Flexity Freedom

The Flexity Freedom is a family of fully low-floor, articulated light rail vehicles developed by Bombardier Transportation, and later Alstom, for the North American market. It was first introduced in 2011 and is built at Thunder Bay and Kingston in Ontario. It belongs to the wider Flexity family and can be built to run in one direction or both. Unlike many competitors it is made of modules of similar length, so an operator can change the number of intermediate modules and so the capacity: Toronto and Waterloo vehicles have five modules and Edmonton's have seven, and up to four vehicles can couple into one train. The cars use regenerative braking and LED lighting, and Bombardier offered a catenary-free version powered by induction. The type runs on the Ion rapid transit in Waterloo Region, the Valley Line in Edmonton and Line 5 Eglinton in Toronto, where a CA$770 million order for 182 vehicles announced in 2010 was delayed by the late delivery of the prototype.