Bombardier Transportation’s trouble-plagued, behind-schedule contract with the Toronto Transit Commission for 204 new low-floor Flexity streetcars continues to be the public target of Toronto Mayor John Tory and TTC Board Chair Josh Colle.
The basic design work for Hamilton, Ontario’s LRT system has been finalized, including the selection of a site for the Maintenance and Storage Facility (MSF). The eight-mile (13–km) line is being financed at an estimate C$1 billion cost by Metrolinx, the provincial agency that oversees Ontario rail transit activity.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is implementing a revised wheel tread profile across its entire fleet of rapid transit railcars to reduce flange squeal and improve ride quality.
The jinx that has bedeviled timely delivery of Toronto’s new low-floor LRVs has now struck the Kitchener-Waterloo ION LRT, presently under construction. Meanwhile, the final alignment for Hamilton’s new B Line LRT is close to confirmation.
If you’ve been commuting into New York City on New Jersey Transit’s North Jersey Coast Line and your destination has been Penn Station, changing trains at Long Branch, N.J., has been a given since electrification was extended there from South Amboy in the late 1980s.
Production and delivery delays continue to plague the new low-floor Flexity Freedom streetcars Bombardier Transportation is building for the Toronto Transit Commission. TTC CEO Andy Byford, who is said to “revel in chaos,” is frustrated with yet another missed deadline. And Toronto Mayor John Tory is “completely dismayed,” as Toronto Star City Hall Reporter Jennifer Pagliaro reported on Monday, April 25, 2016. We reprint the article, in full:
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is starting dynamic testing of the first of 775 Fleet of the Future rapid transit cars being built by Bombardier Transportation under a $2.5 billion contract following arrival of the first car in San Francisco on April 6, 2016.
The National Railroad Hall of Fame has inducted Edward Gowen Budd, founder of the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Co. in Philadelphia in 1912. Bombardier Transportation, which acquired the Budd Co.’s passenger railcar designs and related assets of its mass transit equipment division in 1987, accepted the award on Edward Budd’s behalf during an Oct. 27, 2015 ceremony at St. Louis Union Station.
The Toronto Transit Commission board of directors has voted unanimously to sue Bombardier Transportation for at least $50 million for failure to deliver new streetcars on time, and without defects, according to an Oct. 30, 2015 report in the Toronto City News.
Société de transport de Montréal (STM) on Oct. 23, 2015 announced a three-year capital expenditures program valued at more than C$2.8 billion (US$2.1 billion). The plan outlines spending from 2016-2018 on those investments needed to upgrade or replace equipment and infrastructure approaching the end of their service life in the next few years.
