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Metrolinx: Bombardier Flexity Freedom & Alstom Citadis Spirit LRVs

Considering the close proximity of the factory to Toronto, it would be safe to say noone can undercut bbr. Perhaps if the competition can establish a production plant eventually they can compete on price while maintaining profitability as well
And yet Alstom could create and maintain a line in Ottawa for their bid, right in the Maintenance and Storage Facility, putting employment dollars back into the municipality.

While Millhaven is 245km away, much closer than a Thunder Bay's 1400km, it is still an assembly plant with parts coming from here there and everywhere.

If a consortium did select Bombardier then presumably they would not have access to Metrolinx option pricing and given how much money Bombardier must be burning setting up new facilities in Millhaven etc. it's not like they can easily offer to deeply discount - particularly while public money is propping up the firm.
 
While Millhaven is 245km away, much closer than a Thunder Bay's 1400km, it is still an assembly plant with parts coming from here there and everywhere.

I wonder how expensive it is for BBD to ship things up to Thunder Bay. Shipping anything "up north" is expensive. TB is a relatively large population centre, which would bring down costs, but I still can't imagine it being particularly cheap.

Also, why is their factory in TB? Government subsides I assume. That's a pretty far off place to build a train factory. Especially when all those trains are destined for Southern Ontario and the USA.
 
Also, why is their factory in TB? .
Fort William was (is) a large rail junction so it made perfect sense to build rail cars there. (Same raeson there used to be a huge CN rail works in Moncton.)

Canadian Car and Foundry
At the start of the 20th Century, Fort William (half of what is now Thunder Bay, the other half being Port Arthur) was a growing port on western Lake Superior, offering inducements to companies to move their manufacturing plants to the city. O 25 October 1909, Canadian Car and Foundry were created by the merger of three railway car manufacturers: Canada Car Company and Dominion Car and Foundry Company of Montreal, and Rhodes Curry Company of Amherst, Nova Scotia. In 1912, Fort William offered the new company cash to build a plant in the city, a proposal to which the company and taxpayers agreed. Construction of the new plant began in October 1912. (From: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/canada/can-car.htm )
 
Subway cars trucked 1400km from Thunder Bay and yet an assembly facility beside Bombardier aerospace could have virtually rolled deliveries right into Wilson Yard. Funny old business, manufacturing.
 
If you look at what mills and foundries remain at the Lakehead versus what used to be there - Bombardier is pretty important to the local economy. If that plant closed, you would see both Ontario and Ottawa having to inject money somehow. Might as well keep building railcars up there - at whatever premium the location imposes. For now, anyways.

- Paul
 
If you look at what mills and foundries remain at the Lakehead versus what used to be there - Bombardier is pretty important to the local economy. If that plant closed, you would see both Ontario and Ottawa having to inject money somehow. Might as well keep building railcars up there - at whatever premium the location imposes. For now, anyways.

- Paul

But what if there wasn't that much of a premium?

Shipping these things around isn't an inconsequential amount, sure, but it's also a minute portion of the actual value of the vehicle - fractions of a percent. And you can't help but think that the cost of labour in a place such as Thunder Bay is quite a bit lower than that of a place like Toronto.

Plus, most of the stuff that they build there does get shipped by rail - and the incremental cost of shipping it from Thunder Bay versus shipping it from somewhere closer to Toronto is almost nil.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
Milestone...

BombardierRail ‏@BombardierRail 10h10 hours ago
As scheduled in our Ontario LRV improvement plan, La Pocatière site has begun work on underframes for #TTC @Metrolinx @rideIONrt projects


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