THUNDER BAY — More than a decade after it submitted a bid to make 204 streetcars for the Toronto Transit Commission, Bombardier is about to deliver the last two units in the $1 billion order.
Dec. 31, 2019 was the deadline for finishing the contract.
In an in email to Tbnewswatch, Bombardier spokesperson Kaven Delarosbil said "car 203 is complete and will ship this week. Car 204 will be completed tomorrow, and shipped next week after testing and customer inspection."
Unifor Local 1075 President Dominic Pasqualino said "Everybody's worked very hard. Everybody knows the last few cars of any contract are very difficult. That's when you find out you're short of some parts and everything, but we've done very well."
In October, after a massive effort to improve its production rate, the company described the streetcar project as "a good comeback story."
"The opening chapters of this story have been well documented...We started building the trains while in the middle of an aggressive company-wide turnaround. It proved to be too much. Our journey was not smooth. We hit some major bumps in the road, faced delays on delivery, and took a lot of well-deserved criticism," vice-president Mike Nadolski said.
Nadolski noted that less attention had been given to how well Bombardier had recovered and fixed its issues.
"Anyone in our industry can tell you that once you fall behind on a project like this, recovery is nearly impossible. But we did it," he said.
Pasqualino agrees, saying "the media all thought it would be impossible for us to get anywhere near this," but the company and its workers proved the skeptics wrong.
"But we're really looking forward to seeing what happens in January, because in January there's a possibility of more cars," he said.
The union leader was referring to a potential order for 60 additional streetcars from the TTC.
He said a decision was made at a recent budget meeting to consider that option at a meeting next month.
On Dec.16, a Unifor deputation told the TTC board that delaying the order for 60 units until 2022 will put the future of the Thunder Bay plant at risk.
"It is the one plant that is able to meet the requirements for TTC streetcars," the union's Ontario director, Naureen Rizvi, cautioned.
Approximately 360 Unifor members will still be employed at the plant as the new year begins.
However, by April, Bombardier expects to bring back 75 workers who have been laid off for a refurbishing contract transferred to the Thunder Bay plant.
The plant will also manufacture 36 more bi-level cars for Metrolinx, but the project does not require the recall of the 550 workers who have been laid off.
"To get everybody back we're going to need three lines running. We're going to need streetcars, subway cars, and GO trains, all being produced at a rapid rate. Hopefully we can get to that. We've got a long way to go before we get to that point," Pasqualino said.
Bombardier Chief Operating Officer David Van der Wee said it's part of the company's strategy of "building a bridge of activity in Thunder Bay to the point where some of these big, ambitious transportation projects the Ford government has put on the table really start to get traction."
