Waterloo Region’s Ion light rail transit system, long promised to be up and running by the fall of 2017, will not meet that target.
Regional officials announced Tuesday that they have moved the system’s expected launch to “early 2018” due to issues with Bombardier, which is assembling the 14 vehicles that will be used in the system.
“Quite frankly, Bombardier’s let us down,” said Coun. Sean Strickland.
“They’re having some major problems with constructing our vehicles on time. It is a major disappointment … but something that we’re going to have to manage.”
The first vehicle is now expected to arrive locally in December, with the 14th and final vehicle delivered in October 2017.
After that, testing of the vehicles and track will take place for several months before the system is opened up to the public.
Thomas Schmidt, the region’s commissioner of transportation and environmental services, said in an interview that Bombardier is “adding a lot of extra resources” and moving some of the production work to Kingston in order to ensure things don’t fall further behind.
“They’re bringing in experts … to deal with some of the quality issues that they are having,” he said.
The delay in obtaining the vehicles is not expected to impact the construction timetable or the project’s overall budget, Strickland said, other than that Bombardier may have to pay penalties for missing its deadline.
