by

Our New Streetcar: The TTC Wants To Hear From You! Really! (Update 3)

Updated Dec. 19 at midnight:

At the Dec. 18th TTC meeting, the reports linked below were discussed along with a technical report and appendix from Booz Allen.  Note that these links point to the National Post’s site where they are linked from this article.  As and when the TTC puts them on its own website, I will alter this link to point to the TTC’s copies.

Thanks to Mark Dowling for alerting me to the documents on the Post’s site.

From a friend who attended the meeting, I learned that organized labour made a strong showing arguing for Canadian content and, of course, for the contract to go to Bombardier in Thunder Bay.  Some members of the Commission echoed this position.  I can’t help thinking that they are overplaying their hands on this one.

First off, Bombardier is the only potential bidder with a Canadian rail car manufacturing facility, and this gives them a leg up on costs against any other contender.  Second, the TTC’s decision to opt for a 100% low-floor specification narrows the field of potential suppliers.  At this point, I would be extremely surprised to see more than two bids for this contract, and given the obvious inside track Bombardier has, why Siemens would waste their money bidding against them is a difficult question. 

This gives us the impression of an open proposal call, but there is clear evidence of a desired outcome, and we’re back at the Toronto Rocket subway car order mess all over again.  Light Rail has enough problems in Toronto, not to mention an uphill battle to secure funding from Queen’s Park and Ottawa, without the odour of a predetermined contract.  The last thing we need is for Ottawa to say “you didn’t run the bid properly” as an excuse to back away.

Booz Allen is a major consulting firm for Light Rail projects, among others, and has participated in many studies and designs for new and expanded systems.  The material in their report is drawn from  experience on other systems, and they are vendor-independent.

The information here is no surprise to anyone familiar with the component costs of rapid transit vehicles.  A very large proportion of the new LRVs will be sourced offshore because that’s where components are manufactured.  Half of the cost per car comes from components that are not manufactured in Canada, and this order of LRVs isn’t remotely close to the quantity that would justify anyone setting up a local plant.

Because any 100% low floor car will be based on a European design, the engineering and fabrication work will be done overseas since the expertise and facilities already exist. 

Best case, Booz Allen estimates that 25% of the value of the car order can be provided in Canada, and of this, a goodly chunk is not going to be the work of the folks at Thunder Bay.

If the TTC were to insist on a higher Canadian content, this would effectively lock out every bidder except Bombardier, and even then Toronto would pay a premium to have overseas manufacturing capability duplicated in Canada.  Indeed, if the Can-Con level is set too high, nobody will bid.

Whoever gets this order will be building light rail equipment for the Toronto area for decades.  As I have said before, I have no brief for any would-be supplier, but want only that Toronto gets an excellent car at a good price. 

This contract, plus the Transit City add-ons, will give us Toronto’s streetcar/LRV fleet well into this century.  This is our last chance, after all the years wasted on alternatives, to get LRT right, for it to be a credible form of transit in the GTA.  The last thing we need is a lemon, or “the Edsel of streetcars” as a former TTC Chief General Manager described the CLRVs.

The Request for Proposals will be issued in early 2008.  The next moves are up to the potential bidders and transit’s “funding partners” to prove how serious they are about the future of rail transit in Toronto. Continue reading →

by

Broadview Station: The End Is Nigh? (Update No. 4)

Updated December 18 at 12:50 pm:

Yes, at long last, the new stairway from the surface loop down to both the eastbound and westbound tracks opened as advertised this week.

There is still no sign over the stairway saying “To Trains”, but people find their way down nonetheless.  This has one great benefit of shifting a lot of the pedestrian traffic away from the main entrance and the crowded single stairway down to the original mezzanine.

We still have temporary signs at the bus bays, one of which appears to be held up (crookedly) with electrical wire. Continue reading →

by

Analysis of 508 Lake Shore Service

For those of you who have been wondering, this is the end of the series of posts analyzing service on 501 Queen and related routes.  Unless someone comes up with a really interesting question that deserves further public discussion here, I am now going to focus on other lines.  [You can stop cheering any time now.]

The Lake Shore Tripper, for those who don’t even know it exists, is a remnant of the old Long Branch to downtown service that was a rush-hour extension of Long Branch cars (before they were called route 507) to Church Street via Queen.  Inbound trips operated in the am peak, outbound in the pm peak.

When the Queen and Long Branch routes merged, this service disappeared, but in due course we got a new route, 508 Lake Shore running from Long Branch Loop to Church Street via King.  Three trips operate inbound in the am peak, and four in the pm peak, at least on the schedule.  This post looks at how these trips behave and how, for the am peak, they merge with the 501 Queen service on Lake Shore. Continue reading →

by

Analysis of 503 Kingston Road Tripper (Updated)

In a previous post, I discussed the chaotic headway situation on the 502 Downtowner car.  Now, I will turn briefly to the 503 Kingston Road Tripper.

Updated Dec. 17 at 6:45 am:  Information about the combined 502 and 503 services on Kingston Road added.

For those who are unfamiliar with the service design for Kingston Road (the street), here is how things work between Queen Street and Bingham Loop (at Victoria Park). Continue reading →

by

Believe It or Not, Dundas West is Open

Yesterday, I had the pleasure along with many others of actually riding a streetcar all the way from Broadview to Dundas West Station.  New track all the way, and finally there is no lineup of 505’s waiting to get into Broadview Station because they are so early.

Meanwhile, the TTC has a mixed message on the subject.

According to the Route Diversions page (linked from their Service Advisories), there is still only bus service west of Lansdowne, complete with a link to a Customer Notice.

Meanwhile on the Construction page (also linked from the Service Advisories), the notice correctly tells people that service has resumed to Dundas West Station.

The TTC has high hopes for consolidation of its web information via pages such as the Service Advisories.  Vital to such an effort is keeping the information consistent, accurate and up-to-date.  I will leave to others commentaries on web styles, typography and clarity of navigation.

by

Where Have All The Riders Gone? (Update 2)

[Updated December 14:  A chart of the top 30 bus routes has been added in response to requests from readers.  Comments on this chart are at the end of the post.] 

[Updated December 12:  Charts of ridership and vehicle mileage for most of the system from 1976 to 2005 have been added.  Comments on these appear at the end of this post.] 

My title may seem an odd choice, but my evening spent foraging in TTC statistics was quite sobering.

Some have commented here that I spend an undue amount of time on the streetcar system, and so for a moment, I will turn to the buses.  The TTC likes to believe that its system is growing, and in some very limited places, yes, that is true.  However, the service cuts of the 1990s decimated service and ridership on the entire system, not just downtown.

The count of boardings (one person on one bus regardless of whether they pay a fare or transfer) hit a peak of about 1.42-million in 1989.  This went into  long decline and by 2005, the number was 1.17-million.

Service, measured in vehicle miles, took a hit, although not as deep, through the 1990s, and by 2005 was growing back to almost the same level.  However, this masks what was really happening.  Routes in the handful of growing areas were getting more service, but the TTC was not recapturing riders it had lost.  Major routes now carry only a fraction of what they handled in 1989. Continue reading →

by

Ridership and Service Since 1976 (Updated)

At the 501 Queen Forum last week, I and others talked about the declining service and ridership in the Queen Street corridor.  This post reviews the published statistics from 1976 to 2005, the latest information available so far.

Streetcar Ridership and Mileage 1976 to 2005

These data are taken from the annual Service Plan and related documents.  The most recent counts are on the TTC’s website.

Updated December 11:  A consolidated count has been added for the Queen services (501, 502 and 503) to show the ridership and mileage in the three routes serving this corridor. 

Continue reading →

by

Getting From “A” to “B” — Is There More Congestion?

Those who have come to this site in the past year to read, among other things, detailed analyses of route operations on King and Queen Streets may not be aware that this has been done before.  Back in May 1984, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee organized manual observations of the major streetcar routes for three days.  A detailed post on the subject appeared here in April 2006 and it makes interesting reading for any who think that service problems are new to the system.

At that time, we documented a very high proportion of cars short-turning in the afternoon peak and a systemic problem that the actual times required to make trips across the system was higher than the scheduled time.  Short-turns were poorly managed and contributed to the general chaos in service.  Not much has changed, although the headways are a lot wider now than they were in 1984, and the reliability of service much lower.

Considering how much store the TTC puts in “congestion” as the explanation for all its woes, it is worth looking back two decades to see what changes have been made in the schedules. Continue reading →

by

Before We All Say “Presto!”

Over at spacing.ca, there’s a post about the difference between Montreal and Toronto transfers, and comments arguing whether Toronto is hopelessly archaic, merely quaint, or actually a system that encourages friendly contact with the operators.

In the midst of this, I thought it would be worth looking back at older forms of transfers in Toronto, and this post links to two of them.

Toronto Railway Company September 1892

Souvenir Toronto Transit Commission 1953

The TRC transfers (shown slightly larger than actual size) are printed on very flimsy paper, and were intended to be given out by a conductor.  Note that the corner fold/cut indicates the direction of travel, and there is provision for the conductor to write in the time after which the holder had ten minutes to make their connection.  Obviously, these were intended to be issued as someone left the car.  This format didn’t last long.  (Note also the evolution of the printing of the date with the larger numerals for September 14.)

The souvenir transfers are from the display of the first two subway cars at the CNE in 1953.  I have shown both the back (left) and front (right) here.  The two that I have are printed on different coloured stock, but I don’t know if a wider selection was used.  At the top, you can see the area reserved for a station and time imprint from a machine.  Passengers picked up a blank transfer (yes, there were new ones printed for each date) and they manually validated it .

These transfers include one howler of an error:  one station is missing from the map!  This missing station almost had a different name from the one by which we know it today.  Rosedale is called “Crescent” on many early maps of the Yonge line.

by

Fix the 501 Queen Car: Follow-up to the Forum

At the forum Tuesday evening, the TTC poured cold water on my proposal to swap the CLRV and ALRV fleets between the 501 Queen and 504 King routes claiming that their studies showed that headways below 4 minutes could not be operated reliably in mixed traffic.

Others commented on the length of time it takes to get from The Beach or Long Branch to downtown, and as the evening wore on, comparisons became as bloated as the headways on the 501.  One speaker claimed he could get from Buffalo to Toronto faster than a trip on the Queen car.

This post examines those two issues, and I will update this item if additional follow-up topics come to mind.

[Updated 4:20 pm, December 8:  Bad links to charts corrected plus minor textual revisions.] 

Continue reading →