Humber student Ainsley Gegear dreads that her long TTC ride to school is going to take longer.
The first-year cosmetology student, along with many other Humber College students, are bracing for any service reductions as a result of the layoffs of TTC driver due to the new mandatory vaccine requirement.
“It’s already practically impossible to make it to my morning period classes on time, cause 927 is simply taking forever to show up,” Gegear said. “So imagine when they really reduce the service.”
Like her, other students said to be already noticing a slower and sparser service on some bus routes.
Kayla George, another first-year cosmetology student, who lives in Mississauga, is concerned since service delays on Routes 927 and 123 seem to have already kicked in.
“It will be even worse for those who have to take more than one bus because sometimes, the delay of the first one makes you miss the next,” Kayla said.
The TTC announced last week in a news release that its November and December schedules will include “small and temporary service reductions.” The cause: labour shortages caused by employees deemed “ineligible to work” after the vaccination deadline.
The policy states all employees who are unvaccinated or haven’t declared their vaccination status by Nov. 20 will be placed on unpaid leave until they can provide proof of full vaccination.
Employees still unvaccinated by Dec. 31 will be laid off, except for those with an approved exemption under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Other measures taken by TTC to address the expected worker shortage include hiring new operators and inviting recent retirees back to work, besides temporarily deferring capital projects and cancelling weekend and early weeknight subway closures.
The reduction in the available workforce will mostly affect the TTC’s bus network and that has Humber students worried.
“I haven’t missed any classes yet because of the delays that are already happening, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like in the next few days,” first-year law student Rosemary Taoabuenancy said:
Lucas Wawrow, a second-year Humber engineering student, said delays sometimes add to students’ stress levels, “and you can already tell that some buses are slowing down.
“My buses [504] have been really sporadic,” Wawrow said.
The TTC said when it announced its new mandatory vaccination policy in mid-October, about 85 per cent of its employees had shared their vaccination status, 89 per cent among those were already fully vaccinated.