A pedestrian pathway at Union Station that was closed after a woman was struck by a falling piece of concrete on Thursday night has reopened.
The woman, believed to be in her 20s, was walking through the Bay West Teamway at around 5:20 p.m. when she was hit by a pie-sized chunk of concrete that fell from the ceiling.
The woman was taken to hospital but is expected to make a full recovery.
The pathway, meanwhile, was completely closed to commuters for hours following the incident
It reopened early Friday morning following an inspection.
It remains unclear what caused the chunk of concrete to fall, though Metrolinx says that there was no construction or other work taking place in the area at the time.
“After working tirelessly through the night crews have determined that the Bay West Teamway is safe so the area has once again been reopened,” Metrolinx spokesperson Nitish Bissonauth told CP24 on Friday morning. “Safety is central to everything we do at Metrolinx so that is why we had our engineers and engineers with the city spend the night thoroughly inspecting the teamway.”
Bissonauth said that “minor concrete scaling and repairs” were conducted in the teamway overnight to ensure that no other commuters are put in danger.
He said that Metrolinx has also decided to conduct a follow-up inspection sometime in the coming weeks “out of an abundance of caution.”
“It is an unfortunate incident and we wish the woman that was injured a full and fast recovery,” he said.
Speaking at an unrelated event on Friday, Mayor John Tory said inspections of the construction zone will be increased.
“There’s obviously been many precautions taken by Metrolinx and by Union Station to make sure the people who use that facility are safe. Obviously in the wake of this incident we need to redouble our efforts and inspect it again,” he said.
“It’s a big construction project. These are very sad things to happen, to cause injury to anybody, so we now have to make sure everything’s safe and I’m sure that’s what Metrolinx is doing.”
