Bombardier will miss yet another target on its troubled TTC streetcar order, falling at least five cars short of the 40 it was supposed to deliver this year. In a statement released Thursday, the Montreal-based rail manufacturer said it will supply 35 streetcars in 2017, for a cumulative total of 65 since the order began. The company blamed the latest delay on “issues with the supply chain.”“This is not the result we worked towards and this is not the result we will accept for ourselves and for the people of Toronto. We own this challenge, and we fully intend to do everything necessary to mitigate the impacts,” said Bombardier spokesperson Eric Prud’homme.The company said it is enacting “forceful and far-reaching measures” to improve production, including opening up a second site for final assembly of the vehicles, which are currently manufactured and assembled at its plant in Thunder Bay, Ont. The company also said it would add additional suppliers, and work with current contractors to increase their capacity. The 35 cars Bombardier is pledging to deliver this year is a more optimistic figure than one published Wednesday in TTC CEO Andy Byford’s report to the transit agency board. In that document, the TTC estimated Bombardier would deliver just 30 cars in 2017. In a joint statement, Byford and TTC board chair Josh Colle appeared to accept Bombardier’s 35 car estimate. But they called the latest blown deadline “extremely disappointing and frustrating.” “There should be 146 new streetcars in service today; instead there are just 45. This is completely unacceptable. The TTC is having to continue to use buses on streetcar routes to meet ridership demand,” the statement said. Since the TTC placed the $1-billion, 204-car order with Bombardier in 2009, the company has repeatedly blown delivery schedules, and revised its yearly targets downward four separate times. According to the latest sc ...
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