Two of Ontario, Canada’s numerous light rail transit projects—the Kitchener-Waterloo ION and Hamilton Street Railway B Line—have been facing difficulties, albeit of a different nature. The former is still without functional LRVs; the latter is looking at potentially conflicting operating proposals.
Former Bombardier Transportation executive Andrew Robbins has been named executive director and chief executive of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation.
Metrolinx, the Ontario Government’s transit agency, has dropped its appeal of the court decision earlier this year that had prevented the authority from cancelling a C$770 million order with Bombardier for 182 Flexity Freedom LRVs.
In the wake of Bombardier Transportation’s ongoing problems with light rail vehicles it’s building for various Ontario LRT projects, the purported combination of the railway businesses of Siemens and Bombardier appears to have taken on an interesting twist. This folllows the filing of an official protest letter by Siemens Canada with Ontario’s Transportation Minister over Metrolinx’s awarding of a single-source LRV contract to Alstom.
The first Bombardier Flexity Freedom LRV for the new Kitchener-Waterloo LRT line arrived Feb. 22, 2017, after a long journey by rail from the carbuilder’s plant in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Bombardier announced Nov. 22 that it has been awarded an eight-year contract by Montréal’s Agence Métropolitaine de Transport (AMT) for the operations and maintenance of the AMT commuter rail fleet on all of its six lines in the greater Montréal area.
Metrolinx confirmed November 3 its notice of intent to terminate its $770-million contract for up to 182 Bombardier LRVs.
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.
On Sept. 1, 2016, the Canadian government awarded a lion’s share of transit development agreements in the province of Alberta to the city of Edmonton.
The first of 300 Bombardier R179 cars ordered by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the MTA New York City Transit B Division subway was unloaded at 207th Street Yard in Upper Manhattan on Sept. 6, 2016.
