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Metrolinx confirmed that the partnership had been severed after receiving questions from the Star.

French company Alstom will continue to oversee maintenance and operations of the GO system, Ernesaks added.

“Metrolinx is committed to providing a safe, reliable transit service, with more than 120,000 people relying on GO Transit and UP Express every day,” she said in a statement to the Star.

Ernesaks did answer questions about how much the contract with Deutsche Bahn and Aecon was worth or how much had already been paid out.

Deutsche Bahn and Aecon did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

Deutsche Bahn and Aecon, in a joint partnership, had won a contract to operate and maintain the province’s GO train network back in January 2024, as part of a broader consortium of companies, ONxpress Transportation Partners, that would design, build, operate and maintain an extensive expansion of the province’s central commuter rail service.

The design and construction portion of that contract, led by Alstom, Aecon and Spanish construction company FCC Group was billed at an estimated $1.6 billion.

The GO expansion plan would effectively transform GO from a commuter railway into an all-day, two-way transit network, with service every 15 minutes or better on core parts of the network, including the Lakeshore East and West, Stouffville, Kitchener, and Barrie GO lines. It would enable projected annual GO ridership to reach more than 200 million by 2055, and is seen as crucial to meeting future transportation needs of the rapidly growing region.

GO expansion, previously known as regional express rail, is the province’s single largest transit project and was launched under the Ontario Liberals, and expanded under the Ford government.Ìý

Back in 2020, companies had warned Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario about the public-private procurement model used for the GO expansion projects with concerns about how much financial risk they were being asked to take on. The documents warned that changing course could delay procurement for the expansion, documents obtained by the Star showed.