Why can’t GO, TTC learn from the ’70s?

This week on Monday morning it was cold for the first time this winter. It was — brrrr — minus 14 C at 6 a.m. Before I left the house, CP24 reported that one GO train had been cancelled and there were problems with a section of the TTC subway in the west end. Later, I heard there were difficulties with the Scarborough LRT line.

My car started, though. I turned that key and it fired up in a millisecond. It purred like a kitten all the way into the office. I was snug and warm and entertained on the radio by Erin and Mike and all was well with the world.

I couldn’t help feeling sorry — for a second or two — for all those GO and TTC riders who had been inconvenienced. I mean, it’s winter and it gets cold in these parts but sure as God made those little green apples you can bet the trains or the subways or the streetcars or something having to do with public transit will break down once the temperature goes below zero.

That all those passengers don’t go absolutely ballistic every now and again and do things like occupy buildings until these things get fixed has always fascinated me. But I digress.

Back in the 1970s, the Ontario government had a company called UTDC (Urban Transportation Development Corp.) whose job was to sell transit systems around the world. It made a few domestic sales (Vancouver, Scarborough) and one or two offshore but was eventually broken up and sold off.

But when it was operational, it had a test track at Millhaven, near Kingston, Ont. To demonstrate the product, it would bring people from around the world to watch a couple of subway-type cars zip around that

If a TTC switch is not going to work properly in the cold, then load it up with so much juice that a snowflake would melt a metre short of landing

track. Sometimes, these demos would be held in winter. To ensure that things like signal switches and third-rail power sources didn’t freeze up or become neutered by several feet of snow, they loaded so much electricity into that track that hell could freeze over and the UTDC test track would just keep on truckin’. There could be so much snow or freezing rain falling that you couldn’t drive on the roads but that track would be free of anything even reminiscent of winter precipitation.

If they had the foresight to do that in the 1970s, I can’t — for the life of me — understand why people in charge of public transit systems can’t do the same sort of thing in 2016. If a signal switch on a GO line is prone to freezing up when the temperature dips, how about rewiring it in the summertime to ensure it doesn’t keep doing it come January? If a TTC switch or subway third rail is not going to work properly in the cold, then take a page out of that old UTDC book and load it up with so much juice that a snowflake would melt a metre short of landing.

This is not rocket science and yet year after year, we hear about the same old, sorry problems.

You would hope that the people who run mass transit systems would have — or at least adopt — that UTDC mindset. Your Toronto Star Wheels team will be heading to Detroit this weekend to cover — like a blanket — the preview days for the annual North American International Auto Show. As well, a Wheels correspondent will be travelling to Montreal for the auto show there.

We’ll have a full and complete report on all things Detroit and Montreal in next Friday’s Toronto Star Touch tablet edition as well as our Wheels newspaper section on Saturday. In the meantime, if you can’t wait, everything will be filed as it happens to our Wheels Internet site: thestar.com/autos. nmcdonald@thestar.ca