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TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

DSC said:
Nobody expected Bombardier to suddenly produce 204 streetcars built to fit on our legacy system but we DID expect them to do FAR better than they have and to comply with the agreed delivery schedule. I was strongly in favour of giving this major contract to a Canadian company but must say I will not be so convinced this is a good idea next time.
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Well, hold on here. Has Bombardier shit the bed in terms of the delivery of the units? Most certainly, and in a big way.

The products that they are delivering are at least as good as they promised and quite possibly better, however.

And so, this is what needs to be reconciled - what if the next tender ends up being for a vehicle that is delivered more quickly and on time, but is only pretty good when it comes to reliability and availability, rather than one that is delivered really slowly but is excellent? Is that a good trade-off? And keep in mind that this is a vehicle that will be on the roads an awful lot for the next 30 years.

Yeah, I'd like to see more of the things on the road too. But if it means that more of them stay longer on the road over the rest of their lifetime, I think that it's a fair trade-off to make.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
Finally got to ride a Flexity for the first time Saturday night coming back from the waterfront to Union. What a nice ride. When we were all getting off at Union, the door we wanted to exit would not open. Someone in a wheelchair was going to board that door, which I guess put the door out of service to exit. We were all confused why the door wasn't opened. Wasn't obvious at all why it would not open to me.
 
khristopher said:
Finally got to ride a Flexity for the first time Saturday night coming back from the waterfront to Union. What a nice ride. When we were all getting off at Union, the door we wanted to exit would not open. Someone in a wheelchair was going to board that door, which I guess put the door out of service to exit. We were all confused why the door wasn't opened. Wasn't obvious at all why it would not open to me.
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They are really nice, aren't they!

I wonder if someone pressing the blue button on the outside there is what disables the interior button. Do you remember if it was illuminated at all? Maybe it goes red or something to indicate on the inside that it's out of service temporarily? Seems like a nice gesture to eliminate the person requesting assistance getting trampled.

I wondered how long it would take to get people to understand how the door open buttons work, since they're new to Toronto. It doesn't help that the driver has the option to open all the doors, or put them in "on request" mode for stops with lighter traffic, which makes it a bit unintuitive to get the hang of.
 
I believe that the doors remain closed until the wheelchair ramp is fully deployed. This makes sense because you wouldn't want people walking on a half-deployed ramp or having the ramp deploy on their feet while trying to board. So it makes sense that the doors would not open immediately if a wheelchair user had pressed the blue button. Not sure what happens if the doors have already opened and someone requests the ramp though...
 
smably said:
I believe that the doors remain closed until the wheelchair ramp is fully deployed. This makes sense because you wouldn't want people walking on a half-deployed ramp or having the ramp deploy on their feet while trying to board. So it makes sense that the doors would not open immediately if a wheelchair user had pressed the blue button. Not sure what happens if the doors have already opened and someone requests the ramp though...
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Ah, that's interesting. I guess the trick is that if you see someone heading to the blue button on the outside, to start pressing the button on the inside, in the hopes that you can trigger the door to start to open before the ramp starts to deploy.
 
DSC said:
And hold up the person needing the ramp?
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Not sure how it holds them up. Surely those on the streetcar will get off before those need ramp board.

I'd think it would speed up the whole thing actually, as then the wheelchair ramp would deploy with the doors open. Though most times, all the doors are opening anyways at major stops, so how is this different?

I guess the real question is what happens when the the wheelchair button is pressed, and the door is already open?

Tulse said:
Yeah, that seems like a real jerk move.
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Speeding up loading/unloading? Though I'm not sure how else it would play out at most stops. Vehicle comes to stop ... and then it's going to be a bit of time before whoever gets from the curb to the blue button to press it. Most of the time, the doors will have already opened by then, by someone on the inside oblivious to whether someone at the curb is going to be wanting to press the blue button.
 
I think it's faster to make people disembark at the other doors, so the person waiting in the wheelchair can board, as the ramp takes time to engage. It's just going to be a learning curve.
 
Duck said:
They are really nice, aren't they!

I wonder if someone pressing the blue button on the outside there is what disables the interior button. Do you remember if it was illuminated at all? Maybe it goes red or something to indicate on the inside that it's out of service temporarily? Seems like a nice gesture to eliminate the person requesting assistance getting trampled.

I wondered how long it would take to get people to understand how the door open buttons work, since they're new to Toronto. It doesn't help that the driver has the option to open all the doors, or put them in "on request" mode for stops with lighter traffic, which makes it a bit unintuitive to get the hang of.
Click to expand...
The vertical lights on the sides of the door were flashing red. Not sure about any other lights, as I didn't have time to really look.
 
The "door open" buttons will ring in red if that door is out of service for any reason. To be honest, I don't know if that includes ramp requests.

As for why the wheelchair door wouldn't open, if the ramp has been requested the door will not open at all until the operator has activated the ramp. Once launched, the door will only open 3/4s of the way, and will remain that way until authorized by the operator to close.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
khristopher said:
I think it's faster to make people disembark at the other doors, so the person waiting in the wheelchair can board, as the ramp takes time to engage. It's just going to be a learning curve.
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Fight there way through a crowded streetcar, with the narrow walkway between doors? I don't see how that works. Sure, if I stand up, and see a wheelchair out there (not sure why we are assuming wheelchair here ... you more often see strollers and shopping carts), and the walkways are open, head to the other door.

smallspy said:
As for why the wheelchair door wouldn't open, if the ramp has been requested the door will not open at all until the operator has activated the ramp. Once launched, the door will only open 3/4s of the way, and will remain that way until authorized by the operator to close.
Click to expand...
Given how quickly the door flies open, I'd think much of the time, if the outside blue button is pressed, the door would already be open already.

What happens then?
 
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