Today’s Metrolinx Board Meeting was notable both for the update, in public session, of the project status for five major lines as well as for supplementary information that came out in a press scrum after the public session.
Five projects now have funding and are at various stages in their approval/construction process.
[My thanks to the Transit Toronto site from which I picked up this information. With the Film Festival in progress, I’ve been a bit distracted.]
The TTC recently presented details of its preferred location and proposed layout for a new carhouse in the Port Lands. Of several sites considered, the now-vacant land at the south-east corner of Leslie and Lake Shore wins out. The land is close to Queen Street (only a few blocks to the north), and as vacant land can be easily redeveloped.
The presentation linked from the project’s website gives an overview of the site selection process as well as drawings of the new carhouse.
The big issue now will be funding. Over the past year, the debate centred on getting and paying for 204 new streetcars, but nobody talked about the carhouse they would need. That’s one of the outstanding issues going into the capital budget planning for coming years.
One item of great interest is that the drawing on page 15 clearly states that the yard capacity is 100 cars, plus 36 cars inside the carhouse.
The long-term status of Roncesvalles and Russell is undecided at this point. In the short term, they will be needed to house the existing CLRV/ALRV fleet. However, the proposed new carhouse is clearly too small, and the TTC must intend to use another site, possibly the nearby Russell Yard, as a spillover location.
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
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?
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.
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:
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
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
