Metrolinx warned of Eglinton Station fall hazard months before death
metrolinx engineering advisors warned in July 2022 that Eglinton Station’s deteriorated platform curbs posed a fall hazard months before a woman fell at the Scarborough station and died in December 2022. The internal draft investigation said the same platform defects were still in place when she stepped off the last GO train of the night.
Metrolinx wrote that the uneven surface created a non-standard vertical distance for passengers stepping off and on at train doors, and it recommended full rework of the platform and curbs. The agency planned the work for July 2023, months after the fatal fall.
Eglinton Station platform warnings
The July 2022 report said the deteriorated curbs should be replaced because the station’s platform conditions posed a fall hazard. Metrolinx summarized the risk in its own words: "poses [a] fall hazard by creating a non-standard vertical distance for passengers stepping off/on at train doors" and "Full rework of the platform and the curbs is recommended to eliminate such risk."
That warning followed a separate Metrolinx risk assessment completed two months earlier in response to a number of safety concerns about the station. A construction contractor had already moved fences in June 2022 to widen the platform walkway back to the agency’s required minimum distance of 1.8 metres.
December 2022 fall at Scarborough
Six days before Christmas in 2022, a woman stepped off the last GO train of the night at Scarborough’s Eglinton Station. The platform was cracked, uneven, riddled with holes, and slightly angled toward the tracks. She lost her balance and fell partially under the train as it was leaving the station.
She lay on the tracks for more than four hours in freezing weather before a construction worker found her around 5:30 a.m. Paramedics took her to the hospital, where she died at 7:10 a.m.
Draft report findings
Metrolinx investigators found the day after her death that the fencing had returned and narrowed the walkway again to 1.2 metres. They also found that the platform walking surface had not changed since the engineers’ report, and the draft report said it was uneven, contained cracks, holes and ponding water, and was sloped at more than twice the recommended limit toward the tracks.
The draft report called the death an isolated incident in which she lost her balance under ambiguous circumstances, and it identified one contributing factor: "platform uneven surface." It also warned that if safety recommendations are not followed, it may lead to hazard risks remaining unmitigated, resulting in risk of injury or death to passengers.
