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Roncesvalles Reconstruction

fiendishlibrarian said:
Hmmm...purty new light standards. So is the BIA going to ensure they aren't covered in layers of ads like the ones along College are?
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Also, will they ensure that they actually work? Many of the ones mounted on the hydro poles before this reconstruction hadn't worked for years.

Also, Toronto should have transit shelters available that are double the length of the standard ones for higher volume routes where more people wait at stops. I'm not sure if Roncesvalles needs them, though space is now available with the bumpouts. The bumpouts remind me of St. Clair and Spadina's fully sheltered platform stops. (However, is that cheap asphalt paving I see in the photo above?) The busiest bus routes through the suburbs could definitely use longer shelters, where a lot of people tend to wait at busy transfer points at intersections, and the space is actually available for larger shelters.
 
They seem to be a standard size which can sit close to the curb and the bus can open the door just past the shelter and the back door remains unblocked. There are some stops where more shelter might be useful but they could probably just put up a second shelter and not have people crammed into one. As soon as they put two doors on a shelter the wind is going to blow through.
 
I looked into the delay while at city hall on Wed and once again the city has fallen on the sword for not making sure the subcontractors were informed as to when their work was to start and be completed by. At the same time, they fail to get the various subcontractors up to speed and made sure that the work was completed as plan. Some real poor project managers on staff.

Enbridge and the city are pointing the finger at each other for the delay at this time.

Therefore, the main contractor is not at fault for the delay as has been noted in the past, since he cannot complete his work if the other subcontractors not under his control are not doing their work as schedule.

By the way, how is that street today after the latest snow fall since I cannot see it until Sat?
 
I somehow doubt the BIA will allow their efforts to be undermined with layers of "Booty Camp" ads and other street spam you deem "relevant" plastered everywhere. If not then I don't see why they would have bothered. And if they do, shame on them for facilitating such commercial vandalism.
 
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The lights are relevant so long as they're functional. However, a closer look reveals that they're not very attractive. The poles are too thin, and the design of the light at the top looks very amateurish with few details. They look like the kind of stuff you could get at Canadian Tire for your front or back yard.
 
BlogTO has an article about the Roncesvalles reconstruction, featuring an interview with Councillor Gord Perks. In the interview, Perks says Sanscon simply did not put enough resources into finishing the job on time. The obvious follow-up question is, why didn't the City crack the whip? Perks responds that you simply can't do this with a private contractor:

Because of the history of the way road work is done in the city of Toronto we’re bound by a couple of problems. One is that it’s a privatized service, so these are not municipal employees and we can’t just tell them “you’re falling behind, bring in five more guys, and get the work done.†That’s one problem with privatized services, you can’t control their day to day decisions.

The second problem is because of a long history of people to the right of centre arguing that everything costs too much. We are required to take the lowest bid on a contract, so it doesn’t matter what your history is on completing other work for the City of Toronto, so if you’re a licensed, competent, legal bidder, we’re sort of required by law to take you as the guy who wins the bid.​

Matt Elliot echoes this point, writing: "The belief that ‘privatization’ is some kind of magic that can lead to better services for lower cost is dangerous. There’s always a downside."

Incidentally, the TTC uses its own crews, and they finished their track work on time.
 
Perks has no blame for the City employees involved, it's all the private sector's fault and it would have been fine with city staff. Hands up everyone who thinks that's a credible position, that the City PMs are blameless etc. I'm perfectly willing to believe there were screwups in the private sphere but the City attempted a massively complex venture just as a serious blow to their credibility to pull such projects off was unfolding on St. Clair. The position that "if it was city staff we could have thrown more resources at the problem" just reads like "who cares about cost overruns or planning more carefully to avoid them in the first place?"

In any case, if Perks felt tendering rules and penalty clauses were inadequate, did he make ANY attempt to strengthen them while Mayor Miller (who would listen to him a lot more attentively than the current goof) was in charge? He doesn't have to be involved in picking the bid - he and his fellow councillors are there to put the framework in place and plainly he has to bear some responsibility for the fact that the Roncesvalles contract was awarded under conditions he now says were inadequate.

He also talks about St Clair West in an interesting way. While absolving Sanscon, he says "The problems on St. Clair West came from a few factors. One of them was that they were making changes as they went. " Who is they councillor? That would be the City, and the politicians who felt it wasn't enough that St Clair have a more reliable streetcar but that they try and please every other stakeholder leading to an over-complex project but also lacking guts on things like eliminating left turns.
 
dowlingm said:
In any case, if Perks felt tendering rules and penalty clauses were inadequate, did he make ANY attempt to strengthen them while Mayor Miller (who would listen to him a lot more attentively than the current goof) was in charge? He doesn't have to be involved in picking the bid - he and his fellow councillors are there to put the framework in place and plainly he has to bear some responsibility for the fact that the Roncesvalles contract was awarded under conditions he now says were inadequate.
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The City hired a consultant (Chisholm, Fleming and Associates, I believe) to prepare the tender for the second phase of the Roncesvalles construction. I have no idea if this is standard procedure for more complex projects, or a response to the shortcomings of previous contracts. Perks has said that the resulting contract included many new mitigation measures that were requested by the BIA and the community, but it did not include the big one, namely an enforceable timetable.

I agree with @dowlingm that future contracts need a new framework, and this requires council support that is now more difficult with the new regime. I disagree, however, that Perks could have simply snapped his fingers and the rest of the Miller council would have simply fallen in line for the sake of the Roncesvalles community. This new framework would likely have involved either higher costs (with contractors risking greater damages if there are unexpected delays and missed deadlines -- which are always a risk with complex projects, no matter how well you plan, @dowlingm), a new contracting policy, or a totally new way of building these projects (eg: with public workers). This seems like a bigger deal than just telling City PM's to "make it happen."

Not that Perks isn't trying anyway. I understand he, along with senior technical services staff, are meeting with Roncesvalles community representatives to prepare a "lessons learned" report. Judging by the Perks interview, I would expect that this report will lay bare the true costs of lowest-bid private contracts.

By the way, does anyone know how the St. Clair merchants fared in court this week? A ruling in their favour might be another impetus for change, but given that their lawsuit actually includes the term "war on the car," I have a feeling the whole exercise is just more Fordian performance art. Who is paying for this lawsuit, anyway?
 
Armbruster said:
The City hired a consultant (Chisholm, Fleming and Associates, I believe) to prepare the tender for the second phase of the Roncesvalles construction. I have no idea if this is standard procedure for more complex projects, or a response to the shortcomings of previous contracts. Perks has said that the resulting contract included many new mitigation measures that were requested by the BIA and the community, but it did not include the big one, namely an enforceable timetable.

I agree with @dowlingm that future contracts need a new framework, and this requires council support that is now more difficult with the new regime. I disagree, however, that Perks could have simply snapped his fingers and the rest of the Miller council would have simply fallen in line for the sake of the Roncesvalles community. This new framework would likely have involved either higher costs (with contractors risking greater damages if there are unexpected delays and missed deadlines -- which are always a risk with complex projects, no matter how well you plan, @dowlingm), a new contracting policy, or a totally new way of building these projects (eg: with public workers). This seems like a bigger deal than just telling City PM's to "make it happen."

Not that Perks isn't trying anyway. I understand he, along with senior technical services staff, are meeting with Roncesvalles community representatives to prepare a "lessons learned" report. Judging by the Perks interview, I would expect that this report will lay bare the true costs of lowest-bid private contracts.

By the way, does anyone know how the St. Clair merchants fared in court this week? A ruling in their favour might be another impetus for change, but given that their lawsuit actually includes the term "war on the car," I have a feeling the whole exercise is just more Fordian performance art. Who is paying for this lawsuit, anyway?
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It would not surprise me if SOS is funding the lawsuit.

As someone who writes tenders packages as well bid on them, the city lacks over site on projects as well not knowing how to write an enforcible one in the first place.

I can tell you, Sanscon and its sister company are no fly by night contractor and they know their stuff. They are not at fault for this project nor St Clair one. If they are bad, why have they being doing majorly of TTC tracks work these past 5 or more years with next to no problems for TTC??

I have no personal connection to these company's, as I never had to deal with them in the first place. Dufferin Construction is another story and not a good one.

Sanscon or any other contractor cannot full fill their contract correctly if the City is contracting out all the sub contracts and not producing a flow chart to say what is to be done by when while at the same time changes the scope of the project as well location on the fly. Many things were over looked on the city end

There is more to this story than Perks knows or want people to know.

Lowest bid contracts can be a nightmare if you don't do your research on the company as well knowing what their track record is like. I have seen companies low ball projects, who know how to make more money in the first place through back charges or change orders. Some have never done this size of project before nor the work.

Bottom line, the City needs to open all tenders to all company's regardless if they are union or non union as well have a staff of project mangers who knows how to lite fires to keep a project on schedule. At the same time, it must make sure that all parties are on the same page from day one as well all items have been added to the project before the tenders take place.

For the record, TTC has a policy that if a contractor screws up more than 3 times, it cannot bid for 3-5 years again. In my book, if you screw up twice, you will never bid or get a contract with me again. In some cases, once, depending on what took place.
 
I'm sorry but Councillor Perks is the biggest bag of crap filled air to come along Roncesvalles in quite some time. Is he the leader of the revisionist Left now that they aren't holding the keys to the City anymore when he brings up Sanscon? Always blame a Private Corporation for your own incompetence? I believe he is. At multiple meetings that I have attended about the construction of the Street, he has come across as someone who has a distressing lack of concern for the Residents and Business Owners. Once he equated the delays of the first phase of Construction with a personal renovation of his Home that went a few months over. Another time he almost threw up his hands (figuratively) and said "what can the City do if a Company doesn't meet the deadline?"... apart from levelling pissant fines that go directly to the City and not to the People who live there. The ONLY time he really has ever shown his face on Roncie was either for damage control or to hold another useless meeting to tell everyone that things are still delayed and there's not much we can do other than point our fingers at someone else.
The issue isn't as simple as this moron makes it out to be. Yes, the Contracting Companies dilly dallied by having, at times, a minimum number or even sometimes no crews working. But the City did squat all. When I asked him if, at one of the Neighbourhood meetings, that if a Company is deemed "incompetent" can the City "Blacklist" them from bidding on a Contract? He said no. That is not the fault of a Private Company, that's the fault of the City. It was Mayor Mel who, I believe, instituted the "lowest bid" clause and those idiots down at City Hall... Left, Middle and Right have kept it still. His quote instills so much confidence in me... "we’re sort of required by law to take you as the guy who wins the bid." He is an absolute f*#ktard. I cannot believe that this man is a City Councillor... says something about "Us" doesn't it if we keep voting maroons like this back into position.

p.s. the TTC did the best job of anyone who has had a shovel in their hands... I was quite pleasantly surprised.
 
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