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New Streetcars

Commissioner Glenn De Baeremaeker, applauded by a handful of union activists at the meeting, moved a motion to hand the entire contract to Bombardier without competition to create Canadian jobs. He was voted down.
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*sigh* Does Mr. De Baeremaeker have a short memory or something?
 
i suppose part of the reason the US can demand 60% made in the USA is because they're a large country where there would always be more than one domestic manufacturer bidding on such projects. Too bad for Canada, but we really must have a competitive bid, my guts tell me anything less is an invitation to corruption.
 
isittimetomoveyet said:
I like the this proposed Transit City network. That being said, I dont think it is necessarily all the TTC is going to do. I fully expect more subway within the next decade.

If the City gets its financial house in order (uploading of costs?) and can somehow start running a surplus I think we'll see some specific lines announced to support this Transit City network even further.
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They're building Transit City routes on all the most logical subway extensions. Transit City is designed to preclude any further subway expansion in the City of Toronto, at least for a very long time. The City's financial house doesn't much matter, since the province is paying for everything. The City can't afford $9 billion of Transit City streetcars, or $9 billion of hypothetical subways.
 
The only logical subway extension not addressed by Transit City is the DRL from Pape to Dundas West, and I hold out some hope for this. Sheppard East and the SRT are the only routes that really could go subway that are Transit City/SRT Replacement in MoveOntario.

Eglinton, at least in theory, will be well served by the underground LRT. I can't see bus-stop style stop placement at least on this part of the route.
 
There's plenty of major arteries/routes in the city that would very much benefit from Transit City's funding if some of it was shifted away from routes much better suited to subway projects.
 
Unfortunately, the surface sections of Eglinton may well have bus-stop-style spacing, which would lead to bunching that would completely eliminate the benefit of the underground section. What's the point of a billion-dollar tunnel when the streetcars arrive at the portal in 4-vehicle clumps every 25 minutes?

I also hope against hope for a DRL, but it seems the best case scenario would be some kind of underground streetcar, limited to the capacity of the surface section on Don Mills. The current arrangement really shows that Transit City isn't really about carefully considered transit planning: the Don Mills streetcar dumps everyone on the Bloor line, adding even more pressure on Bloor-Yonge station and the Yonge line south of Bloor, the most congested points on the system. But, as Glenn de Baeremaeker says, it gets a streetcar to every councillor's ward!

The next thing they'll do is propose a billion-dollar rebuild of Bloor-Yonge station, instead of just spending the same amount on a DRL subway!
 
unimaginative2 said:
Unfortunately, the surface sections of Eglinton may well have bus-stop-style spacing, which would lead to bunching that would completely eliminate the benefit of the underground section. What's the point of a billion-dollar tunnel when the streetcars arrive at the portal in 4-vehicle clumps every 25 minutes?

I also hope against hope for a DRL, but it seems the best case scenario would be some kind of underground streetcar, limited to the capacity of the surface section on Don Mills. The current arrangement really shows that Transit City isn't really about carefully considered transit planning: the Don Mills streetcar dumps everyone on the Bloor line, adding even more pressure on Bloor-Yonge station and the Yonge line south of Bloor, the most congested points on the system. But, as Glenn de Baeremaeker says, it gets a streetcar to every councillor's ward!

The next thing they'll do is propose a billion-dollar rebuild of Bloor-Yonge station, instead of just spending the same amount on a DRL subway!
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The street level sections of the Eglinton line will be on the more suburban parts of the street. That, coupled with all-door loading on the new streetcars, should make bunching a lot less of a problem than we're used to. I agree with the rest of your post though. A DRL would benefit the city more than any other line, IMO, and it's inexplicably missing from the plan.
 
MisterF said:
The street level sections of the Eglinton line will be on the more suburban parts of the street. That, coupled with all-door loading on the new streetcars, should make bunching a lot less of a problem than we're used to. I agree with the rest of your post though. A DRL would benefit the city more than any other line, IMO, and it's inexplicably missing from the plan.
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I hope so. Unfortunately, suburban development hasnt resulted in reduced stop spacing on any other TTC routes. All-door loading will help, but it still doesn't make a difference when the TTC makes no effort to maintain a reliable headway. Look at the Steve Munro analysis of the Queen car. They leave the terminals at random intervals. There's no way to operate a reliable service if you don't even leave the terminals reliably.
 
Why can't they split the contract for new streetcars up? I know it is probably not the best proposal when it comes to maintenance-training etc., but it could go a long way to appeasing some of the problems we are faced with presently, regarding competition and domestic production %'s.

I am seriously hoping that this doesn't become a situation where we must help Bombardier, purely because of possible job losses..

p5
 
I remember the different PCC streetcars that rolled all over Toronto back in the 1950's and 1960's. The different varieties seemed to be on different routes. I lived near the Roncesvalles car barn and took the air-electrics up Roncesvalles to the MU units on Bloor going to Jane or the ex-Birmingham cars on Dundas going up to Runnymede. The St. Clair streetcars had what I considered weird ones because they had single roll destination linens on front and more double seats.
So yes, get a variety of streetcars.
 
W. K. Lis said:
I remember the different PCC streetcars that rolled all over Toronto back in the 1950's and 1960's. The different varieties seemed to be on different routes. I lived near the Roncesvalles car barn and took the air-electrics up Roncesvalles to the MU units on Bloor going to Jane or the ex-Birmingham cars on Dundas going up to Runnymede. The St. Clair streetcars had what I considered weird ones because they had single roll destination linens on front and more double seats.
So yes, get a variety of streetcars.
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Ultimately, since you and I have to pay for these vehicles from our tax dollars, we have to consider that maintaining a large fleet of a single type of vehicle is much less expensive than maintaining multiple fleets of different kinds of vehicles.

The city does not have a lot of money, and needs to be responsible with its purchases. It has to be responsible from an accounting perspective, it has to be responsible by law, and it has to be responsible from a common sense perspective.

If we were filled with more cash than we knew what to do with, then buying multiple vehicle types becomes slightly less irresponsible. However, the budget situation calls for a fleet of one standard car with a common set of spare parts.
 
^^Very true- however, they are looking to buy upwards of 300 hundred new cars, meaning that this is not going to be cheap, regardless of whether or not they purchase one make or not. I do agree with what you are saying though.

p5
 
Though talking to Giambrone, we ae going to have two models of streetcars - the one being ordered now for the existing streetcar network (plus the new Cherry/East Harbourfront and likely the West Waterfront route), and one designed for the new Transit City routes which wil mostly be in the suburbs, where double-ended cars will be more likely. The PCCs, even in their different configurations, were 95% the same (except, of course, between the older air-electrics and the post-war all-electrics).

I guess if they go with one manufacturer with variations between the two stocks, at least should be simple enough maintenance-wise, like the CLRVs/ALRVs.
 
SeanTrans said:
Though talking to Giambrone, we ae going to have two models of streetcars - the one being ordered now for the existing streetcar network (plus the new Cherry/East Harbourfront and likely the West Waterfront route), and one designed for the new Transit City routes which wil mostly be in the suburbs, where double-ended cars will be more likely. The PCCs, even in their different configurations, were 95% the same (except, of course, between the older air-electrics and the post-war all-electrics).

I guess if they go with one manufacturer with variations between the two stocks, at least should be simple enough maintenance-wise, like the CLRVs/ALRVs.
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Yes.

Standardization is all about the type of components, not the numbers.

Transit City cars will be visually different than the downtown cars, but they will use the same type of brakes, same type of windows, same type of seats, etc.
 
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