crs1026
Senior Member
From what I was told the 16:30 did go up the Barrie line.
- Paul
- Paul
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GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)
- Thread starter drum118
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denfromoakvillemilton
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Ok, has there been any movement on expansion recently?
andrewpmk
Senior Member
Anne Marie Aikins insisted on Twitter that it didn't. Perhaps she didn't know what route the train was taking.
crs1026
Senior Member
Interesting. My source was also from GO, but a different department. Perhaps there was a coin toss at 16:29.
- Paul
- Paul
SaugeenJunction
Senior Member
Metrolinx to shut Bombardier out of bid to operate GO trains - CP24
"Metrolinx said Friday that it will seek new operators to take over the suburban GO Transit and UP Express airport rail services after the current contract expires in 2023.
The winning bidder to be chosen in about a year will first review the current operations by Bombardier and two other Canadian companies and then operate the services as it quadruples in size to 6,000 trains a week from 1,500..."
"Metrolinx said Friday that it will seek new operators to take over the suburban GO Transit and UP Express airport rail services after the current contract expires in 2023.
The winning bidder to be chosen in about a year will first review the current operations by Bombardier and two other Canadian companies and then operate the services as it quadruples in size to 6,000 trains a week from 1,500..."
Megaton327
Senior Member
Where on Earth did it go if it took neither the Barrie nor Kitchener lines? I've been looking at all the rail lines out of Union, and I can't see what possible route it would take to connect back to RH that isn't off Barrie or Kitchener.
nfitz
Superstar
What exactly is this first tender for? I don't have a Merx account. The comment was that Bombardier can review itself.
Sounds a little odd ... is this just a misunderstanding on the part of the press of what's being tendered? If the first part is a review, the second an RFQ for an operator, and third an RFP perhaps?
According to the CBC article, Bombardier has been operating GO Trains for more than 40 years!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/metrolinx-bombardier-dispute-1.4216781
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DSC
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So, you are proposing GO (i.e. WE) pay for an attendant there at the weekend when there is no 'service'? Trains 'whooshing by' is not a reason to have someone there.
crs1026
Senior Member
There IS an attendant watching trains whoosh by West Harbour. Just not in the ticket booth. The project has a "Rule 42 Track Foreman", who earns much more than a station attendant. They are stationed by the tracks to keep the construction crews away from the trains, and vv.
The point is, no work is getting done at West Harbour. The excavators and track builders have vanished. The new bridge is just sitting there. There are only so many weeks of the construction season left before winter returns.
Time's a-wasting.
- Paul
rbt
Senior Member
"However, Aikins said the winning bidder wouldn't be precluded from using the services of Bombardier and the other two companies to operate and maintain the trains."
This quote leads me to believe Metrolinx thinks the Bombardier operations department is missing experience in one or more sections of the work. I wouldn't be surprised if Bombardier leads the group which wins the bid, with a partner handling whatever piece(s) they don't have in-house.
Perhaps it includes operating the new control centre.
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crs1026
Senior Member
The other big piece may be the rampup of staffing as service expands. Some of the sound bites made mention of that.
That will be another key business relationship, because there will have to be many running trades trainees in the pipeline to get from 1600 trains per week to 5,000+. If ML writes the tender to read "the vendor will source and qualify all staff", it puts the vendor at ML's mercy. Change the in-service date for one route, and there may be too many trainees, or not enough. Who pays for their wages?
The new contract will have to have iron-clad dates and numbers for delivery of new RTE's, tied to new service openings. Vendors will be OK with that, but we know ML doesn't work that way. They will fiddle with the plan.We know ML changes its priorities based on political winds. Too easy for ML to blame the vendor for non-delivery when in fact ML brought a date forward and the trainees hadn't graduated yet. Or for ML to push a date back and then not want to pay for the idle new grads that were trained to meet the old date and then not needed yet.
- Paul
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micheal_can
Senior Member
Why do trains pass GO stations but don't stop at them?
Wouldn't having more service increase ridership?
Wouldn't having more service increase ridership?
vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
Whelps, ML just shot themselves in the foot without realizing it.
I'm sure you can only image what this news means to the people who are actually employed by Bombardier, to say there's a lot of trepidation and concern would be an understatement. People are surmising that it may be as simple as Bombardier being a part of a new consortium with the exact same crewing and management or as drastic as an entirely new employee base being hired. That would be the worse case scenario for everyone because literally nobody here will be willing to help train any new hires to take over our jobs. The problem is right now we are completely in the dark. There's a lot of assumptions about what this means for us but no concrete information and I doubt there will be any time soon, which is going to become a huge problem going forward if it's not addressed quickly. Suddenly people are concern about their jobs and the future which has very negative implications for GO and ML that they seemingly don't have any comprehension or understanding thereof.
It was bad enough when we took over from CN. A lot of the 'old heads' harassed the new Bombardier employees but there was one big difference between that situation and this one. They still had jobs that they could go back to on the freight side of the operation. If the new contractor decides to hire their own people, admittedly an unlikely scenario but still within the realm of possibility until we hear otherwise (and considering they'll have 5 years before they take over operations they might actually think they could pull it off), that of course means none of us will have a job and therefore we would certainly would have no incentive or motivation to train the new people coming in to take over our jobs. The whole operation will become a shit show. Trains will not only be cancelled but service would inevitably have to be reduced as people exited on mass looking for alternative job opportunities. Already earlier today just one day after the news came out this was posted on our union facebook page; http://imgur.com/a/6TfaR
They have all but guaranteed themselves up to 6 years of instability and there is likely going to be an exodus to VIA and other companies, many of our recently hired employees have experience in other unrelated fields that they are able to return to if need be, unless things are made abundantly clear to us what the situation going forward will be.
I'm sure you can only image what this news means to the people who are actually employed by Bombardier, to say there's a lot of trepidation and concern would be an understatement. People are surmising that it may be as simple as Bombardier being a part of a new consortium with the exact same crewing and management or as drastic as an entirely new employee base being hired. That would be the worse case scenario for everyone because literally nobody here will be willing to help train any new hires to take over our jobs. The problem is right now we are completely in the dark. There's a lot of assumptions about what this means for us but no concrete information and I doubt there will be any time soon, which is going to become a huge problem going forward if it's not addressed quickly. Suddenly people are concern about their jobs and the future which has very negative implications for GO and ML that they seemingly don't have any comprehension or understanding thereof.
It was bad enough when we took over from CN. A lot of the 'old heads' harassed the new Bombardier employees but there was one big difference between that situation and this one. They still had jobs that they could go back to on the freight side of the operation. If the new contractor decides to hire their own people, admittedly an unlikely scenario but still within the realm of possibility until we hear otherwise (and considering they'll have 5 years before they take over operations they might actually think they could pull it off), that of course means none of us will have a job and therefore we would certainly would have no incentive or motivation to train the new people coming in to take over our jobs. The whole operation will become a shit show. Trains will not only be cancelled but service would inevitably have to be reduced as people exited on mass looking for alternative job opportunities. Already earlier today just one day after the news came out this was posted on our union facebook page; http://imgur.com/a/6TfaR
They have all but guaranteed themselves up to 6 years of instability and there is likely going to be an exodus to VIA and other companies, many of our recently hired employees have experience in other unrelated fields that they are able to return to if need be, unless things are made abundantly clear to us what the situation going forward will be.
steveintoronto
Superstar
It's definitely badly handled PR. What you state was my immediate reaction when I saw the headline, but as I read more, I realized ML was trying to cover their tracks as they made their point. I don't have the release handy to quote exactly, which is poor form on my part, will try and insert it later with a link, but IIRC, ML were insinuating that BBD's GO train crew operations would remain pretty much as is, but as part of a greater whole....problematic in itself. In other words, a layer of contracted management would be created that the present BBD one would be accountable to. Layers of accountability rarely work well...
I think what's going to have to happen is that ML *with performance caveats* guarantee the present BBD operating crews forward seniority and position, even if BBD let them go if they loose their present contract when expired.
This has all the hallmarks of another Presto Card fiasco, just to name one of the ML's shortcomings. ML had best hire in an HR specialist to oversee the ramifications of statements like those just released, and pre-empt a crisis before it manifests. The best way is to offer security to the present operating staff.
Just thought of what ML might be trying to dissipate, and that's a sale of the BBD crew operation. Just found this missed story from yesterday, far too co-incidental to ML's awkward lunge:
Siemens, Bombardier close to deal on transportation tie-up: report
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/rep...transportation-tie-up-report/article35759049/
Spin-off time might be nigh for Bombardier!
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vegeta_skyline
Senior Member
Yes, it's very interesting timing when taken altogether. I don't anticipate the worse case scenario that I painted above happening. But there's little doubt in my mind that we'll see an increased rate of employee departures specifically to VIA. Which could not of come at a worse time. They were already well behind when it comes to training new engineers. Whether the fault for that ultimately lies with BBD or ML I do not know. What I do is that ML notified BBD that they were going to go to 15 minute service about 8 months ago and apparently ML gives BBD 18 months notice before any service increase. Meaning there's only about 10 months left to fulfill the crewing requirements which at the current pace is not going to happen. Last thing they need atm is to lose qualified people. Add to that there was a recent spate of fatalities which had already depleted the current workforce from people taking time off post incident.