Bombardier gets $428M order for GO Transit rail cars

The company responsible for cutting by more than half the number of TTC streetcars it promised has been asked to make 125 commuter rail cars for GO Transit.

Thestar.com
Aug. 2, 2016
By Ben Spurr

Metrolinx has placed a new $428-million order with Bombardier, despite the company’s well-publicized failure to deliver vehicles on time for other Toronto transit projects.

Bombardier’s rail division announced Tuesday that Metrolinx, the provincial transit agency for the GTA, had exercised an option for 125 additional two-level commuter rail cars to run on GO Transit lines. Metrolinx will use the cars to increase GO service across the GTA.

The order is an extension of a deal announced in 2014 for 65 GO coaches, and brings the size of the total order to 200 cars, at a cost of $685 million.

Metrolinx is still taking delivery of the original purchase, and agency spokeswoman Anne Marie Aikins said that re-upping with Bombardier made sense because the company has supplied GO’s fleet of commuter rail cars for more than three decades. Over that time the company has built nearly 700 of the vehicles.

Aikins said that switching to another supplier could result in additional maintenance and training costs, because the platforms at GO’s Willowbrook maintenance yard were built to fit the Bombardier cars, and repair crews are familiar with the current design.

“This is a logical thing to do, based upon the experience that we’ve had in the past,” said Bruce McCuaig, Metrolinx’s president and CEO.

“We’re very confident that we’re going to get a good product from Bombardier, and they’re going to fulfill their contractual requirements.”

In light of delays to other projects, McCuaig said Metrolinx had “built in additional protections” to the latest contract that include more significant penalties to Bombardier for late delivery, and back-ending payments until after the vehicles have been supplied.

The announcement of the new purchase comes after months of negative headlines about Bombardier missing production deadlines for other Toronto-area public transit lines.

The TTC has filed a $50-million claim against the company over repeated delays in the delivery of its new $1.2-billion streetcar fleet. Under the terms of a deal signed in 2012, Bombardier was supposed to supply 73 of the new cars by the end of 2015, but so far only 23 have arrived.

And two weeks ago, the Star reported that Metrolinx had issued a notice of default to Bombardier that claimed the company was in breach of contract over a separate $770-million order for up to 182 light rail vehicles (LRVs). Metrolinx originally expected the first LRV pilot vehicle in the spring of 2014, but Bombardier has yet to supply it. Some of the LRVs are slated to run on the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRT lines, and Metrolinx said last month it was concerned any further delays could jeopardize the projects’ 2021 opening dates.

In an interview Tuesday, Bombardier spokesman Marc-Andre Lefebvre said the company is on track to deliver the LRVs in time for the Eglinton and Finch lines to begin service on schedule, and that changes it’s made to its production lines will allow it to speed up delivery of the LRVs and TTC streetcars.

It plans to deliver the first LRV pilot later this month, and has pledged to deliver all 204 TTC streetcars by the end of 2019, as stated in the original contract.

Lefebvre asserted that the delays that have afflicted the TTC and LRV orders won’t affect the production of GO cars.

“Those issues are unrelated,” he said. The streetcars and LRVs are “new technologies, new products that we brought onto our production line. In the case of the bi-level vehicles, it’s a product that we’ve been delivering for over 20 years and for which we have a high level of excellence.”

Production of the bi-level rail cars is scheduled to start in Thunder Bay, Ont. in the second quarter of 2018, and final delivery is scheduled for the first quarter of 2020. To handle the order, Lefebvre said the company plans to add 115 employees to its workforce of about 300 in Thunder Bay.