The next time you board the Yonge-University or Sheppard subway lines, there’s a good chance Jessie Kushner will be in control.
The spunky 26-year-old is among a handful of women who’s a driver (they prefer the term “operator”) of a Toronto Transit Commission subway train.
It’s not a traditional job for a young Jewish woman from Toronto, but Kushner wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It wasn’t like I dreamed of doing it growing up,” she told The CJN in an interview.
But, she added, “this is actually a really good job in today’s age. It pays well and benefits are good.”
A subway operator since last summer, Kushner came to the job via a more conventional route.
She graduated from Dalhousie University with a degree in business management, followed that up with study in financial planning and earned a Canadian securities license.
READ: MAURICE SENDAK EXHIBIT IN TORONTO INCLUDES ‘WILD THINGS’
She worked at a downtown bank branch for a few years as an adviser/teller.
“I wasn’t making very good money and I was working a lot of hours,” she recalled. Plus, “it was extremely stressful. I didn’t feel it was worth it.”
She applied for dozens of jobs and put in for one at the TTC two years ago “because I took the system every day and I knew what it was like to be on the subway, being crammed inside. I get it. I thought, ‘I’d rather be driving the subway than going to my office every day.’ ”
Besides, the TTC paid better.
She found the 34 days of training “extremely hard.” The training for a subway train, she explains, is much more rigorous than for a bus or streetcar.
“I didn’t know that I would even make it through training, it was so challenging. But now that I’m actually driving the subway, it is super easy for me. I have it down.”
The hardest part, she said, are odd hours that dent her personal life. Being underground for long periods makes her tired.
Kushner knows of one other Jewish woman who drives a subway train, and on the day The CJN interviewed her at the TTC’s Wilson Yard, two other employees were conversing in Hebrew.
The daughter of Leon and Dorothy Kushner of Toronto, she “definitely” gets reactions when she tells people what she does.
“They want to ask me dozens of questions.”
Chief among them is whether anyone has committed suicide by jumping in front of her train.
Happily, that hasn’t happened on her watch but she’s trained to be on the lookout for people who might jump or fall onto the tracks.
The trains are about 450 feet long and “don’t stop like a car,” Kushner explained. “When it comes right down to it, there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t think anyone can really train you for how you react in that situation.”
Neither has she encountered sick or violent passengers.
“I don’t want any guns or knives on my train,” Kushner said emphatically. “I know that’s going to happen sooner or later.”
People also tend to believe that the subway is fully automated.
“It’s not automated,” said Kushner, who took time to show a CJN reporter the surprisingly simple controls of her train. “It’s all human. Someone’s driving it and opening and closing the doors.”
A driver must consider the train’s speed, myriad signals that do not resemble those above ground, and look out the window to ensure that passengers board and exit safely.
“If something does go wrong, like someone pulling the passenger alarm and there are over 1,000 people crammed onto the train, that’s a stressful situation.”
For the most part, though, the job has been pretty unpressured. She’s encountered a few passenger alarms “but nothing that put me over the edge.”
As for those invariable rush hour delays, “I totally understand. But it’s certainly not the operator’s fault when there’s a problem. I have to say we deal with them pretty quickly.”
The job “is what you make of it,” Kushner said. “Sometimes, when I’m driving, I sing to myself. I’m having a good time.”