ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[MacBerry]

If Bombardier wants to continue to have Mexico in their supply chain, they are going to have to teach the Mexicans how to get the job done properly. They can't afford to have layoffs in Thunder Bay because the Mexican plant has screwed up.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-ba...-1.3127363

Exactly why I am concerned.

Bombardier is competing against giants in the aerospace industry.  They need cash to buy time to get their new planes out for successful sales (hopefully).   The way they are doing this is by selling part/all of its rail unit and by cutting costs.

This has a direct impact on ION.   What assurances/penalty clauses are in place?    Byford and the TTC found out the hard way that on a $1.2 billion contract, a $50 million penalty clause gets them a morning meet and greet and a GTFO from Bombardier.

Boeing learned this the hard way about 10-15 years ago. They had a difficult time getting contracts in the early 2000s as was posted here about the possible future of Bombardier.

Really short version: Boeing's plan was to have the 787 built in various pieces in various cheapest producer regions in the world (mainly China and the other east Asia countries) would ship all the components to Seattle or Long Beach: wings, tail, landing gear and so on.

When they tried to fit all the pieces together, just like Bombardier, the pieces didn't fit. They had to basically start over and choose the best manufacturers and bring most back in house. They also lost lots of manufacturing intelligence to the world's largest country and then began to worry they were putting the company out of business.

Late planes and a refocus back on the Seattle manufacturing plant saved them ... for now.

I think you overstate your case on Bombardier's get out of Thunder Bay comment as most accountant/figure ferrets do ... but you could be right and we will see in two years.

[timio]

Pieces of the culvert for Laurel Creek in Waterloo Park were being delivered this morning.  There's a large crane set up to move them into place.

The only issue seems to be that with yesterday's rainfall, the previously dried out section of the creek bed now has at least 6" of water in it, more where they had excavated.

[Markster]

Before:


https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/...7880649728

After:






https://twitter.com/Markster3000/status/...3400553472

[rangersfan]

Thanks for the photo updates.

[Canard]

Oh dear. That was a horrific amount of rain we got the other day. I imagine that the pumps are installed just for the bypass, and they'll have to sump any rainfall out on an on-demand basis (since you wound't want a pump running continuously to do that which would then run dry).

[jamincan]

There are certain kinds of pumps that are designed to be able to run dry; I have no idea if that's what they are using here though.

[tomh009]

Boeing learned this the hard way about 10-15 years ago. They had a difficult time getting contracts in the early 2000s as was posted here about the possible future of Bombardier.

Really short version: Boeing's plan was to have the 787 built in various pieces in various cheapest producer regions in the world (mainly China and the other east Asia countries) would ship all the components to Seattle or Long Beach: wings, tail, landing gear and so on.

When they tried to fit all the pieces together, just like Bombardier, the pieces didn't fit. They had to basically start over and choose the best manufacturers and bring most back in house. They also lost lots of manufacturing intelligence to the world's largest country and then began to worry they were putting the company out of business.

Bombardier learned a lot of lessons from the 787 debacle (and to a lesser extent from the A380) so their approach to the C-Series was far more conservative, and they subsequently brought additional work in-house.  They have far more financial constraints than Boeing, though, and a brand-new engine design, so they are still significantly delayed.

All of that has very little to do with our LRT trains, though.

[timio]

There were 5 pieces of culvert on site as of this morning at Laurel Creek. They seem to have the water breach under control and have started to pump out the excess again. The one dam has been emptied and moved from the lake side to the track side of the pedestrian bridge. As of 8 this morning, it was laying across a temporary roadway that has been created across the creek.

This will hopefully cause them to reconsider their rainwater mitigation techniques (i.e. get more pumps.)

There's a 4 day period where they plan on working round the clock (July 17-20). One would guess this is when they'll be laying the new tracks and reconfiguring the spur in the area or replacing the old bridge with the new culvert.


On Caroline, it looked as though they were removing the old septic and storm pipes on the west side of the road.

[Markster]

Safe to say that the new rail crossing of the creek will be decidedly less of a "bridge" than what currently exists.

[Canard]

How so? It will bridge the same gap.

[chutten]

Are you intimating that it'll be more of a causeway with a culvert underneath it? I'd count that as less bridgelike than the two obvious bridges currently in place.

[zanate]

It will be two ramps, and a gap over which the LRT will have to jump, which explains why the vehicles are expected to get to so high a speed inside Waterloo Park that they need fences and likely giant nets.

[timio]

Here's some pictures of the crane and culvert pieces from yesterday morning:

[Canard]

Oh wait.  Culvert - I thought you guys were talking about the thing they're working on by Clay and Glass.  Is that huge concrete rectangle for the bridge up at Waterloo Park then?

If so, then I kind of get what that other user is hinting at with it not being so much bridge anymore.

It doesn't really make sense to build a 1.5 metre high bridge... when you can just burry a tube and call it a day.

[Markster]

If so, then I kind of get what that other user is hinting at with it not being so much bridge anymore.

I have a name...

It doesn't really make sense to build a 1.5 metre high bridge... when you can just burry a tube and call it a day.

Yeah, I don't have any issue with it being a culvert instead of a bridge. Just it wasn't until timio first mentioned "culvert" that I realized it wasn't going to be a bridge. It certainly explained the gravel footing that they had been digging into the creek bed. It didn't look like the kind of footing one would use for a bridge.