It began as a lofty venture to give pedestrians a walkway above 14 lanes of highway, linking the GO station south of Hwy. 401 to downtown Pickering north of the highway.

The pedestrian bridge was supposed to be a sleek statement for Pickering, a functional and beautiful bridge that would glow at night with LED lighting.

More than five years after the bridge was supposed to be completed, it is still unfinished and Metrolinx still doesn’t know when it will be.

Dozens of curved metal panels are stacked up with rope along the bridge, outside the glass windows of the catwalk.

“Construction will resume once the contractor is ready to move ahead on all of the structure’s components: the structural steel, the metal cladding and the exterior lighting system,” said Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for Metrolinx.

The pedestrian bridge was plagued with construction delays and errors, as highlighted in the 2016 Ontario Auditor General’s annual report released Wednesday.

The original contractor, Aplus General Contractor Corp, was given a $19-million contract to complete the first phase of the bridge by Metrolinx, because it was the lowest bidder, the report noted.

However, soon after the work began, problems began to crop up, the report noted. Aplus was, nevertheless, awarded the contract to complete the second phase of work on the bridge, worth $8 million, as well as a third contract worth $39 million.

The bridge is costing an additional $1.4 million to complete since the contract with Aplus was terminated, said Aikins.

The Star reached out to Aplus for comment and was told by an employee they would be releasing a statement “very, very soon,” but the employee declined to comment beyond that and wouldn’t give her name.

“We completed the work as designed, and the reason the work on the bridge is still not complete is because of material limitation(s) as designed,” Aplus project manager Fiaz Kara told CP24.

“We were relieved of that contract a few months ago, and, from our understanding, the project is going to be redesigned and work will be retendered.”

In her report, Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk wrote Aplus “performed so poorly that Metrolinx staff had to take over performing many of its duties.

“For example, the contractor had no experience in installing the bridge trusses (a bridge truss is the metal skeleton that is the most basic component of the bridge), something that a contractor constructing a bridge would be expected to know how to do. In fact, it installed one truss upside down.”

Metrolinx’s Aikins disputed this, saying, “There were no issues in the first phase where the pedestrian bridge was built.”

Said Aikins: “We didn’t have a problem with the truss. The bridge was built without issue, so that’s not accurate. The truss is almost impossible to be put upside down. It wouldn’t have worked.”

However, during the second phase, which Aplus was awarded because its bid was, again, the lowest, the contractor was not up to the task, Aikins agreed.

“During the second phase, a beam was placed incorrectly, and, so, then, we couldn’t put the supporting structure on it . . . and, as a result, they didn’t fix it; they were discharged from that contract.”

Although the contract was terminated, Aplus was still paid almost the full $8 million of its contract, the report noted.

In a statement, Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig said, “A beam associated with the support structure for the cladding was installed incorrectly. It was a support beam, not a truss, that was installed out of alignment . . . . This misalignment and the contractor’s refusal to fix the misalignment was one of the primary reasons for termination on the second contract. This, as well as the “careless welding,” is why they were fired for ‘poor performance.’ ”

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Metrolinx was also criticized in the report for awarding Aplus a third contract, worth $39 million, to build a GO and Union-Pearson Express station on Bloor.

“That was built around the same time (as the second phase of the pedestrian bridge), so it’s not like we knew there were problems with this contractor when we awarded them another contract,” said Aikins.

With files from Richard Lautens

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