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TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

allabootmatt said:
So, did 4416 arrive? Or not? Seems to be some confusion on this point...
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There was a lot of confusion, mainly it seems because my contacts at Hillcrest weren't working down there over the Christmas break.

But I have just had it confirmed that 4416 landed on TTC rails on the 31st of December.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
Napoleon said:
Really? Just 2 days after 4415? In my list I have 4414 arriving on Dec. 12, 4415 on Dec. 29. Right?
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I've got 4414 on December 14th, and I thought 4415 was December 24th.

4416 might have been unloaded on December 31st, but could they have had the car in Toronto before that - perhaps stored up at Agincourt on December 29 to stop vandalism while waiting to be able to deliver to TTC?
 
Admiral Beez said:
I know I've said it before, but it's a shame United Streetcar went bust. If they'd been able to hold out a few more years they would have perhaps benefited from the resurgence of trams and light rail transit. Not that their deliveries or rate of production was better or close to Bombardier, but added competition would be good for all North American buyers of such vehicles.
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Brookville are getting into the streetcar game now: http://www.brookvillecorp.com/streetcar-modern.asp
 
It's a cute idea to want to support these tiny one-off American companies - but what happens to the fleets in service when they go out of business?

While most of you may hate Bombardier, you must take some relief in knowing at least that the company is going to be around for quite some time to support the vehicles.
 
You also gotta wonder about the robustness of vehicles designed for toy-train US light rail operations. Even the "successful" recent American streetcar lines carry about as many people as a very lightly used TTC bus route. There's just no comparison with the operational tempo demanded of LRVs on, say, King or Spadina.
 
Duck said:
It's a cute idea to want to support these tiny one-off American companies - but what happens to the fleets in service when they go out of business?

While most of you may hate Bombardier, you must take some relief in knowing at least that the company is going to be around for quite some time to support the vehicles.
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True, but Siemens and Alstom are going to be around, and if a lot of people in Toronto hate Bombardier it's for good reason. Not that it matters - the TTC will always buy Bombardier no matter how crap the product or the delivery.
 
pman said:
and if a lot of people in Toronto hate Bombardier it's for good reason.
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I don't get what that reason is. Yes they have had problems with the delivery of the new streetcars but some of it has been part of the TT's fault as well. I almost wonder if the city and or the TTC has struck a deal with them to take the blame off of them.
 
pman said:
True, but Siemens and Alstom are going to be around, and if a lot of people in Toronto hate Bombardier it's for good reason. Not that it matters - the TTC will always buy Bombardier no matter how crap the product or the delivery.
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Not many companies that haven't built something crap for someone, particular where firms like Alstom and Bombardier have come to where they are in part by mergers. In Dublin they can't get enough Alstom Citadis trams - just ordered 7 x 55m nine section trams for the line BX-D project from La Rochelle - but the 8200 class heavy rail EMUs from a Spanish outpost of Alstom have been mothballed for years.
 
Duck said:
It's a cute idea to want to support these tiny one-off American companies - but what happens to the fleets in service when they go out of business?
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Not to say that its streetcars are necessarily competitive or that it isn't small, but Brookville has apparently been producing rail equipment of various kinds for nearly a century.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
my guess would be some earlier delays like changes to the vehicle design. I thought I saw somewhere that the prototype was supposed to be delivered earlier then it was for testing to begin.
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There were to be deliver a year early, but Bombardier delay it. Some of the delay was the ramp by TTC. TTC was to have 4 various types of prototype cars to the point 4403 was so late that it came as a production unit.

What we are seeing is a resurrection of something that was built before 1950 and was kill off by the cars starting in 1930's. Today we are seeing new lines being built as well plan for including extension of new lines.

These new lines are showing up in some cities that never had streetcars in the first place. Give another 10-20 years, the small companies that are building less than a dozen cars for a system will have a backlog on the books while the larger companies deal with the larger orders.

We have seen Toronto move from a 8m car to the current length of 30m and expect to see longer ones in the coming decades on some routes. The US is looking at going to longer cars while Europe is moving from 30m to 55m or longer. Far cheaper to add sections to some existing models in Europe than to buy a full length car. The new length of cars will vary system by system as well ridership, but on average 45m is becoming the norm these days.

Longer the cars become in NA, drivers will bitch about it while Europe welcomes them.
 
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