Transit users on St. Clair Ave. and King St. are now next in line to benefit from the TTC’s new streetcars, after the agency decided to reshuffle its rollout of the sleek, accessible vehicles.

According to a briefing note the TTC distributed to councillors on Wednesday, Bombardier’s air-conditioned, low-floor streetcars will begin service on the 512 St. Clair route on Sept. 3, 2017, and by February 2018 the line will have a full complement of 20 of the vehicles.

The 504 King, which with 65,000 daily riders is by far the city’s busiest surface route, will start operating the vehicles in regular weekday service in November, and will have 24 by July 2018.

The TTC has already started to deploy some of the new cars on the 504 King on weekends, and is currently deploying them on the 514 Cherry, which also runs along King St.

Councillor Joe Mihevc, who represents a ward bisected by the 512 St. Clair route, said he was “just over the moon” about the new schedule.

He said St. Clair riders have endured more than a decade of construction work, first to build the streetcar right-of-way and then to conduct upgrades to the line last year.

The arrival of the new vehicles “is the last chapter in the St. Clair renewal grand project,” said Mihevc (Ward 21, St. Paul’s).

The new rollout schedule replaces one published by the TTC in the middle of last year under which the 512 St. Clair wasn’t supposed to start getting the new cars until sometime in 2018.

The 504 King wasn’t scheduled to see the new vehicles until after they had been deployed on the 511 Bathurst, 505 Dundas, and 501 Queen.

Riders of those latter three routes are the losers under the new timelines. The 501 Queen, 511 Bathurst, and 505 Dundas were previously slated to start getting the new cars last year but now they won’t enter permanent service on the lines until 2018.

As under the old schedule, riders of the 506 Carlton will be the last to enjoy new vehicles — they’ll have to wait until 2019.

According to the briefing note, the original schedule was chosen “to maximize the customer and service impact of the high capacity cars … and to co-ordinate with planned platform, stop, overhead wire, and track work.”

Bombardier’s failure to deliver the vehicles as quickly as planned, coupled with “other service and construction issues,” forced the TTC to revise the route order.

The 512 was pushed up the list for several reasons, said TTC spokesperson Brad Ross. The route is exceeding crowding standards during busy periods, and it’s difficult to supplement streetcar service with buses on St. Clair because the streetcars operate in their own right-of-way.

The upgrades made to platforms and stations last year also made the entire route accessible, Ross said.

The new timelines are dependent on Bombardier delivering the vehicles as scheduled, which so far the company has struggled to do.

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Under the initial terms of the city’s $1-billion purchase of a new 204-car fleet, Bombardier was supposed to have supplied more than 100 of the vehicles by now. As of this week the TTC had only 33 in service.

The vehicles are deployed on the 510 Spadina, 509 Harbourfront, and 514 Cherry lines.

Ross said the company has met all of its revised delivery targets for the TTC this year and the agency, is “cautiously optimistic” it will supply the vehicles as scheduled from now on.

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