Mayor John Tory emerged from a hot and stuffy ride across town in a non-air conditioned subway car on Wednesday with one message for TTC commuters: we will do better.

Tory rode the length of Line 2 from Kennedy Station in the east to Kipling Station in the west in a car with a broken air conditioner following a challenge from a disgruntled commuter, who joined him for the ride.

During the course of the hour-plus commute, Tory said he not only experienced “considerable discomfort” from the sweltering conditions but also had to sit through four brief delays resulting from a medical emergency at Ossington Station and passenger assistance alarms going off elsewhere in the system.

“I understood some of the challenges before but I understand them better now,” Tory said following the trip. “I will say this to TTC commuters: We will do better next year and going forward.”

The TTC has been grappling with the loss of air conditioning on a number of older subway cars running on Line 2 this summer. The transit agency has said that less than 20 per cent of cars on the line are affected and has encouraged customers who have trouble with the heat to switch cars at a subway stop or wait for the next train.

Some commuters, however, have expressed frustration with the slow pace of repairs.

Speaking with reporters, Tory said that he knows that the TTC has been working hard to fix the broken air conditioning units but he said that going forward the transit agency needs to do a better job at acting preventatively.

“I think the real key is that we do much better going forward at auditing this rigorously so in January when the weather is cold we are identifying units that are frail or are the ones most likely to fail and then fix them preventatively at that time,” he said.

Challenge issued in July

Tory was first challenged to ride the entire length of Line 2 in a non-air conditioned car in July when commuter Bianca Spence sent him a message via Twitter. Spence then repeated her challenge on a number of other occasions throughout the summer, often when the city was under a heat warning.

On Wednesday, Spence said that she is hopeful that Tory’s sweaty ride across town gives him a better idea of what it is “really like on the ground” and perhaps informs his decision making going forward.

“It was absolutely perfect for what I wanted him to experience,” she said. “I hope it informs any decisions that he might make going forward as it pertains to inequities in the quality of service across the system.”

Tory said the only real solution to the air conditioning problems along Line 2 is the replacement of the older-model cars with the new rocket trains, which are outfitted with backup air conditioning units.

“You can fix 100 cars and the day after the 100th was fixed another would break down,” he said. “That is part of the problem we have. We are dealing with old equipment.”