Mayor Rob Ford called TTC chief executive Andy Byford at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night with a question: could a bus that had been sent to the site of an Etobicoke fire, as a stationary “shelter bus,” be used to take him and some of the people displaced by the fire to a hotel?

Requests related to shelter buses are usually called in by emergency responders to the TTC’s transit control centre, and shelter buses are only rarely used to ferry people around. But Byford granted Ford’s request, and he did not think it was inappropriate, said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.

Byford publicly criticized Ford in 2012 after the mayor called his cell phone to ask about the status of a shelter bus that had been sent to a high school football game involving the team he coached. Byford asked that Ford not call him again about “personal” matters.

This matter wasn’t personal, Ross said, and the request for transportation from Albion Rd. and Islington Ave. would have been granted no matter who made it. Shelter buses transported people during the recent ice storm, he said.

“It was for residents who literally were homeless for the evening. If the request had come directly from (the police) for transport, or from the city or either emergency service, we of course would have done that,” he said.

“Transportation is unusual. It is not the norm. But that’s not to say that we don’t do it . . . whether the call came to our transit control centre from Toronto Police, or from the mayor to the CEO, the end result is the same.”

Unlike the bus that took the football players back to school in 2012, this one was out of service, so Ford’s request did not inconvenience riders. The five-kilometre trip was 11 minutes long, he said. Ford then paid for the four displaced people to stay at a hotel.

Ford, known for his attention to constituent calls, regularly calls senior officials to handle problems that would normally be dealt with by lower-level public servants. At a news conference Thursday, he and Councillor Doug Ford cited his work to help the fire victims as an example of his benevolent customer service.

“I didn’t have to do it. I just felt sorry for them. I’m not looking for reimbursement. That’s the way Doug and I work. We’re on call 24-7,” the mayor said.

“I talked to the fire captain on the scene, I talked to the police on the scene, they were just so appreciative,” he said. “They just said wow, thank you so much. These people were ecstatic.”

Doug Ford said: “These are the stories a lot of people don’t hear about what Rob Ford does.”

The mayor said that he “let Andy Byford know that I was using one of his buses.” Ross said Ford actually asked Byford for permission to use the bus. Byford, “in bed,” missed Ford’s first call. They connected when Ford called again “just before midnight.”