Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) spokesperson Stuart Green says recent technical failures on the city’s new streetcar fleet are “natural.”
Green was responding to questions about June’s TTC CEO’s Report in which vehicle reliability of the new Flexity model streetcars from Bombardier fell well below the Commission’s set performance targets for early 2017.
“What we are seeing failures in certain aspects of the new streetcars that are resulting in anywhere from delays of five minutes to pulling the streetcars out of service.” Green told AM 640’s Kelly Cutrara Show.
“Really, It’s just growing pains. These are new designs and a lot of these components that are in our streetcar, it’s the first time they’ve ever been used.”
WATCH: The Toronto Transit Commission released a list of all subway and Scarborough RT delays between January 2014 and April 2017. All of the stoppages during that period totalled almost 2,100 hours.
In the report, there were 28 failures from the 37 new cars in April with the average car travelling 5,530 kilometres before experiencing a technical problem. That was well below the average in February which was a mean distance of 16,431 kilometres between issues.
New sliding doors, which replace bi-fold doors on previous models, have been one of the major operational issues plaguing the TTC. According to Green, the new design was a necessary update to comply with new accessibility needs.
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“You get these things that happen because of real world application,” said Green, “When we were having issues with the doors, early on, it identified as an issue with the speed in which they were opening. That’s one example of what we have to work through.”
READ MORE: TTC to replace 501 Queen streetcar with buses all summer
Mayor John Tory seemed to show little concern about the reliability issues on Wednesday, giving a similar response to the TTC’s issues saying he’s been re-assured that these problems are “getting ironed out.”
“I have been talking with the TTC and they in fact informed me that the story creates a bit of a false impression. There have been some issues with the doors mainly on the new streetcars but by in large they’ve been performing quite well and Bombardier has actively engaged in addressing the things that come up,” said Tory.
Meanwhile Bombardier followed suit with their partner in it’s assessment of the report, saying it’s “typical of the normal process of introducing a new fleet of vehicles.”
“When we get into this normal process, we see these issues come up and, as a responsible manufacturer, we address them and we make sure that we fix them,” Marc-André Lefebvre, Head of Communications and Public Relations for Bombardier told Global News.
“When you look at the actual projects that we’ve done with the TTC, we’ve delivered world-class performance vehicles like the Toronto Rocket. They are among industry-leading vehicles and offer the best performance throughout the world.”
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Meanwhile, Lefebvre confirmed that Bombardier is on track for the 204 new streetcars contracted to be delivered to the TTC by 2019.
“We’re going to be able to have 70 cars in total by the end of this year and we will have delivered all 204 cars by the end — the original contract deadline.”
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