Court Case? What Court Case?
The following comment from Mr.Cow has raised eyebrows.
“By the way it’s not 205 Mk 5 Cars, its 41, 5 section vehicles, at approximately 17.63 Million per 5 section vehicle. With entirely new sub systems not the longer versions of the Mk 3 trains with similar equipment that the BCRTC thought it was getting. You see guys, Bombardier promised the Mk 5 wouldn’t be filled with new tech. They changed the designs and brought in new systems, all before their surface transportation group was sold off. This is forcing the BCRTC to now pay for expensive maintenance training and equipment they never budgeted for. Alstom threatened them you better pay up for the new training or else. The court case between BCRTC/Translink and Alstom was settled out of court. However, the fact remains far more money is being spent by BCRTC than planned. Money nobody has.”
Court Case? Settled out of court?
Like all negative news about SkyTrain and TransLink the media sweeps it under the table, with a “nothing to see here” attitude.
This confirms to me, that a fully independent audit of TransLink and the 21.7 km expansion to the Expo and Millennium Lines is badly needed.
The public is being kept comfortably numb by the mainstream media, who only see fit to give air time for positive news.
First of all, there wasn’t a court case because it was settled out of court. These kind of things happen all the time because sometimes vehicle producers need to change designs to make bigger versions of vehicles actually function. Sometimes when you go from a 4 section Mk 3 vehicle to a 5 section Mk 5 vehicle, problems and issues are bigger than the 25% increase caused by adding the 5th section. Thus new technology is needed. The problem is that politicians and senior bureaucrats, whom actually order the new vehicles don’t understand that happens because of physics. It’s not necessarily their fault or the vehicle provider.
The real point of the comment has been missed, its not that some new tech has been added to the design against the wishes of the customer. It’s the fact that the customer (Translink and the residents of the lower mainland of B.C.) has no other options. Nobody else can make the technology and do it affordably. Alstom has been acting like a basstard to Translink because Translink has no other options and Alstom knows it! That’s the point, not that there was an aborted court case last winter. These fights unfortunately happen all the time, its rather common in this industry, nothing to get excited about. It never amounts to much because everyone involved would rather not go to court. Unfortunately, our system isn’t great at solving these issues unless you actually threaten to take someone to court
Zwei replies: The real point has not been missed as I sent an email to several parties involved with that very point. That the Mk.5/MALM/Innovia 300 cars are indeed proprietary and there is no other supplier. I have also said; “If Alstom ceases production and a new supplier is found, they must design a car and ensure it operates properly or build cars under license from Alstom, which will be very costly for small orders such as the proposed Broadway subway completion to UBC.”
TransLink, the Mayor’s council and the provincial MoT as still under the illusion that all suppliers produce LIM compatible cars.