It has been a trying time lately for commuters on the Bloor-Danforth subway line, who saw one delay or partial shutdown after another last week.

Riding that line can be trying enough riding in regular circumstances. While reports of the sardine-can crowding on Yonge’s Line 1 get all the ink, passengers at Greenwood and Pape often have to wait for numerous trains to pass before they see one with enough room to board.

And last week, one of Toronto’s transit experts had more bad news for passengers on Line 2. For starters, there seems to be no prospect for improved service or more capacity on Line 2 for more than a decade to come, maybe longer.

Transit expert and activist Steve Munro looked (as he does every year) at the TTC’s detailed “blue books,” which hold all the fine-grained information that inform the capital plan, and summarized his findings in a post on his website, stevemunro.ca. What he found could have pretty serious implications for service in the near — and not-so-near — future.

Maybe the most surprising thing he gleaned is that the TTC has decided not to replace the fleet of T1 trains it uses on Line 2 in the mid-2020s as it had previously planned, but to refurbish them to extend their life by 10 years instead. The refurbishment will cost $715 million, versus the $1.86 billion replacement cost. TTC spokesperson Stuart Green confirmed to me that this is the plan, saying they are trying to avoid a situation like the one the TTC had recently with streetcars, in which old ones fail before the news ones arrive.

Munro notes that the long-term cost actually goes up by about $10 million per year as a result of this decision. And we aren’t sure if it will work — the TTC recently tried to extend the life of its old streetcars and found its $26 million refurbishment efforts were ineffective.

Furthermore, these cars aren’t (and won’t be) enabled to take advantage of an Automatic Train Control (ATC) system. That signal system, which is being installed on Line 1 right now, allows trains to travel closer together. That means you can run more of them, so they come faster and are less crowded. The TTC planned (and still apparently plans) to install the ATC signals on Line 2 in the mid-2020s — but the T1 trains cannot make use of them.

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And that, in turn, means there’s no way the TTC could significantly improve service levels on Line 2 while they are in service, which will now apparently be until the mid-2030s.

This change of plans was a surprise. It sounds like the kind of thing that may be worthy of fairly significant public debate, but Munro couldn’t recall it coming before the TTC board, and couldn’t find any evidence it did.

But Green told me it was in the 2019 capital budget. Sure enough, when I looked at the budget documents approved in January, I found a line on the spreadsheet about overhauling T1 cars to extend their life, and a few bullet points about subway car overhauls being an investment in the budget presentation slide show. The issues Munro raises aren’t addressed or unpacked in that presentation, but at least we can see where it was approved.

OK, I can hear some of you thinking, but at least there will still be some improvement when the Scarborough subway extension opens — in 2026, we’re told — and when the Downtown Relief Line opens, which the mayor recently announced should happen as soon as 2029.

Well, not so fast. Munro’s scrutiny reveals a further potential delay. Right now, the trains that serve Line 2 are stored and maintained in the Greenwood Yard. That yard is full. It cannot house any more trains — not even the new ones that would come to serve the Scarborough extension.

The plan to deal with this is to open a new yard at Kipling, for which the TTC has already been buying the land. Line 2 trains would move there, and then the Greenwood Yard would house the trains to serve the new relief line. Neato.

Except that the Kipling Yard, according to Munro’s examination of the budgets, won’t open until at least 2031.

Uh oh.

Munro also points out that the TTC needs a new yard on Line 1, and that yard will be in Richmond Hill, which depends on extending the Yonge line. He suggests that also may not be ready in time to house trains the TTC needs for its plans.

(He points out much more than this — I encourage interested readers to check out his full blog post and his follow-ups.)

Green says in an email, “The TTC’s 15-year capital investment plan identifies our challenges and sets out a road map to address them. It shows where investments are needed for both state of good repair and capacity needs on existing lines to accommodate ridership growth and expansion projects.” Much of it, he says, is subject to “further reporting.” He says the type of issues raised here are the things the plan is intended to address.

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Regarding the yard timing, Green wrote, “We will be developing the strategy as we complete the Line 1 capacity work to identify the elements (which include trains and storage/maintenance facilities) required to accommodate the projected growth in demand on the line. This is the subject of a report to our board in April. We are commencing work on Line 2 capacity as well, to determine the requirements for that line.” This latter study will, he said, include looking at the yard requirements for the relief line as well.

Green says part of the reason the TTC released a “frank and realistic” 15-year state-of-good-repair plan was specifically to make clear the size of some of these expenses and jobs, and the network of interlocking issues that come with them.

I take from that that work is going to be done to figure it out, and then it’s up to the politicians to make sure the cash is there to make it happen.

Let’s hope so. Commuters’ frustration is suffered minute by minute and hour by hour. The potential solutions come in time frames of years or decades. No improvement can come fast enough, but we have no time to waste.