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nfitz said:
As noted and linked above, the TTC estimated in 2006 that the shutdown would only be 8 months. And the bigger issue was the curve at Kennedy station.

Also there's nothing that ever precluded the TTC issuing a tender for vehicles that could take the existing curve.
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The curve at Kennedy was to be scrap and replace with an at grade level.

As for the tunnel, it was going to be more than 8 months and comes from the person who first proposed the system as well help to design the system in the first place. There were many meetings on it.

Why would you replace the existing fleet and system with something that was the same with the same failure rate at twice the cost, if not more?? Unless you were to extended like it was supposed to be in the 80's as well elsewhere, it would be a waste of money..

You think the LRV's are pricey, those new Mark X cars would way more costly, let along updating the system to a true driverless system.
 
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I took this on the last full day of service. I wanted to get some shots in while the weather was still summery -- didn't think that it would be my last chance to do it!

"Here today, gone tomorrow."

DSC_4977-5.jpg
 
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drum118 said:
Why would you replace the existing fleet and system with something that was the same with the same failure rate at twice the cost, if not more?
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Because it would require a much shorter closure. And improvements could be made.

And twice the cost? Read the report behind the link. The cost was cheaper. And that ignores the lower operating cost with automation.
 
A reasonable solution would have been to replace the Kennedy station with the proposed loop, fix the tunnel, and retrofit the line to use the newer iterations of the cars, but with regular axle motors instead of linear induction, which (people keep forgetting) Bombardier made an option many years ago. But that ship train sailed lurched out of the station dragged by a tired, confused mule.
 
nfitz said:
Also there's nothing that ever precluded the TTC issuing a tender for vehicles that could take the existing curve.
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Except that the TTC did their due diligence in 2002 and asked the manufacturer whether they could build either newer versions of the old cars or shorter versions of the then current cars to fit the system. The answer that they were given was a "go away" price of many millions per car, far more than was worth it.

Considering that, what possible additional outcome would be gained by issuing a tender?

Dan
 
I think the ship sailed a while ago on alternatives for the SRT.

That said, 3-5 years ago, I might have wondered about ignoring the tunnel (expensive fix); buying some used Mark 1 or Mark 2 cars from Vancouver.......(just for life extension); installing a cross-over, so you could run the SRT from Ellesmere to Kennedy only, then the buses would only have to do STC to Ellesmere.

That, would of course, have been predicated on a reasonable cost; but given what we'll likely spend on a busway capitally and the cost of operating vastly more buses in this corridor.........I think there was probably a reasonable way to make this work.
 
nfitz said:
And yet I've seen enough smaller towns north of Montreal, to know that many not only don't plow their sidewalks - they don't have sidewalks! Perhaps Montreal plows bike lanes now? They certainly didn't used to plow De Maisoneuve west of Decarie, when I lived there.

In areas with less snow, like in Southern Ontario, there's always been less of a need to plow sidewalks - in most places the bylaw requires the resident to clear the snow down to concrete within 24-hours. Which is more removal than I see in many places that do plow their sidewalks.

Bike lanes are cleared here - often before the roads. And sidewalks are now too. Again, often before the roads. But it's a different fleet and operators for each - so there's no need to do one first.

Latitude means little in terms of snow and rain. The Sahara has the same latitude as Key West Florida!

Even Toronto averages more snow than Stockholm. Quebec City has about triple the snow of Stockholm! Even Vancouver has almost 40% of the snow of Stockholm..
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They did when I used to live there. Lots of people bike during the Winter.
 
smallspy said:
Except that the TTC did their due diligence in 2002 and asked the manufacturer whether they could build either newer versions of the old cars or shorter versions of the then current cars to fit the system. The answer that they were given was a "go away" price of many millions per car, far more than was worth it.
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I bet the extra amount was less than building the new busway. And I bet that the citizens of Scarborough would have prefered that extra money be spent rather than almost a decade of buses. And I bet the amount would have been a small fraction than the subway cost.

Still, you can see why they wanted to switch to regular LRT vehicles.
 
littlewill1166 said:

You'd lose that bet by almost a billion dollars (if you use the report's subway estimate as a proxy for cost escalation to 2023 dollars).
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I don't see the number for the extra cost to build shorter vehicles. Are you really saying that the vehicle cost for shorter vehicles would increase from $170 million to over $1.03 billion? I assume I am being misunderstood.
 
nfitz said:
I don't see the number for the extra cost to build shorter vehicles. Are you really saying that the vehicle cost for shorter vehicles would increase from $170 million to over $1.03 billion? I assume I am being misunderstood.
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After you account for inflation and required infrastructure improvements.

The cost estimates for both the subway and the LRT have gone up 3x or more at various points in time since the 2006 report was published. I find it hard to believe that the cost of upgrading the SRT with new vehicles wouldn't have escalated at a similar rate.

Whereas, right now the SRT busway is estimated to cost around $60 million.
 
littlewill1166 said:
After you account for inflation and required infrastructure improvements.

The cost estimates for both the subway and the LRT have gone up 3x or more at various points in time since the 2006 report was published. I find it hard to believe that the cost of upgrading the SRT with new vehicles wouldn't have escalated at a similar rate.

Whereas, right now the SRT busway is estimated to cost around $60 million.
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The unfunded busway is $60 million. But platform/terminal at the terminals, transit priority, and design is another $40 million. And that doesn't include the 57 extra buses they need - which would have cut this years bus purchase down by 57 vehicles ... which at the (most recent) cost of $1.7 million a bus adds another 98 million to the cost. And there won't be much left of those buses, with bustitution likely going for at least 8 years.

Ignoring other factors (extra operating costs, bus mid-life replacement, and that the extra 2006 cost for the then unnecessary Ellesmere tunnel upgrades, Kennedy loop replacement, station extensions, and wayside/yard modifications), I still think it would have been cheaper (or at least as cheap) to have issued a tender for shorter vehicles; two decades ago. If Vancouver can do open tenders for Skytrain rolling stock, so could have TTC.
 
nfitz said:
I still think it would have been cheaper (or at least as cheap) to have issued a tender for shorter vehicles; two decades ago.
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I don't think anyone is actually going to disagree with that. Even taking the subway as the correct approach, we pissed away a completely viable path to building it on a timeline that would have allowed the SRT to run until opening. As bad as thing got in it's aftermath, the needs to decide and move forward with any alternative was something Soberman emphasized in all the public sessions during the original round of SRT replacement studies. Hell, the ability to avoid a shutdown if quick and decisive action was taken was about the only good thing he had to say about a subway alternative.

By delaying as long as we did we've very much done the one thing that every study, consultant, nay-sayer and bystander clearly said we shouldn't.
 
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