TRANSPORTATION
• City a step closer to new streetcars [ National Post ]
• Ontario passes cellphone driving ban [ Globe & Mail ]
• A fund for roads and bridges [ National Post ]
• Revolt on the rails [ NOW ]
• Toronto firm fails to get TTC contract, may launch legal
challenge [ Globe & Mail ]
OTHER NEWS
• Toronto economic summit scheduled for May [ Globe & Mail ]
• City Hall briefing on economy hush-hush [ Toronto Star ]
• Let’s send the final deceits of the Harris years down the
drain [ Globe & Mail ]
• Museum goes postal [ EYE Weekly ]
• Blue bins have to go big or go (back into) home [ Toronto Star ]
• Don’t count on it [ EYE Weekly ]
• Build Toronto steals CFO from TCHC [ National Post ]
• WiFi’s white knight? [ NOW ]
17 comments
In response to this Star editorial:
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/622779 (Transit contracts and jobs at home)
If Melbourne’s trams were made in France, and Charlotte’s came from Germany, and Istanbul’s came from Switzerland, there really is no teeth to arguing that Toronto’s streetcars should be locally-made. Mandated local content sounds like a nice idea but is no longer logical.
When the iconic PCC streetcars were made in the 1940s, Ontario had lots of heavy industry and it was not a problem to have Canadian Car & Foundry churn out the American-designed classic streetcars. These days, Canadian heavy industry is non-existant and there are very few rail vehicle factories anywhere in the world. You’d have trouble getting an order for 200 bicycles made in Canada, never mind a highly-specialized streetcar. It is entirely normal now for such vehicles to have components sourced globally (no different than an airplane).
As for Bombardier, it’s a nice point of pride that they went from building snowmobiles to owning so much transpo production but they are, after all, hardly a Canadian company these days, at least not in light rail. Their transit designers and light rail factories are in Europe, not Montreal or Thunder Bay, and the Flexity comes out of factories in Austria. I would be pleased if they won the contract, but what are they going to find locally to stick in that vehicle to make up the 25%, some light bulbs and a bit of plastic seating?
All you can really do is try to scrape together some assembly jobs, and even those are not as practical as they once were since the numbers are very small for building an entire assembly line and it is so easy to just globally ship a streetcar from elsewhere.
The TTC is doing the right thing by studying the best practices of the light-rail industry and following suit. The Star makes a good point that there are multiple sub-industries involved in transit, and what’s true in light rail may not be true in buses (where Ontario does have a local factory), but in general be wary of uneducated local politicians (or the screwed-up union politics of the US). Regardless of who wins the contract tomorrow, the TTC has followed a process that is the right choice for fares, not votes, and it should stay that way.
USkyscraper…you use the word “logic” quite a bit in your piece. The only “logic” I see on this issue is that once a jurisdiction loses a hi-tech manufacturing capacity (such as autos, transit, etc.), it’s a hell of a struggle to get it back. And pace the likes of Richard Florida, that does not bode well for long-term economic health.
We live in a world where every jurisdiction seems to preach free trade but many want to subsidize various industries (often in the form of direct subsidies or indirectly in the form of low health/safety/envirnomental regulations or low wages). I don’t think that it is the TTC’s role to decide on its own to adopt a “buy Canadian” policy. But I do think that it is the role of the feds and the provs to have policies/benchmarks (for spending in Canada) in the public sector (including the TTC) where possible.
I with samg on this one. I want to make sure that my tax dollars go towards as much Canadian content as possible. I want assurances that price differentials are not the result of mercantilist practices. For example I would like to be assured that the the steel used does not come from China. Which has come to dominate the world’s steel industry not by any any efficiencies but by being able to produce steel in a manner in which is cheaper because it is dirtier….
” TreeHugger’s John Chamber’s has reported on AAM’s recent study of China’s steel industry. Chambers notes that steel production in China creates 5 times more sulfer dioxide, 18 times more particulate matter and 3 times more nitrogen oxides per ton of steel than that of production in the United States.Moreover, carbon emissions for each ton made in China are twice that of their American counterparts. The American steel industry has worked hard to cut their environmental footprint. The reduction of greenhouse gases means industry has surpassed Kyoto target by 240%. Plus, the Chinese companies can expect smaller fines for non-compliance of environmental standards for the iron-based resource from their centralized governments. The maximum fine in China is $14,000.00 compared to $450,000.00 in the United States.”
(
http://www.manufacturethis.org/2009/04/21/american-steel-is-cleaner-than-chinese-steel/ )
It’s metallurgical coal is locally sourced and sold at a fraction of market prices to its steel industry.
More Canadian jobs, plus add in the multiplier effect along with new trains is better than slightly cheaper new trains without the jobs. I would wager that over thier lifetime the net tax benefit of more local content would more than compensate for any price difference.
In RIchard Florida’s GTA nobody makes anything anymore, we just sit around thinking and stuff magically appears regardless of the carbon footprint to ship it here.
Glen, samg — the cow, or in this case, streetcar, already left the barn. My point is that the capacity is already gone so there is no point trying to go to enormous cost to restart that industry now. We tried this approach already – look up UTDC on Wikipedia – and it failed. Oh well, turns out we can locally design and build buses but not LRT. Onward and upward.
I don’t think people realize this because they confuse subway cars or rail locomotives with light rail or think you can build a streetcar as easily as building a piece of furniture. Thunder Bay today does make subway cars but they do NOT have the production line to make Flexity. That facility is in Europe since it was an AdTranz product originally. You can’t just pop them out of TB on a whim. (Someone from Bombardier please correct me if I am wrong here.) So, since the local option does not exist, there is no point in trying to choose it. You can’t spend money on something that does not exist, and it would be foolhardy to force an entire assembly line to be built for 200 streetcars regardless of carbon footprint eco-calcs. We’re not talking 100,000 Camaros here.
Speaking of hot air, we’re wasting it over a dead topic – use the energy and political capital on something else where local choices still exist, like which firms can bid track work or subway station engineering. By supporting these options while they are still around you will meet the goals you mention above.
uSkyscraper… whether or not the cow or the streetcar has already left the barn, following your suggested course of action may well result in the barn being completely emptied in very short order.
I don’t pretend to know what the answer is with regards to Canadian content… but I do know that the fact that our manufacturing capacity is in freefall is not a solid argument against Canadian content rules when it comes to public spending.
Maybe we need to better job of looking at why our manufacturing capacity has been decimated, the impact this will have on our economy, and why so many other jurisdictions in developed countries are doing their damnest to ensure that they are able to hold on to a core of hi-tech manufacturing industries.
uSkyscraper,
Someone should tell the workers in Thunder Bay that they cannot build it…..
” Workers in Thunder Bay are pleading with the TTC to let them build Toronto’s new streetcar. ”
or that it would be unfeasible to open a production site here….
“If the Siemens bid is successful, the company would open a new assembly plant in Canada, said its director of mobility, Mario Péloquin. ”
http://www.thestar.com/article/595536
UTDC’s failure was not the result of location!
Lets build electric commuter trains for GOs dirty trains on the Georgetown and newmarket expansions. Bombardier builds them for the world already. GO seems unaware.
“GO Transit is also working with the manufacturer, MotivePower Industries, to develop a dual-mode locomotive that can run on diesel or electric power, capable of operating on electrified or non-electrified lines. The Province has proposed that we electrify our Lakeshore corridor.”
http://www.gotransit.com/PUBLIC/en/news/goexpansion.htm#NewGOlocomotives
MotivePower appear to be headquartered in Boise, ID, USA.
http://www.motivepower-wabtec.com/
We’re not necessarily unable to build nothing, but specialization and the passage of time has winnowed the field in all nations. It turned out that Ontario has a great bus factory (Orion) and a great commuter-coach factory (Bombardier) that both were able to manufacture, compete, and win and now export around the world. UTDC failed for a number of reasons, but its products died out and are not coming back. Assembly, sure, logistics alone probably encourage final assembly to happen near the client city (Siemens would no doubt put it in Southern Ontario) but that wasn’t what the Star editorial was talking about.
My original gist here was that the Star was editorializing to perhaps increase the CanCon %, with political guidance, and no doubt there will be great gnashing of teeth about foreign devils should Siemens win. I think that’s media oversimplification and feel that going above 25% would be counter-productive for the reasons stated above. I wouldn’t tell Seattle to make Sounder commuter coaches locally any more than I would tell the TTC to buy 60%-Canadian streetcars. It’s not reality. Let’s accept whatever is awarded, move on and think about other TTC problems instead.
All this posting has me drooling for tomorrow’s PR…
I am a bit surprised by the lack of coverage on the talks yesterday by Ms. Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner of New York City at Downtown and Port Credit. They are doing great things at NYC, closing traffic lanes to turn into otudoor patio and bike lanes, closing off Broadway at Times Square into a pedestrain streets, and so on. But the truely amazing part is speed with which they are doing it, many projects takes a few weeks to do, instead of multi-years/never if it were to be done here in TO. They just paint the street lane a different color, lining it with some cones, and throw in a bunch a patio tables and chairs, mission accomplished! It is almost like the urban repair squad is running the transportation department in NYC. Her trick is to do these as temporary “pilot” projects, which is good for a year, then she has to report back to the mayor and council to decide if these are keepers or not. Thus she just leapfrog all the hoops that she would have gone through they were permanent changes, and get things done with her and the mayor’s administrative power. The key thing is that, once it is done, people can see it with their own eyes and experience it, and decide if they like the changes or not, there is a much big chance for people to accept the changes. Whereas here we always keep debating on paper, which always favour the status-quo. It is so exciting too see the possibility, if we can adopt a similar model here.
yu- we have limited resources to cover things – however the talk is the subject of the next Spacing podcast.
For an example of how “buy Canadian” policies don’t really do anything to save industries, consider the Canadian shipbuilding industry: almost immediately after finishing the Canadian Patrol Frigate program, of which they were the prime contractors, Canada’s two largest naval shipbuilders — MIL-Davie and Saint John Shipbuilding — went bankrupt.
Handing Bombardier the contract without any competition would be a band-aid solution — or worse than that: to survive, Bombardier needs to compete in the global market, not just depend on handouts from Toronto. It could be another 30 years before another streetcar purchase is made. So, sorry Thunder Bay, if your streetcars aren’t the best value for Toronto, you won’t be selling them anywhere else, either.
yu – There was an article in today’s Star that wasn’t included in today’s list.
Manhattan planner (un)paves the way [Toronto Star]
Forgot to mention that the print edition had a picture of her riding the GO train to or from Port Credit.
Brent, thanks for the link. I knew there had to be something on Star.
Andrew, I don’t think that Bombardier is depending on Toronto for ‘handouts’ as they currently operate and/or have orders for Flexity trams in Frankfurt, Brussels, Valencia, Innsbruck, Krakow, Dresden, Dortmund, Augsburg, and Krefeld. Is that ‘global’ enough for you? Still, I’m sure that they would appreciate a little local business.
uSkyscraper, Cycles Devinci (of Chicoutimi QC) has just designed and built 3000 bikes for Montréal’s BIXI bikeshare program and they are one of the premier bike manufacturers in North America. I’m sure that they could accommodate an order for a mere 200, just tell them that Todd referred you!
Outside of Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland and maybe Erie, I doubt that very many cities are looking to Toronto for inspiration, particularly in regards to public transit.