Bombardier has offered the TTC new details on how it plans to ramp up production of Toronto’s much-delayed streetcar order, vowing to more than quadruple manufacturing in two years’ time.

Benoit Brossoit, the Montreal-based company’s president of transportation for the Americas, met at TTC headquarters on Wednesday with transit CEO Andy Byford. In a two-hour meeting, Brossoit laid out a detailed production schedule for the first time since April, when the TTC announced Bombardier had made another downward revision on the $1.25-billion order.

The company now says it will deliver 16streetcars by the end of this year, 40 in 2017, 76 in 2018, and 57 in 2019.

The plan would mean the TTC will have only 31 of the new vehicles at the close of 2016, a figure unchanged since the delay was announced last month. The order originally had 73 new streetcars hitting the rails by the end of 2015.

“The disappointing initial fact is that the 2016 schedule has not changed,” said Byford, who had asked Brossoit to look for ways to increase delivery this year. But Byford said his priority remains ensuring that Bombardier delivers all 204 vehicles by the original deadline of 2019.

Byford said he was thankful that Brossoit, appointed last month, is giving the TTC delivery times more realistic than the “hopelessly inaccurate” projections previously offered. But he expressed skepticism that Bombardier, which has delivered only 17 streetcars since the first pair entered service two years ago, could put together 76 of them in 2018 alone. He said he suggested to Brossoit it might be wiser to “smooth out” production more evenly over the remaining years.

“To me 2018 looks very over-laden. That’s a big ask to get 76 built in one year,” Byford said.

Bombardier spokesperson Marc Laforge said the company is making changes to speed up production, including moving work for Metrolinx’s order of light rail vehicles from the company’s Thunder Bay, Ont., plant to its facility in Kingston, Ont., in October.

Moving the Metrolinx order, previously reported to be 182 vehicles, will allow Thunder Bay to focus on assembling TTC streetcars, Laforge said.

In June, 26 welding experts will also be sent to Bombardier’s plant in Sahagun, Mexico, where problems with the quality of streetcar underframes and harnesses have contributed to delays. The company has already announced it will add a second assembly line for the streetcars at one of its facilities, and next year will enlist its factory in La Pocatière, Que., to take over some of the work currently being done in Mexico.

Laforge said that despite Byford’s concerns, building 76 vehicles in 2018 is realistic, because by adding more production sites Bombardier will essentially be “doubling the team.”

“It’s always more difficult to get the speed that you need at the beginning of a project. When you get that rhythm ... it goes fast,” he said.

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