Special to
This Crazy Train
By GO
Voyageur
Back in April, I traversed the
Pickering pedestrian bridge from the GO station to the DRT bus stop on the
other side. Along the way, I noticed four shattered panes of glass…
Metrolinx
and I exchanged the following tweets:
I forgot
about the problem until June, when I had to cross the bridge, again. Metrolinx and I exchanged the following
tweets:
Special order of glass?! WTH does that mean? What exactly did the bridge engineers design
and Mayor Dave Ryan endorse wholeheartedly?
In
August, I strolled across the bridge one more time. Imagine my surprise when…
“Soon”?! Is that the same “soon” that made us wait an
eternity for real-time bus info?
On Friday, as I waited for my
westbound train at Pickering, a site foreman and his team armed with station
blueprints, asked me to step aside, because they needed to examine the crack in
the pane of glass at the foot of the stairs from the bridge to Platform 1…
I asked him why the panes of
glass at Pickering station were so prone to shattering. I mentioned the defective glass on bridge,
and I pointed to the broken pane across the tracks at the foot of the stairs
from the bridge to Track 2…
He couldn’t speak to the
fragility of the glass, but he did explain why it takes so long to replace the
panes. You see, the sheets of glass
originate in Europe and are shipped
to Quebec where they are “heat
treated” (his words). Then they are
shipped to Pickering for installation. I
wanted to engage him further in this discussion, but my train arrived, and I
had to leave.
Well, that explained the “special
order of glass”, and why six months after the problem was reported, it was
still outstanding. But so many questions
remain unanswered. Why is the original
glass installed on the bridge so fragile?
Is it substandard? Did the design
engineers miscalculate something? Is
vandalism the cause for all this shattered glass? Why do replacement panes need to be sourced
from Europe? Are there not more
economical sources of glass in North America?
What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) of this structure?
Is it time Ontario’s Auditor
General, Bonnie Lysyk, met with Metrolinx’s new President and CEO, Phil Verster,
to get acquainted and review some numbers?
6 comments:
I live in Pickering and take the train from the Pickering station daily. I can attest to the fact that since the bridge was built, at least one pane of glass is broken on any given week. For these panes to shatter as often as they do is not good. We live in Canada with harsh winter weather and we expect that exterior windows of a publically accessed building will withstand our winters. But hell, what more can you expect from Metrolinx but to continue to engage in contracts that bring inferior products to our stations. Metrolinx is about the most untransparent, incompetent government agency out there...and that's saying a lot given Government agencies in general act in about the same manner.
Really....glass from Europe?!
Safety is their "top priority" as well as their "commitment to safety and comfort" and by "top priority" they mean, as always, not really at all...
Like you, I wounder was there really no local supplier that could provide the glass at a decent price?
Toledo Ohio used to be "The Glass Capital Of The World".
Whatever happened to that position?
Why not try that city for obtaining glass from a North American source?
Bridge was built by the lowest bidder. No requirement for bidder to show their ability to do the work.
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