TORONTO Transit Commission (TTC) issued a request for information on September 12 “to gauge market interest and capabilities of potential suppliers” for the delivery of up to 100 low-floor LRVs. Bombardier is currently delivering an order for 204 LRVs, which was placed in 2009, but the contract has been beset by delays. According to the original delivery schedule, 100 vehicles were due to be delivered by the end of 2016, but by the end of December TTC had received just 30 vehicles. The ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected] • Planned pedestrianisation of Oxford Street podcast (CityMetric) • Museum wants to preserve 1960s UK hovertrain (Beeb) • German artists stage performance for passing trains (BoingBoing) • Painting streets white to reduce urban warming (TreeHugger) • Rome opens ‘museum’ metro station displaying ancient ...

In October 2016, Dame Margaret Hodge MP was appointed to lead an independent review of the Garden Bridge project. As part of this review, she conducted a number of interviews with key people and organisations. To aid future research and debate, we have committed to transcribing these interviews into a searchable, full-text format. The completed transcripts can all be found on our Garden Bridge Review page. Please be aware that this is a large project – combined, the interviews comprise ...

Categorizing transit modes can be a challenge. What separates one mode from another can be a difficult line to draw. At what point does a streetcar become light rail? Does “light metro” count as heavy rail? The most difficult of all though, in my opinion, is bus rapid transit (or BRT). An ideal BRT system would be clearly distinct from a regular bus line, with features like completely dedicated lanes, extremely high-capacity vehicles, fancy stations with all-door level boarding, ...

Developing London’s rail and tube stations could provide an innovative and sustainable solution to accommodating the capital’s huge population growth, a new report has found. Think tank Centre for London said that immediate action from the mayor and central government should be taken now to make the most of these opportunities. The report, ‘Ideas above your Station: Exploring the Potential for Development at London’s Stations’, explains that even though developing over-stations is ...

The first pedestrian radar was installed this summer in La Grande-Motte, Paris, near the Tourist Office. Equipped with five cameras (two covering the pedestrians, two covering the vehicles, and one for an overall view of the scene), the system designed to protect pedestrians is primarily a learning tool, thanks to a well lit sign informing the motorist of their potential risky behaviour. Designed by the Lyon-based company AFS2R, the pedestrian radar was first tested in the Rhône at ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected] • Map of London’s defunct tram network (CityMetric) • Manchester’s hilarious attempt at reinventing London’s Oyster (Medium) • A modern atmospheric railway prototype (Railway Technology) • Address twins (Paul Plowman) • Historic Plaque stickers (99% Invisible) • Best pre-flight safety ...

Various studies in recent years have showed that London’s commuters could be exposed to dangerous levels of bacteria, particulate matter and nanodust particles on the underground system. In June, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched a new plan to improve air quality on the London Underground, including more testing, cleaning and better information for passengers. London’s air pollution is one of the main challenges facing the capital and its inhabitants. At the start of this year, the ...

Conservation through consolidation Here was the problem faced by the UK: 1. “The British do more of their shopping on the internet than almost anyone else in the world,” according to the Economist. 2. That means a lot of packages being delivered, which requires a lot of delivery trucks. 3. The amount of delivery trucks was clogging urban streets, adding both congestion and pollution. British municipal governments have begun to solve this problem in a creative way: Pooled delivery. By ...

“To help close the gap between public transit and your doorstep, we’re teaming up with Amtrak,” announced Lyft, Uber’s largest competitor, earlier this month. The partnership will allow Americans to ditch their cars and let the sharing economy deliver them seamlessly to and from the train station. Compelling, right? For urban policymakers, maybe not. Public-private partnerships (we can debate whether Amtrak is public or private later, rail nerds) seek to solve the first/last mile ...

Installing CBTC in the Underground means installing radio antennas in the tunnels – approximately 450 of them – all linked by cables back to the control centre. The method originally envisaged for the fixing of the signalling equipment in the tunnel areas was to use mobile scaffold towers. These would obviously have to be continually erected and dismantled, configured for access to the required parts of the tunnel profile at every one of the 450 antennae locations, and all within the very ...

Uber’s lifting the veil – just a little – to provide data on urban transportation performance. Uber’s new Movement tool provides valuable new source of data about travel times in urban environments. We’ve gotten an early look at Movement, and think its something that you’ll want to investigate, if you’re interested in urban transportation. Uber likes to bill itself as a technology company, rather than a transportation company: technically, it’s the independent driver-owners of ...

London Underground Wifi Tracking: Here’s Everything We Learned From TfL’s Official Report Earlier this year, Gizmodo UK scored ourselves a scoop, as we exclusively revealed some of the findings from last year’s wifi tracking trial, in which Transport for London analysed wifi data picked up from our phones as we travel on the London Underground – and was able to track our movements across the tube network. Many months on and TfL has decided to share more details on what it ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected] • Councils to be allowed to charge for road closures (Beeb) • King’s Cross coal drops (1LondonBlog) • Pram on a Tram – Melbourne’s Step-free Challenge (Transporting Cities) • A ride on the world’s most mysterious commute (CNN) • LA’s bus ridership decline analysed (LA Times) ...

We’ve all been there – you’re standing on the platform on the way to work, hoping to board the next train that pulls up, before seeing the crowd of packed passengers in front of you, crammed into the carriage like sardines. But today, a new innovation has been announced in London that could ease this problem, without taking any passengers off the network. The project, called Orinoco 2 which lets platform staff direct passengers accurately to less crowded parts of the train, is currently ...