TORONTO — Ontario transit agency Metrolinx has announced it will buy 36 new bilevel railcars from Bombardier for GO Transit.
The order will include 31 standard coaches and five accessible cars, and will add more than 6,000 new seats for GO Transit operations. The cars will be built at Bombardier’s Thunder Bay, Ont., plant, which announced in July that it would lay off workers on Nov. 4 because of a lack of orders. [See “Bombardier to lay off 550 in railroad manufacturing arm,” Trains News Wire, July 16, 2019.] There was no immediate word on how the order might affect those layoff plans.
GO Transit has operated the bilevel Bombardier cars for more than 20 years, Metrolinx notes. The new cars will include a real-time onboard diagnostic data system. Deliveries are slated to begin in fall 2020.
