Bombardier says it’s meeting Ion milestones

Passengers won’t board light rail trains until spring of 2019

WATERLOO REGION — Bombardier says it’s not solely responsible for pushing back the Ion launch to next spring.

“A complex project like this one requires the collaboration and co-operation of many entities,” David Van der Wee, chief operating officer at Bombardier Transportation, said in an email statement.

“Overall, Bombardier is on track to deliver to its commitment.” Instead of the expected service start in December, passengers won’t be boarding Ion trains until spring 2019.

“It’s not entirely a surprise given the track record of Bom-

bardier up to this point,” Coun. Tom Galloway said on Tuesday when the delay was announced at a council meeting.

Regional Chair Ken Seiling added that regional staff worked diligently to push both Bombardier and construction consortium GrandLinq to get Ion service started on time. “It’s unfortunate that the weak link in this system has been our private sector partners, and they’re the ones who have let us down in this process, and so we’re making the best of it as we can,” Seiling said.

A report by regional staff released Tuesday said that according to Bombardier’s current schedule, all 14 vehicles are scheduled to be ready in early February.

Bombardier said the report does not completely represent the situation.

It says the completion of the first vehicle with the specialized equipment was on time.

“So far, we met all our key milestones and we are on the right path to deliver all 14 cars with specialized equipment in Waterloo by the end of 2018 as promised.”

Eleven vehicles are currently in the region and three remain at Bombardier’s Kingston plant.

Specialized equipment that’s needed to operate the vehicles on the system must be installed after the vehicles are assembled and the region made a deal with Bombardier to do that installation.

That agreement included specific delivery milestones.

Only four of the vehicles here have the equipment installed, a process that the region said is taking longer than expected.

“If the cars had been on time, this wouldn’t be an issue,” Seiling said on Wednesday.

Bombardier says the integration of the specialized equipment requires an intensive tear down and rebuild of the vehicle.

“We put together a very aggressive schedule and deployed all the necessary resources to meet the milestones, including hiring more employees in Ontario and investing at our Kingston manufacturing site,” Van der Wee said.

After the equipment is installed, the trains must be tested and have a “burning-in period” of 600 kilometres before they can start service. None are service ready yet.

The region contracted Bombardier to build 14 light rail vehicles, originally expected to be delivered by the end of 2016. The first arrived in February 2017.

Light rail between Waterloo and Kitchener was scheduled to launch in 2017.

Total added costs are estimated at $50 million, putting the project budget at $868 million. The region’s contract with Bombardier includes a damages clause, and its legal team is now looking into options.

“We are going to try to recover as much of our costs as we can,” Seiling said.