Wednesday, August 6, 2014

TTC Subway service resumes at St. Clair West after flooding

TORONTO - Two feet of water gave thousands of TTC commuters a rougher ride than normal Tuesday morning.

Flooding at St. Clair West Station left between 100 and 150 yards of track under around two feet of water in some places.

The flooding led to a subway shutdown between Lawrence West and Spadina stations until noon while crews scrambled to fix the problem.

Around 70 shuttle buses had to be brought in during the closure to make up for the break in Line 1 (what used to be called the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line).

Deputy chief operating officer Mike Palmer said a work train on its way back to the yard found flooding on the track at 5:15 a.m.

"We're getting our first trains out at that point and so we had very little time before the start of service to have a look," Palmer said.

The water appeared to come from Monday night's rainstorm.

Although the TTC has catch basins to trap water and pump it back into the city's sewer system, something went wrong overnight and a blockage kept water from draining properly, leading to the flooding at track level.

TTC and Toronto Fire took about three hours to drain the water and then crews had to conduct safety checks before restoring service. "We had to check on the signals on the track, we had to check the pumps and sumps to see what was working, what wasn't working," Palmer said. "That all took more time than we would have liked."

"There was obviously some damage to the track and signal equipment," he added.

TTC workers were planning on going back to the station overnight to clean out all the catch basins to "make sure it is working as best it can."
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