The City of Edmonton will now evaluate the Metro Line LRT signalling system, months after it gave the troubled route’s contractor a Dec. 4 deadline to fix the issues.
Thalus Canada Inc. was issued a Notice of Default on May 1, and on Tuesday, the company said the system is “ready to provide safe and reliable service.”
The evaluation of Thales’ work will take months.
“They may be confident in their work, but we have to do our own due diligence to determine if Thales has passed and has met their contractual obligations,” Deputy City Manager Adam Laughlin said. “It’s important to ensure that the City — and all Edmontonians — has the signalling system that we asked for and were promised.”
Thales is confident with the final result.
“We’re proud that we’ve delivered. It’s been a challenge and the system is ready for service,” Thales Commercial Operations Vice President David Beckley said. “We’ve reached a place where we’re very proud we’ve finished and put a system in a stage where it’s ready to go.”
The city has not fully paid Thales the $55-million contract.
The testing will mostly take place outside of service hours. The city does anticipate there will be one-and-a-half days of system-wide LRT closures each month for testing, but the closures will be on low-service days.
The Metro Line—which opened in September 2015—will run on a 15-minute schedule, and Capital Line trains will remain on a 5-5-10-minute schedule in peak hours.
