A suspected mechanical failure on one of Toronto’s ferries prompting an emergency stop is keeping it out of service, but beyond the city’s own investigation there won’t be an independent review done and it’s one of several instances where this is the case.
In the past decade there have been eight incidents involving the city’s ferries, but only one of those has yielded a full-scale investigation from the Transportation Safety Board (TSB).
The independent body’s mandate is to advance transportation safety and while some occurrences may be serious, it doesn’t always get involved.
Lija Bickis, with the TSB’s marine branch said an average of 900 to 1,000 marine occurrences are reported each year, but not all of them carry them prompt in-depth reviews.
“Because our mandate is advancing transportation safety, there might be cases where the circumstances of an occurrence are quite similar to a previous one, in which case there might not be any new lessons to learn even if we do investigate in detail,” said Bickis.
The 2022 crash of the Sam McBride ferry, which injured several passengers, was determined to be a Class 2 occurrence by the TSB. That prompted an investigation, which last month saw it rule the City of Toronto’s safety protocols had been lacking at the time of the crash.
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Seven other incidents involving Toronto’s ferries in the past 10 years were ruled Class 5 occurrences which don’t require the same level of scrutiny.
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The William Inglis, involved in last Thursday’s incident, was also involved in another accident last October when it struck a wharf after it lost propulsion. 188 people were on board at the time and a crew member in the engine room suffered a minor injury.
Another Class 5 crash earlier this year saw the Thomas Rennie crashing into the shore. The TSB report doesn’t explicitly say where it happened, but the geolocators revealed it ran into a shore within the Billy Bishop Airport’s marine exclusion zone, an area marked by large white buoys meant to keep vessels away for the safety of airport operations.
While the city reported the incident to the TSB and Transport Canada, it didn’t report it to the port authority, which owns and operates the airport.
“There is no regulatory requirement to report incidents to PortsToronto; however, we usually would let them know out of courtesy,” said city spokesperson Nitish Bissonauth in a written statement.
In this case, he said, it wasn’t initially clear the vessel entered airport property, so it wasn’t reported to the port authority.
The city couldn’t clarify however why in the months following the crash, PortsToronto wasn’t notified.
A spokesperson for PortsToronto said it was unfortunate that the city didn’t report the incident, preventing it from responding to it in a relevant timeframe.
“It would have been our hope and expectation that the City of Toronto would have informed us as owner and operator of the airport,” said spokesperson Jessica Pellerin. She said the crash occurred after the final flight of the day, which is why NAV Canada operators hadn’t recorded the ferry incursion.
The ferry incidents come at a time when the city is facing added scrutiny over the operation of its aging fleet. Its four vessels range in age from around 60 to 140 years old. Two new electric ferries have been approved by city council, but they’re not expected to arrive for years.
Bissonauth insisted the city takes Class 5 incidents seriously. “The City undertakes its own investigation each time, reviews safety protocols and implements any necessary measures to avoid repeat incidents,” he said.
However the process in which the city approaches transparency following each municipal review of an incident remains unclear.
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