Who's Not Been Serving Us Lately? Part 2

Read Part 1 ... now onto Part 2
by Chris P. Bacon

In this installment of Who’s Not Been Serving Us Lately? I look at a Metrolinx capital works project.  Metrolinx loves to tell us how hard they’re working at investing our money to improve service.  No doubt, you’ve seen this post on Twitter.  Let’s follow the link and pick one of the projects on the interactive map.  

Burlington GO station, you say? 

Good choice!

Let’s LearnMore about improvements to this facility.  Wow – 265 solar panels!  I wasn’t aware of that.  Oh, wait, what’s this?  “Construction started September 2012 and is expected to be completed by June 2014.”  How did we go from a proclamation of “COMPLETE JUNE 2014” to now hedging that the project “is expected” to be finished next month?  I don’t know what they’re measuring with that start date, considering that buses didn’t move to the north loop until December1, 2012.

Let’s view Metrolinx’s photos of the progress at Burlington station; we’ll skip to the end of the album.  What the …?  Why has no one uploaded photos since May1, 2013 – over a year ago?  This is not looking good.  It’s time for a site visit.  First, let’s look at what thestation is supposed to look like.  Caution is advised, as the following scenes may be disturbing to some readers.

As of Friday, May 16, 2014, this is what Burlington Station looked like from the south parking lot:

Does this look like the architect’s rendition of the renovated station?  The covered bus loop still requires much work.  I don’t see any solar panels, do you?  The old station, to the right, has yet to be demolished.  Here’s a peek inside the station from the north (track) side:

Apparently, there is much work to do on the roof, fascia, and soffits.  From this vantage point, there doesn’t seem to be much activity inside.  I know you’re wondering – is anyone actually working at this site?  Well, yes; as you can see, this person was hard at work:

That’s right.  There was only one person on this work site, which is one more than I have seen over the last month.  So, who is being paid for this project?  It’s none other than BondfieldConstruction Company Ltd.  

Why does the corporation have only one person assigned to this project?  Note that the contractor promised the job would be completed in December 2013 at a cost of $15,234,000.  At this time, we have a project overrun of five months – and counting.  Do we have a cost overrun, too?  It appears so, since the fine print states the following:

Additional operating costs incurred by Burlington Transit due to the temporary move from the south bus loop to the north bus loop will be reimbursed by GO Transit.

Metrolinx toutsthe Burlington station as “just one example of The Big Move in action across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area”.  To me, it’s more an example of inaction.

Are all Metrolinx projects handled like this one?  With billions of dollars at stake, whois responsible for oversight on these capital works initiatives?