December 27, 2006

INFRASTRUCTURE

Ottawa council officially kills LRT

KORKY KOROLUK

Correspondent

OTTAWA

The biggest construction project in the city of Ottawa’s history is dead. City council voted 13-11 to kill the light rail transit project because a promised federal contribution of $200 million was not assured, and voters in last month’s civic election expressed opposition to the plan council had previously approved.

The ramifications for the local construction industry will soon be apparent. Some preparatory — relocating some utilities, for example — had begun this fall, and the general contractor, PCL Constructors Canada Ltd., had planned to have several crews at work as early as next spring.

As well, new buildings on the campuses of the University of Ottawa and Carleton University were tied to construction of the line. Other development along the line had also been expected.

Part of the project’s impact would have been an estimated 3,100 jobs directly related to construction. The light rail vehicles would have been provided by Siemens Canada.

Siemens was the lead member of the consortium that would have designed and built the line, and maintained it for 15 years.

PCL was also part of the consortium, along with Dufferin Construction, which was to have done the heavy civil work, which included a couple of bridges and twinning an existing tunnel under a small lake.

The contract was for $786.2 million, but ancillary work necessary to the project brought the total price closer to $880 million.

The federal and provincial governments each pledged $200 million for the project. A letter from the province last Thursday confirmed the provincial money was in place. A similar assurance from the federal government was not forthcoming.

After Treasury Board chair John Baird said late last summer that the plan had to be approved a second time by the incoming council, the wheels began to fall off the project.

Thus, last week, the new council approved an amended plan that would have eliminated the leg across the downtown core.

Transport Canada considered a change in the scope of the project, and said it needed examination before the $200 million could be released. Earlier in the week, Baird sent a letter to the Ottawa Construction Association. In it, he said the money was still on the table.

But while councillors were provided with the letter, no such assurance was sent to the city. Questioned on that, city manager Kent Kirkpatrick said he focuses “on letters that I get from the bureaucracy at the federal government. “Other letters are expressions of political will or intent.”

But the deadline for financial closure of the contract between the city and the consortium was late Thursday, and council found itself debating what to do just hours before that deadline.

Many of them worried about a letter from the consortium in which it said “should the closing not occur (Thursday), we . . . will pursue any and all legal actions available to us.”

Members were faced, finally, with three choices:

• They could revert to the original plan, on which the two senior governments had already signed off.

• They could go ahead with the amended plan without assurance that the federal money would arrive.

• Or they could kill the plan completely.

They killed it.

From the outset, there was public concern over two aspects of the plan. One was the route through the downtown core would run along two parallel streets already heavily used by cars and transit buses. The other concern was the line’s orientation. Critics argued there was a greater immediate need.

Under questioning by councillor Maria McRae, Kirkpatrick said the city had no plans yet to speed up street widening, intersection work, or whole new roads to help accommodate traffic until another mass transit plan is formulated. That will take a while.

Mayor Larry O’Brien said the city will “move forward very quickly to come up with alternate solutions to the north-south transit line.”

“We will move forward quickly on solving the east-west (problems).”

He said a task force will be formed early in the new year to address all the transit issues “and come back to the voters with other options.” He gave no timeline for such a task force, but during the mayoral campaign, he said he wanted to take six months to examine transit matters.

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