When the new Toronto Rocket subway cars began arriving in Toronto in 2011 the city suddenly had civic space unlike any before: with open gangways between all six cars the new trains surely became the city’s longest linear rooms, snaking their way along the Yonge-University-Spadina line.

Any shared public space in the city is our civic living room, the places we bump into each other, or more accurately, where we have to bump into each other. We’re mostly cocooned at home or work, or in our bubbles of friends and family networks, rarely spending time with strangers. Out on the sidewalks we’re moving too fast to really pay much attention to each other unless sitting down on a bench and deliberately people watching.

Public transit is different, a great equalizer. Car-oriented cities, like my hometown of Windsor, have fewer opportunities to randomly be with and regard other city dwellers like we do in Toronto, and 15 years after moving here, the subway’s multitudes remains a thrill.

When I’m not travelling at rush hour, that is.

Toronto’s longest room is most fun during holiday time, where there’s buoyancy to the crowd, when the kids are out and about by day, and most people are going somewhere other than work. People seem happier. Do we make more eye contact and smile now? Maybe it just seems that way.

Enjoy the feeling of these brief incandescent weeks in the middle of a dark season because the inevitable January crash will come.

The intimacy of the subway during rush hour can be a shock to those new to the city, especially on morning commutes when we get our noses pressed up into people’s morning hair dampness, and all the fresh perfumes and colognes mix together into a rich stew of smells. It reminds me of what church smelled like on Sunday mornings.

The new subways really are long rooms, not merely a series of train cars that get us from one place to another. Virginia Woolf wrote that female writers needed “a room of one’s own” in order to, among other things, have space necessary for writing and thinking. Thinking of the subway car as a room, a place of contemplation, is a good way of understanding the roll they play in our lives as city citizens: every ride is another lesson in what it means to be a Torontonian.

When there’s a Leafs, Raptors or Jays game happening and the subway is packed with fans wearing the same colours, it feels a bit like being on a high school sports outing, a kind of grown-up pep rally.

This being Toronto, it’s usually more fun before the game than afterward.

During the winter, those new to Canada could be forgiving for not wondering if one of our sports teams was named “Canada Goose Down,” so standard a uniform those puffy coats have become.

Though often jammed beyond comfort, especially for those who do a traditional 9 to 5 commute, there are moments of grace, like when the train unloads at Union in the afternoon rush and, until reaching either King or St. Andrew Stations, is briefly comfortable. It’s the eye of the TTC hurricane, those two short lengths.

The open subway concept, where the voice announcements echo and reverb down the length of the train, also gives a better sense of the topography of the underground parts of the subway system. Every curve and bump is noticeable now. Try standing near one end and staring down the length for a few stops: you begin to feel the tunnels and city.

Better yet, stand on one of the gangways between cars and do some Toronto surfing. How many stations can you go without holding on?

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It’s everyday Toronto at its finest.