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Few Torontonians will be shocked. Byford, however, would like them to look on the bright side. “The good news is, the TYYSE is 80-per-cent complete. The track is virtually all in, the tunnels were completed back in 2013, the six stations are well advanced,” he told the cameras after the media tour. “So the end date of December 2017 remains on track.”

At one point, after all, staff told him it might be 2019. At that point he cleaned house and brought in civil engineering firm Bechtel to reorganize project management. It could be worse.

By the end of our three-hour tour, Byford had said “but at least you’re getting a great subway” so many times in so many different ways, and had shifted blame to so many third parties — previous TTC commissioners, the Ministry of Labour, contractors — that it was getting a bit much. Subtle message management this was not. On the other hand, he makes a compelling case that he inherited a heritage-breed turkey when he took the job in 2012, and has made the best of it.

This is in many ways a classic Toronto transit screwup, beginning with the fact the budget was set before the project had been designed — which was the most basic finding of a 2010 report into the legendary debacle of the St. Clair streetcar right-of-way, incidentally. To take just one maddening example: The TTC proposed modest stations, not unlike those on the Sheppard line — “fit for purpose,” as Byford put it, the purpose being to move people from Point A to Point B. Politicians decided they wanted to think bigger, so the TTC commissioned some architectural landmarks. “No, no, that’s too big,” the politicians demurred, and we got halfway bold designs instead.