Update June 19 at 10:20 am: My interview today with Metro Morning is now available online.
The Toronto Star and Globe & Mail report that Premier Dalton McGuinty and Mayor David Miller will announce that the purchase of 204 new streetcars Toronto will proceed. This is expected to occur on Friday in Thunder Bay.
There is no word at present on the status of funding from Ottawa.
Meanwhile, a study prepared for Bombardier shows that there would be significant benefits to both Queen’s Park and Ottawa both for job stimulus and for tax revenue that would come back to them from this order plus the follow-on option for Transit City cars. The study is available on the Globe & Mail’s Toronto Blog (in small print down at the bottom of the article).
An important component of the calculation is the premise that the Transit City fleet will have 50% Canadian content, not 25% as in the initial 204 cars for the “legacy” streetcar system. This substantially increases the economic impact of the combined order.
One troubling comment in the Star’s article is that the existing cars are “failing so fast, the TTC anticipates having to use buses on some routes later this year”. Well now, if memory serves, TTC staff were asked to produce a report on fleet availability and planning back around the start of 2009. This was expected to surface in April, and the latest I have heard is that we might see it in July.
Considering that the TTC will have parts of various lines shut down for track or other repairs, the idea that they don’t have enough cars that work is laughable.
- 512 St. Clair won’t see service west of Bathurst until late 2009 at best
- 504 King is cut back to Queen and Roncesvalles this Sunday until late 2010
- 505 Dundas is cut back to Bathurst Station for July and August
- 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road will be replaced by buses for the August and September periods due to track replacement at Bingham Loop (why this is taking so long is a total mystery, and I cannot help thinking that it is a handy excuse)
The reliability problem with our streetcar fleet is known, but what is alarming is the lack of information about what is really happening. The TTC wrings its hands about problems with adding service to accommodate new demand, and they don’t even have enough working cars, they claim, to run the existing service.
Why are they failing? What is happening here? What’s the big secret? Are we simply trying to save money by cutting back on maintenance?
Answers please!
Steve Munro 
If TTC has to replace some streetcars with buses, they should pick one route, say 511 Bathurst, replace it entirely with bus, and make a point of running very good service on the remainder of streetcar routes.
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204 new streetcars. I saw the drawing of one of the cars on the Star’s website. The article called it a ‘Euro Style’ car and it looks great. I can’t wait for some of these cars to hit some of our routes. The Star article didn’t mention capacity but these low floor cars but they look like much higher capacity then our present streetcars are.
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The Star fails to acknowledge that buses already are being blended with our streetcars. I have seen buses sporting such fashionable route numbers as 501, 504, 505, and 506. I have pictures of them all, all taken within the last few months, or weeks in some cases.
I also can’t help but worry somewhat when Minister Baird tries to reassure people by saying “the best is yet to come.” We’ve seen what happens in the past when an upper level of Government gets ahead of itself with transit projects… like the SRT.
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Funny you should mention it Steve. The Bingham loop track seems to be fine with no major issues. I am there daily and other than some squealing of the streetcar wheels there is nothing wrong with the track. I think they are using this as a cover to put buses on the route that is very rarely used and reallocate streetcars.
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A good ploy for getting what you want is to say that whatever you have now is falling apart and we cannot wait any longer for a replacement. This may only be a ploy by the TTC to get what they need. At any length we do need the new cars and we need them sooner than later.
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I sincerely hope that there will be a public watchdog (i.e. Steve Munro) keeping everybody on their toes, Bombardier included, on providing a streetcar that is not such a dud as the CLRV/ALRV was.
Steve: The real issue to watch for here is that Bombardier, having said that they have a vehicle that meets Toronto specs, doesn’t pull a bait-and-switch and put us in the position of having nice cars we can’t run on the system. There’s also a question of how much of the new “Flexity 2” technology, just announced at UITP in Vienna, will find its way into the Toronto cars.
On the bright side, this is at least a design that is running in many cities already as opposed to the “we have to build it ourself” CLRV.
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they are failing. i saw 2 different pairs coupled last night, my headlight wouldn’t work even after a bulb replacement, with nowhere in the carhouse to put it due to the number of streetcars under repair and my second car leaked so much off the windshield that my backpack was soaked by the end of the night. can’t wait three years. things are starting to get desperate.
Steve: I was on a car yesterday whose windshield wiper worked now and then, and where the defroster did only a half-assed job. Yes, many cars awaiting repair. How many? Why? Why do they fail again?
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why don’t they just merge the 502 and 503 route into one….
it would free up a few cars….
mesh the routes by bringing the 503 to york…and up to queen & mccaul….
Steve: I have proposed that long ago as part of the reorganization of the Queen corridor services. At least if all of the 502/3 cars went to the same place, the outbound gaps would not be so horrendous when one is short-turned or missing in the PM peak. My vote is to make them all 502s as that is the all-day service.
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Re Bingham Loop – the TTC Service Summary claims August 5-September 5 only – perhaps that’s where they’ll get the extra cars from so that they can be allocated to 509 and 511 for the Exhibition period.
I don’t suppose the “track repairs” will take into account curve amendments to suit new low-floor cars. That would be too much to ask for. Maybe they’re going to re-install the second track (removed in 1954) so that both 502 and 503 can be accommodated at the same time. No way can two new low-floors fit onto the existing track simultaneously, which would leave the possibility of one car blocking the very narrow Victoria Park segment of the loop waiting for platform time. (What’s that you say? With the poor headways no two cars should ever be present at the same time, despite the fact of two routes? You probably believe in the Easter Bunny as well).
Pardon my cynicism.
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204 new streetcars to replace the old 248 streetcars…I read this on the sun or was it the star…anyways, why 44 less streetcars?
Steve: If we convert the capacity of the “old” fleet to a common measure, say “CLRV”, then we have 195 (1 was scrapped) CLRVs plus 78 CLRV equivalents (52 ALRVS) for a total of 273. One new car is equivalent to two CLRVs, or 404 in total. We can argue about the exact ratios, maximum headways, the effects of all-door loading on capacity utilization, but there is little doubt that 204 new cars offer considerably more capacity than the current fleet. Then there’s the little matter of how much of the existing fleet is even on the road.
Here are some stories of ttc failings:
I went to a metrolinx georgetown corridor open house at Fort York and then when I headed home, I was waiting across the street and a 511 came, it goes fine up to Bathurst, makes the turn going north and as it is going up the bridge over the VIA/GO/CP/CN tracks…it is shaking left and right.
Another fail: remember those old ttc buses from 10 years ago? I so loved it when they went uphill (think Don Mills going over the 401) and it is struggling and I think at one point the driver had to slam on the break because the bus was close to rolling backwards.
SRT fail: That night of the SRT expansion open house…Karl (see above commentors), me and another transit advocate took the same bus to Scarborough Centre then went up and took the SRT to Kennedy bus alas there was an issue down at Kennedy and the SRT stopped at THE worst station in the whole system: ELLESMERE.
Oh yeah one last one: my 68 Warden southbound bus, the transmission died and the bus died, it took about 20 minutes for a replacement bus came. This happened at Warden Avenue and Comstock Road…anyone who knows what Comstock Road means will get that.
I agree with Karl, I saw at the begining of June while at Yonge/Dundas Square two 505 Dundas buses going eastbound, then between bus 1 and 2 a 505 Dundas streetcar.
Bingham loop being replaced … is that Kingston-VP or just the loop area?
Steve: Based on the info in the memo describing the change, it is the entire loop including street trackage. Bus routes will divert depending on the progression of the roadwork. I am astounded that this project is expected to take so long, but it is possible that there is related City road and utility work happening at the same time. I’m still awaiting info from the TTC with details on this and other track-related questions.
I honestly lost faith in repairs … Vice-Chair commissioner Mihevc told me that the TTC would not build new routes/projects if they can’t mantain current service. How long has the 512 been around? … I wonder if by the time I retire that the 512 will be ready …”the 512 will be finished by year-end/early 2010″ according to a ttc staff. Now this whole mess means the 512 will be finished by early 2010, to gunn’s loop or that extension to Jane?
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If, as the Star article states, it will take ten years before the current fleet is fully replaced, how can existing service levels possibly be maintained? Our “decrepit” fleet isn’t gonna make it without a lot of help. The ALRVs can’t be relied on any more than the CLRVs. The disgraceful lack of basic maintenance had better be just a political ploy or we’re in serious trouble. How are we going to get some honest answers right now?
I am very concerned that the existing fleet will end up being hastily scrapped faster then the replacement vehicles arrive to fill the void. If the hybrid buses don’t work out, and we have no assurances they will even with the upgraded batteries not yet supplied, service will suffer far beyond the scope of the streetcar lines.
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“502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road will be replaced by buses for the August and September periods due to track replacement at Bingham Loop (why this is taking so long is a total mystery, and I cannot help thinking that it is a handy excuse)”
Why don’t they just use the 22 Coxwell bus for a permanent fix for the route? They use it from 7pm-2am and on weekends, they might as well make it a full time route. Just add a couple busses to make it FS and make people transfer when they reach queen street.
Steve: What is quite annoying is that the TTC runs far better service evenings and weekends with the Coxwell bus than they run during weekdays with the streetcars. This is a classic example of how to drive away ridership and give the impression that buses are better. Considering how many of them the TTC runs when they convert a route to bus operation, it’s no surprise that people think they provide better service.
In addition, the TTC new Light Rail Vehicles cannot be supported by the Roncesvalles and Russell Carhouses. Is it true that the TTC is considering on deciding between six sites in the in the Leslie area for a new home for these new vehicles? Will this work?
Steve: You can look at a map of the potential sites on the notice for the public meeting (tonight). Given that the CLRV/ALRV fleets will continue to exist for some time, the two operating carhouses must stay in use. Further down the road, when enough of the old fleet has been retired, then one or both of those sites can be rebuilt as a new carhouse properly designed for a modern fleet.
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Funny thing with Toronto, they always assume that every problem has never been seen before, anywhere. Even when they saw the very same problem only a relatively short time ago.
One needs to look at what happened, when the problem of not enough cars occurred in the past. This is not the first time the TTC has let it’s street car fleet age past it’s best before date. Before the CLRV’s they had the same problem. They rebuilt some of the older PCC cars and bought some other used cars to try and keep the fleet going until the new ones arrived.
Steve: The last time we bought second hand cars was back in the 1950s. It’s the bus fleet that was supplemented with used fishbowls from Montreal, some of which are still in service.
The big problem is that Toronto has been farting around about streetcar replacement for years while the streetcar fleet deteriorates either because it doesn’t work, or because it’s not being maintained. The severity of the problem has not been made public because staff are sitting on a report that was requested last year. Now there’s a crisis that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
This sort of thing gives TTC management a very bad name with funding agencies.
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Things really do seem to be falling apart; in my limited travels about the city, I daily stumble across 2 – 3 broken down CLRVs being pushed to the yard by another CLRV. I’m astonished at how often this happens. But as one driver stated “all maintenance performed on the units is ‘band-aid’ type stuff”.
This breakdown rate is quite disruptive to the entire network.
Steve: The TTC needs to invest in some real maintenance by the sound of things. Are we back to an era of just patching things together to make the budget numbers work out? Does anybody care, or are they too busy lecturing people about how good service can only be provided if there is no conflicting traffic within a mile or so of any transit vehicle?
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Re: “Steve: If we convert the capacity of the “old” fleet to a common measure, say “CLRV”, then we have 195 (1 was scrapped) CLRVs plus 78 CLRV equivalents (52 ALRVS) for a total of 273. One new car is equivalent to two CLRVs, or 404 in total. We can argue about the exact ratios, maximum headways, the effects of all-door loading on capacity utilization, but there is little doubt that 204 new cars offer considerably more capacity than the current fleet. Then there’s the little matter of how much of the existing fleet is even on the road.”
In 1980 the TTC had 300 streetcars, right now they have 248 (180 in working order IIRC)–that’s 52 less, with 2 new streetcar routes. In 2018, the TTC’s order of streetcars is supposed to replace all of the current cars. However, they only ordered 204 new articulated streetcars. You yourself said that “this is not enough to replace the existing fleet plus additions to bring service quality back up, handle growing ridership and new lines.”
Not to mention that there are currently 3 new streetcar routes proposed. So basically what I am saying is that the TTC plans to run it’s streetcar network with 100 less streetcars than nearly 40 years (1980-2018) prior with 5 new streetcar routes; Spadina, Harbourfront, Cherry, Queens Quay East and Commissioners. It makes no sense whatsoever, especially considering the enormous headways that would be required to stretch the fleet over the entire system. Goodbye frequent service.
Although these vehicles are articulated, and there are currently less than 180 streetcars on the road during peak today, 204 streetcars is not enough.
Steve: For routes that now have very frequent service, the new cars can replace old ones at wider headways. For routes that don’t run often, they will have to use a 1:1 (or very close to it) ratio. The big debate lies with off-peak service. Here the fleet size is not an issue, but the TTC may try to stretch out headways as they did on the 501 and 511 with the ALRVs.
Also, there is supposed to be money in the waterfront transit project budgets for additional new cars.
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I wonder how long before this “band-aid” repair work as you call it leads to a shut down of certain portions of the subway line like David Gunn predicted of the North Yonge Extension.
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If it will take 10 years to build the new streetcars for the legacy network, how long will it take to get the streetcars for Transit City (assuming that they are made by Bombardier)? They obviously will have to be made in a second factory, Thunder Bay clearly doesn’t have the capacity especially since it is busy right now with the Toronto Rockets. Will the TTC expand Thunder Bay, build a second factory in the GTA or will the new streetcars (both TC and legacy) be mostly built overseas and finished in Thunder Bay to comply with the 25% requirement?
Steve: If you look at the quantity of cars needed for TC, and the opening dates of the lines, it is obvious that Thunder Bay is going to have to crank them out much faster than the “legacy” cars. I think that the timeframe for the “legacy” contract has more to do with TTC/City budgeting and of avoiding a boom/bust cycle at Thunder Bay than with what they can produce. After all, we are getting an entire order of “Toronto Rocket” trains in only a few years.
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Seeing the new Flexity 2 on Bombardier, will the city try to acquire some? They look great for the new waterfront lines. It would bring a better sight to Toronto. What is the cost compare to the flexity outlook?
I also think the new streetcar can bring better LRT service to Spadina and St. Clair. I’m sure they allow wider headways. Maybe transit priority during midday and evening? I wonder have the city consider time specific transit priority during certain part of the day.
Steve: At this point, I am still waiting to find out just how the Flexity 2 announcement will affect the “Toronto” car.
As for transit priority, I would prefer something a bit more dynamic based on prevailing actual headways (how long has it been since the last time transit was given priority). This would automatically adjust to conditions without a lot of messy time-of-way, day-of-week programming. In effect, if there has not been a priority phase granted within the past “n” minutes, and a transit vehicle is present, give it priority. This would prevent frequent service (including cars running in packs) from completely taking over green time from cross streets, but would not require a lot of messy programming and management.
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What bothers me the most is the suggestion that all of our reliability problems will ‘magically’ disappear when we get the new cars. Routine and proper maintenance applies to everything and to any vehicle. The current fleet has been unfairly slagged for being junk from day one when the real problem has always been shoddy or absent maintenance. Just think if we’d purchased Boeing LRVs – they’d have been scrapped sooner than Boston’s and San Francisco’s the way they would have been treated here. The CLRVs are going to end up unceremoniously scrapped without any fanfare or thanks for what they’ve done for us. I am unapologetic in saying that a clean and functional CLRV was always a pleasant experience.
Bombardier did nobody any favours when they trumpeted how much more reliable the Toronto Rocket trains were going to be than their T1 predecessors before they even began building one. Many of you may not be aware that ALL the motor housings on ALL the T1 fleet are being replaced due to a design flaw that caused stress fractures and breakages of their mounting lugs. Nothing is for certain until a vehicle is in service for a long period of time.
The Flexity cars are at least built and running already in other cities, but the design had to be altered for Toronto’s trackage and we won’t know if it is functional or safe until the prototypes show up long from now. They will be technically and electrically far more complex than the current fleet and will have body panels that are far more difficult to repair than the basic steelwork we have now. Are we going to be told, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s just teething problems” when things go awry? We might find out that they are duds at the same time as the current fleet runs into the ground from lack of maintenance. Then what do we do? And how long can we expect our new investments to last under such lousy upkeep?
Steve: I too am concerned about the claims made for the TR cars considering that similar improvements were claimed for the T1 fleet relative to the H fleet. There’s a point where you just run out of credible room for improvement. This is also not helped by the generous spare ratio the TTC tends to build into its fleet plans so that, initially at least, they have far more cars than they need. This leads to a certain laziness because if there’s a few too many trains in the shop, it doesn’t affect service. The TRs are unit trains, and this means that if there is something wrong with one car, the whole train goes out of service. That will drive up both the spare ratio and the storage space needed to park bad-order equipment.
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I may have misunderstood you Steve. When you said that the 512 would be finished by late 2009/early2010 did you mean all the way to Gunn’s Loop? HOw are they going to deal with the over crowded underpass between Weston Rd. and Old Weston Rd.?
In the meantime, why don’t they run the line out to Lansdowne? You can’t ask the store owners in Corso Italiano to wait forever.
Running the streetcars to Lansdowne would avoid the transfer at Spadina West station and a very large number of St Clair riders aren’t going west of Lansdowne so fewer pepoploe would be inconvenienced.
Steve: My understanding is that the target is to get service back to at least Oakwood sometime early fall. Why Lansdowne should take much longer is a mystery considering that the construction is done from Dufferin westward, and work is now underway between Dufferin and Oakwood. West of Lansdowne I doubt we will see until sometime in the spring of 2009.
I really wish that the TTC/City would publish a project overview so that we could at least know what they are aiming at. If for some reason they don’t actually hit the target, at least we will know what went wrong and whether it was an unavoidable delay.
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1) What will be done with the current fleet once the new cars are in service? Will the old ones be run into the ground and then scrapped? Or scrapped wholesale once the new ones come? Or sold off to some other metropolii?
Apparently, waaaay back when, old Toronto streetcars were sold to Winnipeg. It would be nice if another city could get some urban rail service going again if our streetcars are still salvagable.
Steve: That must have been ages and ages ago considering how long Winnipeg has had no streetcar service. The problem with anyone buying the CLRV/ALRV fleet is that the electronics package is 30 years old and parts are impossible to get. These were to have been replaced in the proposed life-extension program, but that was scrapped when the TTC decided to go for a complete fleet replacement for accessibility reasons.
2) Now we’re hearing the term “streetcar” being used for the TC vehicles when, in the past, boosters were anxious to distance TC from streetcars. Will the new vehicles, door configurations aside, be interchangable between TC and existing streetcar lines?
Steve: “Streetcar” has become respectable enough now, politically, that it can be used for both fleets even though they are different cars. The “Legacy” fleet will have single-ended equipment with trolley poles that won’t be able to run on the TC lines. The TC cars won’t be able to handle the tight curves of the old streetcar system. The two fleets will look similar, but be physically separate from each other.
3) All levels of government would do well to support this industry from an employment standpoint. The feds and the province are throwing squillions at the floundering automakers (and now pulp & paper). The least they can do is support this industry which has a bright future.
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My concern with the new order is headway, not capacity. It’s great to have more capacity, but if one has to wait longer to enjoy the benefit of that capacity then demand for that capacity will drop. The TTC seems to forget that transit relies on being fast, reliable, and convenient. If one has to wait too long for a streetcar it is not convenient, regardless of it running “on-time” and/or being “fast”.
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There was some talk earlier about replacing an entire streetcar line with buses, I say this still needs to be done so that all lines do not suffer. The downtowner and kingston road can go, because IMHO they have no business running such crappy service out there.
As opposed to Bathurst, which does not have enough cars, I say replace Carleton. It’s a very long route and it does not use any of those double-platform stations (Dun Wes / Broad) that we spent all that money creating.
As an added benefit, we could start doing this, right now, by running some “cross eyed” service due to the construction on dundas. Run the 505 down dundas to bathurst, but then down college st to dun wes station. Run the buses to mirror that, as much as possible, on dundas, etc. It might not be perfect but its better then the odd arrangement they seem to want to have.
Steve: In case you haven’t looked lately, there are no curves in the southwest quadrant at Bathurst and College allowing Dundas cars to use the route you propose. If you’re going to make a proposal, the least you can do is check out whether it is physically possible.
Also, because Carlton is a very long route, it would require far more buses than the TTC has available.
This is going to be a juggling act over the next few years if the TTC doesn’t get its streetcar fleet in decent shape because buses needed for better service will be redirected to streetcar lines.
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I’m sure you’ve seen this morning’s speculation that the mayor and the premier will announce 2/3rds of the funding today. I assume that’s not enough to lock in the pricing, and the other third must still be found by June 27.
The mayor seems insistent on taking the most dangerous approach to funding this project. He’s playing to his base very effectively, but he’s also putting the feds in a position where playing to their base (which is something the Conservatives do so well) would mean saying “No”.
Steve: We shall see. There are various ways out of this mess, and I don’t think anyone wants to see the deal fall apart. My interview with CBC’s Metro Morning is available online for further comment. (See link in the main post.)
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Re: John Bromley and adding (back) a second track at Bingham Loop: As John points out in his 50 Years of Progressive Transit (King James Version ;0;0), the loop was converted to partial bus operation after Zone 2 was located to Victoria Park. Today, only the Victoria Park Stn. -bound 12 KINGSTON RD. uses the bus portion, and the 22A COXWELL uses the streetcar portion. How hard would it be to convert the bus portion back to streetcar and keep the 12 KINGSTON RD. on Victoria Park? As far as the TTC is concerned, it would be a serious transfer interference, forcing people to walk a few extra feet to connect between vehicles. I wish they kept that in mind when they designed Wilson Stn!
Bingham Loop is not the only loop that would have problems holding more than one of the new vehicles. Makes me wonder, apart from subway stations, would it really kill legacy operations to install crossover switches on the street a distance away from the loops so you have the ability to operate both double-enders and single-enders? Would it be that confusing to do?
Steve: The problem with double-ended operation is that cars would take their terminal layovers in the middle of the street.
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Steve writes:
“I too am concerned about the claims made for the TR cars considering that similar improvements were claimed for the T1 fleet relative to the H fleet.”
A maintenance person I talked to at Greenwood was full of praise for the H4s. He said, “thirty years old, and running like new”.
Also, nitpick:
“West of Lansdowne I doubt we will see until sometime in the spring of 2009.”
Well, no of course, but I think you meant 2010.
Steve: Time travel. Although if the TTC were running it, I would worry about my Tardis being short turned. Serious congestion problems, don’t ya know!
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Hi Steve
An interesting aside to the purchase of the new streetcars is the amount of misinformation that has been posted in various places. The comments section of “The Star” is filled with all sorts of crap about how streetcars cause pollution by holding up automobiles, etc. Perhaps the funniest one is from someone who claims to show his friends around from Europe these friends seem surprised that we actually use streetcars as part of our transit system! If they are going to lie, they should at least make it believable.
Steve: The automotive lobby has used that canard about how they must be able to drive as quickly and without stopping as possible in many contexts including road expansion and expressway construction. They ignore the fact that if we increase road capacity, more people will drive to fill the capacity provided and those trips will cause more pollution (not to mention requiring more space to store the vehicles at their destinations).
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Steve – any ideas why the media is ignoring the issue of the funding formula, as if it’s been a 1/3 split across the three levels of government forever? As much as I’d love to see the federal money on a contract that provides work across other parts of the country, I’m floored that the provincial government is able to look golden in all this – up until the horrific Harris government, TTC capital funding was always 75% province, 25% city – with no federal $s included – yet now all we’re hearing about is how the feds are supposed to be at the table on this? That sounds very ‘bamboozle’ to me… why haven’t we pushed Queen’s Park further to restore funding levels to the traditional 75-25 split and forget about the Toronto-hating Feds anyway?
Steve: That’s part of the argument I have been making here for some time as well as in interviews today. The idea that Ottawa is “on the hook” for anything is a fiction, and serves only to create supposed conflict where none really exists. Moreover, as long as we have project-based funding rather than a standard per capita (or some such measure), each project will go through the same rigamarole of drumming up support at each level of government.
Ontario has already funded parts of Transit City and Move Ontario 100%. Nobody complained that they were paying more than their “fair” share.
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“would it really kill legacy operations to install crossover switches on the street a distance away from the loops so you have the ability to operate both double-enders and single-enders?”
Why couldn’t double enders use the loop when in mixed operation? I thought the principal disadvantage of DE cars was loss of seating from double side doors and two cabs?
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The TTC will be ordering two separate fleets-one for the Legacy System and one for Transit City.
Does the ordering of the “Legacy” streetcars have any effect on the price for the Transit City vehicles? That is, are there certain overhead costs that would have to be incurred for either of these fleet orders on a stand-alone basis but don’t have to be completely replicated when both fleets in production?
If the federal government doesn’t want to contribute towards the legacy fleet then they shouldn’t benefit from any cost savings as a result of the larger collective order.
Steve: Yes, certainly there are savings from a consolidated order as well as job benefits — Bombardier’s cost/benefit analysis released a few days ago assumes 50% Cancon in the Transit City cars, and having promised that, they are now on the hook to deliver. The feds will rake in a bundle from income tax that would likely not have been collected from all that domestic work.
Mind you, the only Federal contribution so far to a Transit City Light Rail line is 1/3 of Sheppard East. Therefore, their benefit is one third of the saving on the cars for that line, not for the entire network.
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Thanks, Steve – I listened to your radio interview after posting my rant, much of which was driven by the drivel being written under the articles at the Star and CTV (complained about by others here as well), and you’re right – the province does deserve credit for their funding plans so far on Transit City and Move Ontario. Your funding-related comments on the radio interview were greatly appreciated (so nice to hear somebody speaking reasonably about all of this!)… but I’m still gonna press my MPP for a solid, permanent (and old-fashioned!) funding formula come the next provincial election.
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A few nights ago I headed over to Regent Park to look at the new TCHC buildings on Dundas St that were recently completed. After having done that I decided to head over to Dundas and Yonge. During the entire hike from Regent Park to Yonge St not a single streetcar or bus passed me. I know that in the past I have had to wait a long time for a streetcar, especially out on the former 507 Lakeshore section of the 501 Queen route, but this is getting out of hand. If the existing fleet is failing and will not be totally replaced until 2018, then there are going to be some severe service disruptions to the legacy network for the coming decade. I thought that after the Russell Hill subway accident of 1995 the Commission was committed to keeping the system in a state of good repair. If management has confidence in the maintenance of the surface fleet, then why won’t they release the report??
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@Mark: The Double-enders are going to be standard off shelf models with pans. There is no way the TC cars will be able to use the legacy system without modification. Why spend the extra money to do so?
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Re: Jordan
Things are getting pretty bad at this point, but service as bad as you described on Dundas is definitely an abberation. Frankly, if theres one route that generally works well in mixed traffic I suspect it is Dundas. My own experience is that typical travel time from Yonge to Broadview via 505 is almost identical to that via subway, and is almost never more than 5 minutes slower; I’d say thats fairly impressive for a local route with less traffic located in mixed traffic without signal priority.
All that said, like all the surface rail lines, when it goes wrong it really goes badly wrong, and I’ve seen everything from trucks parked on the tracks in Chinatown and Regent Park to hour plus gaps in service.
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While I know that history shows that transit projects got provincial, not federal, subsidies, I’m not sure that doing the Fiddler on the Roof (“Tradition! Tradition!”) dance is entirely worthwhile. Ontario stopped generous subsidies about the same time as Paul Martin cut back transfers to the provincies in order to tackle the federal deficit. It was a cascade of downloads, and as we know the city (think of it as the storm sewer of the water cycle) has the least fund-raising instruments at its disposal.
That being said, Marcus Gee’s column today just makes me want John Barber back.
I hate reading stuff like this over breakfast:
The “improvements to GO Transit” that I can think of are parking lots in the outer exurbs. (Where the Conservatives *do* win seats.) So unless I’ve missed something, this is meaningless to the City of Toronto, who is making the request.
The “York University” subway extension is actually the “Vaughan” subway extension. Vaughan is inexplicably a Liberal riding … but hang on a second, the “Corporate Centre” is in the riding of Thornhill which is … Tory. Huh. Anyway, while I (as a York U alumnus) support the subway to York (which may let others impunge [sic, should be “impugn”] the reasoning skills I learned at York), the expense of continuing the line further north is quite pointless, and of no benefit to the City of Toronto.
That leaves the Sheppard East funding, yay. I tried to get some background, which lead right back to this blog, with over 100 comments, so I’ll just say “Ibid.” and leave it at that.
Steve: It’s a huge shame that with Marcus Gee’s arrival, we seem to have yet another source of Miller-bashing, Tory spin loving writers in our daily press. John Barber was probably too much of a flaming lefty, and would probably not have been welcome even at the Star where keeping those readers in the 905 happy seems to be the editorial creed.
That said, the City repeatedly claims that their LRV project fits the criteria for the stimulus program and that Ottawa didn’t warn the City off when asked about this before the application was filed. Baird says that Toronto applied to the wrong program. It’s time for both of them to put up or shut up: Toronto needs to show the guidelines they relied on, and Ottawa needs to identify the alternative program to which Toronto should have applied, and explain why they didn’t point Toronto in the “right” direction. Right now, it’s just a schoolyard pissing match.
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As much as I loathe to support the Conservatives on any point (I am “party-less” at this time), could Baird’s remarks have any merit ?
I read that he was suggesting Toronto submit road work (and other similar infrastructure) for funding and then use the “savings” to pay for the remaining LRT order.
Sounds like a round-about way of doing things (just to follow the guidelines), but could this work ?
Steve: As I understand it, the City’s position is that Ottawa’s money would be used first to pay for development, setup, tooling and the initial production at Thunder Bay, thereby falling within the two-year window. With that infrastructure in place, the plant would then churn out cars paid for largely with money from Queen’s park and Toronto. This would not just be a short-term burst in activity such as advancing road work that might otherwise take place in the future, but the foundation for ongoing production over the following decade.
Swapping the LRV order for local construction work runs into a few problems. First, to be a “stimulus” it should be work that would not happen anyhow, in effect, a city should not be able to reduce its current budget exposure by transferring work from local to federal funding. That is precisely what Baird is suggesting Toronto do. The construction season for 2009 is already underway and any new projects added would likely occur in 2010. The city’s big ticket projects are usually multi-year affairs and this runs straight into the scheduling limits of the stimulus program.
Toronto has a backlog of work that needs to be addressed, but it will take several years to work through it all as there are limits on how much work can be undertaken simultaneously. This is a question of the capacity of the industry, the complexity of managing multiple projects, and the degree to which people will tolerate many parts of the city being torn apart at the same time in the name of “stimulus”. It may seem odd to say that there is a capacity limit in the construction industry, but this is a major concern for Transit City planners especially on the technical and project management side of things.
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The latest Star article today states that “Thirty to 40 percent of the (current streetcar) fleet is in maintenance already”. This hardly qualifies as a ‘state of good repair’ or even remotely a ‘state of good management’. Where this figure was pulled from I don’t know – it wasn’t a direct quote from an interviewee. However that paragraph directly followed one quoting Adam Giambrone. If he already knows then we certainly don’t need to wait so long for the promised “fleet availablility report” to get some basic figures. While I’d certainly like to know all the finer details of “why” (although I’m hardly expecting to see them publishing a report that hangs themselves like a giant noose), I’d really appreciate some open and honest answers NOW, especially in regards to the hybrid buses.
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If I was the city/ttc I’d be trying to get that fleet availability report out before the deadline. I think the public needs to know what the status is and how important it is for the city to get this contract.
Steve: A related report that is needed is a plan to sustain the fleet between now and the time when a significant number of new LRVs arrive in Toronto in 2012-13.
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“Thirty to 40 percent of the (current streetcar) fleet is in maintenance already”
Oy vey! Perhaps Toronto could “lease back” the PCC’s they sold to Kenosha, Wi. Along with all the other old TTC streetcars at HCRR, the wooden TRCs, TCR #55, the Peter Witts, and PCC’s, hell, even 416 should be leased back. They’re all in better shape than the “current streetcar” fleet. To turn that irony around, I wouldn’t be surprised when the time comes to finally retire the CLRV/ALRV fleet, and the TTC offers a couple to HCRR, the response would be, “No, thank you, really, we’re good!”
Steve: HCRR’s big challenge would be to source the electronics to keep these cars running. The equipment on this fleet dates from early days of solid state controls, and will be seriously antique by the time the cars retire. Maybe we could have one of the older cars tow the CLRVs through the woods. This would match the state in which they are seen all too often in Toronto.
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I would like to know whether or not the Liberals, New Democrats, (Green Party,) and Bloc Québécois would support federal funding of streetcars (whether it be for Toronto or Montréal). Maybe if all three support the funding, there will be more pressure on the Conservatives to do so as well.
Steve: We know that the NDP supports this project because Jack Layton asked a question about it in the House on Thursday. No word from the federal Liberals who are still working out their platform. The Bloc probably does not care one way or another, but it’s possible there is some industrial development in Québéc that might also need support and could be linked in a joint proposal. As for the Green Party, what Green Party? Their main achievement is to split the anti-Tory vote.
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