Mississauga Hurontario-Main Line 10 LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

[Tim MacDonald]

I drove by the Port Credit station this morning and lifting of the power station hadn't happened. The power unit was on a float trailer in the closed off section of the northbound lanes and the crane was being setup on east side of the Hydro wires. That will be quite the lift to get it over the wires!

 

[JJTheJetPln]

I drove by the Port Credit station this morning and lifting of the power station hadn't happened. The power unit was on a float trailer in the closed off section of the northbound lanes and the crane was being setup on east side of the Hydro wires. That will be quite the lift to get it over the wires!

...I was wondering what that was.

I was driving home from work and saw a police escort heading northbound up Hurontario and turning left at Steeles with the substation at around 1AM this morning. I couldn't really follow where it was they were headed to, but sounds like that's what it was.

 

[Dan416]

This morning and yesterday morning I noticed workers from A&B Rail doing something at Hurontario and Elm. No idea what, but looked like something rail-related, which I know is stating the obvious. Just surprising with all the snow I guess.

 

[drum118]

This morning and yesterday morning I noticed workers from A&B Rail doing something at Hurontario and Elm. No idea what, but looked like something rail-related, which I know is stating the obvious. Just surprising with all the snow I guess.

I guess you miss the installing of the tracks the past week or so between Elm and CP. There was no tacks there two weeks ago the last time I saw the intersection until today when I had a look while heading to Square On this afternoon. They were covering the tracks that still need to be pour to them in place, Two weeks ago, they removed the heaters and traps for the north side that were place there last year.

As for the substation been lifted into position at PC, it wouldn't been over the wire, but have the truck back in to long side it. Having not seen the site and going from @Tim MacDonald photo, the crane would be on the other side of the pad depending on the size of it and the amount of boom that was needed to lift the substation onto the pad. We are talking a 300-500 ton crane depending where it was place to lift the substation.

After Leaving Square One, I went to Brampton to kill 3 things on one trip than try doing it in Mississauga on 3 trips. This allow me to have a look at the corridor, but it wasn't a good look as the windows were hard o see out. Had a better clear window bus coming home, but it was dark,

From what I could see, trackwork has been poured with concrete and trap for the Robert Speck Station and not sure if the trackwork is completed at Square One Dr. Shelter installed at Bristol Station.

Starting Feb 6, no left turn at Matheson intersection and not the first time I seen this. No idea if it some work or the whole intersection has to be rebuilt. Traders intersection is close for trackwork.

Looks like all the trackwork is in place for the 401 overpass with one section pour as well another section is trap to protect the concrete under it with the last section unknown.

Prologis/Annagem intersection close and being rebuild. Trackwork and concrete pouring taking pace from the intersection to Courtneypark. This leaves the Kingsway, Derry Rd, 401 off ramp intersections that hasn't been rebuilt so far north of the 401.

The crossover area south of Topflight looks to be poured with trap on it. I am assuming that small area on Topflight has been poured. Police blocking the eastbound lane on Topflight at Hurontario blocking the bus I got off at Derry to change to the 103. I will say it was block off to allow the removal of the cut slabs of trackwork being taken away by a large forklift and could see a large area already removed.

Crews working in the guideway north of Topflight and looks like they have dug more of it now the the crossover for traffic is gone with the opening of the 407 lanes. Duct banks were also being installed.

No work taking place in Brampton at all. Until the snow is gone for the northbound close lanes, no idea what stills needs to be done to get it open. Until it is open, southbound traffic cannot be shifted to allow building the new southbound lanes. Going out on the limb, it will be late summer before the new southbound lanes are open to allow the building of the guideway. This is pushing the building of the line into mid 2027 and cutting it close for a year end of 2028 opening and more like 2029.

I did noticed two shelters have been reinstalled with one a CP and the other at Burnhamorpe for northbound and may have miss a few more because of the windows.

We have been warned that this winter was going to a lot colder and snowy than the past few years that things has slow to a crawl with various timeframes that will be miss because of the weather.

Haven't seen the south section in a month and the only thing that may happen in that timeframe is trackwork installed in the guideways that are ready for it. It is not on my due list at this time.

​

 

[Bojaxs]

In light of all the recent issues with the Citadis Spirits, I'm really beginning to question whether it's a good idea to construct the downtown loop.

The tight turns will most likely mean the trains will travel very slow. Most likely slower than a comparative bus. Or a bus just heading in a straight line towards Hurontario.

The loop feels more like another Ontario transit project that's meant to boost nearby property values, and not so much about actually providing rapid transit to residents.

This article I linked below highlights how city councilors across Ontario often have good intentions, but are poorly informed when it comes to transit.

Coucilour Joe Horneck pushing hard for the downtown loop, but does he understand transit to the same degree as many people on this forum do? Is he completey naive to all the issues surrounding the rolling stock?

Look at the end result of the well intentioned, yet poorly informed decisions made by Ottawa City council.

Someone needs to educated our city councillors on what makes good transit "good".

https://www.insauga.com/100k-people-will-live-in-downtown-mississauga-by-2050-so-lrt-loop-is-crucial-city/

 

[Dan416]

It's a shame we didn't get a high floor LRT. They always seem faster. But maybe I'm just tainted by how the TTC runs their streetcars and now the Finch LRT.

 

[urbanclient]

Low floors can run fast.

All the evidence points to the fact that low floors, fixed / non-pivoting bogies or not, need more generous curve radiuses to prevent excess wear to the track and the vehicles.* Therefore, on tight turns that necessitate low floors to slow down, high floors can run faster. This is not unique to low floor Citadis Spirits in Ottawa and Toronto.

If we're talking straight line speeds, then off course theoretically there should be no speed difference in regular service, everything else being the same.

*I'm still working on a post that covers the curve-radius constraint and maintenance / reliability issue with low floors.

 

[nfitz]

It's a shame we didn't get a high floor LRT. They always seem faster.

In what ways would high floor LRVs make the Waterloo ION run faster? Is there a difference between 70% and 100% low-floor? How much faster would the London Tramlink be if they used high floor LRVs?

I really don't see much difference between the 100% low-floor and 100% high-floor streetcars in Toronto in running speed. The biggest impact is the extra time now required when they load and unload wheelchairs. However there are time savings with the lack of stairs, easier to corner without hitting objects too close to the tracks, and time spent reattaching trolly-poles to the wires.

 

[urbanclient]

In what ways would high floor LRVs make the Waterloo ION run faster? Is there a difference between 70% and 100% low-floor? How much faster would the London Tramlink be if they used high floor LRVs?

I really don't see much difference between the 100% low-floor and 100% high-floor streetcars in Toronto in running speed. The biggest impact is the extra time now required when they load and unload wheelchairs. However there are time savings with the lack of stairs, easier to corner without hitting objects too close to the tracks, and time spent reattaching trolly-poles to the wires.

I don't think high floor trams would make ION run faster necessarily, given the tight turns even for high floor pivoting bogies. For reference, the Citadis Spirit for Ottawa and Finch West and the Flexity Outlooks and Freedoms in Canada are considered 100% low floor.

Regarding the second point. It's common knowledge that the CLRVs before the Flexity Outlooks were generally faster and the PCCs before the CLRVS were even faster. The gap only narrows a bit when you ignore the Flexities crawling through intersections even slower than their predecessors and missing more green lights partly due to their longer length.

The rotation-limited bogies (some bogies are fixed, others only rotate by a few degrees) on the Flexity Outlooks make them harder to turn [1], even if the overall train might take up less space turning. This is a common issue with all low floor trams. Rotation-limited bogies. Even if low floor bogies are marketed as 'pivoting', they often don't pivot anywhere close to the traditional pivoting bogies of high floor trams. This forces them to take sharp turns slower, lest they damage the track and their running gear.

1. "The beauty of the Skoda 15T is that, unlike most other 100% low-floor models, it has (almost) fully rotating trucks with off-centre bearings under the first and last segment and a standard, Jacobs truck under each articulation point. To put things in perspective, pivoting on the Skoda 15T bogie is limited to about 25 degrees compared to almost about 40 degrees on our conventional CLRV/ALRV fleet (but still a hell of a lot better than about 3-4 degrees which is the most our Flexities are capable of). No matter how Bombardier sugar-coats it, not having (freely) rotating bogies is a major compromise. Instead of the bogie rotating, the entire vehicle module must be turned. Damping systems are needed to straighten the vehicle body and absorb shocks from these movements. This inevitably changes running characteristics for the worse."
https://stevemunro.ca/2014/09/05/flexities-debut-on-spadina/comment-page-3/
"A general pattern is that the CLRVs accelerate to a higher speed after leaving stops in many cases although the Flexitys do catch up to the same top speed in some cases. This contributes to an overall faster trip as shown by the trend lines (dotted)."
https://stevemunro.ca/2021/08/13/travel-times-on-512-st-clair/

"More recently, thanks to Flexity derailments, the problem was compounded by a standing slow order across all special work so that even after clearing the facing point switches cars operate at low speed until their rear truck clears the last trailing point switch. This adds substantially to travel time, limits intersection throughput and fouls up transit priority schemes.

The slow order is generic for every junction rather than being specific to locations that are in bad condition.

When Flexitys were introduced, the project manager warned that low floor cars with different truck and wheel dynamics would require greater attention to track quality. What we got were slow orders." [2]

"low floor cars with different truck and wheel dynamics" is a euphemism for low floor cars can't turn very well. They not only wear the track out quicker, the wheels and other running gear also need more frequent repairs than high floor running gear. Manufacturers have tried to mitigate the issues inherent with low floors by incorporating elements of high floor running gear onto newer low floor rolling stock. But the Flexity Outlooks are over two-decade old technology. They are not new, and have nearly all of the problems of the old.

Flexity Outlooks were introduced on St. Clair starting in 2017, full conversion by 2018. Outlooks on St. Clair are much slower than CLRVs: https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4506.shtml

2. 512 picture and quote source: https://stevemunro.ca/2025/09/18/torontos-ambling-streetcars/

PCC acceleration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidents'_Conference_Committee_(Toronto_streetcar)
https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4502.shtml

CLRV acceleration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Light_Rail_Vehicle
https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4503.shtml

North American Flexity Freedom acceleration:

https://dcstreetcar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Section-D-Part-9-947-1047-pagesred.pdf

Flexity Outlook acceleration = 1.1 m/s^2 = 2.46 mph/s = 3.96 kmh/s

https://railscenery.ever.jp/canada/olympic/Vancouvers_2010_Streetcar.pdf

https://www.trampicturebook.de/tram/download/bombadier/Innsbruck_10108_0408_EN.pdf

 

[urbanclient]

Facts don’t care about your feelings.

1. Please stop before you get sent to the timeout corner.

2. To complete a post in another thread comparing maintenance and reliability characteristics between low and high floor tram, I'm waiting on a paper from Czechia that may or may not be relevant. No guarantees. Much to do with the fixed and not-so-'pivoting bogies' found commonly on low floor vehicles.

For that, I gotta find some 'professional write-ups' to put the question to bed according to another member. Even though this is long-established industry knowledge. Noone is claiming something crazy like low floors costing double or triple, but that they do cost more to maintain.

Just as noone is claiming PPCs or CLRVs are twice as fast as Outlooks, just that they were noticeably faster in practice.

 

[reinventingthewheel]

Prepare for an incoming essay with all the answers but without any links.

I read this, clicked Show Ignored Content and spat out my drink.

 

[urbanclient]

I read this, clicked Show Ignored Content and spat out my drink.

I really don't see much difference between the 100% low-floor and 100% high-floor streetcars in Toronto in running speed.

Prepare for an incoming essay with all the answers but without any links.

So you think what @nfitz said is true? It's not some Mandela-effect conspiracy against low floor trams when people remember that CLRVs were much faster. Echo chambers and intellectual incuriosity galore.

But seriously, why are we pulling up long resolved topics bordering on 'is the sky blue?' @nfitz and then acting like it's still up for debate? @sixrings

The CLRVs in general, were faster than the Flexity Outlooks. They accelerated faster, hit their top speed more often during regular service. Anyone who regularly rode the streetcars can tell you that.

This isn't a thread for newcomers to Toronto, where innocent ignorance of such an obvious fact might be expected.

 

[sixrings]

I don't think high floor trams would make ION run faster necessarily, given the tight turns even for high floor pivoting bogies. For reference, the Citadis Spirit for Ottawa and Finch West and the Flexity Outlooks and Freedoms in Canada are considered 100% low floor.

Regarding the second point. It's common knowledge that the CLRVs before the Flexity Outlooks were generally faster and the PCCs before the CLRVS were even faster. The gap only narrows a bit when you ignore the Flexities crawling through intersections even slower than their predecessors and missing more green lights partly due to their longer length.

The rotation-limited bogies (some bogies are fixed, others only rotate by a few degrees) on the Flexity Outlooks make them harder to turn [1], even if the overall train might take up less space turning. This is a common issue with all low floor trams. Rotation-limited bogies. Even if low floor bogies are marketed as 'pivoting', they often don't pivot anywhere close to the traditional pivoting bogies of high floor trams. This forces them to take sharp turns slower, lest they damage the track and their running gear.

1. "The beauty of the Skoda 15T is that, unlike most other 100% low-floor models, it has (almost) fully rotating trucks with off-centre bearings under the first and last segment and a standard, Jacobs truck under each articulation point. To put things in perspective, pivoting on the Skoda 15T bogie is limited to about 25 degrees compared to almost about 40 degrees on our conventional CLRV/ALRV fleet (but still a hell of a lot better than about 3-4 degrees which is the most our Flexities are capable of). No matter how Bombardier sugar-coats it, not having (freely) rotating bogies is a major compromise. Instead of the bogie rotating, the entire vehicle module must be turned. Damping systems are needed to straighten the vehicle body and absorb shocks from these movements. This inevitably changes running characteristics for the worse."
https://stevemunro.ca/2014/09/05/flexities-debut-on-spadina/comment-page-3/
"A general pattern is that the CLRVs accelerate to a higher speed after leaving stops in many cases although the Flexitys do catch up to the same top speed in some cases. This contributes to an overall faster trip as shown by the trend lines (dotted)."
https://stevemunro.ca/2021/08/13/travel-times-on-512-st-clair/

"More recently, thanks to Flexity derailments, the problem was compounded by a standing slow order across all special work so that even after clearing the facing point switches cars operate at low speed until their rear truck clears the last trailing point switch. This adds substantially to travel time, limits intersection throughput and fouls up transit priority schemes.

The slow order is generic for every junction rather than being specific to locations that are in bad condition.

When Flexitys were introduced, the project manager warned that low floor cars with different truck and wheel dynamics would require greater attention to track quality. What we got were slow orders." [2]

"low floor cars with different truck and wheel dynamics" is a euphemism for low floor cars can't turn very well. They not only wear the track out quicker, the wheels and other running gear also need more frequent repairs than high floor running gear. Manufacturers have tried to mitigate the issues inherent with low floors by incorporating elements of high floor running gear onto newer low floor rolling stock. But the Flexity Outlooks are over two-decade old technology. They are not new, and have nearly all of the problems of the old.

Flexity Outlooks were introduced on St. Clair starting in 2017, full conversion by 2018. Outlooks on St. Clair are much slower than CLRVs: https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4506.shtml
View attachment 710974View attachment 710975

2. 512 picture and quote source: https://stevemunro.ca/2025/09/18/torontos-ambling-streetcars/

PCC acceleration:
View attachment 710977
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidents'_Conference_Committee_(Toronto_streetcar)
https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4502.shtml

CLRV acceleration:

View attachment 710978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Light_Rail_Vehicle
https://transittoronto.ca/streetcar/4503.shtml

North American Flexity Freedom acceleration:
View attachment 710982
https://dcstreetcar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Section-D-Part-9-947-1047-pagesred.pdf

Flexity Outlook acceleration = 1.1 m/s^2 = 2.46 mph/s = 3.96 kmh/s
View attachment 710979

https://railscenery.ever.jp/canada/olympic/Vancouvers_2010_Streetcar.pdf

https://www.trampicturebook.de/tram/download/bombadier/Innsbruck_10108_0408_EN.pdf

I was hoping for “facts” or links that were not from North America which is relatively new to low floor lrt operation. Also the c train, sky train and the Edmonton line have been around for quite some time and operate very differently than the finch lrt so that is not a commentary on the technology but the implementation. Considering LRT is used throughout the world I would have thought there would have been some “facts” from say Europe that would have helped my “feeelings.”

If your argument is that bombardier could have made more reliable high floor lrts than the low floor lrts we got. Perhaps. But that isn’t what you’ve lead with since this opening. Maybe I missed it but when you write over and over it sure sounds like there are no low floor lrts in existence anywhere that can operate as fast as a high floor lrt operation.

Btw I welcome not only the time out chair but the complete ban. I really don’t care.

 

[smallspy]

The CLRVs in general, were faster than the Flexity Outlooks. They accelerated faster, hit their top speed more often during regular service. Anyone who regularly rode the streetcars can tell you that.

The rate of injury per 100,000 passengers is also lower with the Outlooks than it was with the CLRVs.

Dan

 

[urbanclient]

If your argument is that bombardier could have made more reliable high floor lrts than the low floor lrts we got. Perhaps. But that isn’t what you’ve lead with since this opening. Maybe I missed it but when you write over and over it sure sounds like there are no low floor lrts in existence anywhere that can operate as fast as a high floor lrt operation.

Btw I welcome not only the time out chair but the complete ban. I really don’t care.

I never said there weren't fast low floor trams. What is with these bad faith strawmans? Utrecht is fast, but large ROW sections are built like the Calgary CTrain. Utrecht also ran with high floor trams for nearly 4 decades before recently switching (which is a whole story in itself).

If we're talking straight line speeds, then off course theoretically there should be no speed difference [between low and high floors] in regular service, everything else being the same.

As recently pointed out, Edmonton and ION surely are at least faster than Line 6, I don't know if they are absolutely 'fast', it depends on each person's definition of 'fast'.
Flexity Outlooks (streetcars) though are slow. Slower than Flexity Freedoms (Eglinton, ION, Edmonton) in practice, given the former's lower designed maximum speed, among other reasons.

@nfitz 's exact claim was:

I really don't see much difference between the 100% low-floor and 100% high-floor streetcars in Toronto in running speed.

Which is so demonstrably false, it beggars belief that you @sixrings expect an essay with links to prove a long established fact or someone to swoop in to protect the honour of low floor trams with counterexamples from Europe.

Nonetheless, I provided an essay with links in good faith.

You never said anything that would even imply you expected links from outside North America?? @nfitz was talking about Toronto? And if you're soliciting others to find information for you, but they've failed to read your mind, why would you think it's ok to turn around and advocate for suppression of their or other's speech, even a permanent ban because it goes against your personal views.

I merely pointed out that the Outlooks were slower than the CLRVs, and explained some of the reasons why. As for low floor trams vs. high floor trams in general, that's another story, but it rhymes with the Toronto case.

Are Outlooks always 'slower' on every inch of track from the barn to the non- and revenue tracks, probably not. But in general, yes they are slower, and it's not by some marginal amount, it's very noticeable in revenue service. A low floor line from Europe running non-Outlook rolling stock is not going to be relevant as to why the CLRVs and PCCs were so much faster. And I admit, it's not just the rolling stock itself that's the issue. The super-risk averse culture probably had something to do with the fact that PCCs have a higher top speed than the CLRVs, IMO probably a customer request, but someone correct me if I am wrong.

I was hoping for “facts” or links that were not from North America which is relatively new to low floor lrt operation.

Flexity Outlooks in Toronto are not that new (first delivered in 2014), nor are Outlooks in Europe as I've demonstrated in the essay with links from Europe.
Brussels ordered Outlooks in 2003, started operation in 2005, Innsbruck ordered in 2005, started in 2008. The earliest Flexities started construction in 2000.

More importantly, low floor trams in general are relatively new. The first 100% low floor trams came in the 1990s, whereas electric high floor trams have existed for nearly 150 years. In general, low floor trams are a new technology that is still being improved upon. That is why I said the 20+ year old Outlook family's technology is outdated and leads to poor handling of the tight turns on Toronto streets. Even the more recent Citadis Spirit that has mostly 'pivoting' bogies (not all pivoting) and yet they are notorious for being even worse at turning than Flexity Freedoms, which is why many have said Citadis should've been for Eglinton and Freedom should've been for Finch West.

Also the c train, sky train and the Edmonton line have been around for quite some time and operate very differently than the finch lrt so that is not a commentary on the technology but the implementation.

You are taking the already borderline meaningless term 'LRT' and making it more meaningless. Please try to be informed so others like @EnviroTO and myself do not have to repeat ourselves.

"so that is not a commentary on the technology but the implementation." The technology used on high floor CTrain and Edmonton lines, and the mostly linear induction light metro Vancouver Skytrain have little to nothing to do with the technology on Line 6 Finch West. That you would even construe these together is indicative of your ignorance of the topic at hand. A low floor street median tram is not relatable to a high floor train that runs like a full blown subway or metro for large sections in Calgary and Edmonton.

CDPQ once explicitly called the REM an 'LRT' and 'light rail transit' in their early public releases to fool the public because the Caisse knew they were allergic to the word 'subway' or 'metro', much less elevated metro. Does that mean the REM is an LRT i.e. the same as a North American tram? Noone on the planet has called the Skytrain LRT, as in light rail transit. 40-50 years ago, Skytrain tech was called light rapid transit aka light metro; or light rail rapid transit out of disregard for terminology standardization on some level. Since then, the authorities behind Skytrain mostly moved away from 'LRT', and AFAIK from 1994 onwards, it was never called simply 'LRT' or 'LRRT' in public facing material again [1].

Please, do a cursory google search or read a few articles on wikipedia to get at least a basic understanding of the terms and technology behind each system you mentioned and how they are different. Or just avoid using LRT like I do.

I've made multiple posts pointing out there is no point in using LRT during discussions if the term is stretched beyond the original North American definition encompassing high and low floor trams, let alone assuming the technology is the same across the board.

If you throw in LIM and conventional light or elevated heavy metro like they do in Asia it wholly includes all urban rail transit from streetcar to full blown subway. In Asia, trams are called trams, light rapid/rail transit refers to non-underground or light metros, because in Asian languages metros are called ‘rail’ or ‘ground rail transit,’ so light or above ground metros are called ‘light rail,’ even though they have nothing in common with North American trams aka 'LRT'.

1. current Translink terminology:
https://www.translink.ca/plans-and-projects/projects/rapid-transit-projects
https://www.translink.ca/about-us/a...panies/british-columbia-rapid-transit-company