The Eglinton LRT maintenance and storage facility will be required by Toronto, Ontario, for Line 5 Eglinton, currently under construction. The site will have storage for 162 Flexity Freedom LRT vehicles and have extensive maintenance facilities. The carhouse is planned to be built near the line's western terminus at Mount Dennis station, on lands formerly occupied by Kodak's Toronto campus.
The facility is scheduled for completion in 2018.
The site was chosen because it was a sufficiently large "brownfield", immediately adjacent to one terminus of the line. At first Metrolinx wasn't open to input from neighbouring residents, but in May 2013, they announced that they would organize a mechanism for taking feedback.
In 2013 Metrolinx announced that they would contract with a private company to operate the facility. It would not be operated by the TTC.
The Eglinton line will use Flexity Freedom standard gauge rolling stock, and will not be connected to the TTC's current streetcar lines, which all use TTC broad gauge.
Video Eglinton Maintenance and Storage Facility
Grounds
The facility's footprint will be 23 hectares (57 acres).
Structures within the MSF will include:
- Vehicle cleaning & inspection facility
- Vehicle cleaning staff building
- Operations company building
- Maintenance building
- Bridge over the CN/CP rail corridor allowing staff and service vehicles to access the MSF from the west
The October 2015 design for the facility incorporated two artificial ponds, and green tracks, so its landscaping would better integrate with the adjacent parkland, in the Black Creek valley. The facility will have a "green roof".
Maps Eglinton Maintenance and Storage Facility
Backup power generator
For the first several years of development, plans called for the northwest corner of the site to contain a natural-gas fired power plant to be used mainly as a back-up generator. It would have had the capacity to run the entire Crosstown system to avoid peak demand times on the provincial power grid or in a power outage, and save about 40 per cent on the price of electricity. The plant was to have been 25 metres wide, 62 metres long and 9 metres tall. Some local residents, and environmental activists, were critical of Metrolinx's plan to use a backup generator powered by fossil fuel.
In January, 2016, the Mount Dennis Community Association prepared a petition, calling for the backup power system to use technology that would not generate local pollution. A copy was presented to Laura Albanese the local member of Ontario's Provincial Parliament. On July 23, 2016, Albanese and local Toronto City Council members Frances Nunziata and Frank DiGiorgio met with members of the Association, and assured them that Metrolinx would look into alternate methods to provide back-up power.
On March 28, 2017 Albanese and Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced that instead of providing backup power with a standby gas generator, backup power would be provided by an "innovative" system of batteries. Del Duca promised that the battery system's operating costs would not be greater than the operating cost of a gas backup power system. The system is said to be able to power the line for four hours, if outside power is lost.
Del Duca said that, in addition to providing emergency power, the battery power would be tapped, daily, during the peak hours thus avoiding Ontario Hydro's peak hours surcharge.
References
External links
- Maintenance Storage Facility - Official Crosstown project website
Source of article : Wikipedia
0 Comments