It's amusing to note that it was FIVE years ago this month that the city received its first LRV from Bombardier, and still not a single revenue passenger has been carried. Even more hilariously, worries were expressed at the time that production delays at Bombardier (which had affected multiple projects in Toronto) might pose a challenge to operation of the Valley Line.
 
Interestingly, the Bombardier cars were the only thing on schedule (even allowing for car 1001 to be returned to the factory and redelivered).
People seem to forget that the city (administration as council knows nothing) is the party who set the standards, wrote the spec's and issued tenders etc. and presented council with admin's choices to vote on.
Funding set none of that, and yet, has anybody in administration fallen on their swords yet?
And penalties, exactly how much and where are they sitting???
 
Breaks my heart thinking about the social and economic ripple effects from such significant delays.
 
I am so sick of listening to apologists for local councils blame the long-gone Stephen Harper for the fact that projects like the Valley Line have gone off the rails. Where's the accountability at the local level? Harper has been out of office for almost eight years and yet people are still insisting his invisible hand is somehow to blame for what has gone wrong.

First of all P3s are not the issue, nor are P3s inherently some kind of Conservative fixation. Consider the Canada Line. It was conceived when Jean Chretien was still prime minister and received funding from the Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund, which supported a number of P3 projects including the Canada Line. The line was delivered on time and has exceeded ridership expectations. The only deficiencies are the fact that the platforms were designed too short--for which the private partner can hardly be blamed.

Second, the debacle of the Metro line (which was not a P3) shows that the issue is with the city transportation department and a lack of adult supervision from elected council. The transportation department accepted Thales' assurances that its signalling system would work even though Thales had never installed its system in an LRT line with grade crossings like Edmonton's. This major error is on city staff, not anyone else. They're supposed to ensure that bidders and suppliers meet required standards. And council is supposed to be ensuring that city staff (through the city manager) are actually doing the jobs they're paid to do. The fact that this project went horribly awry and was over a year and a half late (and again, the city was responsible for delivery, it wasn't a P3) was one of the reasons the city manager was fired.

Third, look at non-P3 projects where councils have failed to exercise proper oversight in design. The transportation department insisted that grade crossings would not cause major traffic snarls on the NAIT line. Like fools, council believed them and approved the project as designed. When the inevitable happened, there was nothing but finger-pointing. And now, having learned nothing from the Metro Line disaster, the current council has eliminated an elevated crossing and station at Heritage Valley in favour of an at-grade crossing, again believing the transportation department's utterly worthless assurance that this will not lead to traffic snarls on Ellerslie Road.

Fourth, a lot of messes that we are seeing are the result of poor decisions by city bureaucrats and rubber-stamping by bored, disinterested councils. Consider Ottawa. The city went with an LRV (the Alstom Citadis Spirit) which was a European tram tweaked for Canada. It had never operated in temperatures as cold as Ottawa's. It had never operated in a light metro (which is what Ottawa's system is, even though it uses trams). Yet Ottawa chose to believe Alstom's assurances that this vehicle would do the job. The LRVs have never worked right, frequently break down, have had issues with their doors and axles and have suffered derailment. Yet this was the vehicle the city chose and council rubber-stamped it. To make matters worse, Ottawa recently ordered MORE of the troubled Citadis Spirits instead of buying another, more suitable model for Stage 2 of the Confederation Line. These are dumb decisions that city transportation departments are making and councils are going along with it.
 
I’m sick and tired of people being sick and tired. Fact Stephen Harpers decisions have long term consequences that cannot be reversed without significant financial consequences.
 
And yet Harper did not write the specifications, nor did he write the the tenders, nor did he select the companies to be accepted, nor did he select the sub-contractors. That was all on city administration (except the subs)
Let's look at the walterdale bridge, not a p3, no harper, but mega delayed, and it was 100% a city of edmonton problem.
Time to put the politics to the side and lay the blame whete it belongs, on city administration, as council only hears and votes on what admin tells them, the admin agenda.
Sadly we can't vote admin out of a job, councillors are thus fair game
Travelling Chris, an excellent posting, agree 1,000%. Of note, when the city received only 1 response (from thales) for the metro signals. Alarm bells should have gone off like a 4 alarm blaze...
 
And yet city administration is not responsible for the level of detail to determine the strength of the concrete or the procedures for pouring. They are not responsible for how much rebar to use or the type of signal cable to use. These are determined by building codes and detailed design that the contractor is responsible for. The city provides a preliminary design only that the contractor has to follow.
In the instance of the Metro line the administrator responsible for that screw up was fired.
 
I'll agree with you, the "standards" that should have been in place seem to have been ignored until too late, who actually monitors that, seems to me the city should have kept an eye open, as we know how corners tend to be cut.
I'm really interested in these cables oxidising, from what I saw during the pylon repairs, those cables around bonnie doon were also being repaired/replaced, so what is the life expectancy anyways
 
People seem to forget that the city (administration as council knows nothing) is the party who set the standards, wrote the spec's and issued tenders etc. and presented council with admin's choices to vote on.
Funding set none of that, and yet, has anybody in administration fallen on their swords yet?
Why does anyone need to fall on their swords? From my observations, it seems like a lot of due diligence went into selecting a P3 contractor. Granted, I can't say much about which ever group evaluated the proposals, however, we had the LRT Goverence Committee involved, along with a Fairness monitor involved. This wasn't admin and admin alone. And even if it was, if they competently awarded the contact, if it does go into the toilet because of poor project management, bad contractors etc how is it necessarily admins fault? I'd actually argue someone was doing their homework, whether it be City monitors, or quality assurance within TransEd for catching a lot of poor concrete work that saw the Whitemud bridge spans redone once (or was it twice?) and the replacement of some of the elevated guideway segments and who knows what else.
LRT Governance Board Bylaw: https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=30726

Second, the debacle of the Metro line (which was not a P3) shows that the issue is with the city transportation department and a lack of adult supervision from elected council. The transportation department accepted Thales' assurances that its signalling system would work even though Thales had never installed its system in an LRT line with grade crossings like Edmonton's. This major error is on city staff, not anyone else. They're supposed to ensure that bidders and suppliers meet required standards. And council is supposed to be ensuring that city staff (through the city manager) are actually doing the jobs they're paid to do. The fact that this project went horribly awry and was over a year and a half late (and again, the city was responsible for delivery, it wasn't a P3) was one of the reasons the city manager was fired.
Frankly, I think the fact Thales hadn't done an install on a system with grade crossings is relatively minor. Yes, there were an incidence or two of crossing triggering with no trains, or releasing the crossing early, but, that was relatively rare and the issues fixed. In reviewing the CBTC tender I looked hard for any references to ATO- Automatic Train Operation. There were none. The only modes speced were CBTC and manual. Yet, after the contract award it seems that the City went back with change orders and I wouldn't be surprised if that's where a lot of the struggles were. The contact went from $44 million to $55 million.
The CBTC project was run by LRT Engineering and Maintenance. They did have experience specing signal system upgrades for the NE LRT signals project, but, I think for this new build, even if it was to be CBTC, it should have been left with the LRT Design and Construction branch. However, LRT Engineering and Maintenance argued against a a fixed block system and suggested the CBTC system, and then were able to go on and spec it themselves.

Of note, when the city received only 1 response (from thales) for the metro signals. Alarm bells should have gone off like a 4 alarm blaze...
Not quite. There were 5 bids, Thales was the second most expensive at $45.4 million with the most expensive at $75.4 million and other 3 between $33 million and $40 million. Thales was the only one to score enough points to meet the minimum points requirement so was the only one to move onto the scoring component based on price, but being the only to reach that stage, it was irrelevant. NO vendor scored full points on ‘Compliance with Milestone Dates’ and ‘Project Schedule Detail and Soundness.' That was where the alarms bells should have been going off.
 
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