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June 23, 2005

Streetcar named expensive

Maybe the Toronto Transit Commission delegation did come back from its much-maligned junket to Rome with something after all, because there seems to have been a rather abrupt shift in my city's streetcar policy. Today's National Post reported (for free!) that a full-on buying campaign will soon be underway. Commissioner Joe Mihevc "said he wants the new cars sooner [than the currently projected 2011], saying he believes it can be done within four years. 'I do have ants in my pants,' he said."

Boy howdy, does he ever. Not very long ago at all, on April 18, things weren't looking all that good for Mihevc. The prevailing wisdom appeared to favour a $214 million rebuilding program that would keep the current fleet in operation until 2020. Mihevc estimated that replacing it with Houston-style light rail cars, the apple of his eye, would cost one billion dollars. And there were other problems:

The Houston model is heavier [than the current cars], can't climb the hill [on Bathurst Street] to St Clair [which is necessary to reach the maintenance yards], and is too long to short-turn or turn around at the loops at the end of most streetcar lines.

Oh, is that all? (Admittedly, the short-turn/loop problem could be addressed with "ambidextrous" rollingstock.)

Furthermore, there's this:

Accessibility in fact, is perhaps the biggest point here. A half-dozen people in wheelchairs showed up to a TTC meeting at City Hall last week.

"Why is it your streetcar and not mine?" Mark Brose of Transportation Action Now asked the commission. "Are you comfortable with that?" Mr. Brose said he moved from Roncesvalles Avenue to Yonge Street because he can ride subways but not streetcars.

TTC officials say there is no easy way to bring wheelchairs on to our current streetcars, and Mihevc agrees that, "I can't see redoing the existing ones to be wheelchair accessible."

It's impossible to say this without coming off as something of a prick, but making Toronto's streetcar system wheelchair accessible is an absolutely crazy idea. I have never seen a person in a wheelchair on a Toronto bus, even on one that is theoretically wheelchair accessible. To my knowledge, however, there is no way for a traveler to know when a wheelchair-accessible vehicle might be on its way and when one is definitely not. This might account for the under-usage. Well, that and the fact that the TTC's Wheel Trans service "provides door to door accessible transit service 7 days a week," and "regular TTC fares apply".

The accessibility movement is admirable, but must necessarily be kept in check by fiscal realism. With Mihevc at the controls, I think Toronto taxpayers such as myself might have something to worry about here. This is a man who favoured a streetcar plan that cost $786 million more than its competitor, and why?

Because we are like sardines [on the current cars]. It is very passenger-unfriendly. You gotta get around that bar that's there so people don't climb on without paying their lousy [? –ed.] two bucks [$2.50, thank you very much. –ed.], and you gotta exit by the back door but you can't get to the back door [Yes you can, buttercup. Get your elbows up. –ed.]. And the moms can't get their strollers up and you gotta help them [How awful for you. –ed.].

I ride the College and Spadina streetcars to work every morning. They work really well, notwithstanding the occasional full-on meltdown. In short, I don't see anything in the Toronto streetcar system that needs three quarters of a billion dollars (extra) thrown at it.

Posted by Chris Selley at June 23, 2005 11:43 PM