A moving subway car is pictured at the Bloor-Yonge station in this file photo. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk /Toronto Sun

TTC workers and passengers are like sitting ducks.

It’s time to call it for what it is: Toronto’s transit system has spun off the rails when it comes to protecting people.

It’s not safe, and the brass have no answers.

Violence struck again on Tuesday afternoon, with a woman in her 20s stabbed around 2 p.m. on a streetcar at Spadina Ave., just south of Bloor St.

It’s not a matter if someone will be randomly attacked on a bus, streetcar or subway train. It’s a matter of when.

It happens too frequently. During the last few days alone there have been allegations riders were sexually assaulted, a bus driver shot with a BB gun and three transit employees assaulted on a bus.

It’s a crisis.

You can’t blame the police or TTC special constables. They’ve made arrests in every one of these cases. But you can blame a failed approach on bail, efforts to enable illegal drug use and inadequate public investment in mental health and addictions treatment.

When is TTC CEO Rick Leary going to come forward with measures to stop people from being victimized?

In response to a request to interview Leary about whether it’s time for him to speak publicly about this issue, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green replied, “I wish you had this kind of passion and enthusiasm for the TTC when one of our supervisors is saving the life of a 15-month-old child. Rick will speak to you tomorrow at some point.”

TTC workers, as Green noted, do heroic work every day, and we can ask Leary about the mentioned case.

Perhaps we need to do more positive stories. But there is no glossing over the fact there’s a problem on the system right now. Hopefully, he has something meaningful to say.

Tough questions should also go to Mayor John Tory, Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who collectively bear responsibility for the transit system becoming a defacto homeless shelter and drug enablement centre.

Tory has met with Leary, TTC Chair Jon Burnside, and Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw, but words will not do it. It’s time to take back the TTC, and the streets, from the offenders who are hurting innocent people.

“Something like this, you don’t close your eyes, and it goes away,” said Marvin Alfred, president of Amalgamted Transit Unit, local 113. “There is no sense of deterrence, there is no sense of TTC being able to impede these people from bringing these items on the vehicles and in the transit system.”

Operators are telling The Toronto Sun they are starting to bring their own bear spray to fend off potential attacks. No one thinks operators should take matters into their own hands, but they shouldn’t be lambs to the slaughter, either.

“You don’t want to feel you are at risk just because you are wearing a uniform,” said Alfred.

They are at risk and so are passengers.