New Toronto Streetcars
If you are new to urban rail transit, please visit Toronto, Ontario, to see a fine rapid transit subway system and an excellent streetcar system. The streetcars enjoy very heavy ridership. The hardy fleet of street- cars that have served Toronto for the best part of 40 years is in a transition to a new and very different fleet.
The new cars were developed by the
Toronto Transit Commission in league with Bombardier, the car builder. The design is based upon a multi-unit articulated car called the Flexity and they have very high capacity. The new cars are accessible and air conditioned.
Accessibility is gained by
means of a ramp, similar to those on TTC buses. Because of size and the Flexity de- sign, the new cars have 70 seats compared to 46 seats in the old cars. The old cars have a standing capacity of 86 people, while the new cars have a capacity for 181 standees. Total capacity of the old cars is 132, while the new cars hold 281. The old cars are 15.22 meters long, 2.04 meters wide, and 3.62 me- ters high. The new cars are 30.20 meters in length, or double the length of the old cars. In the coming change, 204 new streetcars will replace 247 older cars. It is expected that more cars will be needed over the next ten years as patronage grows and new streetcar lines are opened. The new fleet has a price tag of C$1.2 billion dollars, or about $6 million per car; another $800 million is needed for infrastructure, including a new overhead contact wire system. A new car- house will be constructed at Leslie street and Lake Shore Boulevard.
Prototypes of the new fleet are on hand in
the summer of 2013 and will be used to train operators. And operators they will be, as the new cars place the operators in a cab. The cab has modern television capability that af- fords the operator with a 360 degree view both inside and outside the car. A proof-of- payment system will be used as the means of fare collection.
Deployment of the new rolling stock will take place in summer of 2018. The initial line to employ the new cars will be the very heavily used Spadina line that serves the Waterfront district and Spadina Avenue. The next lines will be Dundas, and Bathurst by the end of 2019. There may be some expansion of streetcar service in the future. An exciting plan was shot down by mayor Bob Ford, who feels about streetcars as many elected officials in the U.S. did in the 1930s and after the Second World War. Many observers believe the streetcars will prevail. Thanks for Peter Per- rault for the information.
On the Boulevard There is much transit action real and pro- posed on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. As of June 2013 there is a bus-only lane that is 1.8 miles long and links MacArthur Park with Western Avenue. This is the first in- stallment of what is expected to be 7.7 miles of bus-only lanes. In another idea, developer Rick Caruso wants to operate streetcars on Wilshire Boulevard. The cars would operate from Caruso’s popular Grove shopping cen- ter and pass the Beverly Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This will take some time to reach implementation. Thanks to Douglas I. Duncan for the news.
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