June 21, 2006

The rendering shows what Ottawa’s city streets will look like once the LRT is built. The consortium headed by Siemens Canada, PCL Constructors and Dufferin Construction was chosen by Ottawa city council

The Project Team

Members of the consortium chosen to build Ottawa’s light-rail system: Siemens Canada Limited — Systems integrator, electrical and mechanical systems and manufacture of the light rail vehicles. PCL Constructors Canada Inc. — Civil construction. Dufferin Construction Company — Heavy civil construction partner. Stantec Consulting Ltd. — Civil works design consultant. URS Canada Inc. — Support consultant and bridge design. Jacques Whitford Limited — Geotechnical engineer. David S. McRobie Architects Inc., and Griffiths Rankin Cook Architects — Architects in joint venture. James B. Lennox & Associates Inc. — Landscape architect/urban design; Delta Media Inc. — Lead communications consultant.

—Koroluk

Transportation

Ottawa LRT faces stiff opposition

Total cost of the system could reach $1 billion

KORKY KOROLUK

correspondent

OTTAWA

The biggest construction project in Ottawa’s history moved a step closer to reality last week with the release of financial details that left many wondering just how much it’s going to cost.

It’s a light rail transit (LRT) system to connect the city core with the southwestern suburb of Barrhaven. Construction is to begin this fall, and ultra-modern electric trains are to run over the 29.4 kms of line by the end of 2009.

The cost?

Mayor Bob Chiarelli said the fixed price for the design and construction of the “base LRT project” is $654.2 million. Other costs will bring the total to $744.2 million. But if council approves an extension from the edge of Barrhaven into the Barr-haven Town Centre, that total will go to $768.2 million. And if you add the $18 million planned for project management, the total will be $786.2 million.

That’s without a maintenance facility, not part of the project, but essential to it. It will be privately built and leased back to the city for $8.6 million a year.

The final plans for the project were unveiled at an open house last week. After half a dozen similar open houses across the city, city council will vote at mid-July on whether the project is to proceed or not.

Opposition has been mounting — not to the concept of light rail, but to the cost and to details of the plan.

Some critics of the project say the actual cost is more likely to be in the $900-million-plus range, with several saying they believe it will be closer to $1 billion.

Still others say it shouldn’t be built at all — or that an east-west line should be built first.

The present plan is undeniably ambitious.

From the University of Ottawa campus in the downtown core, the line will go west through the core area, then turn south to the Carleton University campus.

From there, it will continue south, skirting the airport and crossing Riverside South, a new area where there has so far been little development. A new bridge will then take the line across the Rideau River into Barrhaven, a suburb where houses are popping up like mushrooms after a rain.

Along the way, an existing rail bridge over the Rideau near Carleton will be completely rebuilt, and a tunnel under Dows Lake will be twinned to accommodate the system’s twin tracks.

The system will have 22 light rail vehicles and 23 stations.

Three consortia competed for the project with the one headed by Siemens Canada, PCL Constructors and Dufferin Construction winning the work.

The scheme’s proponents expect a number of economic benefits, and have produced studies predicting the project will generate 3,100 jobs directly related to construction, plus another 5,500 indirectly related jobs.

They say more than $800 million in new commercial and residential development is likely along the LRT corridor, and the value of adjacent properties will climb by a minimum of 10 to 20 per cent.

It is, said Mayor Chiarelli, “something that people are waiting for and something that people want.”

At the open house, he quickly dismissed questions from reporters about the likelihood that the project cost could top $1 billion.

“It’s absolutely incorrect, and it’s totally politicizing the issue to use those types of untrue numbers,” he snapped.

But this is a municipal election year, and Chiarelli’s two main competitors have both demanded that the final vote on whether to proceed with the project be delayed until after the election. One, former city councillor, Alex Munter, has said an independent audit should be performed before a final decision is made.

Delaying the project, even by six months, could be expensive, said Rejean Chartrand, the city’s director of economic development and strategic projects.

A six-month delay would add about a year to the construction schedule, he said, and since it would mean losing production time slots at the factory, it would also delay delivery of the rail vehicles by a year. Other capital costs would increase by 10 to 12 per cent.

Taking all these together, he estimated the cost of a six-month delay would be “between $65 million and $80 million.”

In spite of that, delay is just what Hume Rogers wants.

Rogers, who manages a hotel on the downtown portion of the route, is also head of a coalition of business people, environmentalists, light rail enthusiasts and others that calls itself Get It Right.

The group is concerned about the plans to run the line across the core area on two one-way streets that already carry a lot of bus and car traffic. It is also concerned about the station at the University of Ottawa.

That station was added to the plans after the environmental assessment had been done on the rest of the route, and the assessment for the addition is not yet complete.

Hume said he’s concerned that if the project is begun before all the necessary approvals have been obtained, it will leave the northern end of the route terminating in the middle of a nearby bridge.

That had been the original plan, he noted, but it would have meant closing the bridge to all but rail and bus traffic.

He said “before we start, we should make sure we have all of the ducks in a row, that we have all the approvals necessary.”

He also said he is not happy about a somewhat vague plan the city has to take a portion of the bus traffic off the arterials the rail line is to use to cross the downtown core.

The whole project should be postponed, he said, to allow all approvals to be in place before a start is made. And “it would also give us a chance to take a second look at the project to see if there are not other ways we could do things better.”

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