crs1026
Superstar
Had a chance to eavesdrop in on a conversation this morning by a city hall staffer on a conference call regarding the Eglinton and Finch LRT's (I believe the mayor was on the call too). I couldn't clearly make out everything they said, but I overheard the following:
- Both LRT's are "ready to go" from the TTC's perspective;
- Metrolinx are the ones delaying things;
- TTC will only operate the lines, but MX owns them and are responsible for maintenance;
- Despite this, TTC went out of their way to hire a sub-contractor to fix messes made by an incompetent contractor initially hired by MX;
- TTC created the training plan because MX didn't have one;
- TTC has consistently offered their consulting expertise for the duration of the projects but MX has taken an aloof approach;
- Someone on the call wanted to be publicly seen to be "taking action", so the staffer recommended the city issue a press release regarding project progress, and offered that a flyer could be sent to 10% of households but warned that would be very expensive;
- The staffer also recommended that the tone of the press release be as friendly as possible so as not to ruffle feathers even more and potentially delay things even further by way of vitriol ("let's not pull a Matlow" was said)
- There was a mention of an ongoing lawsuit between the organizations (TTC and MX) - I couldn't make out the exact context;
The general tone of the staffer was one of frustration over how MX has mismanaged the projects (especially Eglinton) across multiple categories, and that they're being needlessly obstinate to deal with. By what I could gather, there is a lot of scrambling behind the scenes to get these lines operational. There was definitely an undertone of exasperated desperation.
Now click like - it's not often you get a post full of substance from Towered, so shower me with love!
More meat in this single post than the accumulated last two or three years' worth of ML press releases. Thanks for sticking your neck out.
- Paul
