It’s wonderful that Line 5 is operational, but the design, construction and maintenance of these station just feels like complete amateur hour. I’m talking about everything from the depth of stations and poor layouts, to the water intrusion issue, the illegible maps and wayfinding, the poor accessibility, escalators and elevators out of order, dirty stations (the white walls are already looking filthy in many places). We even have entire entrances out of order.
I think that if this is what we can expect with the Ontario Line, we could be in big trouble. Metrolinx can get away with these issues with Line 5, becuase it’s suburban and relatively low ridership, but I don’t how the Ontario Line will perform with something like 200,000 people per day, if we can expect the stations to be this poorly designed, built and maintained. High ridership has a way of stress testing poor design.
It’s only been a few months, but I kind of get the impression that the TTC does a better job of maintaining the decade old TYSSE, than Metrolinx does with the 5 month old Crosstown. I’m nervous about what the condition of Line 5 will be in a decade.
It doesn’t help that Metrolinx doesn’t really engage in public communication, so who knows if they ever intend to fix these issues.
