Statement from TTC CEO Greg Percy on recent signal issues

This morning was another difficult day for TTC customers. We know thousands of customers were inconvenienced, and we sincerely apologize.

The TTC is committed to running a system that is, above all, safe. But also one that is reliable.

This morning’s issue is similar to one we experienced last night at around 7 p.m. – a server that operates the routing of trains on our ATC signaling system went offline for unknown reasons. This system is designed with a failsafe mechanism that stops service when an operating anomaly is detected. In these cases, the system worked as designed.

Last Wednesday and this past Monday, we had two other ATC signal issues on Line 1 that caused delays of 60 and 20 minutes, respectively. While nobody wants service disruptions, the fact that the system shut down when errors were detected should give assurance that our system is safe.

However, this number of ATC signaling issues so close together is unacceptable to me, and we need to understand them better in order to resolve them safely and quickly.

To that end, we are working with the equipment manufacturer to conduct a thorough deep dive to determine how these incidents happened and whether there’s any correlation between them.