Ontario has purchased 65 new bi-level GO Train cars, a $255 million order, to be built at the city's Bombardier plant.
The announcement of the new order, which includes an option for another 75 cars that could bring the order to $480 million, was made at the Thunder Bay plant Friday morning and the Bombardier Thunder Bay business unit vice preident Aaron Rivers said it means job retention for local workers.
Rivers said this could potentially mean job stability for another five years and will stop the ebb and flow of labour the plant has seen in the past.
"This is an opportunity for us to guarantee we can solidify those numbers and now make sounder business decisions based on the longevity of these platforms," he said.
This order of cars will also be a benchmark platform in commuter transit globally, said Rivers.
The cars will be able to outmatch a car of the same length by 70 per cent for passenger carriership and they are crash energy management cars, which Rivers said is a game changer.
"These vehicles allow crumple zones very much like automobiles to absorb the energy of a potential imminent crash to protect those of the passengers on the train," he said.
The design moves passengers more inward so the train has a larger impact zone if a crash were to happen and it does this without decreasing the number of passengers it can hold.
"From an innovation perspective, this is a groundbreaker that will be mimicked for years to come I believe," said Rivers.
The order, including the option for another 75 cars, has created a backlog at the plant, but one the workers are happy about.
"We're really excited about it," said Dominic Pasqualino, president of Unifor Local 1075, the union representing the plant's employees.
"We're very happy they chose us to continue on to solve the problems in Toronto," he said.
"Every time I go to Toronto, it seems to get more and more congested and we have the answer here in the streetcars, in the bi-level cars and in the subway cars."
A contract like this is also important in keeping younger workers at the plant. Pasqualino said it gives them long-term employment that will keep them from leaving the city.
MPP Bill Mauro (Lib., Thunder Bay-Atikokan) helped make the announcement and said in 2003, the plant was down to about 250 workers.
"We've been investing massively since then," he said, noting the plant currently has more than 1,000 employees.
The success of Bombardier has had a large impact outside of the local plant's wall, Mauro added.
"I think we could all sit back and have a best guess at what would the city today be looking like if we didn't have these 1,200 additional jobs that have been here for a very long time," he said.
"Where would a lot of these young people that are working in this plant be today? Would they still be in Thunder Bay? ... What would it mean to house prices and house values? What would it mean to the property tax situation in Thunder Bay?"
The order is expected to have the train cars delivered between June 2016 and July 2017 and it will increase GO Transit’s fleet of train cars to 743.
Follow Jodi Lundmark on Twitter @JodiL_Reporter
