Vehicles

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Trolley Coaches for Toronto?

One side effect of retirement is that I am finally dealing with years of accumulated files.  Yes, I admit it, I have more paper than I need (especially now that so much is available in electronic format), and some of those old reports about obscure parts of the system really are not high points of my bedroom reading.

In the course of sorting through things, one always bumps into items that are misfiled, that faded from memory.  One of these was an envelope I had kept because of the postmark dated May 4, 1972.

TTCPostmark4V72c

So much has changed.  Postage is a lot more than eight cents, and the postal code of “Toronto 7” is positively quaint.  The slogan “Ride With Us No Traffic Fuss!” is classic, but the real gem is the trolley coach as the symbol of progressive transit.

Back in 1972, the trolley coaches had a future.  Vehicles soon to be displaced from the 97 Yonge route by the opening of the Yonge Subway to York Mills were destined to replace streetcars on St. Clair (even though there were nowhere near enough of them to actually do that).  The TTC was still committed to electric operation, and the equipment in these coaches would be recycled into new bus bodies from Flyer.  Nobody had heard of Natural Gas Buses.

Today, the TTC resists calls to re-examine trolley coaches on the grounds that pure electric buses without wires are just around the corner.  I remain unconvinced, and look forward to a day when a modern trolley coach will appear in TTC literature.

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Why Streetcars?

Tom Jurenka sent in the following note, and it raises questions that deserve a debate.

Hello Steve

As a non-native Torontonian (grew up in Winnipeg, but have lived in Toronto for 24 years now) I have always been puzzled — and often infuriated — by streetcars (and the absolutely terrible traffic light timing in Toronto, but that is another story).

My question is an honest one — WHY? All I can see is the negatives of streetcars:

  • they tear up streets (I’ve lived through Queen Street E, Gerrard, now St. Clair, being torn up utterly to undo the damage of streetcars pounding the rails)
  • they are slow as molasses (as a bicyclist, I routinely pass 5 or 6 streetcars on Queen Street heading from AC Harris to downtown)
  • because of their slowness and immobility they delay traffic all the time, causing snarls and the attendant idling pollution
  • they are super expensive (witness the recent funding mess)

So I’m really curious why streetcars are a better alternative to trolley buses or just plain old buses, which move fast, are mobile, and are less expensive per unit to buy. Would you be able to point me at some links/articles/studies/whatever to help me understand this issue?

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

Tom Jurenka

This is a far more complex question than just the list above, but I will use this as a jumping off point. Continue reading →

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Who Will Build Transit City’s Fleet?

In a press scrum after today’s TTC meeting, Chief General Manager Gary Webster was asked about the follow-on order of streetcars for the Transit City lines.  Given the planned opening dates, these vehicles must be ordered fairly soon.

Webster replied that the optional order had not yet been placed, and that with the new legal framework around Metrolinx, that agency has approval powers over acquisition of cars to be used on lines funded by Queen’s Park.  Brad Ross, TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications piped up that the cars may not even be built by Bombardier.

Metrolinx certainly has chutzpa!  Quite recently, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced funding for the Sheppard East LRT, and proudly claimed that jobs would be created at Bombardier to build cars for this line.

More to the point, do we really need to go through the entire procurement cycle all over again?  What does Metrolinx hope to bring to a repetition of the bidding process?  Are they just throwing their weight around, or are unseen interests bent on derailing the Bombardier deal?

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Toronto Will Finance Its Own Streetcars (Updated)

Updated June 26 at 10:15 pm:

Today, Toronto Council voted 36-6 to proceed with funding of the purchase of 204 new streetcars as described in my original post (below the break).

During debate on the proposal, a few items of clarification were brought out that were not in the initial report.

  • The bus midlife refurbishment project has not been completely dropped, but cut back by 70% of the original allocation.  The TTC will perform a trial refurbishment of one bus in 2011 in anticipation of the first of the recently purchased buses reaching its 9th year.  Based on what is found (body condition, etc.), the future funding for this program will be readjusted.  The new fleets are expected to be much more robust than the older generations of buses, but we won’t know for sure until they actually reach the age when rebuilding would normally be expected.
  • The paving project has been cut back by 50%, and is subject to review based on actual conditions.
  • The fire ventillation upgrade program has been cut back by 50%, but this work has also been consolidated with the second entrance program in stations where this is applicable.
  • All other projects (Eglinton bus terminal, station modernization, Collectors’ booth renewal) have been cut by 100%.  The Eglinton terminal may not actually be needed, or at least at the originally planned size, because the number of routes connecting at Eglinton Station will be far lower after the Eglinton LRT is in operation.

From a financial point of view, all of this is a big shuffle.  For the time being, the TTC defers work that was currently planned for funding via City borrowing.  This is replaced in the capital budget with borrowing for the new streetcars.  In parallel, the City will make application to Ottawa for over $600-million worth of projects that would have been financed by the City, and which can be completed within the timeframe to qualify under Ottawa’s rules for “stimulus”.  On a 1/3 share basis, this will yield about $200-million in federal funding.  Additional funding is expected to be available from other non-stimulus programs.

The net effect is that future City spending will be reduced by an amount roughly equal to the funding for the new streetcars.

Furthermore, the TTC will review its capital budgets for the coming years, and it is possible that parts of some deferred projects could reappear based on then-current funding availability and priorities.

This decision is even more important that the original 1972 move by Toronto Council to save the streetcar network.  Not only does this ensure that network’s continued existence, it will expand the fleet and underpin the Transit City routes.  Indeed, a suburban LRT network was the goal behind Streetcars for Toronto’s activism on behalf of the streetcar system.

We’re not quite at the end of a long road, but I would like to share today with the Streetcars for Toronto Committee, some of whom contribute in the comments on this site from time to time:

  • Andrew Biemiller (original chair), John F. Bromley, Mike Filey, Robert Wightman, Howard J. Levine, Chris Prentice, Ros Bobak and Greg Gormick.  (Apologies if I have omitted anyone in the fog of time.)
  • In our work we were strongly supported by former Aldermen Paul Pickett and the late William Kilbourn, as well as by the office of then-mayor David Crombie.

With luck, we will ride new streetcars and even a new line or two before the 40th anniversary of the decision to retain the streetcar network. Continue reading →

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How Many Streetcars Do We Need?

Recent comments by Adam Giambrone, Chair of the TTC, suggest that 30 to 40 percent of the streetcar fleet is out of service in the shops, and that bus substitution will be required on some routes come the fall.

Those of us who follow the TTC have been waiting for a definitive fleet plan for some time, and hope to see one, finally, in the July Commission Meeting Agenda.  Meanwhile, I thought that I would set the stage by reviewing the current scheduled service to see how it may evolve over coming months.

The fleet contains 195 CLRVs (one of the original 196 has been scrapped) and 52 ALRVs.  The scheduled service beginning June 21 is 123 CLRVs and 38 ALRVs.  This is 63% of the CLRV fleet and 73% of the ALRV fleet.

Peak AM requirements by route are:  Bathurst (9), Carlton (32), Dundas (14), Queen (31 ALRV), Lake Shore (3), Downtowner and Kingston Road (11), King (27 CLRV + 7 ALRV), Spadina (15), Harbourfront (6), St. Clair (6).

What we don’t know is the number of cars that are permanently out of service with problems that cannot be or are too expensive to fix.  In effect, we don’t know what the true size of the available fleet might be.  A CLRV overhaul program is in progress (the affected cars are those with the new entrance layout and revised rear seating), but this is not as extensive as the original plans to replace major subsystems such as the electronics package.  This program takes some number of cars out of the pool, but should gradually replenish the fleet.  We don’t know how quickly this is happening, nor how reliable the “new” cars are.

In August, peak requirements will drop by another 11 cars when the 502/503 routes are converted to bus operation, although this will be offset in the fall when the 505/506 routes revert to their standard arrangement in the west end.  The May schedules for these routes required 53 cars in the AM peak compared to 46 today.  A further 9 cars will be needed to restore the 504 King line to its May schedule.

Late in 2009, the 512 St. Clair line’s service will be restored at least to Oakwood, later to Lansdowne.  However, this route is now using a captive pool of cars trapped north of the underpass work at Dupont and Bathurst, and there are, I believe, enough cars in that pool to handle this extension (combined with appropriate schedules where cars spend more time in motion than laying over at terminals).

The TTC needs to explain how it plans to manage streetcar service over the next three years, not to mention service improvements for capacity and the commencement of service in the eastern waterfront.  How long will new streetcars simply make up for failing CLRVs and ALRVs rather than contributing net new capacity to the network?

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Funding for New Streetcars (Updated)

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!

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Bombardier Markets Streetcars

Normally, I wouldn’t use my site to plug a manufacturer’s products, but with some recent discussions here about the relative merits of ICTS/Skytrain and streetcar/LRT technology for Scarborough, I have to make an exception.

LRT is well established all over the world, and Bombardier uses its market presence to great effect in their promotional material.  The jumping off point is a press release for the “Olympic Line” in Vancouver, a streetcar line (and that’s the term Bombardier uses) that will operate during the 2010 winter games using cars loaned by the Brussels system.

But it gets better:  more details are on Bombardier’s Vancouver 2010 Streetcar page which proclaims “The Streetcar Returns to Vancouver”.  You can view the information, photos and videos in the pulldowns yourself.

If anyone thinks that Bombardier might be ashamed of its streetcars, that it needs a Toronto ICTS line to justify its existence as a major vehicle supplier, well, just look at this site.  This is not just a Vancouver page, but a catalogue of Bombardier’s technology, almost all streetcars, worldwide.

Toronto, that “world class city”, lost decades in transit progress to an attitude typified by former megamayor Mel Lastman who said “real cities don’t use streetcars”.  We have a lot of catching up to do.

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Port Lands Carhouse and Maintenance Facility

The TTC has been examining several possible sites for a new carhouse and shops to store and maintain the fleet of new streetcars.  A status report appeared on the May 28 supplementary agenda, but this does not include the presentation materials.

Map of sites considered

Of the fourteen sites considered, only six, all in the Port Lands, were large enough to hold both the maintenance shops and storage space for cars.

Short list of sites

Of these sites, the more northerly ones are most likely to be of greatest interest as they require the shortest connection to the existing system.  Site number 1 immediately north of the Ashbridges Bay water treatment plant brings some local controversy because the space, although not formally parkland, is green space in the community.

Future plans call for retention of Russell and Roncesvalles carhouses.  In the short term, these will be needed for the remaining ALRV and CLRV fleets.  Longer term, they would require major changes or rebuilding to house cars from the new fleet.

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Sheppard East LRT Funding Announced (Updated)

Updated May 19:

The question of turnback points and storage tracks on the Sheppard East LRT has come up in the comment thread on this post, and I have now received some details from the TTC.

There will be a crossover at “regular intervals” along the line for turnbacks.  As for storage tracks, there are two potential locations that were shown in the preliminary designs at public meetings.  Neither of these is confirmed yet, and their inclusion will be subject to detailed design and costing.

  • Don Mills Station (third track)
  • Malvern Garage (spur)

No three-track section on Sheppard itself is planned.

Details of the Don Mills Station configuration will be included in a report on the TTC agenda for May 28. Continue reading →

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My Ride on the King Car

A few days ago, my travels took me to Parkdale for a presentation near Jameson Avenue in the early afternoon.  The obvious route for someone like me living near Broadview Station was the King car.  That journey gave several examples of how service can be delayed that have nothing to do with traffic congestion, and illustrate the changes that will be possible when the TTC moves to low-floor cars and all-door loading.

Just south of Danforth, we picked up a load of students from Moncrest School on their way to Thomson Hall.  They filled up the back half of the car.  Just loading them all took a while, and I wondered to myself how the TTC will handle fare collection for this type of group when they move to self-service.  Now we were slightly late.

By the time we were westbound on King, the car was filling up.  A man had boarded with a shopping buggy, and he took a single seat just ahead of the rear vestibule on the left side of the car.  This started a plug in the aisle that worsened when a group of five boarded.  There were not enough seats for all of them, and they wound up partly seated and partly standing right across the aisle from the shopping buggy.  Needless to say they were not going to “move to the rear”.

At Sherbourne, we passed up the first group of would-be customers even though there was still room in the rear vestibule.  This continued at Jarvis, Church and Victoria.

At Yonge, the crowd turned over, but the car was now quite late and we still didn’t manage to fully use the capacity.  By University we were again leaving people at the stops.  The students piled off the car at Simcoe, and by Spadina the car had cleared out reasonably.  All the same, we left an unhappy customer running for the car at Bathurst because getting back on time was more important than waiting, and the next car was only a block behind us.

While this may have been a particularly bad example of how service can be screwed up by loading delays, it’s not uncommon.  The combined effect of many factors interferes with the travel time of TTC vehicles, and this has nothing to do with whether they are in a private right-of-way.

Loading delays caused by inadequate service can cause a downward spiral where line capacity drops even as ridership grows because cars spend longer at stops and onboard crowding slows or blocks movement of passengers.  We hear far too much about traffic congestion as the root of all evil.  Yes, it exists, but it’s not the only problem.