Bloor-Yonge station, teeming with commuters since it became Toronto’s main subway intersection in 1966, could get a new platform and other changes to reduce the sometimes dangerous overcrowding.

Easily the busiest of the TTC’s 75 subway stations with hundreds of thousands of passengers flowing through daily, Bloor-Yonge has shot up a priority list to the point where city staff recommend $500 million in precious federal transit funding be aimed at the major expansion.

Total cost, including city and provincial funding, is pegged at $1.1 billion.

If approved by city council and other levels of government, a new eastbound platform will be built on the lower level near where the south wall is now, giving Line 2 passengers heading up to a Yonge train an additional set of stairs, escalators and elevators.

Having two separate platforms, rather the current narrow island with tracks on both sides, should neutralize a pinch point at the station’s north end that jams when eastbound and westbound trains arrive around the same time. Smaller improvements are planned for the Line 1 Yonge line platform.

A city staff report released Wednesday says planning and construction on the complex project needs to be fast-tracked because computer modelling shows extra capacity is badly needed before 2028.

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City spokesperson Brad Ross said Bloor-Yonge moved past other projects as a priority because the Eglinton Crosstown light rail line and planned Yonge North subway extension to Richmond Hill will pour more people into the system and through the central gateway to downtown Toronto.

“If you’re going to add more people to the line, you need to deal with the potential for overcrowding when it becomes unsafe,” Ross said. “Bloor-Yonge station is really now at a critical point where it needs to be expanded.”

January of 2018 saw what could be a preview of the future without expansion. A signal breakdown and cracked rail packed Bloor-Yonge platforms to the point where TTC, for 15 minutes during morning rush hour, had to send packed cars straight through the station without stopping.

Ross acknowledged expanding the busiest subway station would be “incredibly complex” and “disruptive,” but predicted engineers can figure out how to do it with full closures potentially only on some weekends.

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“It would be quite a scene for a few years but then like a breath of fresh air once it’s done,” he said.

Union Station saw a similar expansion, with a second subway platform. Asked if there is a risk Bloor-Yonge could see the same time and cost overruns as the huge Union remake, Ross said the subway portion of that project, which also involves GO and Via, was finished on time.

The original station opened in March 1954. Planners foresaw an east-west connection further south, at Queen St. When the second line was built, in 1966, the city chose Bloor, a planner told the Star later, to help spur a development boom north of the core.

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering Toronto politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider

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