Q18) Can emergency vehicles use the dedicated right of way for the LRT?

Yes. Emergency Medical Services and Fire Services are being consulted on how the LRT right-of-way can be designed to accommodate their vehicles.

Steve: Seems that the fire department wants it both ways. Centre poles to simplify fire fighting, no poles to simplify driving down the right of way.

Steve: The TTC claims that this arrangement simplifies overhead maintenance. This may be true, but properly maintained span wires don’t fall down often, and they have never produced any stats to indicate the relative benefit of centre poles to other design issues.

As I have stated before on this site, I have seen responding fire apparatus on the St Clair right-of-way traveling with apparently no problems. Just because it’s a right-of-way doesn’t mean that the pedal must to the metal! If conditions require it, slow down! Fire vehicles, in particular, slow down for speed bumps or other traffic calming devices that the city builds in the roadways!

I have seen responding fire apparatus stopped “dead” in traffic in the downtown area, waiting for a distant traffic signal to change so that traffic can try and clear a path. Could fire apparatus have a head-on collision with a streetcar or could it hit a centre pole? Certainly it could! If it’s traveling on King, Queen or Dundas could it hit a streetcar head-on or clip a pole if they are running in the curb lane? Again, certainly it could! Accidents can happen anywhere, anytime and it’s time the SOS group got off their thoughts that they are far worse off than other parts of this City.

I have ridden a bus, in service, on the St. Clair right-of-way. The driver moved along, at the speed the streetcars move, loaded and unloaded passengers and he didn’t seem to have a problem. The vehicle didn’t loose a mirror to a centre pole nor did it fall off the ROW. The driver was very competent, which is what we expect behind the controls of all TTC vehicles.

Lets look at the St Clair West Station entrance and exit ramps. Here we have ramps that have always had centre poles, the ramps don’t appear to be wider that the street ROW and the buses and fire apparatus have been using those ramps from day one. It may have happened, but I have not heard about any buses or fire trucks bouncing off the walls or centre poles on the ramps! Before amalgamation and because of the boundary lines between Toronto and York, when there was a Fire Call at St. Clair West Station it would have had double the number of fire apparatus using the ramps, as both the City of Toronto and the City of York would send a “normal response” of apparatus to the location. Again, no problems.

The tightest spot, from what I can see, for buses and/or fire apparatus passing each other is on the ROW from just east of Bathurst to just west of Vaughan. Vehicles must slow down and proceed with caution when passing. And what can we say about this area? Well, there is no centre poles to blame, not a one!

Steve: Just a note of clarification: My opposition to the centre poles is comes from the extra metre they take from space that might otherwise be dedicated to wider sidewalks or other street facilities. With the lighting poles on virtually the same spacing as the transit poles, there is a clutter to the street that was not present on the old St. Clair.

Good design is a question of balancing competing interests for the best overall solution. On St. Clair, the design was decided long before anyone had a chance to comment. Any attempt to change it was met with astonishing resistance and with claims about the evils of side poles that were demonstrably untrue.

Aside from that, is the fire truck situation any worse on the “new” St. Clair than it is on Queen or King or Dundas or most of College to name but a few streeets wihich are not grand avenues like St. Clair?

Watch for Margaret Smith to run for City Council in the next municipal election.

Steve: The side poles that hold up the street lights are at almost identical spacings to the centre poles holding up the overhead. If magically we could have ONLY centre poles, then your goal (and a lot of nice streetscaping) would be achieved. However, where we once had two poles, we now have three.

I have personally driven buses on the St. Clair ROW as well as on the Spadina ROW (at the lower end where there are centre poles BTW). My understanding is that TTC’s buses are as wide as are legal under the HTA. I, therefore cannot see that a fire truck can be any wider than a TTC bus. I am a “carefully selected and trained” professional operator who finds driving on the ROW to be a true test of my driving ability (and yes I do keep a tight grip on the steering wheel!). I would expect that firefighters are just as trained to drive their vehicles as I am to drive mine. I have watched fire trucks on many occasions navigating through traffic and have no doubts as to the driving abilities and skills of their drivers. My opinion is that this whole issue is more about politics than it is about whether or not emergency vehicles can navigate the ROW. It is interesting that the politician who is raising the issue has always been opposed to the St. Clair project!

At least two recent fires in the old city one at the Trinity Bellwoods and another at Kensington Market were complicated by the monster trucks which I understand replaced smaller models used by the pre-amalgamation TFD.

Unless someone corrects the “one size fits all” thinking areas like “the Market” will need to be bulldozed to accommodate these behemoths. And bulldozing the neighbourhoods of the old city will be over my and several other dead bodies!

As with transit it seems that one size fits all is the pervasive thinking at City Hall.

As for a 40′ bus traversing down the ROW, I bet the drivers of these buses are drinking lots and lots of caffeine (and developing good grips on the steering wheels) lest they sideswipe a pole. Mind you, unless someone corrects me, I think the width of a fire truck is a lot less than a bus. So there are definitely some clearance issues, maybe the ROW was designed for buses in mind but not a hulking fire truck.

A few days ago, buses were substituting for the 512 streetcar service. The bus that I was on drove down the length of the ROW at a decent speed, fast enough that we were zipping past the stream of auto traffic. If a 40+’ bus can do this, then why can’t a 47′ fire truck do the same? I doubt that the fire trucks are that much wider than a bus.

Steve: You are asking a peevish question in the best tradition of this site. I believe that the initial plans for the “city” network will be to put longer trolley shoes on the new cars, not pantographs, so that they can handle the added power draw without a complete conversion of the overhead suspension.

If and when they do switch to pantographs, it has huge implications for our complex intersections, and it will take a long time to re-engineer and rebuild the entire network. Considering that they only just started to use hangars that are compatible with pans in the past year, they have a lot of catching up to do.