mrgrieves
Active Member
will it be same story for Eg LRT?
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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
JasonParis
Moderator
This snow event is on the same scale as 1999, when Mel famously called in the army. We shouldn’t judge the open-cut or outdoor sections of the network too harshly—there’s always room to learn and improve, but this is truly a once-in-a ~25-years event.
Mihairokov
Senior Member
Wasn't the 1999 event multiple days of sustained snow?
Anyway, the dunking on Toronto for calling in the army has always bugged me. The army should be helping places shovel out when there's substantial snowfall.
Northern Light
Superstar
Their contract should be terminated for cause.
I mean, even if the government's lawyers are idiots and didn't spell out maximum out-of-service times, there is a basic principle of common law that a contract is only valid if there is a meeting of the minds and an exchange of goods, services or money that a reasonable person could understandably agree to....
No reasonable person would accept that a reasonable standard is a train line that's been out of service almost as much as its been in service. Terminate the contract.
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APTA-2048
Senior Member
People often forget or don’t know that the main reason was emergency services were pretty much paralyzed. If I recall correctly, there was at least one death attributed to a delay in emergency services getting to them.
gabe
Senior Member
Toronto calling in the army to "shovel" has become a comedy meme now, but it was a serious event. Over 100 cm of snow, we had back to back storms. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the roads. EMS couldn't get through the snow. I remember my dad and neighbors, armed with shovels digging out a police car and other vehicles stuck on the road.
smallspy
Senior Member
They do have special snow clearing rail equipment, and they're using them.
But they also don't work particularly well on switches. Those need to be done with more specialized equipment - which the TTC doesn't own - or by hand.
Dan
turbanplanner
Senior Member
Personally, the people I know who say stuff like that have never gone north of Front street!
Fun fact, in my experience Toronto police only seem to have all season tires, From what I've seen many were over 8 years old
chrisw
Active Member
From Reddit, TTC workers digging out a stuck subway at Davisville, the subway was there since Sunday evening.
JasonParis
Moderator
Yup—two massive storms in the same week, followed by a deep plunge in temperatures. Calling in the army was the best decision Mel ever made, if you ask me. It was genuinely serious.
What always stuck with me is that a year or two later, when Jack Layton was running for the federal NDP leadership, he mocked it in his speeches to put distance between himself and Toronto—at one point even revising the snowfall down to “10 cm.” I was generally a fan of Layton, but that move irked me to no end.
nfitz
Superstar
And a third dump of 30-cm five days later when they called the army. Which arrived two days later - just as there was a 27-cm dump.
118.4 cm in the month, mostly from January 2 to January 15 with very little melting. The most snow in an entire month Edmonton has had in the last century is 79 cm in 1942. 81 cm in Winnipeg in 1955. And only 70 cm in in May 1903 (bonus points for being May - but I wonder how much melted); these are the places that whined about the army. How many times a decade does Winnipeg call in the army, because they keep building in flood plains?
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txlseries4
Active Member
Just saw this graph in a CBC article comparing the 1999 storm to yesterday's and our snowfall so far this month
nfitz
Superstar
It looks like they are using downtown measurements for 1999, and Pearson measurements for 2026. Pearson only got 107 cm in 1999, compared to the 149 cm downtown.
urbanclient
Senior Member
You all were right about Toronto downtown and many other places. But I wasn't lying when I said I got about 30 cm either.
Johnny Au
Superstar
Looks like snowfall record for downtown Toronto has been broken!
The previous record was 58.4 cm on December 25-26, 1872. The new record is 61 cm on January 25-26, 2026!
Source for the previous record: