The
Urban Transportation Development Corporation, or
UTDC as it was commonly known, was an Ontario, Canada
, Crown corporation
created in the 1970s as a way to enter what was then expected to be
a burgeoning market in advanced light
rail mass transit systems.
UTDC developed a vehicle that would provide service at rider levels
between what would normally be served by a traditional
subway on the upper end or busses and
streetcars on the lower, filling a niche aimed at
suburbs that were otherwise expensive to service. The
Intermediate Capacity
Transit System (ICTS) found sales with the
Toronto Transit Commission (TTC),
the
Detroit People Mover and
the
Vancouver SkyTrain.
Further sales proved more difficult than initially hoped, and there
were questions about the company's ability to survive. In the early
1980s,
Hawker Siddeley Canada
joined forces with UTDC in order to win a number of contracts with
the TTC and
GO Transit.
Forming a joint
operating company at their Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F)
factories in Thunder Bay,
Ontario
, Can-Car Rail built heavy-rail
passenger cars, subway cars, streetcars and other vehicles.
Now armed with a complete portfolio from light to heavy rail, UTDC
had a number of additional "wins" across North America, becoming a
major vendor in the mass transit market. It was eventually
privatized in the 1980s, when it was purchased by
Lavalin of Quebec. Lavlin ran into financial
difficulties in the early 1990s and sold its interest in UTDC to
Bombardier in 1991.
Bombardier operates UTDC as part of their
Bombardier Transportation brand.
Bombardier has had greater success marketing the product portfolio
abroad, and the ICTS, now known as the
Advanced Rapid Transit
(ART), has been sold to a number of new operators and is currently
in operation or under expansion in seven cities around the world.
Bombardier often relies on Lavalin's new owners,
SNC-Lavalin, to plan the construction of the
rights-of-way and set up the operations centers.
The UTDC factories in
Kingston,
Ontario
and Thunder Bay continue to produce rapid transit
systems for use in Ontario and abroad.
History
Genesis
Toronto
grew
extensively during the 1960s and 70s, and like many cities in North
America, most of this growth was in the suburbs. In order to move workers to and from
the business and industrial areas in the city center, an extensive
series of
expressways was planned, and
made their way into the city's Official Plan in 1966. As work on
the new hiways started, a wave of public protest followed as many
houses, and in some cases entire neighborhoods, were bulldozed to
make way. The work became increasingly opposed in Toronto,
especially after the cause was taken up by famous urban
commentator,
Jane Jacobs.
In 1971
Bill Davis won the
Progressive
Conservative Party of Ontario leadership contest, replacing
long-serving
John Robarts as the
official party leader.
Shortly after taking power, on 3 June Davis
announced that he was canceling provincial support for the highly
controversial Spadina Expressway
in Toronto, rising in
the legislature and stating that "Cities were built for people and
not cars. If we are building a transportation system to
serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good place
to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve
people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop."
Davis felt that the future of urban transit lay not in the
automobile, but mass rapid transit systems. In keeping with this,
the street portion of the Spadina Expressway was canceled in 1971,
but full funding remained for the
subway line that shared the
same right-of-way. However, subways were suitable only for
high-density routes that could afford to pay for their expensive
construction and operation. In 1980 this was estimated to be
between $75 and $80 million a mile. The TTC suggested that all of
the high-density routes suitable for subways were already being
served.
The other vehicles in use with the TTC, buses and streetcars, would
not be able to provide rapid transit unless they were given a
separate right-of-way. This expense is easy to justify in the case
of a subway with its large passenger capacity, but for a system
like a bus the capital costs overwhelm the passenger numbers these
systems could carry. What was needed was a new system that reduced
the capital costs to be able to efficiently serve low-density
routes in the suburbs, a system with flexible sizing somewhere
between a small subway and large streetcar, an "intermediate" sized
system.
ICTS
Work on an "Intermediate Capacity Transit System", or ICTS, had
already started in 1970. Several consulting firms were asked to
provide separate feasibility reports with outlines of a basic
system. At the time, new urban transit systems were a field of
active research across North America due to U.S. federal funding
under the
Urban
Mass Transportation Administration's (UMTA) plans to roll out
new systems in cities across the country. UMTA was convinced that
urban rail systems would only be able to compete with cars if they
had more car-like capabilities, and they were primarily interested
in the
personal rapid transit
(PRT) concept of automated car-like cabs that would pick up and
drop off passengers as individual units and then link up into
longer trains for travel at high speed between stations. A number
of companies in the U.S. were in the process of developing systems
for the UMTA, and many of these companies submitted a proposal for
the ICTS project.
It was with the formation of the new
Ministry of Transportation
and Communications in May 1972 that serious development of the
ICTS started. On 22 November the new policy was announced. The
Davis government proposed a new rail network known as "
GO-URBAN" that would operate three routes in the
Toronto area under the auspices of the recently created
GO Transit, and asked for submissions for ICTS
vehicles to service the routes. Fourteen designs were initially
studied, but whittled down to eight formal proposals. Some were PRT
systems, while others were more traditional subway-like systems.
Three of
the eight ran on rubber wheels, four were air cushion vehicles
(hovercrafts) including a version of the
famous French Aérotrain
, while the German firm Krauss-Maffei entered their Transurban system, a smaller version of their
Transrapid magnetically levitated
train.
The
space age maglev system immediately
won the interest of the Davis government, and in the Phase II
proposals they selected it for further study, along with
Ford's
ACT and Hawker
Siddeley's entry, both of which used rubber tires. Ford withdrew
when the ICTS varied too greatly from the system they wanted to
develop, which was aimed primarily at sites in the U.S. With only
Hawker Siddeley and Krauss-Maffei remaining, the 1 May 1973
announcement that the Krauss-Maffei design had won the contest was
unsurprising.
In November 1974 Krauss-Maffei announced that they were forced to
withdraw from the project. The West German government had been
funding development of several maglev systems based on different
technologies, and decided at that time that Krauss-Maffei's system
was less interesting that ones from
Thyssen-Henschel and
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm.
There were also technical problems; in testing, the complex systems
needed to switch trains on the magnetic tracks froze up, and would
require a re-design. With Krauss-Maffei's financial support gone,
and daunting technical problems remaining to be solved, the maglev
project died.
A test track being constructed on the grounds
of the CNE
was abandoned in place, with the foundations and a
few support pillars already constructed. Krauss-Maffei
continued development of the original inter-city Transrapid, but at
a very slow pace and through a series of mergers with other
companies involved in maglev technology. The first Transrapid
system did not enter service until 30 years later.
UTDC
On 14 April 1975 the Ministry of Transportation arranged financing
for Phase I and II studies to develop a new system to replace the
maglev. In June 1975 OTDC announced that it had arranged a
consortium to continue the development of the ICTS, changing their
name to
Urban Transportation Development
Corporation to avoid any "provinciality" during their
efforts to market what would now be an entirely local design to
other cities. The consortium consisted of
SPAR Aerospace for the
linear induction motor, SEL for the
automatic control system,
Dofasco for an
articulated
bogie system,
Alcan for the design of the car bodies and a set of
prototypes, and
Canadair for assembly and
production.
A
development and testing center for UTDC was built on a 480-acre
site in Millhaven, outside of Kingston, Ontario. Kingston had been home to the
Canadian Locomotive Company that
closed its doors in 1969, and the city lobbied hard for the new
company to locate to their city. It was officially opened on 29
September 1978 by
James Snow, the
Minister of Transportation and Communications. The site included a
1.9 km oval test track that included at-grade, elevated and
ramped sections, switches, and the automatic control center. Phase
III of the ICTS program ended on 31 January 1980 when testing on
the prototype was completed at the Millhaven site, by this point
the government had invested about $57.2 million, of a total $63
million spent on the product by the government and its industrial
partners.
Looking for a site in Ontario to serve as a testbed for the ICTS,
the government focused on an extension of the eastern end of TTC's
Bloor-Danforth line.
The TTC
had already started building a streetcar line that would extend
from the end of the subway at Kennedy station
to the Scarborough City Centre
, a low-density route passing through industrial
land. They were not interested in changing to the ICTS for
this route, until the Ontario government, who provided about 80% of
the capital costs, stepped in and demanded the ICTS be used.
A smaller
system in Hamilton
was also considered, and there was a brief study
for a similar system in Ottawa
.
Vancouver
was interested in the system as part of the
Expo 86 buildout in keeping with their
theme, "Transportation and Communication". In spite of the
UMTA program in the US being "de-funded" that year, Detroit pressed
ahead with their plans and signed up in August.
Hamilton, Ottawa, Miami
, Los Angeles
and Washington, DC
were also in talks with UTDC. With three
customers lined up, a manufacturing plant was added to the
Millhaven site, VentureTrans Manufacturing, which opened in
1982.
In 1982 UTDC also entered a design to offer rail service to the
suburbs east of Toronto, a system known as
GO
ALRT. ALRT was based on the ICTS technology, but used a longer
car about the size of a conventional railway passenger car, and
replaced the third rail power with an overhead
pantograph. Given the larger sized cars
that made mechanical placements easier, conventional motors
replaced the linear motor in order to reduce capital costs (the
linear motor requires an aluminum "fourth rail" for the entire
line). However, due to changes in the laws governing the operation
of GO trains on the freight railroads they ran on, GO was able to
improve their schedules without having to build any new
infrastructure. ALRT was canceled in 1985 in favor of conventional
heavy rail technology.
UTCD would later play an important part in
this buildout in spite of these changes, and, ironically, GO would
eventually build their own twin-line line to Oshawa
to allow for
expanded scheduling.
Construction of the Toronto and Vancouver systems proceeded apace,
with the
Scarborough RT opening
for service on 22 March 1985, followed by the
SkyTrain on 11 December 1985, with
passenger service starting in January. The systems suffered from
serious teething problems; snow froze to the
third rail which required the Scarborough RT
system to be fitted with protective covers. The braking system was
too powerful and caused the wheels to rub flat in spots, which led
to noisy running, the opposite of the design goal. Bugs in the
automatic control software led to a number of problems with doors
that would not open, "phantom cars" that would appear mid-line and
cause the collision avoidance systems to turn on and freeze trains
in place in spite of having a driver, and a host of other problems
that seriously delayed scheduled operations. In Toronto, the
Scarborough RT became a subject of ridicule, often closing in heavy
snows. Most of the problems with the Toronto and Vancouver systems
were worked out by the time the
Detroit People Mover officially opened
in July 1987.
Can-Car Rail
Starting in 1972, the TTC contracted
Hawker Siddeley Canada to design a
new streetcar known as the "Municipal Surface Car". However, with
the formation of the OTDC in the early 1970s, and with the TTC
getting 75% of its capital funding from the provincial government,
it was not entirely surprising that they demanded the TTC turn to
OTDC for new vehicles, in spite of protests to the contrary.
In August 1973 the TTC placed an order for 200 new vehicles from
OTDC, the
Canadian Light
Rail Vehicle (CLRV). The design was purchased from the Swiss
company
Schweizerische Industrie
Gesellschaft (SIG), who were contracted to build the first 10
before turning over construction to OTDC, subcontracted at Hawker
Siddeley's CC&F factory in Thunder Bay. The prototype run was
cut to 6, in order to allow 4 to be converted into an articulated
design, the
Articulated
Light Rail Vehicle (ALRV).
In March 1983
Hawker Siddeley
Canada sold a portion of their CC&F factory in Thunder Bay
to the UTDC, creating the jointly owned
Can-Car
Rail. Hawker Siddeley had already developed a number of
rail vehicles, and with its partnership with UTDC these became the
favored products for a number of contracts in Ontario. In addition
to the ICTS, UTDC now had a product portfolio that spanned
everything from streetcars to subways to traditional heavy rail
passenger cars and hoppers.
Continued wins
In December 1983 the TTC announced they were buying 126 subway cars
from UTDC, and followed this in February 1984 with an order for 52
ALRV's. The subway cars were built at Car-Car, but after the first
ten ALRV's, streetcar production moved to the Millhaven plants
which were winding down their ICTS production.
A further
run of a modified double-ended ALRV's followed for the Santa Clara Valley
Transportation Authority, and then a run of 58 subway cars for
the Massachusetts Bay
Transportation Authority in Boston
.
These were the first of many such orders, and eventually hundreds
of subway cars were delivered to various U.S. transport services
over the next two decades.
Since the early 1970s, Hawker Siddeley had been designing a new
two-level railcar for
GO Transit, which
they started delivering in 1976 as the
BiLevel. GO continued placing
additional orders, eventually buying 470 for their service in
southern Ontario, where the BiLevel is widely associated with
GO.
When downsizing hit GO in the early 1990s, a number of these
coaches were leased out to various operators in Canada and the US.
They were received to rave reviews, and quickly generated orders
from operators across North America. Several hundred additional
BiLevel cars were built, and over 700 are currently in
service.
UTDC's Can-Car also produced a number of other products for sales
to the
Canadian Forces, including
versions of the
Volkswagen Iltis,
the medium-sized
M35 2-1/2 ton
cargo truck and the larger
Steyr
Percheron.
Sale to Lavalin
In spite of these successes, as early as 1981 the government had
considered selling UTDC to the private sector. Their concern was
that without a manufacturing business, UTDC would find it difficult
to make enough income to justify its Kingston operations. If the
company did start a manufacturing side, it would be inappropriate
for the company to remain government owned.
In 1986
the new Ontario government announced their intension to sell UTDC
to Lavalin, a large engineering company in
Montreal
. Lavalin purchased the company for only
CAD$50 million, less than the $70 million spent on the UTDC by the
government up to 1981. The sale was highly controversial at the
time, due to several non-performance payments due to the early
problems on the ICTS that had to be paid out by the government, to
the tune of $39 million. Soon after, Hawker Siddeley announced that
they were selling their remaining interest in CC&F to Lavalin
as well.
This was during a period of rapid
conglomeration by Lavalin, which
included purchases of the
Bellechasse Hospital in Montreal,
MétéoMédia's television
services, and many other businesses that were unrelated to its core
engineering strengths. By the early 1990s this aggressive expansion
plan led to a massive debt load and serious financial difficulties.
In 1991, Lavalin's bankers put it under pressure to be acquired by
its chief rival,
SNC. Lavalin announced its
intent to sell off its stake in UTDC, and several companies
expressed an interest, including
Asea
Brown Boveri and
Westinghouse. Before this was
completed, the company went bankrupt. As part of the proceedings,
UTDC was returned to the Ontario government, who quickly sold it to
Bombardier in 1991. SNC
purchased the engineering portions of the company and became
SNC-Lavalin, while most other business
were sold off to other firms.
Sale to Bombardier Transportation
Bombardier quickly re-branded the UTDC products under their growing
Bombardier Transportation
marque. Bombardier Transportation is the company's railroad
equipment division, started in 1970 with their purchase
Rotax, who made engines used in their
snowmobiles as well as making
trams. Now in the train business, in 1975 they added
the
Montreal Locomotive
Works and their
LRC high-speed train
design. Although the LRC was never the success Bombardier hoped,
the company continued to buy other rail companies in North America
and Europe, dramatically expanding division until it became the
largest supplier of rail equipment in the world with its purchase
of
ADtranz in 2001.
Bombardier was much more aggressive in marketing the UTDC product
line than either the Crown or Lavalin had been, especially the
ITCS. Bombardier re-designed the cars, expanding the passenger
capacity and updating their look, re-introducing the product as the
Bombardier Advanced
Rapid Transit (ART). ART won the contest for the
AirTrain JFK project, which is widely
considered a great success in spite of predicitions to the
contrary.
After winning SkyTrain, Bombardier further improved the design by
introducing an articulating section between adjacent cars,
replacing the coupling and doors of the older (retroactively named)
Mark I design. The articulation allows passengers to move freely
between the cars, as well as adding more internal space for
passenger seating.
These versions of the Mk.II design have won
several new contests, and are currently operating on the Kelana Jaya Line in Kuala Lumpur
, the Airport Express in Beijing (in four-car trains), and is under
construction on the EverLine Rapid Transit System
outside of Seoul
.
Vancouver continues to be the largest operator of the ICTS system,
with 49.5 km of operational lines. The SkyTrain system uses a
mix of MK I and MK II trains.
Bombardier also continues to win sales with its other light rail
vehicles, including a major expansion of the TTC's network using a
derivative of the
Flexity platform, which
will be built at the CC&F plants.
UTDC Products
Mass Transit
Light Rail
Heavy Rail
Other
Major Clients
See also
References
Notes
- Sewell
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 104 - the first mention puts it at $80
million, but the very next page puts it at $75
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 72
- Ken Avidor, "A Brief History of Personal Rapid Transit in
Minnesota", Minnesota2020
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 75
- Filey, pg. 39
- "1934 - 1977 From the idea to the system
decision", Transrapid International
- Harald Maas, "Schanghai stutzt den Transrapid",
Tagesspiegel, 1 February 2008
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 93
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 99
- James Bow, "UTDC Kingston Transit Development Center", Transit
Toronto
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 103
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 105
- Peter Drost, "The GO-ALRT Program", Transit Toronto, 10 November
2006
- "TTC Rapid Transit and Streetcar Official Opening
Dates", TTC
- Heather Conn, "On track: the SkyTrain story", B.C. ransit,
1996
- "Scarborough RT back in service", Toronto
Star, 18 January 2009
- "PURCHASE OF TTC VEHICLES", Hansard, 24 May
1983
- Ray Corley, "CLRV: Canadian Light Rail Vehicle", The Toronto
Transit Commission, October 1996
- Litvak & Maule, pg. 105
- "UTDC for sale", Northern Ontario Business, June
1991
- "Hon Ms Wark-Martyn", Hansard (HIGHWAY TRAFFIC
AMENDMENT ACT (FIREFIGHTERS)), 7 December 1994, pg. 2330
- Philip Hopkins, "Rail industry spooked by international
suppliers", The Age, 19 February 2007
- "Toronto picks Flexity Outlook", Railway
Gazette International, 27 April 2009
Bibliography
- Isaiah Litvak and Christopher Maule, "The Light-Rapid Comfortable (LRC) Train and the
Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS): Two Case Studies of
Innovation in the Urban Transportation Equipment Manufacturing
Industry", University of Toronto/York University Joint Program
in Transportation, 1982
- John Sewell, "The Shape of the Suburbs", University of Toronto
Press, 2009, ISBN 0802095879
- Jüri Pill, "Planning and Politics", MIT Press, 1979, ISBN
0262160730
- Mike Filey, "Toronto Sketches 5: The Way We Were", Dundurn
Press, 1997, ISBN 155002292X, pg. 38-40
- R. C. Baker, "The Intermediate Capacity Transportation System
for Toronto", Transportation Planning and Technology,
Volume 4 (1972)
Further reading
- William Middleton, "Metropolitan railways: Rapid Transit in
America", Indiana University Press, 2002, ISBN 0253341795
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