ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[Canard]

LOL, what? They just announced they sold 35 to Air Canada.

Cute conspiracy theory, too. Where's my popcorn?

[ookpik]

LOL, what? They just announced they sold 35 to Air Canada.

In Canada, to a Canadian audience. The linked article is about the Singapore Airshow. That's in Singapore. What has BBD sold there?

Cute conspiracy theory, too. Where's my popcorn?

No popcorn for you. But I'll happily give you some tin foil to make a hat.

[Canard]

LOL, better pass it over to BuildingScout, he/she's the one who suggested there's a conspiracy, not me.

[BuildingScout]

LOL, better pass it over to BuildingScout, he/she's the one who suggested there's a conspiracy, not me.

They've done it before, several times. That is a well documented fact. Assuming that they might be at it again is thus a reasonable assumption. No conspiracy there just stating facts. I used to own BBD-B shares so I followed them quite closely back in the day, which is how I came to see the repeated pattern of "oh no! jobs will be lost at the local plant/win the contract after". I sold the shares long ago when I realized how badly managed they are.

[kps]

For example they enter a bid for a rail project and then a few months later announce that the production facilities in the country will be shut down because of lack of contracts.

Sometimes they shut them down anyway:

In 2000, Bombardier announced it was to close the subsidiary plant BN Manage based in Manage, Belgium; the action attracted criticism from both trade unions and the Belgian government; perception was that Bombardier had used the 'jobs card' to win a Belgian double deck train contract worth 8.5 billion Belgian francs. The closure announcement came as a complete volte-face from Bombardier's previous statements which included optimistic statements about the Manage plant's future.

The little local tie-in (and the reason I knew of this instance) is that it was that ex-BN site in Manage that developed the low-floor Flexity bogies shortly before being closed.

[Pheidippides]

   

[KevinL]

They are still going to be working on our Flexity Freedom LRVs. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-ba...-1.3452078

I should hope so, they just added Edmonton to their orders.

[MacBerry]

Does that mean fire sale? I keep hearing that the transportation division is the one part of Bombardier still making money, and you fire 3200 of them? But the one division tanking hard, commercial aerospace, you fire no one at all?

They won't lay off people who are needed to build product.  If they are terminating production workers in the transportation division (not clear in which country) it's because they don't have enough orders to keep those people employed.

Toronto Star reporting the following information about Bombardier job cuts (February 17, 2016):

"2,830 will be in Canada, with 430 in Ontario and 2,400 in Quebec. In all, 400 jobs will be axed in the train division and 2,430 in the aerospace division in Canada."
 
and

"A Unifor spokesman said no unionized job losses were anticipated at Bombardier’s transportation plant in Thunder Bay, which makes the long-delayed TTC streetcars"

[Canard]

Most of the Thunder Bay employees being laid off (250-350 people) will be in ~9 months when the last Toronto Rocket MOVIA Metro train is built and delivered. Some of them may be transitioned over to FLEXITY of production warrants (and I think it certainly would).

[Canard]

   

   

   

(Whoah - only allowing 3 attachments per post now? This is going to get tedious...)

[Canard]

   

   

   

[KevinL]

From Twitter user @reaperexpress - the first catpoles:

[timc]

I noticed those today as well. Also I think some are up near McCormick.

[clasher]

I think it's gonna be pretty sweet to see the trains running under the manulife bridge on Charles.

[GtwoK]

New Ion update today. Very little in it that we didn't already know. Of note:

The King / Erb intersection officially will not need to be closed this year, thank god

Waterloo Park station construction underway

Foundations for the rail bridge at King / Victoria are done

Work on Charles in front of the tannery will resume in a week

The remainder of the track on Borden will be installed starting on Tuesday