Last week, the TTC adopted a plan for rejuvenation of the streetcar fleet that will see the first new cars on the street by 2011. It’s taken a long time to get a plan that keeps everyone happy including the financial beagles, but this one seems to be acceptable to all.
Streetcar Fleet Plan January 2007
Note that the version here is a low-res PDF file so that readers don’t have to wait forever for the bigger version to dribble down the line. Continue reading
Not long ago, I wrote about the changing level of service on the streetcar system over the past 50 years in Always A Car In Sight. Just to recap, my intentions were threefold:
This produced a number of comments as you can see in the post, but a few other points have come up here and in other threads. Continue reading
[This item has been updated to correct some typos, and to add a concluding paragraph that I forgot to put in before publishing it.]
Yesterday’s Toronto Sun reported that a proposal for 100 of the CLRVs to be refurbished by Bombardier’s Thunder Bay plant is on hold. Some history is needed to put this in context.
For quite some time, the TTC has looked at new or refurbished streetcars. New cars always seemed to have an astronomical price tag, but refurbishing was neither cheap nor a long-term option.
Any price quoted for a new streetcar, commonly $3- to $5-million per vehicle, provoked sticker shock. Oddly, nobody ever mentioned the size of the vehicles in this discussion. Given the TTC’s long anti-streetcar history (now mellowed to grudgingly accept that there is a place for LRT), the suspicious among us might think that this was a deliberate strategy to make streetcars look prohibitively expensive.
Current talk is for a $3-million car that will be larger even than an ALRV or subway car, and that’s not a bad price for a vehicle of that size (more about service impacts later). If we can actually get new cars for that price, the comparison against a $1-million CLRV retrofit doesn’t look so bad (almost twice the car and at least double the lifespan for about three times the money). Continue reading
In between many screenings at the Film Festival, I took the opportunity to write up the TTC’s Capital Budget presentation from August 30. The information here is a combination of the TTC staff presentation, remarks by Ted Tyndorf, Chief Planner for Toronto, and my own opinions. This is intended mainly as a view of the most recent TTC thoughts on the subject.
Here are the high points:
I will take up the issue of where we should go next with transit planning in a future post, likely over the weekend. Meanwhile, the gory details. Continue reading
Car 4041 has been plying Spadina Avenue this week showing off a trial installation of air conditioning on a CLRV. This morning when I went for a ride, the weather was moderately warm, not boiling, and it was fairly humid. The car had a partial seated load as it was right behind its leader.
The A/C is nowhere near as aggressive as it is on some buses or on the T1 subway cars. Moreover, depending on where you are in the car, you may not feel the effect at all because the cool air does not blow out evenly. If the car were packed and/or if it were much hotter, I doubt that the unit would be able to keep up with the load.
This brings me to the question of having windows that open on air-conditioned vehicles. Aside from the fact that on cooler days we could save energy by just letting air blow in from outside, if the A/C cannot keep up with the heat and humidity in the car, a sealed car would be even less comfortable than what we have now.
When I rode back north on a non-A/C car, I sat beside the open window and was actually cooler than I had been on 4041.
If this is an example of what we’ll get on new or rebuilt streetcars, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
A report on the Policy and Finance agenda for July 18 sets out the business plan for various waterfront projects. Like the Spadina Subway (discussed elsewhere) this work will be funded through a trust to which various governments will contribute. Much of this report is dry financial stuff where we take money out of one pot, put it in another, shuffle the cards around, and hope it all comes out in the end.
The interesting stuff is in Appendix A which describes the various projects. Here we learn the current plans for construction of LRT lines to the eastern waterfront.
Development of the Port Lands (east of the Don River) is not mentioned probably because it lies beyond the 10-year horizon of this plan.
I mention these schemes in the context of the TTC’s fleet planning. We are developing a huge new part of the city, and it will need transit service. Decisions about new streetcars cannot be delayed indefinitely if we are serious in the “transit first” commitment to new neighbourhoods.
The issue of any new projects at the TTC is bound up in questions of provincial and federal funding right now, but at least one logjam is out of the way. Continue reading
I am beginning to wonder whether we should just get rid of the TTC and City Council, including the Mayor, and just appoint the members of the Budget Advisory Committee as transit dictators for life.
Once again, a proposal by the TTC to buy new streetcars rather than rebuilding all of the CLRV fleet failed at BAC yesterday by a vote of 4 to 2. Continue reading
May’s TTC meeting included a comprehensive presentation on the streetcar fleet situation in response to the Commission’s clear desire to proceed with plans for new cars as soon as possible. The intent is to take this presentation (along with the Bus Fleet Plan described in a separate post) to Budget Advisory Committee on June 9, to Policy & Finance on June 20, and to Council on June 27. Continue reading
Another batch of mail from readers: Continue reading
Steve Munro 