus stops.

It’s not as easy as it sounds, says Bigioni.

“The hardest was ‘Glencairn,’” Bigioni says. “I hadn’t pronounced it correctly and that’s the way it went out on the trains so people that lived in the area complained. We had to re-record that one.”

And she still critiques herself.

“Sometimes when I’m by myself I’ll listen to it and think, ‘Well, I could have done that better, or if only I had another chance to record it like this.”

When asked about her favourite subway stop to announce, she wastes little time in answering.

“Bathurst!” she says decisively. “I like the name of that station for some reason.”

Bomé says her family and friends are her biggest fans.

“My son will tell his friends and sometimes they won’t believe him. And then he’ll say, ‘Mom! Can you just do a stop?’ And so I’ll announce the stop they usually get off at and they go, “Oh my God! It is you!” she says, laughing.

“You’re kind of smiling on the inside because you’re sitting with all these people who are listening to it and you’re thinking, nobody knows that’s me. I kind of giggle to myself.”

Jessica Martin, 29, who works in corporate communications at the TTC, does the marketing announcements, letting customers know if there’s a service disruption.

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

“My friends aren’t as happy with mine, necessarily, because I’ll be announcing where they’ll be no subway service on the weekend due to track work and my friends will be shaking their fists and saying, ‘Darnit Jess!’”

The women agree that having their voices heard by millions everyday is an honour.

“Many years down the road, our names will come up every once in a while. We’re part of TTC’s history,” Bomé says.