New peak-period services require a larger fleet. When mayoral candidate Olivia Chow touted better bus service as a plank in her campaign, the TTC’s response was, essentially, “We can’t get any buses.” Its story has now changed. According to the Operating Budget Analyst Notes (page 60):
In August of 2014 … there appeared to be no opportunity to procure additional buses in 2015. Through continued discussion with various Bus Vendors, an opportunity arose to procure up to 50 buses with delivery commencing in late 2015.
Storage space, another of the TTC’s problems, will be obtained on leased property until a new bus garage can be built later this decade.
As for streetcars, the TTC has changed its plans for its 52 “ALRVs,” the two-section cars that operate mainly on Queen Street: rather than retiring them as new cars enter service, it will now be overhauling 30 in order to provide an additional decade’s worth of life. Deliveries of the new cars are expected to ramp up from 27 vehicles in 2015 to 40 per year by 2018 to get Bombardier back on schedule.
For both bus and streetcar service planning, this represents an important change from “We can’t run any more service” in 2014 to an aggressive “We will run as much service as we can” in 2015.
