Metrolinx interest in Sumitomo trains now official

Metrolinx has issued a statement confirming its interest in piggybacking on a pending order in California for Sumitomo Corp. of America trains that could run on the Toronto air-rail link. The Sumitomo bid was reportedly about $22 million lower than the lowest among five competing bids.

GO Transit president Gary McNeil, who has been leading the ARL project until a full-time executive can be hired, probably in January, said that companies such as Bombardier and Siemens also manufacture this type of equipment. But nobody makes it in Canada.

At the Metrolinx board meeting Tuesday, McNeil restated his earlier comments to The Toronto Star that locomotives are exempt from Ontario's recent 25 per cent Canadian content requirements.

But the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) agency that is poised to buy 18 of the cars for about $57 million, apparently won't make a final decision until December after several SMART board members missed the agency's November meeting, according to a report last week by the Marin Independent Journal.

 

Comments

[Mark_dowling]

The Sonoma Marin tender has not yet been approved and there is public unrest because the project is being halved due to insufficient sales tax raised. If that order gets cancelled, what happens to Metrolinx's order?