Edmonton Journal

City remains mum on new deadlines for Metro Line ELISE STOLTE

- estolte@postmedia.com

City council again voted to keep any update on Edmonton’s troubled Metro LRT Line in private Tuesday, declining to release any new dates from Thales Canada.

City officials haven’t said whether they’ve accepted Thales’ lastchance proposal to fix the line, or whether they’ve even made a decision.

Thales Canada had five business days to submit its new plan after Edmonton issued a notice of default May 1. The signalling contractor said that update included a new date for when it believes it can have the line running properly, both on the street-level portion to NAIT and in the downtown tunnel.

But Thales said city officials are the only ones who can release those details because they need to approve that schedule. They said some of the delay on this file is the city’s fault.

“When there is something to say, we’ll say it,” Mayor Don Iveson said Tuesday.

Outside council, he said: “There will be no public update until the fall, but rest assured, city administra­tion is working on this daily.”

He said negotiatio­ns with Thales should not be done in public.

When asked if Edmonton residents should just assume all is still going well in the absence of informatio­n, Iveson said: “You should assume Edmonton is vigorously pursuing its rights under the contract to get remedy.”

The Metro Line, an LRT spur line extending service from downtown to NAIT, was supposed to open during the spring of 2014. That was delayed because of challenges with

The risk is always people get worried about what’s not being shared with them.

a new high-tech signalling system.

Thales Canada successful­ly got this train-based radio system to work at the Metro Line’s at-grade crossings, and finished installing the technology on all of Edmonton’s 40-year-old trains. Now it needs to ensure trains from the new line and the old line can weave between each other in the downtown tunnel.

Coun. Andrew Knack said he will push council to release at least basic informatio­n on where Edmonton is at in the contract process.

He said the public should at least know, in general, what Thales’ response was and if Edmonton accepted Thales’ new schedule.

“Just generally, when you’re not sharing as much informatio­n as possible, the risk is always people get worried about what’s not being shared with them,” Knack said. “This has been a long process, there has been a lot of challenges with it. I think that’s the reason why people want to stay as informed as possible on this.”

City officials had no comment Tuesday. A Thales official said they were continuing to work on the project.

In the end, council ran out of time Tuesday and postponed its private update until the next council meeting.

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