By Adriel Smiley

Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney feels confident that things will be back to normal. The optimism for the future of Canada’s transportation industry is not exclusive to Mulroney. TTC Senior Communications Advisor, Stuart Green feels that the fall of 2021 is a target that feels attainable.

“We’ve got this sort of longer-range plan for the balance of 2021… we’ve imagined that maybe in September or October of this year, we will have returned to something resembling normal, pre-pandemic kind of service levels, “ Green states.

Canadians have begun to get vaccinated with over 4 million doses delivered according to the COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker. The success of the vaccine rollout will affect the faith commuters have in returning to normalcy. There is a rush to leave the pandemic behind, but several of the practices from 2020 will remain going forward.

Metrolinx lost roughly 90% of its ridership last year. While profits plummeted, expenses went up and additional safety measures were put in place to maintain cleanliness standards. Metrolinx spokesperson Nitish Bissonauth thinks these measures will be around long-term.

“The safety measures that you see currently on our system, whether it’s on our vehicles or at our stations, they’re not going away, right? So even when things return back to some degree of normalcy, those are changes that are staying,” Bissonauth explains.

In the final instalment of Pandemic Pivot, we hear from a few different perspectives on what their plans are for the future and how the industry will recover.