Many changes will affect TTC operations with the onset of summer schedules for 2016. These include both the usual seasonal changes to service levels, several construction projects affecting routes, and the restructuring of routes serving the waterfront.
Updated May 24, 2016 at 7:30 pm: Preliminary information on construction diversions at Broadview Station has been added to this article.
The information in the spreadsheet linked here is organized into three sections:
- Routine, mainly seasonal, changes
- Groups of changes related to specific projects and route reorganization
- Construction project calendar
The 514 Cherry streetcar route begins operation running via a short spur south from King to Distillery Loop. Initially this will run with a mix of Flexities and CLRVs pending an increase in the fleet of new cars. Eventually track on Cherry will extend under the rail corridor and south into the Port Lands, but that is a project still years away and subject to the usual wrangling at Council about capital spending priorities.
In the 2016 Budget, the TTC Board and Council chose not to fund the new service with additional money, and so this operation will be implemented by cutting service on the outer ends of the 504 King route. Peak service will operate every 8-9 minutes, and off-peak periods, the line will operate on a 15 minute headway with five cars. A blended service on King is impractical given the large difference in frequencies between the 514 and 504 routes. Whether the Cherry cars actually pull out onto King into gaps and carry passengers, or merely slip in behind King cars and let them do the work remains to be seen.
The 172 Cherry Street bus has been replaced by an extended 72 Pape over a new route serving Queen Quay East, and by a new 121 Fort York – Esplanade bus that will operate on, at most, 15 minute headways, a considerable improvement over the former 172 Cherry.
Sunday Stops
The TTC continues its program to remove Sunday Stops from the system with removal of stops at the following locations.
Streetcars Return due to Bus Shortage
With the onset of construction season, and despite the summer service cuts, several streetcar routes will be partly or completely replaced by buses: 512 St. Clair, 511 Bathurst, 506 Carlton. This will be offset by the return of streetcar service to the 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road Tripper lines, as well as full streetcar service on 504 King with no bus trippers. Service will likely revert to combined streetcar/bus operation in September thanks to the late deliveries of new Flexity streetcars by Bombardier.
Construction Work on College Street
Several projects on College Street West have been timed to occur over the summer of 2016.
- Special track work replacement at Bathurst and at Lansdowne
- Removal of safety islands at Bathurst eastbound and at Bay Street both ways
- Expansion of the safety island westbound at Bathurst
- Water main upgrades on College and on Lansdowne
- Streetscape improvements on College
The effects of these will be:
- 506 Carlton will operate with buses in the west and streetcars in the east on weekdays, and with buses over the entire route on weekends. The weekday services will overlap between Church and Bay. This will continue throughout the summer.
- 47 Lansdowne will divert around the construction area via Dufferin Street.
- 511 Bathurst will be operated by buses until the next schedule change at the end of July diverting around construction via Spadina between Harbord and Dundas.
- The 509/511 bus shuttle on Fleet Street will be replaced by the 511 bus service.
Details of the service diversions are in a separate article.
When streetcar service returns to Bathurst Street, the cars will operate into Exhibition Loop so that through service is provided until the Labour Day weekend. In September/October, service will be cut back again to Fleet Loop for a track replacement project in Exhibition Loop.
St. Clair Construction
Major construction work at St. Clair and St. Clair West Stations will require removal of streetcar service over the summer and early fall. The approach ramps at St. Clair West were not rebuilt during the line’s reconstruction, and the track must be replaced. The entire 512 route will be operated with buses through the summer, and streetcars will return from St. Clair West to Keele in September. Full streetcar service will resume on the Thanksgiving weekend in October.
Buses will not be able to enter either station during this project. At St. Clair Station, all bus service will loop on street via Avoca, Pleasant Boulevard, Yonge and St. Clair with transfer connections at the Pleasant Boulevard entrance. At St. Clair West Station, the 90 Vaughan bus will be extended south to Bathurst Station, and routes 33 Forest Hill and 126 Christie will be interlined. All buses will make an on street transfer connection at St. Clair West.
Broadview Station Construction
The bus loop at Broadview Station will be rebuilt over the summer and all bus services will loop on street via Erindale, Ellerbeck, Danforth and Broadview using an on street transfer. Given the frequent congestion of streetcars on Broadview awaiting entry to the station, the bus service will add to the congestion at Danforth northbound. The arrangement of on street stops for the four bus routes affected here has not yet been announced. Running time has been added to allow for the around-the-block loop except in cases where there was already enough recovery time in the existing schedule.
Updated May 24, 2016: Brad Ross at the TTC has provided the preliminary construction notice for the service and street changes. In addition, the Brick Works shuttle bus which normally loads on Erindale outside of Broadview Station will be relocated to Chester Station.
Bayview Services Reorganized
Peak period frequent service on 11 Bayview now ends at Davisville & Bayview, but this will be extended to Sunnybrook Hospital with every second bus running through to Steeles.
The 28 Bayview South route serving the Brick Works now operates only on weekend daytime hours, but will provide service during all periods.
Victoria Park North
Service in York Region on Victoria Park will now be provided by York Region Transit. The 24D Victoria Park branch to Major Mackenzie will be dropped and all service will turn back at Steeles Avenue. The 224 Victoria Park North route will cease operation.
Richmond Street Construction
All Downtown Express services will divert westbound from Church to Peter while Richmond Street is rebuilt from Victoria to York. Whether there will be any provision to assist the left turns west-to-south at Peter that will block 501 Queen Service (itself forced to divert and turn south at Spadina for water main construction) remains to be seen.
Steve Munro 
Is removing streetcar islands a new policy system-wide for non-ROW lines? There are others, Bloor/Dundas W comes immediately to mind…
Also, with regards to the special track work at Lansdowne/College, it is baffling that they aren’t going to go after the special track a half-block away at Dundas/College at the safe time, this section is arguable in worse condition.
Steve: To accommodate access by scooters and wheel chairs, the islands must be wider. There is not physically the space to do this where they are being removed.
College and Lansdowne is being dug up by Toronto Water, and TTC is taking advantage of this to replace that section of “College Loop”. The Dundas and College intersection is planned for 2018 together with tangent track on the bridge at Sterling Road, and Dundas and Lansdowne is in 2019. These dates may change as the TTC is always shuffling its projects to fit in with City work.
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Will there be any division shifts?
Steve: There are none listed in the memo detailing the changes.
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Food for thought, TTC can also expropriate the land at College/Dundas, which is presently occupied by the petrol station, to provide a off-street lay by for short-turns, instead of sitting on Lansdowne. In fact, the original College-to-Dundas curve can be kept for non-layover short-turns.
Steve: Actually that would be a rather tight loop, probably too small to hold one the new new cars.
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I am curious why an island has never been added on College, eastbound at Yonge. There is definitely enough room there, even for an island built to current standards.
Steve: Islands are rare on the system, and most were built a very long time ago except for new routes with reserved lanes. Even then, St. Clair and Spadina already had islands at many stops. Remember that when most islands were built (early days of the TTC), the system looked a lot different. College and Yonge was a T intersection, and streetcars turned south to jog down to Carlton street. Also, the Eaton’s College Street store did not exist until the 30s.
From the City Archives, here is a 1920 view looking southwest and showing that the intersection did not need an eastbound island in its pre-Eaton’s, pre-jog elimination days. Here is the view looking south in 1912 showing the job as it once was.
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The Sunday stop was a bizarre anachronism. I’m glad to see them go. Out of curiosity, to your knowledge, was there ever a Saturday stop at any of the city’s synagogues?
Steve: No, but then I believe that travelling to the synagogue by public transit would not be allowed for the faithful.
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This combined with Bombardier’s incompetence is the beginning of the end of streetcars in Toronto. Streetcars won’t immediately disappear completely but several streetcar routes will be permanently converted into bus routes followed by all eventually.
Steve: Considering the projected population growth in the area served by the streetcar lines, this will bring huge fleets of buses to streets like King, Queen, St. Clair and others. Bombardier may be incompetent, but you may have noticed that they are not the only company on the planet building rail vehicles.
Oddly enough, when some generations of new subway cars ran into teething problems and late deliveries, nobody talked about the end of subways, and the TTC kept old trains in operation to make up for the lack of new ones.
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Given the new 514 route goes from Cherry to Dufferin along King. That will mean a fair number of left turning vehicles at King and Dufferin. I don’t know that intersection but Google street view shows that there is no advance green for the left turn from King on to Dufferin southbound. Has the TTC given any thought to that or is this going to be another Toronto traffic FUBAR?
Steve: City Transportation is supposed to be working on signal changes. We will see what they manage to achieve in the remaining month.
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This shows that there are still a left over anti-transit influence from the city councillors from the previous city hall administration, who consider public transit to be “gravy”. However, what is really missing is a stronger operational subsidy from the provincial government for all public transit operations, not just capital projects.
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Looks like a bunch of cuts to TTC bus routes are to help with the lack of streetcar. There really should be a temp bus garage to help out with all this. But seeing as how TTCs ridership hasn’t reach projection levels for this year so far, it may be a hard sell. I guess the express bus reports are out the window. Hopefully BBD is paying for all this bussitution. They really should give us money to temporarily lease buses in the mean time.
Steve: Actually the seasonal bus cuts are almost the same as in 2015 and previous years. The streetcar shutdowns are scheduled to co-incide with the availability of extra buses during the summer.
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Steve says:
“Oddly enough, when some generations of new subway cars ran into teething problems and late deliveries, nobody talked about the end of subways, and the TTC kept old trains in operation to make up for the lack of new ones.”
An honorable mention that the artic buses were delivered late. Nobody talked about the end of buses either.
By the way Steve, what division would operate the new 121 Fort York – Esplanade and the temporary 506 and 512 routes?
Steve: The 121 will operate from Birchmount which previously operated 172 Cherry. Service on 506 Carlton will operate from Eglinton and Mount Dennis, with additional buses from Malvern on weekends. The 512 buses will come mainly from Mount Dennis and Wilson with peak extras from Arrow Road.
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Subways and streetcars and buses for that matter are a different beast altogether. Hawker trains weren’t that old compared to other subway cars in North America. Montreal has subway cars older than ours. It’s not like TTC’s older subway cars were in dire need for replacement. Buses, at least we have two manufactures and the option to lease buses if needed. Streetcars, there aren’t that many options, it’s off the shelves, and not a hot enough commodity in N.A. so its understandable the “panic” people have with the late deliveries with streetcars. And rightfully so.
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So is the 508 officially just off the rails now and sitting in the history books?
It always seemed like and odd route – kind of a west end downtowner or tripper…. But I’m sure if they rejigged its terminus it could have made a little more sense?
Steve: The 508 is officially removed due to a shortage of streetcars, a problem that might be fixed in our lifetimes. The real problem with this route is that it had so few trips, and the concept of “on time” was entirely foreign. If it ever resumes at a decent frequency, there would be a good argument for making the eastern terminus Distillery Loop.
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Steve, do you know if the buses that will be running on St. Clair will use the ROW lanes or on the regular traffic lanes?
Steve: Regular traffic lanes.
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They did recently rebuilt the stop for accessibility for new streetcars at Church and Adelaide which is exclusive to the 508. The 508 is a difficult route to operate. Each trip needs its own car. TTC would need a whole bunch of extra cars to make this route work unless they plan to make it a full service round trip route like the 502/503. The 508 never had much riders actually taking advantage from downtown to Long Branch cause of the horrible service it provided in PM rush hours. Initially the 508 was a good idea cause the 501/507 exist. Ironically that configuration has returned with no 508 in place.
TTC would be much better off if the operated more 145 trips at regular fare. Of course they’ll have to solve the congestion problem around Lake Shore. If we talk about building bus lanes for the 145, we might as well take about the Waterfront West LRT. Which means nothing gets done for the next decade.
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Thanks for acknowledging that Bombardier is not the only rail vehicle production company on the planet but the only problem is that TTC is NOT aware of that simple fact. It will be Bombardier’s incompetence that will be the final nail in the coffin of Toronto streetcar history. I personally like streetcars and would be happy if Siemens or another company were given the streetcar order while banning Bombardier from any public sector contracts in Ontario for a minimum of 100 yrs.
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I worked at Queen and Victoria a few years ago and caught afternoon 508 cars at the corner quite a few times. One problems was that a very senior operator would sign up for 508 and would move sooooooooo sloooooooowly, it seemed possible for the streetcar to start rolling backwards. Unfortunately this was the run I usually wanted to catch. It really was faster to just catch a 501 across Queen and Lake Shore, even if the 508 operator drove with some sense of urgency. Queen is (was?) a surprisingly fast route, faster than King almost always.
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Ah, that explains why most (all?) the northbound bus stop signs on Victoria Park, at least north of McNicoll, have been replaced with the blue and white YRT ones in the past week or two.
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To my knowledge, I don’t believe there was a great debate over whether we should start Saturday horsecar/streetcar service.
For many years, there was just no Sunday service whatsoever and the push to operate on Sundays was met with opposition from those who spoke of wanting to keep Sunday as a day of rest for all and sundry while really not wanting people to take a streetcar to a park or beach instead of going to church. The idea of adding “Sunday Stops” placed conveniently to the entrance of churches was the counter argument that helped make the claim that those same streetcars could be used to make it easier to get to church.
It surprises me that no one wanted streetcar operation to make all non-Sunday Stops designated as “pick up only” before church services on Sundays (i.e.: one could only disembark at a church). Or did someone attempt to do this? 😉
Steve: Another point about Saturday service: at the time the “Sunday service” debate was going on, Saturday was a working day. The five-day week is a comparatively recent invention.
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Nothing bizarre about it. A lot of people use the stops in a short time period which is otherwise low traffic. Many are elderly and need to be as close to where they are going. It is called customer service. A concept somewhat foreign to the TTC.
What is bizarre is this; making service less convenient especially for people who need a little consideration. I am sure routes such as Dupont and Junction do not suffer schedule making one or two extra stops. Remember this, the same number of people still have to get off/on the bus so running past the Sunday stop saves little or nothing. In all likelihood there won’t be anyone using the regular stop at that time of day, so nothing saved but a few seconds braking time.
Steve: The TTC has some bizarre fetishes about saving on running time at precisely the moments when this is not an issue. The real reason for getting rid of Sunday Stops on streetcar routes was to save on the cost of pavement modifications at those locations.
At first, the bus routes were not part of this process, but after coming up with that cock-and-bull “explanation” about saved running time, leaving these stops on bus routes did not make sense.
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On the subject of late delivery of new Flexity streetcars by Bombardier. Am I correct that their bid was $600 million dollars less than the only other bidder Siemens? That is Half a BILLION dollars!
Steve: Yes, you are correct, more or less. Also, by comparison with subway cars, the Flexity streetcars are not outrageously more expensive considering their size and the fact that every car must contain a full complement of all subsystems.
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Broadview Station Construction
Will they temporarily ban on-street parking along Erindale Ave?
Steve: One would hope so, but it will be amusing to see what happens if they don’t. Really the entire “around the block” loop including the cab stand on Broadview needs to be given over to buses.
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It’s frequent to see 504 streetcars coming south (and north) on Church. I’m sure more than three 504s pass by that stop on the average weekday.
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Hey steve do you know how come there is a bus shortage going on? I thought we had enough buses in ttc now with more new novabuses coming in?
Steve: There are two problems. One is that the reliability of the fleet overall is still not at the level the TTC wants. New buses do replace the oldest junk, but there are lots more in their mid-lives. Also, there is a shortage of bus operators noted in the service memo for June as one reason for scheduled service being less than budgeted.
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The re-establishment of blended service on 72 will be something to keep an eye on. I have a feeling it’s going to be as disastrous for headways north of Eastern Avenue as it was when it was running a decade ago.
I have similar doubts about how the 121 (now with 1000% more turns!) will perform given the terrible congestion on Front Street during many parts of the day.
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I use the 72 every day to get to my office, and I have to say that while it started out in the new arrangement running like clockwork, now it is all too common to see buses running in pairs. That being said, once the new services start up I’ll more than likely be taking the 72 from Union instead.
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Ya know, Alstom is building Ottawa’s LRT cars right here on OC Transpo property. Just sayin’….
Steve: It would be interesting to see what Alstom would bid if there was a new tender.
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That’s because TTC is NOT a reliable transit service provider. It was normal for two or even three TTC 224 buses showing up at a time of little traffic and no construction and we petitioned our city and regional councillors to have the service provided by YRT whose buses almost always run on time and bunching is non-existant. Also the other night, three long articulated 310 Bathurst TTC night buses showed up after almost two hours of waiting (this is late at night with almost no traffic and no construction) . When asked the driver about why three buses showed up at the same time, the TTC driver said and I quote “What is the supervisor doing?” I wish that the YRT abandons all of it’s reliability on the TTC and this is sad news for the TTC as the TTC was making money off of this.
Steve: I have just started looking at the 165 Weston Road North as part of a review of the many routes operating on Wilson Avenue. The service north of Steeles is rather erratic considering how infrequently it runs. As for the night routes, I was going to look at them earlier this year, but there was a problem getting all of the data. Some sort of systematic outage at 3am on many days. I still have to chase this as I believe that the actual record of night operations will reveal a less than rigourous adherence to schedules.
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Why doesn’t the 121 terminate in Exhibition place like the 509/511 Shuttles?
Steve: Because it is not replacing the streetcars. The service is intended to serve the condos, not the CNE grounds.
Also I think the running time may be tight, and continuing into the CNE may add mileage they can’t support. Remember that thanks to Council’s refusal to pay the incremental cost of the Cherry Street service, all of this is being done within the existing available budget for the routes involved. Remember to thank John Tory for keeping your taxes down.
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No, Steve only TTC service north of Steeles is erratic and YRT/VIVA run on time. It should be TTC that should be contracting routes out to the YRT/VIVA for reliable on-time service rather than the other way around. YRT contracting services out to the TTC was a good money-maker for the TTC as well as TTC drivers who got overtime due to increased demand for their services in York Region but TTC drivers screwed it up by running on their own schedules. That’s not to say that all TTC drivers are bad but the few bad apples bring a bad image to the good ones as well and in this case, the bad ones have resulted in lost revenue for the TTC by YRT increasingly dumping contracting out to TTC due to poor service.
Steve: I did say that I was reviewing the 165, and my comment about service applied only to that route. Erratic service is an endemic problem on the TTC. The effect is worse where headways are wider such as north of Steeles.
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Steve, If Jason and York Region Resident check the YRT site, under the future plans it already states the route plans for YRT routes when the Spadina subway is complete. They will be happy to know that current routes on Weston, Jane, Keele, and Dufferin that the TTC currently handles will revert to YRT. At that time, Markham Road, Warden, Birchmount and McCowan will be the only routes the TTC will handle in York Region!
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Buses replacing the 512 using regular traffic lanes for the entire summer will be an absolute catastrophe (especially on weekends) unless the city is somehow able to restrict on-street parking. Is there a technical reason why the buses can’t travel on the streetcar ROW? (Vehicle height or weight etc.?)
Steve: Don’t get me started about the stupid design decision to put centre poles on the right-of-way. Even without them, buses would have to be careful passing each other, but with them, things get tight.
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The TTC needs to monitor drivers’ locations using GPS or other satellite technologies and fire those drivers caught idling unnecessarily when they should be driving. Also a lot of the TTC bus drivers (especially at night) intentionally start their routes late as they goof around and then speed and run red lights and run STOP signs to make up for the lost time which brings me to the following: Why does the TTC not install black boxes to record speed, etc and why does the TTC not install dashboard cameras to monitor the unlawful running of red lights and STOP signs? Furthermore, why does their union oppose these very important public safety measures? Also Steve, why don’t you advocate for these important public safety measures?
Steve: Actually, the TTC has started this on a small scale, but does it retrospectively, not in real time. As for my advocacy, my focus is on service quality. It’s easy to make it sound as if all operators drive the way you describe when in fact this is a minority of all staff.
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You guys do remember that they’ll have to cut away on the platforms to make them accessible to the new streetcars. Work zones will definitely occupy the ROW so running the ROW is technically not possible. Then riders will have to board at the platforms while avoiding dangerous equipment. Afterwards they’ll wire up the platforms for ticket vending machines.
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York Region Resident wrote:
From my own observations, the TTC operates these contracted routes on the principle that they are a high priority as far as getting the service run (so they can get paid), but a low priority to run it in a way that is good for the customer.
I recall a TTC service disruption that, once over, saw full service restored to at least one contracted route (Warden 68B) before much of the 416-only routes of the TTC were even barely running. At the time, someone speculated to me that restoring the contracted services was a priority since the TTC gets a guaranteed payment for just running the buses. While trying to cite just when this was, the only thing that seems to fit my recollection was the wildcat strike by TTC maintenance workers back in 2006, where service didn’t start resuming until after 3 PM. I recall full service on Warden north of Steeles by 4:30 pm.
Given the way the TTC, especially these days, seems to allow bunching to occur on the north-of-Steeles routes, it seems they just want to get the number of runs out there without any concern for maintaining headways.
While it is poor service to be sure, what makes it worse is the double fare that everyone wishing to cross Steeles must pay on these routes to get that poor service. While it is debatable just how fair (pardon the pun) that is for those continuing a trip deeper into the 416, it is really unfair for those who arrive at their destination on the same bus that took them over the border. YRT’s Leslie-90 and VIVA Green take people all the way to Don Mills station for a single fare (and one that may be usable for a return trip, if within the 2 hours of first boarding!). Now those who will be using the Victoria Park-24 route will have this.
If we aren’t going to have better fare co-ordination that allows the use of any operator’s bus for a single fare (with upgrade if crossing borders), then I say let me use the YRT bus south of Steeles. I’ll be able to do so for a single fare where we can’t allow the hordes of people waiting for a bus to join us even though we have ample room (common experience on the Leslie-90 on Don Mills Road between Steeles and Sheppard). And let more York Region residents do the same as we dump more of the TTC contracted operations.
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I am a Durham Region resident who travels a lot to Scarborough and York Region. I can confirm that TTC service is really bad. Here in Durham buses run on time and our DRT Pulse buses are frequent and run on time and NEVER bunch but the problem is that they only go till UTSC and then we are held hostage by the TTC as we get from UTSC to Scarborough Town Centre and so I wish that DRT Pulse buses also went from UTSC to Scarborough Town Centre. Furthermore, I wish that there was a YRT or VIVA bus to Scarborough Town Centre as we are held further hostage by the TTC as we travel on McCowan from Scarborough Town Centre to York Region.
I like this site Steve – Thank You!
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I had a chance to observe the 501 diversion today and the streetcars have difficulty safely turning off the Spadina ROW without working white bar signals. I witnessed two near misses and would not be surprised if at least one motorist drives into the side of a turning streetcar before October. I wonder what the ATU has to say about this arrangement.
Steve: I don’t know about the ATU who are strangely silent on things like this. However, I have raised the issue of the absence of transit priority and white bars many times with TTC and City Transportation.
There is an interesting wrinkle here. The white bar is activated by the electric switch electronics, but if the switch is out of service because of a diversion of all cars, the white bar does not work. This happens whenever there is a full service diversion eastbound at Queen and Broadview.
Of course nothing prevents that part of the cycle from being forced “on” or whenever a car is present regardless of the switch setting when there is a diversion, but I really don’t have the sense that this is considered as “important” by the TTC. We mess around with parking restrictions on the edges of the peak period, but don’t address basic functions like this that affect service all day long.
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Some decades ago when I was in Purchasing, there was the concept of “vendor development”. The idea was not to depend on one vendor for a particular product or supply, just in case. The alternate vendors were thrown a bone once in a while, just to keep them interested and competitive. Regarding streetcars, it was only with the UTDC streetcars, the CLRV’s and the ALRV’s, that the TTC abandoned multiple vendors and sources. Even then, the first CLRV cars were built in Switzerland.
Likewise with buses, the post-war TTC had buses from many sources – CC&F, Fitzjohn, Ford, GM, Mack, New Flyer, Twin Coach, and Western Flyer. Then, more recently, TTC stuck with Orion, until Orion went out of business, now they are grudgingly buying NovaBus.
Steve: I have to jump in here. On the rail side, the TTC was down to a single supplier of subway cars with the advent of the H series trains in the mid-60s. The Canadian market is rather small, and it’s not as if an industry can be built on serving multiple systems. The Thunder Bay plant has been kept in business at least in part by government support through contracts in Ontario. As long as they were turning out good vehicles, this might produce some grumbling about unfair competition, but it did not hurt the TTC or GO.
As for buses, the North American bus industry dwindled over time. It was not a question of the TTC maintaining a broad supplier list, but of the economics of the industry. Ontario Bus Industries was not turning out the best vehicles, and there was some political chicanery keeping them alive. The flirtation with natural gas buses was a marriage of convenience between interests at Queen’s Park and the TTC who wanted to look “green”, but get rid of the trolley bus network. OBI got an untendered contract as a sole supplier and the natural gas industry got what it hoped would be a showcase installation. Then there was the sad story of the OBI/Ikarus buses.
Flyer tried to get business in Toronto, but was frozen out, almost certainly for political reasons.
I had heard of Bombardier streetcar/LRV alternatives such as Siemens and Brookville before (from posts on this blog). A simple Google search brought up a list of quite a few streetcar/LRV alternatives, all of which – emphasis – supply North America. None of them are from obscure manufacturers in Peru, Russia, Iran, China or elsewhere.
The list can be seen here. Besides Bombardier and Siemens, the other companies listed are Alstom, Brookville, CAF, Inekon, Kawasaki, Kinkisharyo, Škoda, Stadler, United Streetcar, and Vossloh.
For example, Inekon is a Czech company, in the European Union, with labour rates lower than ours, and they offer both new vehicles and rebuilding & upgrading used vehicles. Could the TTC send them some streetcars to rebuild?
For example, United Streetcar specialises in streetcars/LRV’s and are an American manufacturer in Oregon.
At this point, can you still argue that the TTC can save money running a single-vendor fleet? Obviously not.
Steve: A few of the European companies were interested in bidding on the TTC LFLRV order, but were frozen out of the bid process. A few of the companies you mention are very small scale operations. If Bombardier’s ability to build vehicles had not fallen completely apart, we would not be having this conversation, and new vehicles would pop out of the line routinely just like the subway car order that is just finishing up. That company, sadly, became pre-occupied with building airplanes. That story is bigger than the TTC.
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Further to my post above, I was thinking that neither the TTC nor Siemens were completely to blame for the streetcar order going to Bombardier. I am going just from memory here, but I remember something about an Ontario government directive that the order had to be sourced entirely in Canada or perhaps entirely NAFTA, and that Siemens built into their quote having to build Canadian manufacturing facilities from scratch, which they do not have. Which caused their quote to be $600 million above Bombardier’s. Maybe Bombardier was under-bidding? Events since then suggest that.
Another case of political interference?
I was reading just today that Siemens supplies Portland, Oregon with light rail rapid transit 80% built in America. That includes not just vehicles, but the entire system.
So Portland goes with Siemens but Toronto does not.
Maybe we can save a lot of taxpayers’ money and aggravation by going with the lowest quote, without extraordinary stipulations.
Steve: The Ontario requirement is 25% Canadian content, and that was considered acceptable under NAFTA although there was some grumbling at the time. This was a low enough level that Bombardier could push some of the work offshore, and that was their undoing. It should be noted that almost none of the major propulsion and control systems is built in Canada. This is an international market, and Canada has never established a base in these technologies. Thunder Bay is mainly doing assembly of components built by others, and the big question is how much of our mess stems from bad supply and how much from difficulties in the Thunder Bay operation. As I have mentioned before, somehow they seem able to churn out subway and GO cars with relatively few problems.
As for taxpayers’ money, there is a regular blizzard of press releases from governments touting how they have inked deals to bring jobs to Ontario (or Canada in the case of the Feds). Those same taxpayers demand to know what governments are doing to ensure that current and future generations will have good jobs available. We give subsidies to keep the auto industry, for example, alive. We could turn off all of those economic programs and watch as international companies consolidate their work to the cheapest location, a process that has been widely underway in many industries for decades.
The USA manages to impose “buy America” policies that other countries might have difficulty copying because of the sheer size of its market and political heft.
It’s all about playing to local politics.
Meanwhile, the next time you buy clothing or electronics or furniture, will you shop “Canadian”? It will be quite a challenge.
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Right now, the TTC bus drivers have a chokehold not only on Toronto riders but also on that of nearby municipalities and therefore, I am really excited by RER and SmartTrack and subway extensions outside of Downtown. I hope that the Richmond Hill subway is expedited as a priority project serving a priority neighborhood (Thornhill).
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Hmmm, this got me thinking. The TTC is capacity-constrained due to garage space, but what about YRT and the other surrounding transit agencies? Is there any capacity for the TTC to contract in service along the borders (YRT in North York and north Scarborough, MiWay in Etobicoke, Durham Region Transit for east Scarborough)? Would it be a realistically priced alternative to leasing temporary garage space if Council were willing to pay?
Steve: TTC was going to lease the old YRT garage now sitting empty, but that deal fell through for some reason. No word yet on a temporary garage site within Toronto.
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