 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Rail transport |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Locomotives High-speed trains Intercity and commuter trains Trams People movers Signalling systems |
| Owner | Bombardier Transportation (1992-2021) Alstom (2021-Present) |
| Company type |
|
|---|---|
| Industry | Mass transit/railcar manufacturing / military vehicles |
| Founded | 1973 as Ontario Transportation Development Corporation |
| Defunct | 1991 |
| Fate | assets acquired by Lavalin and later Bombardier Inc. |
| Successor | Bombardier Transportation |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Railcar, Mass transit cars, Streetcars, military vehicles |
The Urban Transportation Development Corporation Ltd. (UTDC) is a former 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.[1] 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 a marketing company located in Detroit.
- 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 the 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.