What made St. Clair streetcars bunch up like this?

You know how the old clichĂŠ goes - you wait ages for a bus then two come along at once. Here in Toronto, that saying extends to comical numbers of streetcars too. Case in point yesterday on St. Clair where Reddit user z24lucifer spotted a line of vehicles that appears to stretch to the snowy horizon.

The TTC's executive director of corporate communications Brad Ross says the first car in the picture is disabled and the one behind it is preparing to push it off the right of way. The cars behind should have been turned back at Oakwood by transit control, he admits. Ross says the TTC is addressing the incident, which resulted in a 25 minute delay, with staff.

Bunch-ups are inevitable when vehicles are fixed to rails, though any rider of the Dufferin bus will know it can happen to more maneuverable surface vehicles too.

Could the TTC realistically do more to prevent these situations or is that a responsibility that falls with other road users too? We saw similar scenes during the last major snowfall when cars blocked streetcar tracks en masse.

When the new, high-capacity cars enter service in 2014 there will, over time, be an overall drop in the number of streetcars - could that solve bunching to some extent? Are more turning loops the answer? Tell us below.

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

Image: z24lucifer/Reddit.