[Admiral Beez]

True, and we'll never know. I can speak from my experience in brand and product management and sales and procurement directorship, where the metrics of customer choice/options and switching cost are always included in the bid process.

I can assure you Bombardier knew that the TTC had painted themselves into a corner, with massive switching costs and zero options other than to bend over and take whatever they said. When your customer has no choice and you're getting billions in government grants and loans, you don't care about a few million bucks in fines. Bombardier knows that no matter how badly they f#ck up this tender the TTC will still be their bitch. They have no other option.

 

[rbt]

What trams though? Beyond an apparent 17 units isolated to training and operating on a few routes, where are these trams we paid a premium for?

That has nothing to do with the specs written into the tender.

I can assure you Bombardier knew that the TTC had painted themselves into a corner, with massive switching costs and zero options other than to bend over and take whatever they said.

Which again doesn't have to do with the technical specs in the agreement. Every company would require a few years lead-time on an order like that. Waiting until the current vehicles were being scrapped to shop for new ones wasn't wise.

SRT is rapidly approaching, or already past, a similar hard deadline with no manoeuvring room.

 

[crs1026]

So, we're basically stuck with the gauge and radii chosen in 1861 by the TTC's precursor the Williams Omnibus Bus Line?

There's an urban legend that standard railroad gauge is derived from the dimensions of Roman chariots, and that TTC gauge was designed to defeat farmers' use of street car tracks for their wagons.

As this picture of a street in Pompeii demonstrates, in fact both standard and TTC gauges were used in Roman times. The Omnibus Line had nothing to do with it.

- Paul

 

[Admiral Beez]

AIUI, it's not the gauge, but the turning radii and wheelchair access that makes our new vehicles rare as hen's teeth. Remove the sharp turns and move to Euro-spec accessibility standards and presumably we could use whatever's on the market. But I digress, this is an impossibility.

 

[mpd618]

I'm under the impression that Toronto's is one of the largest inner-urban streetcar networks in the world, with a large number of streetcar intersections with connections. While the Bombardier situation is crazy, it's by no means obvious that Toronto needs to change to a different kind of streetcar system.

 

[EnviroTO]

How was the Thunder Bay plant re. delivery and quality of the CLRV and "ALRV, that predate Bombardier's acquisition in 1991?

When a company takes over a plant the sign changes, there isn't a mass replacement of the workforce. Canadair, UTDC, etc didn't become a bunch of people who knew how to build snowmobiles looking at aircraft and mass transit orders lost at how to fulfill them.

Today I am 45 years old. My bet is I will be 60 before the final units arrive.

How much would you wager?

 

[Steve X]

AIUI, it's not the gauge, but the turning radii and wheelchair access that makes our new vehicles rare as hen's teeth. Remove the sharp turns and move to Euro-spec accessibility standards and presumably we could use whatever's on the market. But I digress, this is an impossibility.

TTC has rejected BBD once before. The current order is actually the 2nd request for bids for new streetcars. Previously TTC cited that BBD would derail. BBD would rather pay TTC to redo the sharp curves but TTC/City of Toronto wouldn't allow it either. Rebuilding some curves to 17m (standard for many older European cities) would put the tracks on the sidewalk. I don't know how much the streetcar would need to honk to get people out of the way. A car stopped in the wrong place to make a right turn would hold up half the intersection when a car needs to turn.

The Metrolinx LRVs is more flexible but the signal system and 30 years maintenance supplier is umm... BBD. No matter what other suppliers they go with now, they still need ATO equipments from BBD.

 

[Johnny Au]

I'm under the impression that Toronto's is one of the largest inner-urban streetcar networks in the world, with a large number of streetcar intersections with connections. While the Bombardier situation is crazy, it's by no means obvious that Toronto needs to change to a different kind of streetcar system.

No other city in the Americas has three grand unions for its streetcar system or even a single grand union. Read here about grand unions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_union

A grand union at the intersection of Spadina and Queen

 

[EnviroTO]

Rather than propping up an incompetent company that is only around because of federal assistance

Seems like a real stretch. The company has been expanding and growing through its history but somehow was on the fiscal brink the whole time based on your observations. Somehow with the government giving Bombardier less than the cost of all the companies it procured and product research it has done, it is still here and pays back money over time. Why didn't this come to our attention prior to them spending money on product development and research funding for their biggest project of all time?

To think all these years when Bombardier wasn't front and center in the news they were on the brink of collapse. Going from snowmobiles to global aviation and transportation at 60 plants worldwide while all along being about to collapse if the federal government of the day didn't pay their bills.

Amazing.

Thanks for clearing it up for me. Here I thought they were a success story, but they are just a crown corporation like VIA Rail, Canada Post, AECL, Maritime Atlantic with their growing global relevance, product diversity, and customer list.

 

[Admiral Beez]

If Bombardier was delivering the new cars on time, we'd all be celebrating them as an Ontario and Canadian success story, and great partner of Toronto. We all like to back a winner. When I travel the world and see a Q400, I always tell my travel mates that it was (at least in part) made in Canada. Same goes for Spyder trikes and eventually the CS series jets.

But when they continuously mislead or don't know their own business enough to understand their delivery capabilities, and meanwhile show up in the media asking for government handouts while announcing moving jobs from Downsview to Mexico, well, we're going get pissed off, and yes, make some silly blanket generalizations.

We just want our damn streetcars.

 

[Steve X]

If Bombardier was delivering the new cars on time, we'd all be celebrating them as an Ontario and Canadian success story, and great partner of Toronto. We all like to back a winner. When I travel the world and see a Q400, I always tell my travel mates that it was (at least in part) made in Canada. Same goes for Spyder trikes and eventually the CS series jets.

But when they continuously mislead or don't know their own business enough to understand their delivery capabilities, and meanwhile show up in the media asking for government handouts while announcing moving jobs from Downsview to Mexico, well, we're going get pissed off, and yes, make some silly blanket generalizations.

We just want our damn streetcars.

Flexity streetcars aren't really Canadian products. Bombardier acquired the low floor tram design from ADTranz when they bought them out and built upon it in Europe. Engineering designs are produced in Europe. Most of the parts are made elsewhere and assembled here. All that's happening in TB is like putting lego together. I see the new streetcars like an European transit vehicle in TO.

 

[MetroMan]

^ not sure I agree but it is an interesting idea....but if the job losses would likely be in Thunder Bay why the "preferably Quebec" part?

Oops. Total mental lapse. I meant Thunder Bay.

 

[jcam]

Flexity streetcars aren't really Canadian products. Bombardier acquired the low floor tram design from ADTranz when they bought them out and built upon it in Europe. Engineering designs are produced in Europe. Most of the parts are made elsewhere and assembled here. All that's happening in TB is like putting lego together. I see the new streetcars like an European transit vehicle in TO.

That and the fact that for the plant in Mexico doing subassemblies, it's their first crack at the design. So you're taking a vehicle engineerined and long manufactured in europe, and you're teaching a Canadian outfit how to assemble, and a new sub assembly manufacturer how to build it. Knowledge transfer isn't always smooth...there will be teething problems. But had any of the other major manufacturers set up shop in Canada/North America to win the contract, they likely would've encountered similar issues. The fact is, once the vehicles have been accepted, they're miles ahead on reliability than what the old streetcars.

 

[cplchanb]

That and the fact that for the plant in Mexico doing subassemblies, it's their first crack at the design. So you're taking a vehicle engineerined and long manufactured in europe, and you're teaching a Canadian outfit how to assemble, and a new sub assembly manufacturer how to build it. Knowledge transfer isn't always smooth...there will be teething problems. But had any of the other major manufacturers set up shop in Canada/North America to win the contract, they likely would've encountered similar issues. The fact is, once the vehicles have been accepted, they're miles ahead on reliability than what the old streetcars.

Unfortunately for BBR, they chose the wrong order to test the new waters... 50/50 speaking, they really shouldve started with a much smaller order so that in a case like this at least they wont be rotating on a spit for the next 5 years with hundreds on the backlog. TTC's vehicles shouldve been built with the production strategy like the TRs.

 

[DSC]

The fact is, once the vehicles have been accepted, they're miles ahead on reliability than what the old streetcars.

It would be a pretty sad state of affairs if brand new streetcars were NOT more reliable than ones that had been on the road for 30 years!