Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) — Kabelleger / David Gubler
Toronto Line 2 to get CBTC signalling from Hitachi Rail
Toronto Transit Commission awards Hitachi Rail GTS contract for CBTC on Bloor-Danforth Subway, promising up to 40% capacity increase.
Main source: ‘CBTC is coming home’: Toronto Line 2 resignalling contract let · By Rail Post Desk
The Toronto Transit Commission has awarded Hitachi Rail GTS a contract to supply communications-based train control and related control technology for the Bloor-Danforth Subway, according to railwaygazette.com.
The supplier stated that the contract will see SelTrac CBTC equipment fitted to Line 2, following installation of similar technology on Line 1, the Yonge-University Subway, in 2022. According to Hitachi, fitting Line 2 with CBTC could lead to a capacity increase of up to 40% as its Automatic Train Control functionality allows for moving blocks to reduce headways along the route.
‘We’re modernising the TTC by investing in systems that increase capacity, improve reliability, enhance safety and support a growing city’, said TTC Chief Executive Mandeep Lali when the contract was announced on July 15. ‘CBTC is the next evolution in signalling, enabling us to better manage trains in real time and deliver more frequent service to customers.’
‘We’re proud that our world-leading technology, designed in Toronto, will transform passenger experience, reliability and increase capacity on Line 2’, added Arnaud Besse, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for Hitachi Rail in Canada. ‘Today, our invention comes home. 50 years ago, we developed this technology here and exported it to the world’s most complex transit systems. Now, it returns to where it all began.’
The SelTrac technology now offered by Hitachi Rail as successor to Thales GTS has its roots in Europe, with the brand name a reference to Standard Elektrik Lorenz, which later became part of Alcatel and then Thales. Among the earliest applications in the early 1980s was an automated light metro project in Toronto to serve the Scarborough neighbourhood in the east of the city. The Scarborough RT shuttle opened in 1985.
The latest contract includes installation of CBTC on the Scarborough extension of Line 2, which is currently under construction. This replaces the Scarborough Rapid Transit service, which ceased in July 2023, and uses a new alignment.
The value of the Line 2 contract has not been disclosed.