Effective May 10, 2009, several service changes, mostly seasonal, will occur.
In addition to these:
Subject to vehicle and operator availability, a PCC will operate as an extra on 509 Harbourfront on Sundays from May 10 to September 6 between 11:30 am and 7:30 pm.
Fare collection eastbound on Queen’s Quay for the 509 and 510 Spadina routes will be handled at Union Station, not onboard vehicles, as in previous years to reduce loading times on weekends after 3 pm.
There will be two public meetings to discuss the design for this section of the WWLRT, essentially an upgrade of the Long Branch streetcar.
Monday, May 11, 2009
2:00pm-4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
Mimico Adult Learning Centre
255 Royal York Road
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
2:00pm to 4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
The Assembly Hall
1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Drive
For further information, including the display panels from the previous open houses, please see the project’s website.
After the first round in December 2008 where many felt that the available information and proposal left much to be desired, this is described as a “re-start” of a “new consultation process”.
A few months ago, I received the TTC’s vehicle monitoring data (a.k.a. “CIS” data for “Communications & Information System”) for 501 Queen and related routes for the months of December 2008 and January 2009. I have been whittling away at it for the past few months as time permitted, and now it’s in shape to begin publishing commentaries.
Of particular interest are the effects, such as they may be, of the new line management strategies implemented by the TTC. Operations in the two months differ because of a change in the schedule.
For reasons best known to the TTC, relief crews were available during Christmas Week, but there was no extra line management. Therefore, that week is in a way an example of a “do nothing” approach, although under less than the most strenuous circumstances.
Anyone who was in Toronto this past winter knows it was much worse than the previous few years and we had a particularly bad December. This shows up in the service quality, but generally for the period needed to get the roads back in proper shape.
Because I now have data for December 2006, December 2007, January 2008, December 2008 and January 2009, we can review operations over three winters, a variety of weather conditions and different management strategies. Continue reading
Updated April 25, 9:30 am. I have added material from the media briefing and the staff report that I did not have time to incorporate in the original article. The additional material is appended below after the break.
On April 24, the TTC announced that Bombardier has won the competition for an order for 204 new low floor streetcars for Toronto. The staff recommendation will go to the Commission itself for approval on Monday, April 27.
Both Bombardier and Siemens bid on this tender, and the proposals from both vendors were considered to be compliant both on technical and financial grounds. Therefore the question came down to cost and with Siemens’ bid over 50% higher than Bombardier’s, there was no question about the winner.
The vehicles will be a modified version of the Flexity car with three powered two-axle trucks and five car sections. Bombardier has not yet updated their site with information about the vehicles (as of 2:00 pm EDT April 24). An illustration of the proposed car is in the Toronto Star’s article posted earlier today.
Although not guaranteed, this contract places Bombardier at the front of the line for supplying cars to the much larger Transit City system, especially if that builds out to anything near its full extent. The contract includes provision for add-on orders, but the TTC will be negotiating their price separately as the Transit City cars will have significant differences affecting their cost:
Subject to funding, a process still under negotiation with the Federal and Provincial governments, the first prototypes would arrive in Toronto in mid-to-late 2011 for non-revenue testing. Production deliveries would start in 2012 and stretch out to 2018 by which time the last of the existing CLRV and ALRV fleets would have been retired. A new carhouse, likely in the Port Lands, will be required to house this fleet while the older cars would run from Russell and Roncesvalles.
Postscript: I cannot help mentioning that the illustration of the new car shows a vehicle facing westbound on Queen at Bay signed “Neville”. Continue reading
This is quite a bit outside the normal topics covered here, but a recent question in another thread asked about how the KL Monorail was doing. Here is a response from a regular reader, Moaz Yusuf Ahmad. Thanks to him for providing this info. Continue reading
John Sewell’s new book The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl provides the jumping off point for a panel discussion on how the suburbs developed as they did and where we might go from here.
Where: The Gladstone Hotel (Queen & Gladstone, accessed via 501 Queen and 29 Dufferin or whatever your favourite form of transport might be).
When: Tuesday, April 21. Doors open at 7, panel discussion begins at 7:30.
Cost: $5, or free if you buy the book.
Who: John Sewell (moderator), Mayor Rob Burton (Oakville), Deputy Mayor Jack Heath (Markham), Mayor Steve Parrish (Ajax), Kim Storey (architect, urban designer, partner in Brown & Storey Architects)
This event is part of Pages Books’ This Is Not A Reading Series.
For a good part of today, April 18, a conversation has flown back and forth via email between me, Karl Junkin of TRAC, Mike Sullivan and Rick Ciccarelli of the Weston Coalition, and Robert Wightman (a frequent contributor to comments here and a member of the original Streetcars for Toronto Committee). I will not attempt to précis all of the threads, but thought it worthwhile to bring the discussion out into a broader context in this blog.
The problem, in brief, is to ensure that the electrification of the Weston/Georgetown corridor happens sooner rather than later and that the number of diesel trains operated on that corridor is kept to a minimum as service builds up to projected levels.
We had quite a discussion about dual mode locomotives with the major points pro and con boiling down to:
The idea lurking behind this is to maximize the amount of electric operation in the Weston corridor at least as far as the airport in keeping with the desire of communities along the corridor to minimize diesel operation, noise and fumes.
Various links of interest:
Railway Age article (quoted on another site).
Bombardier specification sheets for existing New Jersey and on-order Montreal equipment.
Specification sheets for GO’s current equipment (here and here, similar content).
Recently, I threw a new variation into the discussion by suggesting that there could be two separate fleets of locomotives. Purely electric locomotives would be used to hall the service on the all-day section of the Lakeshore and Georgetown lines, and diesels would be used for peak period express trips running on the extended routes.
This arrangement would mean that all off-peak service would be electric, and diesel operations would remain only for peak extensions and for lines that had not been converted for electric operation.
There are downsides to this, notably that more infrastructure would be needed to get to the point where electric service could start, but it would achieve much of the goal of reduced diesel operation in the major corridors without requiring electrification to the end of service territory. It would also eliminate the need for dual mode locomotives — whether this is a “benefit” depends a lot on where you stand on this type of operation.
Finally, all of this assumes that “Blue 22” would be electrified from day 1. This seems highly unlikely given current arrangements with the proponent, SNC Lavalin, who are not even providing new equipment for their service. Whether the proposed structures for the airport access tracks can even accommodate future electrification is unknown, and I would not be surprised to hear how we couldn’t possibly force SNC Lavalin to include this in the initial build.
Metrolinx is showing its usual colours on this whole issue saying that the project to get new service on the Weston corridor is far to important to delay, and that electrification is something for the future. They are not making a lot of friends along the line on this count as well as on other structural issues involving neighbourhood impacts. I will explore those in a separate post.
When: Wednesday, April 15 from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm
Where: Bahen Centre Lobby, 40 St. George Street
What: First year engineering students spent half a term identifying and researching issues of usability, accessibility, and sustainability within the TTC system. This led to 80 “Requests for Proposals (RFPs)” of which the top six were selected as design challenges to be solved during the second half of the course.
Topics:
For more information, please see the full invitation.
Metrolinx and GO begin their series of open houses for the expansion of tracks and service in the Weston corridor tonight. Politically, this project has moved from a concern just in the town of Weston to a growing controversy along the line as neighbourhoods learn of the potential impact on them.
Among the issues are:
GO Transit fought a long battle with the Weston Community Coalition over issues in their neighbourhood during an earlier GO-managed study of the line. GO used the term “NIMBY” in an attempt to marginalize this opposition, and that term crept into recent provincial announcements about the need for an enhanced (read less vulnerable to opposition) transit environmental assessment process. Sadly GO and their new partner, Metrolinx, do not seem to have learned much about meaningful public participation, but now face opposition from other neighbourhoods and possibly from the City of Toronto itself.
The open house schedule is available at the project website.
Update 1, April 15, 2009: Although the original Transit City report gave Pearson Airport as the western terminus of the Eglinton line, the cost estimate only covered the portion to Renforth. Approximately 3 km of additional construction are required to bring the line right into the airport, and the cost of this was not included in the 2007 estimate.
The underground section of the line was originally planned to lie between Keele and Laird Drive, but this may be expanded west to Jane and east to Don Mills (except for the river crossing). This additional tunnelling is included in the recently announced cost estimate.
Original article:
Today’s Globe & Mail contains an article by Jeff Gray about the constantly escalating estimates for the Eglinton “LRT” line. Gray cites the original estimate of $2.2-billion in 2007 compared with $4.6-billion figure included in the recent McGuinty funding announcement. Nobody quite seems to know why the cost has doubled in two years. Continue reading
