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Last step’s a killer

By Chris Richardson

When a group of third-year nursing students contacted the TTC to make the stairs at Dundas Station safer for the public, the mass-transit system did them one better — they said they’d demolish them.

The stairs leading to the station at the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas streets, where a number of Ryerson students enter the subway, are set to be removed later this year.
“The northeast stairs will be demolished in conjunction with the Metropolis development current under construction … the new subway access will be [built during] their development,” said Louise Crawford, a customer service supervisor for the TTC, in response to the nursing students’ letter.

The six students pursued the safety problem as part of a political action project assigned to them this year that focused on community health.

“We chose a small project that we thought was doable,” said Amanda Dawson, who came up with the idea for improving the steps.

The group asked 98 people around the subway station if they had concerns about how slippery the stairs get when it rains or snows. Their results showed that 78 per cent of those travellers consider the stairs unsafe.

The nursing group also set up an e-mail account, TTCSteps@hotmail.com, which they would like individuals to contact to voice their concerns about safety on TTC stairwells.

After a difficult time finding the TTC workers responsible for the stairs, the group finally got a response on Monday.

“The irony is, after all our hard work, we find out they’re demolishing those stairs,” Dawson said.

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