The Urban Transportation Development Corporation Ltd. (UTDC) was a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario, Canada. It was established in the 1970s as a way to enter what was then expected to be a burgeoning market in advanced light rail mass transit systems. It developed significant expertise in linear propulsion, steerable trucks and driverless system controls which were integrated into a transit system known as the Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS). It was designed to provide service at rider levels between a traditional subway on the upper end and buses and streetcars on the lower, filling a niche aimed at suburbs that were otherwise expensive to service.
Urban Transportation Development Corporation Ltd. was a holding company. During its time it held several wholly owned subsidiary companies: Metro Canada Ltd. was established as the contracting, delivery and operating company for system sales. UTDC USA Inc. was the U.S. subsidiary of UTDC, incorporated in Delaware with offices in Detroit, Arlington, Virginia, and Birmingham, Michigan. UTDC Services Inc. provided transit service consulting to international clients and worked very closely with the experts from the TTC. UTDC Research and Development Ltd. was formed to support the continuing improvement of the group's base technology, and to repurpose it and apply it to different, non-transit markets. Buses that ran on rails, materials handling systems, steerable trucks for freight rail cars and extruded tunnel lining systems were some of the products researched. The Services and R&D companies were merged in the mid-1980s to form Transportation Technology Ltd.
The Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS) was sold into three markets: the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) for its Scarborough RT line, Detroit's Detroit People Mover, and Vancouver's SkyTrain system.
Further sales proved more difficult than had been hoped, but in the early 1980s, Hawker Siddeley Canada joined forces with UTDC in order to win a number of contracts with the TTC and Ontario's GO Transit commuter network. They formed a joint operating company at their Canadian Car & Foundry (CC&F) factories in Thunder Bay and Kingston, Ontario: Can-Car Rail built heavy-rail passenger cars, subway cars, streetcars and other vehicles. Now armed with a complete portfolio from light to heavy rail, UTDC had a number of additional successes in North America, and became a major vendor in the mass transit market. It was privatized in 1986, when it was purchased by Lavalin of Quebec. The UTDC factories in Kingston and Thunder Bay continue to produce rapid transit systems for use in Ontario and abroad.
History Genesis Toronto grew extensively during the 1960s and 1970s, and like many cities in North America, most of this growth was in the suburbs. In order to move workers to and from the business and industrial areas in the city centre, an extensive series of expressways was planned, and made its way into the city's Official Plan in 1966. As work on the new highways started, a wave of public protest followed as many houses, and in some cases entire neighbourhoods, were bulldozed to make way. The work became increasingly opposed in Toronto, especially after the cause was taken up by famous urban commentator, Jane Jacobs.Sewell
In 1971 Bill Davis won the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leadership contest, replacing long-serving John Robarts as the official party leader and Premier of Ontario. Shortly after taking power, on 3 June Davis announced that he was cancelling provincial support for the highly controversial Spadina Expressway in Toronto, rising in the legislature and stating that "Cities were built for people and not cars. If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good place to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop."
Davis felt that the future of urban transit lay not in the automobile, but mass rapid transit systems. In keeping with this, the street portion of the Spadina Expressway was cancelled in 1971, but full funding remained for the Spadina subway line that shared the same right-of-way. However, subways were suitable only for high-density routes that could afford to pay for their expensive construction and operation. In 1980 this was estimated to be between $75 and $80 million a mile.Litvak & Maule, pg. 104 - the first mention puts it at $80 million, but the very next page puts it at $75 The TTC suggested that all of the high-density routes suitable for subways were already being served.
The other vehicles in use with the TTC, buses and streetcars, would not be able to provide rapid transit unless they were given a separate right-of-way. This expense is easy to justify in the case of a subway with its large passenger capacity, but for a system like a bus the capital costs overwhelm the passenger numbers these systems could carry. What was needed was a new system that reduced the capital costs to be able to efficiently serve low-density routes in the suburbs, a system with flexible sizing somewhere between a small subway and large streetcar, an "intermediate" sized system.
ICTS
Work on an Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS) had already started in 1970.Litvak & Maule, pg. 72 Several consulting firms were asked to provide separate feasibility reports with outlines of a basic system. At the time, new urban transit systems were a field of active research across North America due to U.S. federal funding under the Urban Mass Transportation Administration's (UMTA) plans to roll out new systems in cities across the country. UMTA was convinced that urban rail systems would only be able to compete with cars if they had more car-like capabilities, and they were primarily interested in the personal rapid transit (PRT) concept of automated car-like cabs that would pick up and drop off passengers as individual units and then link up into longer trains for travel at high speed between stations.Ken Avidor, "A Brief History of Personal Rapid Transit in Minnesota", Minnesota2020 A number of companies in the U.S. were in the process of developing systems for UMTA, and many of these companies submitted a proposal for the ICTS project.
It was with the formation of the new Ministry of Transportation and Communications in May 1972 that serious development of the ICTS started. On 22 November the new policy was announced. The Davis government proposed a new rail network known as GO-Urban that would operate three routes in the Toronto area under the auspices of the recently created GO Transit, and asked for submissions for ICTS vehicles to serve the routes. Fourteen designs were studied, but whittled down to eight formal proposals. Some were PRT systems, while others were more traditional subway-like systems. Three of the eight ran on rubber wheels, four were air cushion vehicles (hovercraft) including a version of the French Aérotrain, while the German firm Krauss-Maffei entered its Transurban system, based on magnetically levitated train (maglev) technology.
The space age maglev system immediately won the interest of the Davis government, and in the Phase II proposals they selected it for further study, along with the Ford ACT and Hawker Siddeley's entry, both of which used rubber tires. Ford withdrew when the ICTS varied too greatly from the system it wanted to develop, which was aimed primarily at sites in the U.S.Litvak & Maule, pg. 75 With only Hawker Siddeley and Krauss-Maffei remaining, the 1 May 1973 announcement that the Krauss-Maffei design had won the contest was unsurprising.Filey, pg. 39
In November 1974 Krauss-Maffei announced that it was forced to withdraw from the project. The West German government had been funding development of several maglev systems based on different technologies, and decided at that time that Krauss-Maffei's system was less interesting than ones from Thyssen-Henschel and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm."1934 - 1977 From the idea to the system decision" , Transrapid International There were also technical problems; in testing, the complex systems needed to switch trains on the magnetic tracks froze up, and would require a re-design. With Krauss-Maffei's financial support gone, and daunting technical problems remaining to be solved, the maglev project died. A test track being constructed on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition was abandoned in place, with the foundations and a few support pillars already constructed. Krauss-Maffei continued development of the original inter-city Transrapid, but at a very slow pace and through a series of mergers with other companies involved in maglev technology. The first Transrapid system did not enter service until 30 years later.Harald Maas, "Schanghai stutzt den Transrapid", Tagesspiegel, 1 February 2008
UTDC On 14 April 1975, the Ministry of Transportation arranged financing for Phase I and II studies to develop a new system to replace the maglev. In June 1975 the Ontario Transportation Development Corporation (OTDC) announced that it had arranged a consortium to continue the development of the ICTS, changing its name to "Urban Transportation Development Corporation" to avoid any "provinciality" during its efforts to market what would now be an entirely local design to other cities.Litvak & Maule, pg. 93 The consortium consisted of SPAR Aerospace for the linear induction motor, Standard Elektrik Lorenz's "SelTrac IS" system for the automatic control system, Dofasco for an articulated bogie system, Alcan for the design of the car bodies and a set of prototypes, and Canadair for assembly and production.Litvak & Maule, pg. 99
A Transit Development Centre for UTDC was built on a site in Millhaven, outside of Kingston, Ontario. Kingston had been home to the Canadian Locomotive Company that closed its doors in 1969, and the city lobbied hard for the new company to locate there. It was officially opened on 29 September 1978 by James Snow, the Minister of Transportation and Communications. The site included a oval test track that included at-grade, elevated and ramped sections, switches, and the automatic control centre.James Bow, "UTDC Kingston Transit Development Centre", Transit Toronto Phase III of the ICTS program ended on 31 January 1980 when testing on the prototype was completed at the Millhaven site; by this point the government had invested about $57.2 million, of a total $63 million spent on the product by the government and its industrial partners.Litvak & Maule, pg. 103
Looking for a site in Ontario to serve as a test bed for the ICTS, the government focused on an extension of the eastern end of TTC's Bloor–Danforth line. The TTC had already started building a streetcar line that would extend from the end of the subway at Kennedy station to the Scarborough City Centre, a low-density route passing through industrial land. The TTC was not interested in changing to the ICTS for this route, until the Ontario government, which provided about 80% of the capital costs, stepped in and demanded the ICTS be used. A smaller system in Hamilton, Ontario was also considered, and there was a brief study for a similar system in Ottawa, Ontario. Vancouver, British Columbia was interested in the system as part of the Expo 86 buildout in keeping with the theme, "Transportation and Communication". Although the UMTA program in the U.S. was "de-funded" that year, Detroit pressed ahead with its plans and signed up in August. Hamilton, Ottawa, Miami, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. were also in talks with UTDC.Litvak & Maule, pg. 105 With three customers lined up, a manufacturing plant was added to the Millhaven site, VentureTrans Manufacturing, which opened in 1982.