[URBAN NOTE] "Nearly triple the number of subway trains shut down by TTC because of extreme heat"

[rfmcdonald]

The National Post's Victor Ferreira reports on the overheating subway cars on the Bloor-Danforth Line, still overheating on the 19th. (Believe me, I can testify to this.)

When James Ross takes the TTC to work in the morning, he’ll inevitably walk onto a Toronto subway car without air conditioning.

It’s unbearable for Ross, the TTC’s Head of Subway Transportation, but instead of following the flock of riders off onto another train car, he’ll stand inside and take the heat.

“I’ll stick it out because I’m trying to set an example, but we can’t kid ourselves,” Ross said. “It’s not pleasant.”

Between June 1 and September 13, the TTC took 63 trains out of service because of the extreme heat inside the cars, according to internal data obtained by the National Post. The number nearly tripled from 2015, when there were only 23 trains placed out of service in the same time frame due to hot cars. It took between nine and 225 minutes to repair and get each train back on the line during a summer when up to 25 per cent of subway cars were operating without working air conditioning units, causing an uproar among riders.

The chance of a train going out of service increases when the weather spikes, Ross said, because of a greater strain on the HVAC systems to keep trains cool. This August was the hottest one on record in Toronto, with temperatures rising 20 times above 29 C. In August, there were more cases of hot cars forcing trains out of service — 25 — than in the entire four-month span between June and September in 2015. Five cars were taken off the line because they were too hot on Aug. 12, when the temperature spiked to a high of 35.9 C.

But the TTC continues to place trains out of service due to hot cars, even when temperatures dip in the fall. A train on Line 2 was put out of service on Oct. 9, 2015 because it was too hot, despite temperatures only reaching 16.7 C that day. Later, on Nov. 5, 2015 — Toronto saw a high of 20.5 C — a train was taken out of service again because of hot cars.