A Chicago railfan.

Steve: Very late 2010 for first shipment, more substantial production volume starting in 2011. This all assumes that we actually place an order in early 2008.

I feel concern about those outboard motors on the low flow design. Any unbalance is going to show up as rotation of the truck, not good for single point switches. I feel they might make it work on new vehicles with tight tolerences, at a considerable risk of problems arising as wear sets in.

Hills like Bathurst may not be the only problem for low floor vehicles. I recall noting that the west approach to the Dundas bridge west of Lansdowne had quite a sudden transition from the bridge deck to the roadway.

“Steve: Most of the world calls this “Thorncliffe Park”. Every time I ride through there on the 100 I am amused at the pretentiousness of that title.”

Gah. Four years in Toronto, two years passing that intersection on a weekly basis and I never knew what it was called As for subway connectivity I would have expected eastbound passengers from that neighbourhood and points north to use the Eglinton LRT to access Scarborough via Kennedy. My concern is that while arriving LRT passengers to Pape under the existing plan have no realistic option in the event of a subway breakdown, Broadview’s comprehensive linkages means passengers have other avenues of escape! Anyhow, this is getting a bit (a lot) off topic.

Steve: Yes, it is.

Given the investment in relatively new loops on the existing lines I doubt they would go for double ends on those lines but the new lines open the question up again. Another official on site told me that they were concerned to maintain the streetcar experience such a sitting by windows with a good view of what’s on the street. I found that encouraging. Enough with crush loads etc.

Riding on the Bloor subway this evening around 7:30 I noticed I was the only one on the car who wasn’t reading a book or newspaper, listening to an ipod or dozing off. So much for the subway experience!

To be clear – I referred to “East York Town Centre” at Overlea/Millwood, not East York Civic Centre at Mortimer/Coxwell. I’m not that crazy – really.

Steve: Most of the world calls this “Thorncliffe Park”. Every time I ride through there on the 100 I am amused at the pretentiousness of that title.

As for solving site specific problems etc. – sometimes things “just work”. It is hardly rejigging the network when Pape is merely a presumptive choice – as indeed you keep telling us we shouldn’t be fixated by where they drew the lines on the TC map.

At present there are no proposals for what would happen to DMLRT south of Pape, and the Pape line is at the east end of the study design envelope so it’s difficult to know how a Broadview alignment might be remediated with some expropriation for the cost of an Pape South LRT alignment but in the end we’re talking about maximising existing track and junctions to leverage no less than three connecting streetcar tracks (Queen, Gerrard, Dundas) to run Don Mills services through as well as the possibility of extending Broadview south.

As for too far west – Broadview might be two subway stops away but it was a 10-15 minute walk during Taste of the Danforth. Two stops is a long way in some parts of town but it’s hardly a yawning gap on Danforth and Pape is hardly a critical destination point *of itself* at present.

Steve: “Too far west” refers to (a) transfer traffic onto the subway and (b) the difficulty of a southerly extension. Given projected demand in the corridor, the streetcar lines on Broadview cannot handle their current traffic plus the Don Mills LRT.

As an interesting and blatantly Heart-of-the-New-West-promoting aside, Calgary Transit is also considering low-floor, double-articulated LRVs for the proposed southeast leg of the C-Train system, in part to respond to tighter turning radii and also partly to improve passenger accessibiilty. The C-Train already uses high-floor LRVs from Siemens, so in the interest of maintaining fleet manufacturing consistency I would suspect that Calgary Transit are leaning towards the S70 Avanto, which in common with the Combino Plus is a double-articulated vehicle, yet is distinct from the Combino Plus in that it has cabs at each end and has provisions for couplers.

The coupler-equipped S70 Avanto is slated to enter service on the Charlotte, NC LYNX system by the end of this year, and their site has a couple of images of the vehicle on display.

Keep us posted on how the selection process goes, Steve!

(By the by, those of you looking for a lower-budget surface LRV option may want to consider the Vagonmash LVS-2005. The specs in Russian for those who are curious.)

Steve: Note that Vagonmash is not participating in the TTC’s preliminary discussions about the proposed tender.

“There are curve radius problems with making it any larger in its present location, and the only way to get more capacity is to grab some of the land in the nearby Parking Authority lot” – in most cities that wouldn’t count as a problem given the city’s ownership of TPA, but god forbid in this town we kill TPA offstreet lots in transit’s name and privatise the rest to buy transit vehicles.

A solution to the Broadview loop issue could be to make it and not Pape the connection to the Don Mills line – if that line ran subsurface on Broadview as presumably it would along Pape it could emerge at a portal where the road falls away towards Riverdale Park. Broadview could then be a through station rather than a terminus, with the current Broadview services terminating further north at a suitably spacious point, perhaps at East York Town Centre or at Eglinton.

The lack of an ROW on Broadview would be a problem but it can surely be solved or at least improved with less expense than pushing a new LRT south of Pape Station. While the lack of a western catchment is an issue, I’m sure we can rely on the City to sell out the view of the Valley to the condo developers, a process which has already begun.

While I have advocated (somewhat selfishly) for Coxwell as the DMLRT intercept with the B-D, Broadview north of Danforth does have the advantage of running NE-SW, the angle most passengers want to travel – towards downtown.

Steve: First off, we don’t solve site-specific design problems by re-jigging our transit network proposals. This would be very much a tail-wagging-the-dog situation.

“Through routing” existing services over to the East York Centre (at Coxwell and Mortimer!) or at Eglinton and Don Mills are hardly options for routes that now terminate at Broadview.

Steve: Assuming that the tender goes out this fall as planned, the idea is to award it sometime next spring. Of course, the politics of the budget crisis may get in the way.

Steve: The other amazing thing about that shot is how uncrowded the platform is compared with what I usually see.

1. 510 Union station entering Spadina and no one rushing/crowding to board … must have been the first time, you see, so the passengers were probably very surprised to see the new streetcar
2. Streetcar in Spadina ROW NB at Harbord…and the cars are still getting priority and turning left in front of the streetcar
3. 510 Union station streetcar eastbound on Queen St?…ok that was nitpicking…

Overall…an interesting video and I must say, I like the way they interspersed the CLRVs with the Combino.

Cheers, Moaz

Steve:

As for traffic priority, that’s the one left turn we allow every hour.

As for poles vs. pantographs, poles are virtually discontinued in the industry (according to a railway technology book I have). It would be naive to think it wouldn’t pantograph.

With the TTC station renovations projects coming up and more stations to be added to the list later, including stations with streetcars, I would imagine we can expect increased streetcar capacity at subway stations in due time. If it is already a problem at Broadview today, they must be thinking about tomorrow. It is admittedly complicated, but I can see it possible (at least physically, not sure about practicality) to run a loop on the opposite of Broadview’s platform (currently bus only), but this would have streetcars doing a figure-8 in the station – maintenance is going to love that, oh yeah [/sarcasm].

Steve: Before the reno at Broadview started, I had some discussions with the TTC about the loop. There are curve radius problems with making it any larger in its present location, and the only way to get more capacity is to grab some of the land in the nearby Parking Authority lot. Considering that we might actually see this project finish in the next few months after years of glacial progress, I don’t think the locals (me included) are up for a total reconstruction.

There are several other locations on the system where the presence of cars in the 30-metre range will pose problems because the station and loop designs are based on PCCs and CLRVs.

Is Skoda still going to make an offer to the city?

Steve: I have no idea what Skoda is up to. We will have to see who bids when the proposal call comes out this fall.

Repeated for completeness, this is the primary site related to Siemens’ public relations exercise in Toronto. Oddly the “Virtual Combino Plus” show in the simulations doesn’t match the version depicted in the mock-up or the Toronto-specific brochure. I am personally less impressed with the style of the ‘virtual’ version.

A PDF brochure depicting Siemens’ Toronto concept car with a detailed floor layout. This is obviously their big public-pitch document.

A news article attempting to tie this announcement to Mississauga by referring to Siemens as “a Mississauga manufacturer”.

“Exhibits” section of the official website of the CNE. Top of the list is the “TTC Streetcars of Tomorrow” entry with a photo of the actual Siemens mockup.

Subsection of the Siemens Canada corporate site about the Combino Plus

Subsection of the Siemens global corporate site about the Combino Plus.

Subsection of the Siemens Australia corporate site about the Combino Plus. There is a Melbourne-specific PDF brochure link. Save the PDF file first in order to view it because clicking the link throws the browser into some sort of never-ending loop. (All file links on this particular server seem to behave this way.)

PDF brochure about the four-section Portugal Combino Plus. It contains a lot more technical detail then you’ll find elsewhere including good photos of the driver’s cab, the motorized bogie (truck) and the traction unit alone.

General Combino Plus PDF brochure.

A detailed description of the special hourglass-shaped, rubber-encased steel springs used as the main suspension between the bogie and car body by the actual manufacturer of the springs.

Now get reading folks. I’ll return later this weekend with detailed comments and observations. Don’t get any funny ideas in your head that I’m a rabid Siemens fan. I’m most definitely not!

Steve: Thanks to Kristian for all of these links. I have modified the comment so that the URLs work as hotlinks. This avoids formatting problems with some of the very, very long URLs.

Steve: For what it’s worth, the derailment problems are supposed to be fixed now, but it would be interesting to hear Siemens comment directly on that.

Frankly you would have thought Siemens would have provided a more wheelchair-friendly mockup as well. Great for folks like my wife and myself with some moblity issues, but a wheelchair user at the CNE is not going to be impressed at all. We’ve ridden Combinos in Europe and there are other choices available. And, this type of car loads much better from stops wtih raised pedestrian areas and that’s not going to be possible in most city locations.

The Siemens cab is terrific, now if only TTC will accept the joystick controller. The 4900 ALRV demo had one and operator’s didn’t like it much (no idea why, but likely not as comfortable as modern joysticks). I found it extremely comfortable to use, but then I’m not going to be operating one. There is only so much that can be changed from standard and no modern builder of whom I’m aware offers a 1930s style set of pedals.

A good start.

The ad doesn’t really mention that they are bidding for the contract. Given how the TTC ran promos for the “my new streetcar” website, some people could assume the combino was chosen as the winning design!

If the TTC will promise that service frequencies won’t be reduced with the new cars, I’ll hang up my subway hat for good.

Knowing the TTC though, that won’t happen. Service that is already bad will only get worse with the new cars. We’re better off with cars 1/2 the size being proposed. Can you imagine what suburban waits on Finch will be like with cars triple the size of a bus? They’ll take a bus than runs every 7 minutes and replace it with a streetcar that runs every 20.

It’s nice to be courted.

Seems to me the bombardier flexity is more suited for suburban style LRT.

Steve: The capacity of various stations is a matter of some concern. For example, Broadview Station regularly sees mixtures of ALRVs and CLRVs stacked up out onto the street. There may be some reduction in frequency (fewer, larger cars) but the problem will remain, and it will worsen if service improves to handle rising demand.

The TTC schedules recovery time at terminals, but this is not practical given the capacity of some locations and the frequency of service.