Vehicles

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From The Archives: New Streetcars for Toronto (Updated)

Here’s a streetcar design that’s been around for a while, and it served us all well.  We could have had a new generation of these cars back in the 1970s, but Queen’s Park and the UTDC gave us the CLRV instead.  The Edsel of the streetcar, as a former Chief General Manager once said.

Here is a PDF version of a single file rather than four separate images.

Updated February 7, 2018 with higher resolution images.

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Plans for New Streetcars?

TTC plans for a new streetcar fleet moved onto the front burner at the April 19th meeting of the Commission.  After a staff update on the CLRV rebuild program and possible timetables for new streetcar purchases, the Commission decided that:

  • Only 100 CLRVs will be rebuilt, not 196.
  • New streetcars will be procured with a prototype to be delivered in 2010 and production deliveries from 2011 through early 2014.
  • The Commission will take a package consolidating all information about streetcar fleet planning through the committee cycle (Budget Advisory, Policy & Finance, Council) in May.  Continue reading →
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TTC Cattle Cars Part 3: Passengers 2, Staff 1

I’m at a loss knowing where to begin on this.  If you’ve been following this thread, you will know that TTC staff really, really want their new subway cars to use “perimeter seating”.  This means that all of the seats face inward and there are no forward or rearward facing seats, no conversation nooks.  As if that isn’t bad enough, they want to use metallic seats with no cushions.  [Let us imagine a short theatrical pause here so you can catch your breath.]

This particular scheme has been before the public twice before that I know of.  The first outing was at February’s TTC meeting where it did not win high praise.  My own posts on the subject started about that time.  More recently, TTC staff showed up at a Rocket Riders meeting to talk about their design.  On that occasion, it appeared that both the new perimeter design and the existing T-1 compartment design were both on the table.  So far, so good. Continue reading →

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TTC Cattle Cars: An Update

Tonight I went to a presentation by TTC staff about the new subway car design.  I am pleased to report that the original scheme discussed here with all perimeter seating was given roughly equal billing with a version much like the current subway cars where some of the seats are at right-angles to the walls.

The rationale for the perimeter seating goes like this:  in our post 9/11 world, the new standards call for there to be no space under seats where someone could hide a package.  This is easier to do with transverse seats than with perimeter seating.  This is supposed to be an FRA (US Federal Railroad Administration) standard, and I plan to check out the details.

A very simple question:  Are commuter railroads, Amtrak, the bus and airline industries going to eliminate all transverse seating?  There is more going on here than just an FRA standard. Continue reading →

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TTC Cattle Cars: Why Do TTC Engineers Love Bench Seating?

The TTC has done quite a job of massaging press coverage for its planned order of new subway cars.  The new cars will run as unified trains with the ability to walk through the entire train as one continuous unit.  This is expected to add about eight percent to train capacity.

You can look at two posts on this scheme here:

spacing.ca transit.toronto

Continue reading →