news TTC Releases Official Statement on the Bus Ordered for Mayor’s Football Team

Commission maintains that operational staff did not know it was the mayor asking for a bus to be sent to pick up the Don Bosco Eagles.

As has been widely reported, last week a TTC bus was requested by police to pick up the players of the Don Bosco football team—whose coach, famously, is Mayor Rob Ford. It’s not entirely clear why officers judged the special-order bus to be necessary: various spokespeople have alluded to tensions between players at the game, and also to inclement weather.

It is not, says the TTC, unusual for various emergency services to ask the transit provider for what is known as a “shelter bus.” What is less common is unloading passengers from a bus already on the road to fulfill such a request, as happened here—a situation considerably complicated by the fact that when a bus didn’t arrive, Ford called TTC CEO Andy Byford to inquire about its whereabouts.

Below is the full text of a just-released TTC statement on the incident, summarizing remarks they have already made and attempting to allay concerns that the mayor unduly influenced operational decisions.

