Detroit looking to buy Scarborough RT trains and equipment from TTC

Trains and other equipment from the now-defunct Scarborough RT could soon find a new home in Detroit.

The City of Detroit is looking to buy 10 to 12 train cars from the TTC for its own rapid transit system called "The People Mover," Ernest Latham, the deputy manager of the Detroit Transportation Company (DTC), told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday.

"That'll help us extend our fleet out and have a more robust newer fleet as (the TTC's) fleet was just certified and rebuilt. It would help us retire some of our older vehicles," Latham said, noting that the "The People Mover" currently has a fleet of 12.

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"Our transit agency is of the same vintage as the Scarborough line. So you guys have a lot of assets that we could use for train parts, long lead time items that we would have to go out to tender for, smaller parts, large ATC sub-assemblies and vehicles themselves. A lot of these parts would transfer readily over to our system here in Detroit."

At the DTC's Dec. 12 meeting, the board of directors gave the general manager the green light to negotiate and enter into an agreement to purchase "various surplus assets" from the TTC, including vehicles and components from the SRT, as well as supplies and parts.

Latham said the board approved US$1 million dollars for the purchase.

"We're looking at it as a win for us because it'll help us extend another three, five, seven years down the line until we can go out for tender for new fleet," he said, adding that the DTC had inquired about buying equipment from the TTC even before the pandemic.

"There would need some minor modifications to put them on our line. So we're looking at taking the cars, changing them, retrofitting them a little bit to fit our line."

Latham said the transit agency wants "The People Mover" in tip-top shape ahead of the 2024 NFL Draft, which will take place in the city in April.

The TTC had planned to close the Scarborough RT last month but was forced to shut down the line early after a derailment this summer.

The problem-plagued six-stop transit line, which opened in 1985, was only designed to run for 25 years and should have been retired more than a decade earlier.

In a 2021 report, city staff acknowledged that SRT vehicles were “becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain.”

As far back as 2006, city staff were recommending upgrades to the line, including purchasing larger, new generation vehicles to replace the SRT’s aging fleet of 28 cars.

In an interview with CP24 on Tuesday, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said "with a bit of work," Detroit could get another five or 10 years of life out of the equipment, which is "cheaper than purchasing new trains."

"We were approached by Detroit a while back. They asked us about purchasing the decommissioned SRT trains and so we entered into negotiations with them. Now their board has signed off on a deal to purchase these trains and some of the infrastructure as well, some of the signalling pieces. We are still finalizing the actual nuts and bolts of it all but they will pay us a fee as well as the shipping costs."

He said the DTC's board of directors approved a recommendation to spend about a million dollars on the equipment plus shipping costs.

"So it will be a net win for the TTC," Green said. "We did a life extension on these trains several years ago… so they are still in pretty good shape."

Green said the TTC will be holding on to a few of the SRT cars in an effort to preserve a piece of the city's transit history. Some of the cars will be sent to the Halton County Radial Railway museum, he added.

"We absolutely understand the nostalgic value and we know that transit enthusiasts really like the history so we will be keeping some of this machinery for ourselves," Green said.

With files from CTV News Toronto's Mike Walker