Langley City Councillor defending LRT after deadly collision report out of Toronto

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SURREY (NEWS 1130) – Plans for Surrey’s LRT are moving forward but now a recent story in the Toronto Star says that city’s streetcars are involved in half of the system’s deadly collisions could affect the project’s future.

Toronto had 15 traffic fatalities involving streetcars in some from between 2007 and 2017 according to The Star. But Lanlgey City Councillor and transit blogger Nathan Pachal says some collisions on the Surrey LRT are inevitable.

“Streetcars do carry a high proportion of traffic but one of the fundamental differences is that the majority of the TTC streetcar network does run in mixed traffic,” he explains.

“[Toronto’s] is an old system that was installed around the turn of the last century…whereas the Surrey system is really modern LRT. It’s more akin to what you would be seeing being built in places like Portland, in places like Kitchener-Waterloo.”

Surrey’s LRT would have dedicated right-of-way separate from traffic, which Pachal says would ultimately mean fewer collisions. So Surrey, in theory, would have fewer collisions LRT-vehicle.

“I think there will be collisions just like there are also fatalities on the SkyTrain network as well. But because they are fundamentally two different systems.”

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