This is an articulated tram. Notice the small centre car supports the two outer bodies. This configuration is sometimes called, "two rooms & a bath".
So boys and girls, lesson for today; what is an articulated car?
Definition:
Articulated cars are rail vehicles which consist of a number of cars which are semi-permanently attached to each other and share common Jacobs bogies or axles and/or have car elements without axles suspended by the neighbouring car elements. They are much longer than single passenger cars. Because of the difficulty and cost of separating each car from the next, they are operated as a single unit, often called a trainset.
The difference between an articulated tram and a Bombardier ART Innovia/Movia car is that in an articulated tram, on truck or bogie supports two bodies. With the ART Innovia/Movia cars, the body is supported by two trucks.
Another version of an articulated tram, where one body section is supported by the two adjacent body sections, with their own trucks or bogies.
A Bombardier built ART innovia/Movia light metro car as used in Vancouver.
The non articulated Innovia/Movia light metro car. Notice that each body section is supported by two truck or bogies.
This is of great importance for Fraser Valley passenger rail.
The Stadler FLIRT is a close cousin of the Stadler GTW tramtrain and like the GTW, the articulated FLRT uses a diesel power-pack located in the middle of the train.
The FLIRT DMU is really a five section, articulated diesel rail car, with four sections and the power-pack, which can operate in multiple units.
Those who want a return of the Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban should c consider that articulated rail cars would ride the valley rails far better than non articulated cars and at a cheaper cost.
As the various vehicles that operate on the SkyTrain network, TransLink and a host of others remain ignorant of the benefits of articulated vehicles.
Also to be considered, the FLRT rail cars being delivered to Ottawa have been specifically designed to operate in Canada, making the FLIRT an “off-the-shelf” vehicle, ideal for the interurban and for the E&N.
Stadler wins first contract for multiple unit trains in Canada
The City of Ottawa and SNC Lavalin Group have declared Stadler as the winner of the contract for seven four unit diesel electric FLIRT trains, as part of the Stage 2 O-Train Trillium Line extension project. The contract is valued at approximately 80 million Swiss Francs (106 million Canadian Dollars). Canada is now the 18th country to purchase Stadler FLIRT trains. According to the contract, Stadler will deliver the vehicles starting in mid-2021 to Ottawa, where they will undergo extensive testing. This is Stadler’s second contract in Canada. Stadler is currently building double-deck dome cars for Rocky Mountaineer, which will take passengers on scenic routes northeast of Vancouver.
The seven four-unit trains for Ottawa are equipped with four 480 kW diesel engines. Parts of the traction equipment system and the diesel engines are housed in power pack units. With the current design the trains comply with the emission standard Tier4 final, with the North American Track Class IV, with ADA and are fully compliant with AODA (Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act) standards as well as with the North American fire safety standard NFPA 130.
With speeds up to 120 kilometres per hour, the Stadler FLIRT trains will service the extended Trillium Line.
The Stage 2 Trillium Line extension is a public-private-partnership project which will extend the existing Trillium Line by adding 16 kilometres of rail and 8 new stations, including a link to the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport. TransitNEXT, a wholly owned subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin, will design, build, finance and maintain the Stage 2 Trillium Line Extension.
The Stadler site in Bussnang, Switzerland is building and assembling the FLIRT trains for Ottawa. Here, Stadler has ample experience with projects for countries with requirements for extreme winter weather conditions. In Estonia, Norway, Finland and Sweden the Stadler FLIRT trains are already in service with high operational availability, even under tough cold-weather conditions.
About Stadler
International rail vehicle construction company, Stadler, is headquartered in Bussnang in Eastern Switzerland. Founded in 1942, it has a workforce of over 8,500 based in various production and over 40 service locations. Stadler provides a comprehensive range of products in the heavy and urban transport segments: High-speed trains, intercity trains, regional and commuter heavy rail trains, underground trains, tram trains and trams. Stadler also manufactures main-line locomotives, shunting locomotives and passenger carriages, including the most powerful diesel-electric locomotive in Europe. It is the world’s leading manufacturer in the rack-and-pinion rail vehicle industry.
Kicking and screaming all the way, Toronto is now updating its heritage streetcar system to light rail standards and the the result is obvious, success.
Modern trams, reserved rights-of-ways, all the key ingredients for successful LRT.
Sadly, this puts Toronto 40 years behind most other European Cities.
As found in Europe, modern light-rail has changed the dynamics of public transports and except for a few bumps along the road, the successful King Street experiment may even change the way the TTC thinks, when planning for subways, except…………
…………for the real transit Luddites like Premier Ford, who wants to squander billions of dollars on subways or elevated transit so surface streets remain for cars only.
So 20th century way of thinking!
Toronto’s King streetcar pilot project is now permanent
Streetcars are officially king on King St. W., and their reign could expand to other streets.
City council voted 22-3 Tuesday to make permanent the King St. pilot project, giving streetcars priority over other vehicles between Bathurst and Jarvis Sts.
After the success of the King streetcar pilot project, Toronto’s transportation general manager says city staff are looking at other ways of “moving people out of cars and onto public transit.” (RANDY RISLING / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)
After resounding success that saw, for a relatively modest investment, weekday rush-hour streetcar boardings skyrocket from 72,000 to 84,000, and overall people movement into downtown increase while vehicle traffic decreased, city staff are looking at other routes.
Barbara Gray, transportation general manager, said staff are not necessarily looking at restricting vehicles on the other transit routes, noting traffic signal improvement and relocated stops has helped make the King pilot a model that has other cities around the world looking to emulate it.
“When we start to look at … environmental goals and climate-change goals, getting people onto transit, walking and biking is a critical need and goal of the city and projects like King St. help to get us there,” Gray told council.
“We are looking at moving people out of cars and onto public transit.”
It restricts car movements on the 2.6-kilometre stretch of King by compelling drivers to turn right at most major intersections.
The project wasn’t a hit with everyone. Some King St. merchants said the pilot project hurt their businesses and even forced some to close. City staff acknowledged tracking growth in customer spending slowed to 1.7 per cent during the project, from 2.5 per cent the year before.
Mike Williams, in charge of economic development, said his department will continue working with businesses to boost foot traffic in the corridor and their receipts. Now that the pilot is permanent, city staff plan street improvements including elevated patios and comfortable seating in freed-up space.
Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 10 Spadina-Fort York), who represents the corridor that includes the theatre district and restaurant row, urged his colleagues to officially acknowledge transit needs to be a priority over cars in the corridor.
“It’s a pilot for a reason, it’s not designed to be perfect, that’s what happens when you make it permanent and that’s the opportunity here,” he said.
Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre) tried unsuccessfully to convince council to halt restrictions on private vehicles after 7 p.m. and overnight, and to give electric vehicles all-day access.
Holyday said allowing cars free access at night would help businesses, and that some of his Etobicoke constituents have told him the risk of getting a ticket on King is keeping them from going downtown.
Mayor John Tory acknowledged the challenges the pilot has proposed to some but said the overall increase in transit use can’t be ignored. He successfully asked council to have staff continue monitoring King St. transit performance.
Councillor Holyday, Michael Ford and Jim Karygiannis voted against making the pilot permanent.
With files from Ben Spurr
David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering Toronto politics.
South Fraser Community Rail is the latest group joining the struggle to get rail passenger service operating in the Fraser Valley.
Instead of TramTrain and its variants, they opted for the hydrogen powered electric train in the guise of an electric multiple unit (EMU) passenger trains.
I added this article to demonstrate that is Canada, simple streetcar lines can carry large volumes of people.
Each day, 84,000 people ride the King St. Streetcar, while TransLink claims a modest 60,000 people a day use Broadway.
The King car is not just Toronto’s busiest surface transit route. It carries as many people as the number riding the Sheppard subway and the Scarborough RT – combined.
What is more interesting:
The King car carries more commuters than the Miami Metro. The subway in Florida’s largest city has 23 stations and is 39 kilometres long.
The King car carries as many people as the Denver, Colo., system of light rail (LRT) and commuter rail, with 63 stations and 141 km of track.
On an average day, the number of passengers exceeds the entire daily traffic of each of the LRT networks in Phoenix; Minneapolis, Minn.; Seattle; and Houston.
It carries more people than the Seattle trolley-bus system, which has 15 routes and 109 km of overhead wires. It carries only slightly fewer people than the LRT network of Dallas – which with four lines and 150 km of track is the longest light-rail transit system in the United States.
So, when it comes to the Broadway subway, bigger is not necessarily better and in fact a much cheaper tram line, with some reserved rights-of-way and some priority signalling (oh my, that is light rail), carries a lot more people than many hugely expensive and over built transit systems in North America, is something to think about.
But of course it is transit in metro Vancouver and the Mayors council and politicians just love cutting ribbons in front of expensive subways, especially when the taxpayers must ante up the money, without any debate. Oh how Soviet of the mayors council on Transit, where fiction is preferred than fact.
One small step for the King Street streetcar, one giant leap for Toronto
Even Junius has to get to work in the morning.
The Globe and Mail editorial board’s fictional leader and author of the newspaper’s motto – “The subject who is truly loyal to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures” – tends to spend his time wrestling with weighty questions. Issues of principle. Matters of state. The capital-F Future.
But before any of that happens, there’s the small matter of getting to the office on time.
And each day, like 84,000 other people in Canada’s largest city, Junius rides the King Street streetcar.
A little more than a year ago, Toronto, site of some of North America’s longest commutes and home to the continent’s least taxpayer-subsidized public transit system, decided to try a little experiment. On the stretch of King Street running through downtown, streetcars would be given priority over cars. The goal was speeding up commuting times – with nothing more than a little change in the rules of the road. It involved installing a few concrete barriers and painting some yellow lines, over a weekend.
It wasn’t a multidecade, multibillion-dollar megaproject. It was an instant, cheap micro-project. And the impact has been enormous.
So far, though, it’s just an experiment – the King Street Transit Pilot isn’t permanent. Last week, city bureaucrats recommended that Toronto Council make it permanent, essentially creating a kind of instant, low-budget surface subway through the centre of town.
That should be a no-brainer. The little transit miracle on King Street deserves to be studied, expanded and emulated.
Thanks to the project, commuting times have been significantly shortened, and passenger traffic on the streetcars is up 17 per cent. New streetcars have been added to the route, but they’re still overcrowded at rush hour.
It proves that shortening commuting times doesn’t just benefit existing riders; it encourages new people to switch to public transit. The more a transit service is quick, frequent and convenient, the more people will use it. Obviously.
The King car is not just Toronto’s busiest surface transit route. It carries as many people as the number riding the Sheppard subway and the Scarborough RT – combined.
In fact, this one streetcar route serves more people than entire public transit systems in many American cities.
The King car carries more commuters than the Miami Metro. The subway in Florida’s largest city has 23 stations and is 39 kilometres long.
The King car carries as many people as the Denver, Colo., system of light rail (LRT) and commuter rail, with 63 stations and 141 km of track.
On an average day, the number of passengers exceeds the entire daily traffic of each of the LRT networks in Phoenix; Minneapolis, Minn.; Seattle; and Houston.
It carries more people than the Seattle trolley-bus system, which has 15 routes and 109 km of overhead wires. It carries only slightly fewer people than the LRT network of Dallas – which with four lines and 150 km of track is the longest light-rail transit system in the United States.
At first, the King Street pilot project generated pushback from drivers who feared their bumper-to-bumper gridlock would only get worse, and from a small but vocal group of local restaurateurs along King Street who worried about losing car-driving patrons. But Toronto’s downtown is so crowded that the only way to reduce paralyzingly heavy car traffic is to create more options for people to abandon cars for public transit.
And while Toronto still needs several big fixes, such as the so-called Downtown Relief Line subway, the quality of life in a city is also the product of lots of small decisions that can either improve the life of citizens, or immiserate them.
Right now, the stretch of King Street where streetcars have priority is only a couple of kilometres long. It should be gradually expanded, especially to the fast-growing neighbourhood of condos to the west of downtown. More streetcars should be added, further speeding up service. And, as in cities such as Montreal, restaurants can even be given the opportunity to set up patios on the street.
The big stuff – making a city easier to live in, faster to commute to and more desirable to visit or do business in – is the product of a lot of small steps. On King Street, Toronto’s small steps are having a big impact.
The real trick is to plan for rail properly, which is hard to do in Metro Vancouver, where politicians think they are better at planning for transit than the real experts.
It is hard to think any valley mayor and council would be against a viable Vancouver to Chilliwack rail link, which a basic hourly servcie would cost around $750 million.
$750 million is less than half the cost of a SkyTrain extension to Fleetwood.
In the real world, this would be considered a no-brainer, sadly in metro Vancouver, no-brainer solutions for our traffic woes are few and far between.
While the Surrey to Langley SkyTrain extension is still very much in the early planning process, another group is pitching a passenger train linking Surrey with stations across the Fraser Valley.
The South Fraser Community Rail Group believes rapid transit could be built south of the Fraser River utilizing the existing interurban rail line that runs from Chilliwack to the Pattullo Bridge at a fraction of the cost of SkyTrain, or even the light-rail project that was scrapped last year.
The group believes using hydrogen power would save on the expense of electrifying the entire 90-plus-kilometre network of track.
Rick Green, a former mayor of Township of Langley and spokesman for the South Fraser Community Rail Group, says the cars will be more expensive to buy but will be nearly free to run, producing nothing but water as emissions.
He believes all the pieces are in place — it is just a matter of political will to get it done.
“We can build this thing for somewhere between $12.5 million and $14 million per kilometre. We can build the whole thing including rolling stock, construction, and road closures for around $1.3 billion,” he said.
“The line will be accessible to 1.2 million people, and it goes right by 14 post-secondary institutions and connects 16 communities.”
The old interurban line was operated until the 1950s by the B.C. Electric Railway. The government-owned tracks were sold off, but a provision in the sales contract still allows for the re-introduction of passenger traffic.
Patrick Condon, a UBC urban planner who has been studying the problem of transportation south of the Fraser, says his research suggests Surrey is not only set to become the province’s largest city, but the entire population south of the Fraser could swell to three million people by 2060.
“There are only two options: build reasonably dense housing around existing infrastructure, or continue to sprawl out and eat up all the farmland. We can’t continue to build more roads to ease congestion,” Condon said.
According to the experts, those who live south of the Fraser can’t continue to rely on getting around by car, but spending billions on SkyTrain technology isn’t the right solution either.
Green agrees, calling the SkyTrain down the Fraser Highway “insanity” and adding the $1.6 billion to get the train to Fleetwood seems excessive.
“It just makes so much sense,” he said when comparing his proposal.
Although the TransLink Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation endorsed further study on a SkyTrain Millennium Line extension to the University of British Columbia (UBC), its recently released meeting minutes show that serving the university with a $7 billion subway is not a regional priority.
It is clear from the mayors’ discussion that raising funds for the next phase of transit projects would need significantly increased resources to meet the vast regional demands. Many mayors see equity as a major issue because Vancouver and UBC are considered already well served by transit relative to other municipalities that are growing rapidly but have little to no transit.
The minutes say that “project costs must be borne by Vancouver and UBC as the line is not a regional priority.” So the municipal tax base will be used to fund transit, which is a provincial and federal funding responsibility, rather than funding the municipal services needed for a growing population.
More property taxes, development fees and a proposed land value capture tax would go to pay for a subway.
More rentals and affordable housing will not be achieved because the fees required to pay for the subway will need market strata development and much higher tower densities, like Oakridge and the Cambie corridor. Increased taxes will also make housing even more expensive.
Local businesses are already struggling. If the taxes don’t kill them, the business interruption from over a decade of subway construction will ensure most do not survive. It will also make commuting to UBC a nightmare.
A Broadway subway would make the Canada Line construction disruption on the Cambie corridor look like a dress rehearsal.
The main argument used to justify a subway is one of capacity, but this is mistaken. There are issues with both how ridership is calculated and how many could be served by only one subway along Broadway.
It is not accurate to count all ridership on 4th Avenue, Broadway, 16th, 25th, 33rd, 41st and 49th avenues and SW Marine Drive when determining potential ridership on a Broadway subway. People will continue to use the transit closest to them – especially if transit is plentiful and convenient.
Also, the updated McElhanney Consulting Services report showed that multiple routes of transit were more effective at wooing people away from automobiles than just one subway on Broadway.
Most of the reports on Broadway rapid transit have been biased towards a SkyTrain subway and have a questionable involvement with SNC-Lavalin. There is no independent study showing what could be achieved with multiple routes of more affordable transit options. This should include express buses to take commuters from the Millennium and Expo lines directly to UBC, diverting ridership away from Broadway altogether.
Vancouver was built as a streetcar city before the common use of the automobile. It was designed to be transit oriented with short blocks that are all within a 10-minute walk of a streetcar arterial grid. These were later converted to the more flexible trolley buses that still serve the city today.
The most cost-effective electric transit option is to expand the existing trolley system at $1 million per kilometre and $1 million per articulated double trolley bus. Some light-rail transit along routes such as the Arbutus corridor could cost $50 million to $100 million per kilometre, compared with the subway at $500 million per kilometre.
Even the currently approved subway funding of $2.8 billion for only 5.8 kilometres could instead cover multiple routes of trolleys 13 kilometres each to UBC and still have funds left over for other priorities like affordable housing, including student housing at UBC.
There are more reasonable ways to serve UBC transit while still respecting regional municipal priorities. •
Elizabeth Murphy (info@elizabethmurphy.ca) is a private-sector project manager and was formerly a property development officer for the City of Vancouver’s housing and properties department and for BC Housing.
Well, it has taken almost 90 years for transit planners in North America to realize that by giving a streetcar a dedicated lane it becomes light rail. European transit planners clearly understood by the 1930’s that by giving a streetcar a dedicated route, its performance almost matched that of a much more expensive metro or railway.
Sadly, it will probably take another couple of decades for the City of Vancouver to understand this simple lesson.
When there is billions of dollars to squander on a subway, SNC Lavalin and Bombardier Inc. are laughing all the way to the bank!
Using low-cost materials like this concrete divider, Toronto set up new streetcar stops on the far side of intersections on King Street, enabling safer boarding and cutting down on time stopped at red lights. Photo: Human Transit
In crowded urban areas, cars aren’t the most efficient way to move people. That’s the lesson from Toronto’s one year King Street “pilot,” which prohibited through car traffic on the high-ridership streetcar corridor.
New data from the one-year pilot experiment shows the King Street corridor is moving more people than it did before the city cleared cars out to the way. That’s because removing car traffic from King Street improved streetcar service so much, ridership has grown 16 percent.
A total of about 84,000 people are using the King Street Streetcar along the east-west corridor daily, the city reports. But only 72,000 people were using the roadway before the street was redesigned to prioritize the streetcar.
The data comes from new report from the city’s transportation staff recommending the corridor design be made permanent. The city estimates it will cost just $1.5 million to make the improvements permanent, providing a dedicated lane for existing high-capacity surface transit one of the best transit investments available to cities.
Not only is the streetcar moving more people, thanks to its dedicated lane, riders are happier with service as well. The King Street Pilot resulted in about 30,000 minutes saved by riders daily, the city reports. It was especially effective reducing major delays. The slowest average journeys — at the evening rush hour — decreased by five minutes.
A graph showing travel times on the King Street Streetcar before and after it was given a dedicated travel lane. Graph: City of Toronto
“Prior to the pilot, overall customer satisfaction with King streetcar service was low on key measures such as travel time, comfort, and wait time,” city staff writes. “Through the pilot period, customer satisfaction on all these measures have significantly improved.”
Cycling rates have also increased. There are about 380 more daily cyclists on the corridor at the afternoon peak, according to the city, “likely because reduced motor vehicle volumes made it more comfortable to cycle.”
Drivers haven’t been duly inconvenienced, the data show. Car travel times on parallel corridors is roughly the same as before the pilot began in January, 2017.
The pilot did show that retail sales were down very slightly, about 0.8 percent, most notably from restaurants. But the city says that reflects a trend that was underway before the pilot. There were a number of very outspoken business owners that opposed the pilot. But, overall, at least according to the city’s data, the experiment does not appear to have been the retail apocalypse some predicted and was very positive for tens of thousands of daily streetcar riders.
It seems the good burghers of Chilliwack see the benefits of a rail servcie connecting Vancouver to Chilliwack.
A basic Vancouver to Chilliwack DMU servcie can be had for as little as $750 million and a more elaborate service using hydrogen powered trains or electric servcie, with several trips per direction each hour would cost around $1.5 billion.
Expensive you say?
Well compare it with a $3.5 billion, 5.8 km Broadway subway, or a $1.6 billion, 9 or 10 km extension of the Expo line to Fleetwood.
Rail for the Valley welcomes Chilliwack on board the Valley Express!
Community rail proponent Rick Green appeared as a delegation before Chilliwack council to make a pitch for hydrogen-powered light rail from Surrey to Chilliwack.
“We’re leading the charge for South Fraser Community Rail, and calling it The Plan,” said Green, a former mayor of Langley Township. “It’s the smart way to solve the south of Fraser transportation and transit deficit.”
Green has made his pitch before in presentations for B.C. Premier John Horgan and the TransLink Board, and said the idea is backed by former premier Bill Vander Zalm.
Essentially, the plan is to reactivate the old “interurban corridor” using existing track, for emissions-free passenger rail service, powered by Canadian hydrogen fuel cell technology.
It would be cost-effective, “at less than eight per cent of the cost per kilometre of the Surrey to Langley LRT,” Green noted.
The old line was “protected” by a previous government for passenger use at “no cost for its use” due to a right-of-way owned by the people of B.C.
The estimated cost for the South Fraser community rail is $12.5 million per kilometre “all in.”
It would see a “spine” established as the main rail line, and a “rib” or road network feeding it by bus from the Pattullo Bridge and Chilliwack, “in the same way as the Skytrain,” Green offered.
The rail line would be “building economic growth,” while serving more than a million residents in 16 cities and communities, as well as 14 post-secondary institutions, the Abbotsford Airport, tourism and agri-tourism.
The Fraser Valley airshed “gets exponentially worse every year,” but the rail line would reduce emissions.
“One train would remove 177 cars from Highway 1,” Green told council.
“Development is a funny thing. We would all like to go back to the way it was but that isn’t going to happen,” Green said. “The Fraser Valley is growing exponentially and we have to manage it so we are able to live with a good quality of life.”
Green took issue with the support given from Chilliwack politicians for highway expansion as a solution to daily gridlock.
“Widening Highway 1, really?” he said. “Let’s be honest with residents.”
He said that would mean that widening a few kilometres at a time, which would take decades to achieve, and growth would outpace the expansion.
So what makes the community rail idea so attractive right now? he asked.
“The renewal of passenger rights in the Pratt-Livingston corridor, which is the section that goes through the two Langleys,” he said. “And the introduction of Alstom hydrogen technology, a B.C. invention and Canadian manufactured propulsion system from Missisauga.”
Green said the technology has been successfully operating in Germany for the past two years.
Green concluded with “the ask” for council support to establish a community-led and provincially endorsed task force to push the community rail proposal forward.
Coun. Chris Kloot thanked Green for the presentation. He called it a “no-brainer” and noted if the political will was there, the proposal “will happen.”
“I think it’s a project that certainly needs to happen sooner rather than later,” Kloot said.
In the end city council voted unanimously to send a letter to the Fraser Valley Regional District asking that South Fraser Community Rail committee reps be given an opportunity to make the presentation to the FVRD board.
More details on the plan for South Fraser Community Rail.
Artist Jake Berman plots old public transport systems in period style. From LA to Toronto, San Francisco to Buffalo, he has created maps of cities’ modern transit too, so you can click and compare
By Aaron McArthur Reporter/Anchor Global News
While the Surrey to Langley SkyTrain extension is still very much in the early planning process, another group is pitching a passenger train linking Surrey with stations across the Fraser Valley.The South Fraser Community Rail Group believes rapid transit could be built south of the Fraser River utilizing the existing interurban rail line that runs from Chilliwack to the Pattullo Bridge at a fraction of the cost of SkyTrain, or even the light-rail project that was scrapped last year.
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