OneCity Plan

[dowlingm]

The contract penalties issue is a bit of a scare tactic. Metrolinx have already leveraged their order to provide cars to Kitchener and I have little doubt that if Mississauga LRT plans progress they will be buying Metrolinx spec Flexity also. The irony is that if we don't stop messing around Toronto will be the third or fourth municipality to receive "Toronto spec" vehicles! Metrolinx could also vary their order to add some downtown spec cars on Toronto's behalf for QQE LRT now that's back on the table. Basically Bombardier are making billions from GO, subway, downtown and uptown cars and it's time TTC and Metrolinx started using their market muscle to extract more flexibility from them. Unfortunately high CanCon requirements make it difficult to identify a credible contender to threaten BBD with, no matter how many press releases Siemens issue.

 

[innsertnamehere]

QQE will use regular streetcars. It is will be an LRT just like st.clair.

 

[Electrify]

Transit city got canned. The only lines that seem still going is Eglinton and the trains have probably already been ordered. The only way the trains could be used would be to create more projects which the city has no funds for and no back up from the province. If the subway is forced and the LRT scraped, the trains would sit and occupy space while the Scarborough project will be behind and later may be canned due to lack of funding. Then nothing will be completed. No added LRT projects, no completed LRT project for Scarborough. There may also be penalties from the other governments for not building it on time. They only agreed to the LRT, not subway and there's a time line. If it's not completed on time, the other govt might ask the city back for money back whichy they provided for the project.

Uhh... what? The plan right now is to convert the SRT into a Transit City LRT line. In fact, the Scarborough and Sheppard lines are to share the same garage. This basically means making the stations compatible with low floor vehicles powered by overhead wires and changing the track power supply to work with this (the SRT like the Transit City lines use standard gauge, so technically speaking they should not need to replace the rails themselves). If OneCity were to go ahead, it would mean that the trains which were destined for the Transit City Scarborough LRT line could instead be used on Sheppard, Eglinton, or Finch.