What’s the deal with the hot subway cars?

The “hot car” problem on the TTC has been the transit story of the summer. We answer five questions about the sweaty saga. How many hot cars are there? According to the TTC, as of Wednesday, between 15 and 20 per cent of the 370 cars on Line 2 didn’t have working air conditioning. That’s about 55 to 75 cars. Why aren’t there any hot cars on Line 1 (Yonge-UniversitySpadina)? The TTC runs its newer Toronto Rocket trains on Line 1. The trains have only been in service for five years and have yet to experience widespread maintenance problems. The T1 model trains on Line 2 are about 15 years old or older and many are in need of repair. Why doesn’t the TTC run new cars on Line 2 (the BloorDanforth line) as well? The TTC has run a few Rockets on Line 2 to alleviate the hot car situation, but most of the new trains are used on Line 1 because that line carries 740,000 passengers a day, 40-per-cent more than Line 2. The new trains have passenger capacity about 10-per-cent greater than the older trains. When will new subway cars come to Line 2? The T1 trains on Line 2 won’t reach the end of their service life until 2025, at which point they will be replaced by newer models. Will the hot cars be fixed by next summer? Not necessarily. The TTC is replacing the air conditioning units in all its T1 trains, not just the ones that have already broken, because the units are at the end of their lifespan. It still has more than two-thirds of the fleet to overhaul and it can take up to 10 days to replace each unit. Ben Spurr