Yes, Bombardier has made a total muck up of the streetcar contract. Out-of-alignment frames and substandard workmanship has left the City without the vehicles to replace older cars. Only a pitiful handful of cars has been delivered. We’re not sure as Josh Colle, the TTC chair says, that “Torontonians are looking forward to the pleasures of their new streetcars”. Riding a tram isn’t like an evening with an old friend. But never mind. Bombardier is a bit player in the streetcar scandal played out daily in Toronto. Whether it be the enormous cost and inconvenience of maintaining a street railway in 2015, the extraordinary obstruction of traffic caused by streetcars, the inflexibility of streetcar routing and the time it costs the public or the maddening exercise of building tracks on the street in Leslieville — it is all entirely the fault of elected City Councillors who voted for a 19th century transit system. Please do not talk of the environment. The impact of electric and natural gas buses on the environment is a piffle. Council is talking of blacklisting Bombardier. Fine. But let members also awaken from their long dark night as streetcar zombies.
