An interesting development:
Bombardier baffled by derailed streetcar contract
JOHN PARTRIDGE and MATTHEW CAMPBELL AND JEFF GRAY
Globe and Mail Update
July 18, 2008 at 3:28 PM EDT
Bombardier Transportation says it is baffled by the Toronto Transit Commission's dismissal as “non-compliant” of its bid for a $1.25-billion contract to replace the city's aging streetcar fleet.
As a result, it is urgently seeking a meeting with the TTC to get a better understanding of what went wrong.
“Based on the information we've got, and it's limited at the moment. . .bottom line is we don't understand at this point or accept the non-compliance determination,” Bombardier spokesman David Slack said Friday. “We still believe the bid submitted was competitive and responsive to the intent of the specification and [that] it's a viable proposal for the needs of the region.”
Mr. Slack also angrily dismissed comments made Thursday by TTC chairman Adam Giambrone that Bombardier had deliberately submitted a bid that did not meet some of the transit operator's technical requirements.
“We take some exception to the comments that were in the media this morning that BT knowingly submitted a non-compliant bid,” he said in a telephone interview. “These suggestions are unwarranted and do nothing to further constructive interaction between the parties on this.”
The TTC announced Thursday that it has rejected Bombardier's proposal as technically non-compliant, and the only other submission it received, from tiny British-based TRAM Power Ltd., as commercially non-compliant.
It said that, instead, it will begin negotiations with various manufacturers, including Bombardier, over the next four weeks to find a design that will work.
Mr. Slack said Bombardier, the world's largest maker of light rail vehicles and a unit of Montreal-based aerospace and transportation giant Bombardier Inc., was planning to write to the TTC Friday seeking a face to face meeting as soon as possible.
“Our management today is going to ask the TTC for an immediate meeting to discuss the issue in more depth so we can get a better understanding of where they are coming from,” he said in a telephone interview.
Until the company learns the specific details of how its proposed vehicles are non-compliant “or how they believe they are not compliant,” Mr. Slack added, “we have no recourse. We need to talk with them directly to understand what the issue is, and until we get that, we're at a disadvantage.”
Mr. Giambrone, who also is a Toronto city councillor, told reporters Thursday that Bombardier's proposed “Flexity” streetcar would simply would not run on the city's system, with its hilly streets and tight curves.
"Effectively, the car that they bid would have derailed on Toronto streets, and they should have known this," he said.
Mr. Giambrone said Bombardier knowingly submitted a bid that did not meet several of the TTC's technical requirements, writing "fail" right on the document indicating that the firm's testing showed its vehicle could not push a disabled streetcar up a hill near Union Station and could not handle the city's unusually tight 11-metre-radius curves.
However, Mr. Slack refused to comment on the Flexity vehicles' ability to meet the TTC's technical requirements. “We're not going to debate the technical aspects in the media,” he said.
He also dismissed out of hand the notion that Bombardier may have been overconfident of winning the contract and careless in preparing its bid.
“That's pretty ridiculous given that right up until the bid submission [deadline] we assumed it was going to be multiple bidders [including] a couple of our big competitors,” Mr. Slack said. “The bottom line is that we are the world's No. 1 provider of light rail vehicles [and] our success wouldn't be what it is today if we went into bids with a sloppy approach.”
Siemens AG, the German conglomerate widely expected to compete with Bombardier for the project, surprised many by failing to submit a bid before the July 3 deadline.
Dirk Miller, a spokesman for the company, said Friday that Siemens is interest in the new process the TTC is planning to launch to choose a manufacturer. "We have to re-assess and then our final decision may be a different one," he said.
Mr. Miller also said that the company's decision to pull out of the TTC's original request for proposals came as Siemens was about to announce a restructuring. “The decision was not simply based on technical challenges,” Mr. Miller said. “We are going through an adjustment…and have to improve cost performance in some areas. It's always difficult to take a risk in such an environment."
The streetcar purchase - which has not yet received necessary funding from provincial and federal governments - has been controversial from the outset, as the TTC insisted on holding a competitive bidding process after it was criticized for entering into a "sole source" deal with Bombardier for $674-million worth of subway cars in 2006 to preserve unionized jobs at Bombardier's Thunder Bay plant.
Bob Chernicki, an assistant to the president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents workers at that plant called the TTC's rejection of Bombardier's bid “shocking.”
He warned that it threatens the plant's future. “Nothing else is coming into that plant," he said, adding that without the streetcar contract there is “no question” but that there will be layoffs there after 2010.
More to come.
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