É«É«À²

Now, more than a century after É«É«À²’s first street rails were installed, there’s change afoot: The TTC has agreed its new Transit City lines will conform to the worldwide standard established in England in 1845, which is 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches (1.44 metres), a little more than two inches narrower than the TTC’s existing 4 feet, 10-7/8 inches (1.5 metres).

The TTC and Metrolinx, the provincial agency that is funding the Transit City lines on Finch, Sheppard and Eglinton Aves., want to make sure the new lines are compatible with any other light rail transit (LRT) that might be built in the future. Mississauga, Hamilton, Ottawa and Waterloo have all expressed an interest in LRT, although none is committed.

There are no plans yet to physically link regional systems to the TTC’s Transit City lines, but converting to the standardized gauge could help the province get a better price on streetcars, said Metrolinx vice-president John Howe.

“What we want to do is remove as much vehicle customization as possible, because we think we can achieve better value for the taxpayer by taking an international off-the-shelf standard design, basically the same proven LRT vehicles that are used elsewhere in Canada, the U.S. and Europe,” he said.

Metrolinx still isn’t saying whether it plans to exercise the TTC’s option to purchase the Transit City cars from Bombardier, which last summer was awarded the $1.2 billion contract to build 204 replacement cars for the 11 old TTC routes.

But the track gauge shouldn’t make much difference to the price because the wheels are adjustable, according to TTC Transit City spokesman Ryan Bissonnette.

“The current streetcars have actually been used on other systems. They used three streetcars in Boston. They just change the wheel base,” he said.

There are no plans to convert the TTC’s existing routes to standard gauge. The Transit City cars will link to the subway rather than the other streetcar lines, Bissonnette said. And the suburban cars also will be double-ended so they can be driven from the front or back.

So why does the TTC use a different track gauge, anyway?

“TTC gauge is `English carriage gauge’ and was used in É«É«À² well before the TTC was formed,” explains transit blogger Steve Munro. “There were two purposes: One was to make it impossible for the steam railways to use city tracks and the other (alleged) was to allow carriages and wagons to drive on the tracks when roads were impassable due to mud.”