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Transport Action board members attended the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) conference in Toronto from November 17-20, 2024 and the Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium’s (CUTRIC) Zero Emission Transit and Mobility Conference, held in Burlington in October. Ongoing collaboration with both of these industry organizations is vital to furthering our advocacy for passengers and for stronger, more inclusive transit networks for all Canadians.
A common theme was the needs for permanent operating funding, and call with Transport Action supports. Several agencies presented best-practices and frameworks for advocating for themeselves, even at agencies where there is little room to maneuver. International benchmarking in order to demonstrate the value for money of Canadian transit operating budgets was also discussed.
CUTRIC’s conference presented ongoing work to benchmark and document electric and hydrogen bus introduction across Canada, enabling lessons to be shared between agencies and future fleet and depot investment requirements to be accurately forecasted, while also exploring the greening of the upstream electricity supply and recapturing braking energy from electric trains to charge connecting buses as stations.
CSA Group (formerly the Canadian Standards Association) also attended both events and presented at the CUTA conference about ongoing efforts to develop a broad standardization framework for Canadian rail and transit, adopting and adapting international standards. This will build upon the success of the Canadian Method for Risk Evaluation and Assessment For Railway Systems, which was developed in support of Metrolinx projects including GO Expansion, and is closely aligned with Europe’s Common Safety Method. Having well documented standards not only improves safety, it also helps to ensure comparable and competitive bidding during procurements, and to reduce the number of bespoke solutions which will in turn help to improve the long-term maintainability of systems. Standardization also ensures that colleges and universities can teach technical and engineering skills that will be portable across the industry, all of which should greatly aid Canadian railway and transit undertakings in delivering the best possible service with the available funding.
Delegates to the CUTA conference received a guided a tour of the transit priority measures that have been implemented in downtown Toronto, including the Spadina bus priority lanes during streetcar construction, and the King Street transit corridor. Toronto staff stressed how quickly they were able to roll out the Spadina lanes once the political will existed.