VIA Rail has shortlisted five companies to submit proposals for construction work at its maintenance centres in Montreal and Toronto.

The Crown corporation announced on December 4 that it has invited Aecon Infrastructure Management Inc., Buttcon Limited, EllisDon Corporation, Kenaidan Contracting Ltd. and Pomerleau Inc. to participate in separate request for proposals processes for the projects. The proposal for the Toronto Maintenance Centre project will be due in July; proposals for the Montreal project will be due in August.

It is not yet clear when the contracts for the projects will be awarded. VIA’s pre-pandemic project schedule called for a contract award this winter.

“Despite the pandemic, we have continued to work on our large-scale modernization projects, which will transform passenger rail service in Canada,” said VIA Rail president and CEO Cynthia Garneau. “This is, in fact, another example of how we are getting closer to completing one of the building blocks of our High Frequency Rail project, which will offer more frequencies and connect more communities to our network.”

The project to modernize the maintenance centres in Montreal and Toronto is part of the Corridor Fleet Replacement Program, which will see Siemens build and supply 32 new trains to replace the current fleet. Before VIA can take delivery of those trains, extensive construction and maintenance work is required at its Montreal and Toronto yards.

Specifically, the scope of work for the projects includes: a combination of constructing new buildings and making facility infrastructure upgrades at both centres, including architectural, civil, structural, mechanical, electrical and communication engineering systems, and supplying and installing train set maintenance equipment to support the new and existing fleets.

The first train set of the new corridor fleet is expected to be brought into service in 2022.