Toronto Streetcars

In October 2015 I finally visited Toronto as a tourist.  It is a fantastic city with plenty going on, not least the filming of one of my favourite TV shows, Suits (ostensibly set in New York).    The highlight for the transport professional has to be the tramway, or street car, system.  Toronto's public transport is operated primarily by Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) who have a wonderful pseudo-communist logo.  This blog will focus on street cars, with brief mention of other modes at the end.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) logo looking a little hammer & syckle-ish outside the Toronto Subway

We wanted to buy a day ticket for the TTC.  The street cars appeared rely completely on off-system ticketing, so the obvious place to go was a Subway station.  This is where we discover Toronto ticketing is stuck in the early 1980s.  I don't recall what the token system was for but surely wasn't the day ticket!  Apparently single fares can be paid to the driver on boarding.

So you want a day pass, you'd go to a machine titled 'passes' yes? No!  You suspect the screen is a shiney front for a very retro machine inside!

Having concluded the only way to buy a day ticket was to talk to a staff member, the principle of Group Station Manager caught me eye.  Anyone would think there were several ex-London Underground managers working for TTC!

So the day tickets had to be bought from a TTC staff member in a passemiter type facility.  Who'd have thought in 2015 that a major western city would be using scratch cards for day tickets?

Toronto street cars tend to run in the centre of the road.  Stops are marked by these fairly subtle posts, usually just before a crossroads (Toronto is largely laid out in a typical North American grid pattern).  When the tram stops in the outside of two lanes traffic has to stop on the nearside lane.  Toronto is far from the only city that uses this system but any road safety audit would surely decree it insanity, particularly as alighting passengers could step in to the path of oncoming traffic.

Close up of the at-stop information.  Route 504 on King goes through the heart of the city and was observed to suffer from some bunching of vehicles.

Toronto's street car system is run primarily by late 1970s/early 1980s cars manufactured by Hawker Siddeley in Thunder Bay, Canada.  The vehicle was intended as a new standard called a Canadian Light Rail Vehicle (CLRV), and whilst it was not adopted elsewhere, nearly 200 are in service in Toronto.  The CLRVs replaced PCC cars, one of which operates on San Francisco's (wonderful) F line in Toronto colours.

One of the problems with operating genuine street-cars is the lack of segregated running that a modern system or a metro has.  Here is a CLRV in traffic on route 511 on Bathurst Street.  The main line railway in to Toronto goes over the bridge.

There is also an articulated version of the CLRV called an ALRV.  These date from the mid to late 1980s and operate three of the eleven TTC Streetcar routes.

The conventional 'trolley' system of motive power means there is a strip on the rear of every vehicle that never gets washed!

The CLRVs and ALRVs are currently in the process of being replaced by 'off-the-shelf' Bombardier Flexity trams.  The Flexitys are twice the length of the CLRVs.  The first Flexity trams entered service in 2014 but delivery seems to be quite slow.

CLRV vehicles on the waterfront lines 509/510.

Route 512 to Keele starts at the St Clair East interchange with the Toronto Subway, where the signed exit from the Metro leads on to the Streetcar platform. It further interchanges with the Metro at St Clair West.

The route 512 runs along St Clair. At St Clair West station it dips in to an underground interchange with the Subway and local buses.  I found this quite a fascinating place to watch trams go round a bus station.

There are signs of investment in the TTC network, which has the impression of a system that may have gone many years without significant expenditure upon it.  ST Clair West is going to be a beneficiary,

More signs of change - which may be influenced by the aforementioned Brits in senior positions at the TTC.....

Interior of the CLRVs does not hide their 1970s design.

Overview of the interior of a CLRV.

Gate line at St Clair West.  Notable that the gates apply to the bus and streetcar stops as well as the escalators down to the subway.  Two things of note: 1. the ticket seller merrily laughing at my activities, and 2. the complete uselessness of the scratch-off day ticket in these gates!

Gratuitous CLRV photo.

And another CLRV.

And another!

Flexity at night.

I don't have enough to review the Subway, but here's an Alexander-Dennis Enviro 400, a product of Falkirk, Scotland, in use as a sightseeing bus in Toronto.  Some 220 more Alexander Dennis double deckers are set to join operations in Ontario.