WATERLOO REGION — The Region of Waterloo's light rail transit project won't launch until early 2018 due to a lengthy delay in train delivery from Bombardier.

Officials announced the late start on Tuesday.

"What's of particular concern to me and I suspect to the rest of council as well — is another shoe going to drop?" Coun. Tom Galloway said.

Bombardier and a senior regional official told The Record last week there would no further delay in the region's order, after the company announced it would transfer its Metrolinx contract to a Kingston plant in October in an effort to speed up delayed streetcars for the Toronto Transit Commission.

A staff report said the first train would be delayed three months longer than officials were told earlier this year. They were informed May 19.

The first train will now arrive in December instead of August. The 14th train, the final one, will be delivered in October 2017.

In the first delay, confirmed in April, delivery of the first train was to be pushed back by two months to October and the final vehicle delayed by four months to May 2017.

That was announced after months of saying there would be no delay.

The financial implications of the delays are not yet certain.

Coun. Sean Strickland said there needs to be public reporting about what's happening.

"The other thing that we have yet to determine is, of course, the ramifications for the financing model for the LRT and that needs to be determined when we get more details from Bombardier," he said.

Construction consortium GrandLinq is required to have the light rail system ready to run by a certain date. July 1, 2017 is set as the substantial completion deadline. On that date, the region must start making payments to GrandLinq for operations and maintenance, Galloway said.

If the trains aren't ready and GrandLinq completes construction on time, the region still has to pay but the government won't be receiving the revenue from fares it anticipated.

"There will be costs associated with this delay … because we're not going to have the fare revenue that we were anticipating, so that's lost for sure," Galloway said.

Thomas Schmidt, the region's commissioner of transportation and environmental services, said staff is working on the financial implications.

"Some of it is cash flow, our mitigation. It may not end up being very much extra or any extra at all if we do it right," he said. "There will be probably a little bit of extra cost."

GrandLinq was awarded a $1.9-billion contract to design, build, finance, operate and maintain the light rail system. Up to $565 million in construction costs will be contributed by the federal and provincial governments.

The region will pursue options to recover costs associated with the delay from Bombardier.

In the contract, the provision for late trains is $1,500 per day, per train, up to a maximum of $3.3 million. The region can also seek further damages.

Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig said the delay shouldn't be blown out of proportion.

"This is a big issue but let's not make it any bigger," he said.

The region is piggybacking on a Metrolinx contract for approximately 170 vehicles, including streetcars for the Toronto Transit Commission. The commission's order has been plagued by quality problems and resulted in some streetcars being rejected.

Regional politicians approved the $92.4-million deal for Bombardier trains in July 2013 and have been monitoring the issue.

Regional staff, consultants and representatives from Crown corporation Metrolinx have done inspections at the Thunder Bay site in past to ensure quality of the vehicles.

Regular check-ins is scheduled going forward.

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Officials are skeptical Bombardier will actually deliver.

"From what I've seen they are absolutely taking this seriously, they're committed to delivering this schedule," Schmidt said. "Having said that we need to see the vehicles delivered and until they have done that we have every right to be skeptical."

The region doesn't have a lot of other options.

Schmidt told The Record there aren't any other trains in the world right now that could be brought in instead.

A new order from some other company would mean modifications to the actual light rail system, particularly the stations, because it is being built specific to the low floor trains from Bombardier.

Schmidt said the train delay isn't expected to delay construction in any way.

Once the trains are finally delivered, GrandLinq needs to test the system and the vehicles.

Paige Desmond Paige Desmond covers Waterloo City Hall for the Waterloo Region Record.

Email: pdesmond@therecord.com Twitter: @DesmondRecord

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