A Brief Primer on Toronto’s Trolleybuses
The following brief history of Toronto’s Trolleybuses was provided by Avrom Shtern in the LRPPro blog and is worth a read as it somewhat mirrors Vancouver’s trolleybus situation.
Trolley Buses operated in TO between 1921 and 1993.
Frequently Asked Questions about Toronto’s Trolley Buses
(Last Modified on September 6, 2013 11:46 PM)
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Why did the trolley buses disappear from Toronto’s streets?Why did the trolley buses disappear from Toronto’s streets?
Bad timing, mostly. Electric vehicles have longer lifespans than their diesel counterparts (at least 30 years versus 12-18 for the average bus), but even these vehicles have to be rebuilt or replaced sometime. The most recent fleet of Toronto’s trolley coaches started operating in the year 1947. In the late 1960s, the TTC had the entire fleet rebuilt by Western Flyer, and that added another twenty or so years to the trolley buses’ lifespan. That brought the fleet to 1992.
By 1992, the fleet was showing its age again, and the infrastructure was also on its last legs. To retain trolley coach service, the TTC was looking at either rebuilding or replacing its fleet, and spending millions to upgrade aging infrastructure. The price of oil was also very low at this time, and the electric trolley buses had become the most expensive surface vehicles of the fleet to operate. Add to this a budget crunch and shrinking ridership from the recession, and the TTC decided that the trolley buses weren’t worth it, anymore.
The final straw was the natural gas buses. At the time, this new technology promised quiet, smooth operation and reduced pollution, and the builders marketed these buses as ideal replacements for trolley bus service. The TTC did not stop to think that these improvements only appeared when natural gas buses replaced diesels; instead, it pushed for a change of technology from electric trolleys to natural gas. The natural gas design has shown its flaws, since then, and the TTC are no longer as interested in the technology.
In general, trolley buses were the poor siblings of transit agencies’ streetcar and bus fleets. While theoreticially combining the advantages of streetcars and diesel buses (lower emissions, greater flexibility, less likely to be blocked by traffic), practically they also combined the disadvantages of both technologies (less capacity, more infrastructure required). In Toronto, the trolley buses were usually assigned to lower-demand residential ex-streetcar routes. Except for Bay and Ossington, they were never assigned to transit corridors where frequent service was required. Their adept handling of steep hills was never displayed in flat Toronto. In general, they were never given a chance to prove themselves.
Why did trolley buses use two trolley poles and streetcars only use one?Electrons are charged particles and are repelled from negatively charged surfaces and are attracted to positively charged surfaces. For electrical components to work, they must stand between this flow from negative to positive. If anything prevents electrons from running to the positive surface (e.g. the positive outlet of a battery or plug) from the negative surface (e.g. the ground or the negative outlet of the battery or plug), then there is no current, and electrical motors won’t operate.
Streetcars take power from a charged trolley wire. The electricity travels through the trolley pole and the inner workings of the streetcar and is channelled out of the wheels and into the rails and the ground. Trolley buses have rubber-tired wheels, however, and rubber is an effective insulator against electrical current. To have a current, the trolley bus must either string a metal chain from the motor to the ground, or return the power to a differently charged wire. Guess which is safer and more practical.
There are streetcars which operate using two trolley poles. Cleveland is one example. This is done when the transit agency wants a more controlled circuit, rather than routing the electricity into the ground via the rails.
Why were there two separate divisions of trolley bus routes in Toronto?
Eglinton Division and Lansdowne Division remained separate because the route that was to connect them together was never converted to trolley bus operation. The TTC had serious plans to convert the 32 Eglinton West bus to trolley coach operation (going as far as to construct a rollsign for it), but never followed through. It is possible that this was due to opposition by Forest Hill residents to the stringing of overhead wires along Eglinton Avenue.
So, how did trolley buses get transferred from one division to the other?They were towed.
Seriously, that’s probably how the TTC did it. Fortunately, they didn’t have to do this very often, as both the Eglinton and Lansdowne Garages had the facilities necessary to perform all of the necessary maintenance. Without the trolley wires, there was no other option in moving the trolley bus around. Well, you could try batteries, but batteries are the reason why Toronto’s Last Trolley Bus rots in a parking lot instead of runs on city streets.
So, how do you know this stuff?
We look it up. Here are the sources we’ve consulted in building these web pages. You may be able to find these publications in your local library…
Bromley, John F., and Jack May Fifty Years of Progressive Transit, Electric Railroaders’ Association, New York (New York), 1978.
Filey, Mike, Not a One-Horse Town: 125 Years of Toronto and its Streetcars, Gagne Printing, Louiseville (Quebec), 1986.
Filey, Mike, The TTC Story: The First Seventy-Five Years, Dundurn Press, Toronto (Ontario) 1996.
Roschlau, M.W., ‘Adieu, Mt Pleasant’ Rail and Transit, Sept-Oct 1976, The Upper Canada Railway Society, Toronto (Ontario), 1976.
Scrimgeour, Pat and Scott Haskill., ‘Toronto Trolley Coaches Stored’, Rail and Transit, January 1992, p3-4, The Upper Canada Railway Society, Toronto (Ontario).
Toronto Transit Commission, Trolley Coach CC&F and Flyer Coaches, The Toronto Transit Commission, Toronto (Ontario), January 1987.
Wickson, Ted, ‘TTC leases 30 Edmonton trolley coaches’, UCRS Newsletter, July 1990, p19, The Upper Canada Railway Society, Toronto (Ontario).
Several of Toronto’s and Hamilton’s last Trolley Coaches are on display and in working order at Halton County Radial Railway and Museum. Unfortunately they do not have working trolley bus overhead yet. They are working on it and one day they might but, they are only a not for profit museum operation and every dollar that is made has multiple critical uses planned for it.
Thanks for the history lesson on trolleybuses in Toronto. Replacing the 60 passenger capacity trolleybuses with 300 passenger capacity trams is financially and environmentally prudent for our high volume trolleybus routes in Vancouver (Broadway) and was the prudent thing for Cambie Street, too, in my opinion.
I was on Cambie Street yesterday at about 6 PM and the No. 15 “diesel bus” had one person on it. Before the subway on Cambie Street (boy did that subway reduce road congestion with all the bumper to bumper cars on Cambie Street) in Vancouver, we had trolleybuses. I really do not see how the soot blowing diesel buses on Cambie Street have improved the air quality.
Since the subway under Cambie Street, vehicle counts on Cambie Street have jumped. I’ll leave it to the “bright” City of Vancouver transportation staff to tell us what the new vehicle count is on Cambie Street. How does increasing road congestion with subways reduce road congestion? Gregor is using the “success” of the subway which has increased road congestion on Cambie Street to justify the subway to UBC? Vancouver Sun “reporters” have let this one fall through the cracks, as usual.
I was simply curious, how many of the new buses planned in the current transit plan, the one you guys are voting on anyway, are Trolley Buses and do they plan to retain the network?
Zwei replies: The plan calls for 400 new buses and I believe 0 trolleys. Local transit guru, Stephen Rees said in a blog reply, quoting another transit blog; “With more than 1500 buses, the Translink bus fleet is oversized. At peak hour, only ~1000 buses are in revenue service:” – See more at: http://northerninsights.blogspot.ca/2015/02/a-camel-is-horse.html#comment-form
This indicates to me that they do not have the man power to operate those extra 500 buses, let alone operate 400 more.
Does anyone at TransLink have a brain? If the morons at TransLink are planning to run 400 more buses to shuttle enough riders to s-train (even at $100 per hour which is low and conservative, the driver costs $30 per hour, just salary without benefits) here for just 20 hours daily, it costs TransLink $292 million annually. I don’t know, the more I learn, the more baffled I am by these idiots.
Here is my draft to Greg Moore in response to his assertion that we are doomed without more funding for Trans-link. It is titled, Do pigs fly? Can more hub to hub transit by TransLink really reduce road congestion?
Preamble
By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun February 13, 2015 4:00 PM
http://www.vancouversun.com/side+transit+plebiscite+feels+TransLink+recent+actions+help+cause/10812693/story.html
“By voting No because you don’t like the (TransLink) governance you’re not sending a message,” said Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore. “You’re saying ‘we don’t like the plan or the funding source.’ And we will be stuck in congestion.”
“Our members are very supportive of the Yes vote, given the congestion in New Westminster,” said CEO Cori Lynn Germiquet, adding 33 per cent of members are small businesses. This is a congestion issue for Metro Vancouver and that costs businesses a huge amount of money in terms of transporting goods and services and getting their members to work on time.”
Greg Moore and Cori Lynn Germiquet,
Fine, there is no use in arguing with you. Yes, getting more drivers to take transit might reduce the number of cars on the roads as you contend. If we vote no to throwing more good money after bad and end the further fleecing of taxpayers by TransLink, which is already over funded by 33%, the road congestion is depicted on top in the following figure and if we vote yes to throwing more good money after bad and allow TransLink to continue its wayward ways, the road congestion is depicted on the bottom in the following figure:
http://www.notranslinktax.ca/
Do you see much difference either way in these figures? Professional registered engineers with APEGBC have shown that only 53,000 cars are added to the roads at most if transit is shut down during the morning commute (2011 report). For the over 10,000 kilometres of paved roads (single or multiple lane) used by transit buses and other vehicles in Metro Vancouver, road congestion increases by no more than 1% without any transit at all. Transit does essentially nothing to reduce road congestion; yet, reporters at The Vancouver Sun refuse to report this and continue to extol the “virtues” of transit buses poisoning us with harmful diesel exhaust fumes.
https://www.apeg.bc.ca/Home
TransLink’s “hypothetical” reductions in road congestion as well as concomitant reductions in air pollution and carbon emissions are suppositions derived from assumptions contradicting reality. TransLink not only assumes that transit does not degrade the air quality or emit carbon emission but also assumes that transit does not hamper traffic flow. These assumptions are like assuming that pigs fly, and pigs don’t really fly except in the Dorito commercial during the Super bowl.
http://admeter.usatoday.com/commercials/doritos-pigs-fly-super-bowl-commercial/
If the road congestion by the transit buses clogging up the roads is taken into account, does transit reducing road space for drivers increase or decrease road congestion? I don’t want to debate whether transit does or does not reduce road congestion; there can be no consensus, and it is a pointless waste of time, in any case.
“When are politicians going to get over the ideological allure of transit and address the realities? Studies show it doesn’t really conserve resources, because all those big, fuel-burning buses frequently have just a few people on board. And transit is s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-w, and often uncomfortable.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/08/25/kelly-mcparland-public-transit-stinks-statscan-confirms/
“Few ideas have proven more powerful in shaping Canadians’ thinking about urban transit than this: Building roads is self-defeating. Like those famous South Sea Islanders who built crude wharves thinking that it was the wharves that caused cargo ships to appear and unload valuable goods, those holding this view believed that building highways could never solve our transit woes because the mere existence of the roads would conjure up more cars.
This theory drives much of our preoccupation with building highly expensive urban transit – subways, light rail, dedicated bus lanes and more – because, the argument goes, we break the cycle of dependence on the car and cut congestion by shifting resources away from road building and into transit.
Except it’s not true. As urban geographer Wendell Cox likes to say, this idea that road construction only worsens congestion is like believing that building more maternity wards will cause more babies to be born.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/sick-of-congestion-build-roads-not-transit/article16107135/
“Prudent path forward for Metro Vancouver transportation”
Rather than bicker about the cost of the funding for TransLink or the supposed vehicle reductions by transit, I want to discuss the most prudent path forward for future transportation in Metro Vancouver. Two things benefiting both the environment and economy can be done to improve transportation for vehicle owners and transit users:
• Build more bridges to spread out traffic and reduce road congestion for all commuters
• Replace low capacity diesel bus routes (polluting) with high capacity electric tram routes (non-polluting)
All the suppositions about transit reducing air pollution and carbon emissions fall to pieces if road congestion continues unabated (our current path). Here is what the bozos at TransLink have accomplished after 16 years of building subway and sky train lines:
• Vancouver has the worst road congestion in Canada
• Transit by TransLink is the most expensive in Canada
• Transit routes with FTN service have the worst air quality in Canada
Since we have no Plan B for the Plan A, which is to increase spending for TransLink to continue to succeed at failing: if we shoot down Plan A, we’ll move right onto Plan C which is the elimination of TransLink for Metro Vancouver to run affordable transit and build more bridges – to relieve road congestion by transit buses and other vehicles on the overwhelmed bridges. Plan C, I like.
Putting people on transit, in fact, kills vehicle sales. Millions of Canadians relying on the automobile industry for jobs lose their jobs, as a result, and the economy falters. Electric cars do not pollute the air. Diesel buses operated by TransLink pollute the air. There is no environmental imperative favouring transit, today, as there was in the past. As far as the large number of drivers who drive gasoline powered cars goes, cutting the commuting time of drivers on the roads by 50%, with more bridges to avoid time wasted in traffic, for instance, has a corresponding reduction in carbon emissions, air pollution and road congestion – this is far more beneficial than forcing a few drivers kicking and screaming onto transit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuE2eZSDBIY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_h-WxZgMfM
http://www.electricbike.com/specialized_turbo/
Replacing the 99 B-Line route moving 2,000 people per hour (100 passengers every 3 minutes) with the tram line moving up to 6,000 people per hour (300 passengers every 3 minutes) costs no more than $325 million. Replacing the 99 B-Line route moving 2,000 people per hour with the extension of the Millennium Line to UBC in the subway carrying about 12,000 people per hour costs $5 billion. Adding another tram line on another bus parallel route to UBC moves 12,000 people per hour to UBC for $650 million and saves taxpayers about $4.35 billion. It also removes all the diesel buses which the subway will not remove and requires to get transit users to the subway.
Plan C, I like. I don’t like you and others like you who can’t prove anything that you claim about transit by TransLink which is nothing more than an expensive scam by the swindlers fleecing taxpayers to essentially embezzle billions of dollars for the firms building infrastructure for the hub to hub transit here (subway and s-train lines).
Eric Chris, Vancouver
It sounds more like to me that there is a maintenance issue going on somewhere. Most transit managers keep 10% off road at peak for replacements and emergencies, some up to 17% but according to your figures 1 in 3 are not moving. If it were a lack of drivers they would be turning over (a great number of buses but, they really don’t. According to CUTA their (Translink) vehicle turnover use is no higher than most operations. Unless there is a great number of vehicles hidden in long term storage somewhere, this points to maintenance issues. A lack of maintenance staff or a lack of facilities, maybe both?
It has been my experience that, transit operations don’t order huge numbers of anything as expensive and complex as a modern low floor bus and then just store it because they don’t have the operators. The problem can be as simple as a an overly expensive or the more common, under supplied engine component. Orion Bus (before it shutdown forever) had this problem a few years ago with their Hybrid Batteries and mounting clips. Many of the clips didn’t fit the batteries used and the batteries themselves failed at a very high rate compared to other models. This caused huge headaches for the TTC, OC Transpo, STM and many other large transit agencies that operated that particular model of Hybrid Bus.
A few years ago, a bus manufacturing company that masks itself as a Canadian Bus Manufacturer but, is really European, even though like most manufacturers they mostly use GM parts, had problems with a minor piece of engine technology. When the engine temperature dropped below a certain temperature, a sensor on the fuel pump system would automatically shutdown the pump to save on excessive fuel pump wear. The issue was that, if you lived anywhere where the temperature went below 4 or 5 degrees C your buses would shutdown. It would shutdown anywhere out in the street, or in a cold maintenance/storage garage (and trust me boy, are some of those bus garages cold) or when they are being stored outside. The real chore was restarting them.
Mainly Ontario and Quebec operators were hit with this issue. The problem was fixed easily enough when the manufacturer was bombarded with calls from most of their cold weather customers including, just about every operator in the province of Quebec. I am also quite sure that, the emergency visit/inspection to that particular company’s Quebec manufacturing plant by members of the regulatory and standards division of the Quebec Ministry of Transport, also helped to ensure a really quick fix. The improper factory default setting a sensor tolerance level was thankfully only a temporary issue but it did sideline an enormous number of vehicles.