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TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

The meeting is tomorrow morning at 10 AM. There's a report on-line. Essentially the city will cover the missing $417-million from the feds, by removing $417-million from planned 2012 to 2018 TTC spending. Mostly the Mid-Life Bus Rebuild Program.

Assuming council doesn't block it. And unless council either approves, or the feds provide the money, then they can't proceed with the purchase, based on earlier council resolutions.
 
I am surprised by the, er, non-impressiveness of the things that will be deferred. I mean, bus rebuilds are important, obviously, but the rest seems relatively superfluous. Collector-booth rebuilds? We shouldn't even have collector booths! Eglinton has a perfectly good bus terminal, and the City should be pulling out all the stops to derive revenue from the site of the old one. The Station Modernization Program always seemed mostly unnecessary to me, aside from state-of-good-repair and installing elevators. And fire ventilation is an issue for sure, but fires are rare enough (knocks on wood) that it shouldn't be too much of a hit.

In any case, the City's bus fleet needs are going to be considerably relaxed by Transit City--the vehicles for which are being funded by our betters in Ottawa and Queen's Park.

If this is really all that needs to be deferred, I can't see this not getting past Council, though perhaps after some histrionics from the 'responsible government group.'
 
Can some of the stuff that's deferred not be accelerated to make use of stimulus funds? Bus rebuilds, station (including collector booth) upgrades, etc.?
 
kEiThZ said:
Can some of the stuff that's deferred not be accelerated to make use of stimulus funds? Bus rebuilds, station (including collector booth) upgrades, etc.?
Click to expand...
Well, yeah, if you find the matching $600-million. Where's that going to come from? The provincial portion went into the streetcars.
 
Toronto will be paying for the streetcars in increments, not all at once. The final payment will be with the delivery of the last vehicle. So by then we could have a federal government that, hopefully, will be more transit-oriented.

However, for now we do have to put down a deposit from Toronto's pocket, which will be a higher deposit that we originally planned for.
 
^
I think he meant to use the Federal stimulus funds that were originally meant to fund the new trams. So, instead of deferring said maintenance, apply for the displaced funding under the stimulus program. The one issue I can see for this was that most of these projects were intended for 2012-2018, thereby disqualifying them from the short term component of the stimulus.

Anyways, this seems like a generally bad idea. Wasn't the dominant lesson of the 90s that maintaining the system in a state of good repair should take precedence over large scale capital projects? Ignoring the bus rebuilds in particular seems short sighted, given their importance to transit anywhere north of Bloor where subways have negligible walk in ridership compared to feeder routes. I think someone said that most of the deferred projects appear 'unimpressive.' The unfortunate reality of public transit is that the most important parts of it are unimpressive. In Toronto on of the most important aspect is maintaining properly function feeder bus routes to the subways.
 
Whoaccio said:
Anyways, this seems like a generally bad idea. Wasn't the dominant lesson of the 90s that maintaining the system in a state of good repair should take precedence over large scale capital projects?
Click to expand...

Roughly 30% of the current CLRVs are out of service for repairs at any given time (sketchy data from Steve Munro). If that factoid is true, the replacing them falls under SOGR just as much as replacing the subway cars and buses did in capital budgets from 2003 through 2009.
 
Whoaccio said:
^
I think he meant to use the Federal stimulus funds that were originally meant to fund the new trams. So, instead of deferring said maintenance, apply for the displaced funding under the stimulus program. The one issue I can see for this was that most of these projects were intended for 2012-2018, thereby disqualifying them from the short term component of the stimulus.

Anyways, this seems like a generally bad idea. Wasn't the dominant lesson of the 90s that maintaining the system in a state of good repair should take precedence over large scale capital projects? Ignoring the bus rebuilds in particular seems short sighted, given their importance to transit anywhere north of Bloor where subways have negligible walk in ridership compared to feeder routes. I think someone said that most of the deferred projects appear 'unimpressive.' The unfortunate reality of public transit is that the most important parts of it are unimpressive. In Toronto on of the most important aspect is maintaining properly function feeder bus routes to the subways.
Click to expand...

I meant 'unimpressive' mostly about the not-bus-overhaul stuff. New booths, modernized stations, and a new Eglinton bus terminal are definitely in the 'nice to have' category. The bus rebuilds are clearly more important, though we should note that bus requirements are actually going down, not up. In any case, doesn't gas tax money *have* to go to buses? I remember reading that somewhere.
 
rbt said:
Roughly 30% of the current CLRVs are out of service for repairs at any given time (sketchy data from Steve Munro). If that factoid is true, the replacing them falls under SOGR just as much as replacing the subway cars and buses did in capital budgets from 2003 through 2009.
Click to expand...

I don't see how shifting the maintenance gap from the CLRVs to bus fleet is a good solution, though. Its not like it was a surprise that CLRV's would reach the end of their useful life around now. That the TTC/City Hall has failed to replace them up until this brainwave is their fault.

As of now, I would:
A.)Continue to lobby the federal government for investment, not under stimulus, but just general infrastructure.
B.)Defer planned LRT projects such as the Waterfront East LRT or Sheppard East or Jane or any of the other billions that are going into expanding the street railway network and focus on what we have.
C.)Investigate the possibility of an AFP whereby a tender would assume operations of the surface railway network in exchange for the remainder of capital costs.
D.)Phase out rail operations along Queen & King until such time as replacement LRVs are affordable without compromising the larger system in order to concentrate operations along the more heavily upgraded 'LRT' routes (Spadina/Harbourfront/St. Clair) as well as Dundas & College. In total both routes operate with 77 CLRVs/ALRVs. Assuming an average capacity 1.75x that of a 40ft bus, this translates to 135 buses. Basically pepper them along Front, Wellington, King, Adelaide, Richmond and Queen in order to disperse demand. That should work out to roughly 80m.

That's in no particular order, and some of them are mutually exclusive. In any case, the TTC shouldn't just start shortchanging the bus network in order to cover up its incompetent procurement processes. The bus network is pretty much the crown and jewel of public transit in the GTA.
 
The money are not coming from bus repairs.

Actually they are, but they're coming from bus repairs on the assumption that TTC's budget never increases.

So when the time comes and the busses need to be fixed, one of the following will hapen.

1. TTC'll ask the government for more money and it'll get it.
2. They'll raise fares.
3. They'll raise fare temporarlly on the excuse that the government isn't paying for the bus overhauls. And then have the general mass raise up against their elected representatives and force them into giving the TTC money.
4. Miller will take Haper's 300M for something that's already been budgeted for. And then transfer that budget to the TTC.
5. This is all a game to make the CPC look bad and that the next Liberal government will cough up with the money and fund it to the TTC.


Every bus is being repaired when it needs to be repaired.
 
Transit needs ideas, not money
A good reason to tell Toronto to get lost

We don’t know why Ottawa told Toronto to drop dead on the city’s plan to spend $1.2-billion on 204 new street cars. But if the Harper Tories and Transport Minister John Baird need some help defending their decision, there are lots of good reasons around — including a brand new report yesterday showing that public transit across Canada is something of a failing industry.

Even before that report — from the Conference Board of Canada, documenting how public transit is the home of rising prices and falling output — Ottawa should have had no trouble explaining why it may not want to be shipping small fortunes to Toronto or any other city clamouring for transit funding

More................http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...e-corcoran-transit-needs-ideas-not-money.aspx
 
That article's crazy even considering the source.

Public transit, the goddess of the greens, the left and union leaders, is the last bastion of transportation still locked in total government control. No competition, no privatization, no markets and no pricing systems, no attempt to break out of a structural model that, wherever it exists, prevents productivity gains, drains efficiency, raises costs and generally treats taxpayers and commuters like fiscal cattle.
Click to expand...

This dude really hates taking the bus.
 
Calling for transit to break even without calling for roads to break even is obviously just an attack on transit. I would be completely supportive of the province and city creating separate arms length agencies in charge or road transportation simply for greater transparency. Having a road agency begging for funding which is not stable and guaranteed every year might change people's perspective.
 
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