More construction needed on St. Clair West to accommodate new TTC streetcars
Posted March 25, 2013 5:34 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO, Ont. – It’s bad news for many of the merchants and residents who live along St. Clair Avenue West.
After enduring months of construction while the old tracks were ripped up and replaced, they’re now learning some of that construction will have to be done again to accommodate the new streetcars.
The new streetcars, set to roll out next year, have an automatic accessibility ramp and the platforms on St. Clair will have to be adjusted to line up with the ramps.
The TTC says this construction was impossible to predict ahead of time.
“The time that the new streetcars were ordered we did not know, and we could not have known, the design of the actual ramp to be deployed,” TTC CEO Andy Byford said.
Byford adds that it is not a surprise that they’ll have to make changes to accommodate new vehicles, saying that’s a fact of life when dealing with transit.
“That’s the way things go, if you want new state-of-the-art vehicles, you have sometimes have to change the infrastructure,” Byford said.
The exact cost and time-frame for construction is not yet known, but the TTC says they will do their best to do it quickly and efficiently.
“We will be looking to undertake these works with as minimal disruption as possible,” Byford said.
They have set aside $58 million for the construction in case the bill runs up to that level.
