The provincial government announced Tuesday that it is officially stepping into the contract-offering process for new cars on the Montreal metro.
Premier Jean Charest said the government will not send the project to an international tender, and will instead hand a contract worth about $1.3 billion to a Bombardier-Alstom consortium that will build the cars in La Pocatiere.
"It's good news for Montreal in the sense that we will have our metro cars more rapidly, but good news for Quebec because it will create high quality jobs throughout Quebec," said Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay.
Four years of delays
The STM first put out a call for tenders in 2006, asking for 340 rubber-wheeled metro cars with an option for 130 more.
At the time the transit agency selected Bombardier as supplier, arguing the Quebec-based company was the only firm capable of meeting its needs.
French train-builder Alstom disagreed and took the STM to court in June 2006, finally winning the case in 2008, however before the STM was forced to re-open the tender process, Bombardier agreed to work hand-in-hand with Alstom.
Specs changed in 2008
Then the STM decided to change the specifications of the bid, and replace not just the 40-year-old original rolling stock metro cars, but up to an additional 500 metro cars as well.
This led to expressions of interest from Spanish firm CAF, and a fierce demand from Chinese company CSR Zhuzhou which is convinced that steel-wheel cars could be built at a Canadian factory for less money, including the cost of converting the metro's railways to use steel wheels.
The STM was supposed to make an international call for tenders at the end of September, but Transport Minister Sam Hamad refused to let the company issue the call for bid, claiming there was an urgent need to replace the metro cars as quickly as possible.
With files from The Canadian Press
