August flooding damaged nine new TTC streetcars

Thestar.com
August 27, 2018
Ben Spurr

The torrential rain that inundated Toronto three weeks ago damaged nine of the TTC’s expensive new streetcars, four of which have been taken out of service indefinitely to undergo repairs, the transit agency said Monday.

Two of the Bombardier-made vehicles were stranded in a flooded rail underpass on King St. W. the night of Aug. 7, and sustained “severe damage” to their interiors, according to TTC spokesperson Stuart Green. At least one of the cars was swamped by what the TTC described the day after the storm as a mix of rainwater and “a quantity of human waste” from an overflowing sewer.

The streetcars that suffered severe damage were stranded in a flooded underpass on King St. W. on Aug. 7.

Green said both of those vehicles are being sent to a Bombardier facility in Kanona, N.Y., to undergo “major cleaning and repairs as well as parts replacement.”

Two more new streetcars in service that night also sustained significant damage, but will be repaired by Bombardier workers at the TTC’s Leslie Barns car house in Toronto “over the next couple of months, depending on the extent of the repairs needed,” Green said.

Five cars suffered only minor water damage, and have already been repaired and put back in service.

The storm damage to the vehicles, each of which cost almost $5 million, is only the latest mishap to hit the TTC’s new streetcar fleet.

The agency’s $1-billion order from Quebec-based Bombardier for 204 of the cars has faced repeated and highly publicized delays, although the company says it is on track to recover and deliver all of the cars by the end of next year as scheduled.

In July, the company revealed it will have to recall 67 of the vehicles over the next four years to fix a widespread welding defect.

There is no indication that the storm damage was related to any manufacturing problem. None of the TTC’s older model streetcars were damaged in the storm, but Green said that was likely because the agency now deploys its new, larger cars in busier downtown areas, which are lower-lying and more prone to flooding.

The TTC has taken delivery of 92 of the new cars to date, and the agency doesn’t expect the temporary loss of the four vehicles requiring extensive repairs to affect service.

Green said that while the transit agency is “fairly confident that the unique nature of this particular storm was the single greatest contributor” to the damage, the TTC has revised its extreme weather protocols to avoid a repeat of the problem.

“Based on that storm, now we have an even better understanding of which areas might be prone to flash flooding, so we can exercise a different level of caution in those areas, if we see storm warnings like this in the future,” he said.

Green couldn’t say how long the maintenance will take or how much it would cost, but said “we do have insurance for situations like this.”

More than 70 millimetres of rain fell on Toronto between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Aug. 7, causing flash floods throughout the city.

Photographs of the two streetcars in the King St. underpass just west of Sudbury St. were widely circulated online and in the media, and became symbols of Toronto’s struggle to cope with major storm events that experts say are becoming more frequent as a result of climate change.

Green said the TTC believes the flash flood blew a manhole cover near one of the cars on King and flooded it with a mixture of rainwater and sewage. A half-dozen passengers were on the car at the time and had to be evacuated as the water rose inside.

“We expect the damage (to the two worst-affected cars) will have impacted the electrical systems most heavily. We won’t be surprised if some components require replacement, complete replacement,” Green said.

An ongoing TTC review of the incident is looking at the operators’ conduct in relation to how the cars on King became stuck, but according to Green, the drivers “did all the right things in terms of getting passengers to safety in extremely difficult circumstances.”