Light rail vehicles aren’t about to start testing on the LRT track after all. It had been expected that the second vehicle to arrive in the region would be taken out onto the track Thursday for the first time. Ion officials announced Thursday that the testing had been postponed. No new target date was given. Coun. Tom Galloway says the issue boils down to a dispute between Bombardier, which still owns the vehicles, and GrandLinq, which will operate them. “Apparently there’s some documentation that GrandLinq wanted to have from Bombardier (and) Bombardier hadn’t sent it yet,” he says. According to Galloway, the paperwork issue only came to light Wednesday afternoon. The second vehicle arrived in the region in late September. Unlike the first vehicle, which has sat in a garage in north Waterloo since February, it was in working order. Whenever the testing does happen, it will start with the vehicle being towed along the track. Eventually, it will start running on its own power – something Galloway says it’s capable of now. “There are still some technical issues that have to be sorted out, but they’re not issues that prevent the train from being run under power,” he says. Bombardier has a contract to manufacture all 14 vehicles for the Ion system, which is scheduled to start passenger service next spring. Galloway says six vehicles have now been fully assembled, with work underway on the rest.
