If you’re a regular public transit rider in the city of Toronto, you’re all too familiar with the painful experience that is the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) system–especially if you visit Spadina station, notorious for its very long walkway between the Line 1 and Line 2 platforms, on your commute. Local comedian Jacob Balshin captured this hilariously relatable reality in a satirical video about the station’s lengthy tunnel, titled, “The first annual Spadina Tunnel Marathon was today.”
In the clip, Balshin playfully recruits city-goers to join him in creating the station tunnel’s first-ever marathon. “Hundreds of Torontonians gathered to run from one end of the tunnel to the other,” the video’s subtitles read. “The tunnel is 42K long–some runners did not make it. It took 8.5 hours to finish the marathon.” The winner of the subway station marathon was awarded a Pizza Pizza Pepperoni Stromboli.
The content creator’s post was a hit among his 63,300 followers on Instagram.
Balshin’s video is complete with all the elements of a true marathon, including the pre-race stretching and warmup, bib numbers and water stations–but falls short in distance by 41,850 metres. While the Spadina tunnel feels like it never ends, it’s actually only 150 metres long. You’d have to travel the length of the tunnel 280 times to cover the full 42.2-km marathon distance–but if you’re a daily commuter, you’ve probably already completed an actual Spadina station tunnel marathon without even realizing it.
Why is the tunnel so long?
The northbound/southbound (Line 1) and eastbound/westbound (Line 2) trains originally had separate stations, but they were later connected by the tunnel. A moving walkway, which was in place until 2004, used to cover a significant length of the path, which is why a section of the tunnel’s tiling doesn’t match the rest. Although a moving sidewalk could make the tunnel marathon quicker, any equipment maintenance would significantly obstruct pedestrian traffic. With 11,000 people traversing the tunnel daily, extreme wear left the moving walkway shut down more often than not, and it was eventually removed. Now, the station sees more than 15,000 passengers trudging down the hallway each day.
Want to skip Spadina Tunnel Marathon?
Commuters transferring between lines have two choices for stations to change over: St. George and Spadina station. The experienced subway users have learned that because of Spadina’s hefty walkway, changing at St. George is faster and easier.
