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It will be interesting to see who the LRT supplier are for these bids.

{http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/10/21/ottawa-light-rail-bid-fin\
alists.html
}
Ottawa light rail bid finalists announced


CBC News

Posted: Oct 21, 2011 1:34 PM ET

Last Updated: Oct 21, 2011 1:32 PM ET

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Siemens wants to bid on new LRT project


mi-ottawa-lrt-cyrville-300.jpg
An artist's rendering shows Cyrville Station, one stop on Ottawa's proposed light rail transit line. (Ottawa Light Rail)The City of Ottawa has announced the three finalists vying for the $2.1 billion light rail system contract.
VINCI Concessions, ACS Infrastructure Canada and Bouygues Travaux Publics will all submit proposals by July 2012. The construction is projected to start sometime in 2013.
VINCI dubs itself Europe’s largest operator of transport infrastructure concessions such as light rail systems, roadways and bridges. ACS is an international group based in Spain, but it is its Canadian subsidiary in charge of the Ottawa light rail bid.
Bouygues Travaux is a France-based corporation that advertises its specialty in underground works, complex civil engineering projects and engineering structures.
Councillor says bidding competition very timely

Coun. Diane Deans, who also heads the city's transit commission, said the project comes during tenuous economic times throughout both Europe and the United States.
As a result, she said these companies are taking the contract seriously.
"Europe isn't building this kind of project right now with their economies and the state of chaos that they're in, and neither is most big cities in the U.S.," said Deans.
"In some ways I think our timing is really good because they're going to sharpen their pencils and they're going to, I think, bring in competitive bids because that's what they're going to have to do to win."
Siemens, a multinational company based in Germany, was not one of the finalists after making its interest in bidding public in early July. The company had previously won nearly $37 million from the city after the old light rail contract, held by Siemens, was cancelled.
The winning bid will oversee the design, financing, building and maintenance of the Ottawa's new light rail system, which the city hopes to have complete by Canada's 150th birthday celebrations in 2017.
 
The winning bid will oversee the design, financing, building and maintenance of the Ottawa's new light rail system, which the city hopes to have complete by Canada's 150th birthday celebrations in 2017.
I don't think that's what they're planning... I'm pretty sure the accelerated timetable was a 2018 opening, with the stations being ready for "viewing" by 2017.
 
Regarding vehicles for the line, the report issued by city staff in the summer said "During the RFQ stage, respondents will be directed not to commit to a specific LRT Systems/Vehicle system. This will enable the City to focus on qualifying the best construction consortium and ensure that a qualified consortium is not disqualified due to a non-compliant vehicle."

I'm baffled by that crude little rendering included in the CBC article. It's out of date by a couple of years and bears no relationship to the most recent design for Cyrville station. Ottawa Business Journal always seems to do the same thing. How can you take their reporting on the project seriously if they can't bother to go to its website, which has a large and up-to-date image library?
 
Why not just use vehicles from the TTC LRT order that the TTC won't be needing anymore due to the Transit City cancellation.
 
Why not just use vehicles from the TTC LRT order that the TTC won't be needing anymore due to the Transit City cancellation.
Because they don't meet the specs. For example, they have an upper limit of 70 or 80 km/hr, compared to the 100 km/hr required for Ottawa. There's also not that many left over after the Eglinton/SRT requirements. A few dozen maybe? How many are required for Ottawa?
 
Because they don't meet the specs. For example, they have an upper limit of 70 or 80 km/hr, compared to the 100 km/hr required for Ottawa. There's also not that many left over after the Eglinton/SRT requirements. A few dozen maybe? How many are required for Ottawa?

I thought there were quite a few that would be left over. How many were ordered for the SELRT and FWLRT?
 
I can see them maybe using a couple of them as 'test vehicles', but I don't think there were enough ordered to satisfy the demand. This line is projected to be using 3 car trainsets every 2 minutes or so during peak periods on opening day, with even more required when the line is extended west to Baseline a few years later.
 
I thought there were quite a few that would be left over. How many were ordered for the SELRT and FWLRT?
The original number from Metrolinx in 2010 was 182 cars; 76 for Eglinton, 48 for SRT, 23 for Finch, and 35 for Sheppard; though TTC consistently says 183 cars instead of 182. So 124 of the 182/183 cars were for the Eglinton/SRT line. However, with the redesign, and the increased ridership, the number of cars required has increased - I'm sure we discussed it somewhere, but I can't find the hard numbers. At most it was only 58 cars ... and I think it's far lower than this with the increased requirements for vehicles on Eglinton and the SRT.
 
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Because they don't meet the specs. For example, they have an upper limit of 70 or 80 km/hr, compared to the 100 km/hr required for Ottawa.
This is only an issue if they decide to make it an issue. There's more wiggle room in these decisions than it sometimes seems.
It's easy for them to write them off because they don't meet this bullet point, (and sure enough in gov't contracts, they love to use arbitrary bullet points to weed out bidders they don't want,) but it's also easy for them to overlook this if the rest of the value proposition
 
No, it's an issue if it's there for a good reason. The speed of the vehicles is far from an arbitrary bullet point. As someone else pointed out, the first phase of the Ottawa system could likely get by with an 80 kph top speed. But later phases could well see trains running 2 and potentially 4 miles between stops, along highways. Would 70 or 80 be fine for that? The time penalty might only be a minute or so, but would OC Transpo really want their riders watching the cars whiz by at 100? Buses often go pretty fast on the transitway. Slower travel is not the way to sell a new rapid transit system.
 
I'm not saying that speed doesn't matter.
I'm saying that, given an appropriately attractive package, missing the top speed by 20% is not an absolute dealbreaker.
 
I'm not saying that speed doesn't matter.
I'm saying that, given an appropriately attractive package, missing the top speed by 20% is not an absolute dealbreaker.
Perhaps ... but surely Ottawa's demand for vehicles far exceeds the 58 that were left over from the Sheppard East and Finch West lines, if the city goes ahead with cancelling it. And as I said before, there's likely not even 58 left over, as the frequency for the Eglinton/SRT line has gone up - and all trains are now 3 vehicles long. I'd be surprised if there's much more than 20 cars left over. Might be an option for KW ... How many vehicles does Ottawa require? How many vehicles does KW require?
 

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