Metrolinx has pushed back the opening date for the oft-delayed Finch West LRT again, and says this time its troubled vehicle order from Bombardier is to blame.

According to Metrolinx, the provincial agency in charge of co-ordinating transit in the GTHA, the $1.2-billion, 11-kilometre light rail line now won’t open until 2022 at the earliest, instead of 2021.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins wrote in an email that the one-year delay was caused by “uncertainty with the Bombardier vehicle supply,” which forced the agency to pause the procurement process for Finch last year.

She said Metrolinx restarted the procurement in May when it announced that it had signed a sole-source deal with Alstom, a Bombardier competitor, to supply a fleet of 17 vehicles for Finch.

The Alstom deal “provides certainty that we will have the vehicles required to operate the service,” Aikins said.

She said the new opening date of 2022 is only an estimate. “We will have a firm construction schedule once the contract for Finch West LRT is awarded in the spring of 2018.”

A spokesperson for Bombardier denied that the company was at fault for the delay. “Any pretention to that effect does not stand the test of facts,” wrote Marc-André Lefebvre in an email.

He asserted that Bombardier was “ready, able, and willing” to deliver the vehicles on time for Finch’s opening.

The 18-stop Finch LRT would connect the TTC’s future Finch West subway station to Humber College’s North Campus in Etobicoke. It has repeatedly been postponed since mayor David Miller unveiled it in 2007 as part of his Transit City plan.

When the provincial government announced in 2009 that it would fund the project, it predicted that construction could be completed by 2013.

Subsequent setbacks, including mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to cancel Transit City upon taking office in 2010, caused the opening date to be pushed to 2019, and then 2021.

Councillor Anthony Perruzza, who represents one of the wards through which the LRT would pass, said he was “saddened” by the latest delay.

Perruzza (Ward 8, York West) said the LRT is badly needed because the Finch bus line “is very much at capacity.” The line carries 44,000 riders a day and is the TTC’s second-busiest bus route.

He said the buses frequently bunch up and “are always crowded. You’re just shoulder to shoulder.”

Last fall, Metrolinx issued a notice of intent to terminate its $770-million order with Bombardier, which the agency placed in 2010 for 182 vehicles to run on the Finch, the Eglinton Crosstown, and other Toronto-area light rail lines. The agency said that the company still hadn’t delivered the first pilot vehicles, which were supposed to arrive in the spring of 2015, and had defaulted.

Bombardier countered that it would still be able to deliver the fleet before the lines opened, and took Metrolinx to court to block the agency from cancelling the deal. In April a judge sided with the company, and the fate of the purchase is now tied up in a dispute resolution process.

In a separate development, a different legal battle between Metrolinx and Bombardier was quietly resolved last week.

In August, Bombardier filed an application for a judicial review of Metrolinx’s decision to lock the company out of a bid to operate the agency’s passenger service.

Bombardier currently holds contracts to operate GO Transit and the Union Pearson Express, both of which are overseen by Metrolinx. But the agency plans to issue another contract in 2023, by which time it hopes to have dramatically increased GO Transit service under its regional express rail expansion plan.

Metrolinx initially said Bombardier couldn’t bid on the new deal because it would involve reviewing its existing passenger operations, which the agency claimed would pose a conflict of interest.

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However, Metrolinx said this week that after consulting with the industry it decided to package the procurement for rail operations with the bid for the design and construction of express rail infrastructure.

That should allow Bombardier to take part in the procurement as part of consortium bidding to design, build, and operate the express network. Bombardier’s litigation was adjourned on Sept. 13.

Lefebvre, the Bombardier spokesperson, said that the company “acknowledges and welcomes” Metrolinx’s intention to amend the procurement.

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