For those who depend on the TTC, no news is certainly good news. The announcement from Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 that negotiations will continue if the Commission replaces one negotiator with another has left nervous passengers grateful for the reprieve.

"It's pretty frustrating," agrees Elena Vardon. "It kind of sucks to know that at any moment, I could have to leave for work at 6:30 in the morning and be kind of stranded."

Deniz Rakhman is concerned about a long distance call. "We work for promotions so we had to wake up at 5 in the morning. If there's no TTC, we can't get to work because I live an hour and a half away from here."

Celeste Sadler is as worried about her own position as she is about her students. "I'm kind of concerned because I work for the university and it's the final exam," she explains. "As staff, you need to get on campus every day."

Commuters will still get 48 hours notice in advance of a walkout, but most seem unable to say what they'll do if push comes to shove and the transit union walks off the job. During the last outage on May 29, 2006 - a one day event  that came as part of wildcat action - the city was plunged into chaos when 1.5 million travellers lost their only way into work. The job action cost the TTC $3 million, money they never were able to recover.