The north-south line is really just the beginning. It's supposed to open in 2009. Over the next eight years, the bus fleet will increase 40 per cent while the rail will go up 225 per cent to reflect extension of the north-south line and creation of an east-west system.

Despite more fares coming in, the operating bill for taxpayers is projected to increase by $2.1 billion over the same time period, an average of $121 million a year. Even with more provincial gas tax money in the future, the city report says it's "uncertain" if property taxes could pay for the rest. Actually, it's certain they couldn't. That kind of annual increase, if paid from property taxes, would amount to something like 15 per cent a year, just to pay for transit.

By 2021, Ottawa city staff say our whole transportation network will be four times as large as it is today.

Per capita transit ridership in Ottawa is the third highest in Canada, but it has only increased 4.4 per cent in a decade. The city's current plan calls for increases of six per cent a year. The city's latest report describes the 30 per cent target number as "a real challenge" that would mean Ottawa had the highest percentage of transit use in North America. It also says the goal can be achieved.

No, it can't, according to the city's own ridership study. Even with the planned construction and spending, transit's share of the daily commute will only increase to 21 per cent by 2021. Without all the expenditure, it will decline below today's levels. The 30 per cent target is only achievable if the 2021 cost of operating a car increases by 50 per cent, after inflation. Sound likely?

The $725 million north-south train will only reach one area that is not already well-served by transit. Riverside South, assuming it increases in size tenfold, will generate 1,400 riders in the morning rush by 2021. That would be less than half of one per cent of all morning rush hour trips. This model community, which has train transit as its central reason for being, will have 21 per cent of its commuting trips provided by transit, well below the city's overall target figure.

If Riverside South doesn't develop as planned, the train will be even more useless because most of the rest of the people it will carry are already well-served by bus transit.

The ignored ridership study also reminds us that projecting big transit increases based on population and job growth is a bit simplistic. The increasing number of jobs in the suburbs won't be easy for transit to serve and the aging population calls into question Ottawa's ability to actually fill all those projected jobs.

A proper executive summary of this latest report would have told us Ottawa's grand transit expansion plan costs way, way more to build than we can afford, has insupportable operating costs and won't meet the commuting-share goals city staff keep citing.

The truth probably does not constitute a compelling sales pitch to the provincial government, which will be asked to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the transit dream. But what about the taxpayers? Don't we deserve the truth?

There's a fine line between a sell job and a con job, and the city has crossed it.

Contact Randall Denley at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com

Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, February 11, 2006

Unbreakable rule of the workplace: If you're working on a big project, don't leave the boss out of the loop. Even more important when you've got 22 bosses.

Ottawa city councillors put their staff through a four-hour question and venting session about light rail this week but it was difficult to feel sorry for staff. Sure, most of it was stuff councillors should already have known, but did staff really think their political bosses would be content to be kept in the dark until this summer?

Well, maybe they did. Like most things that are now giving councillors great concern, the approval path for the train is something they already agreed to.

"They are finally realizing they are out of the loop for a long time, but that was laid out last summer and they voted for it," Councillor Gord Hunter says.

This week's demand for more information is a last-minute attempt to regain some kind of control over a project on which most councillors have been passengers for years. Councillors' noses are so far out of joint that some are actually talking about voting against the train proposal if it doesn't meet their long and varied lists of demands. Clearly not satisfied with the project, some argue it should be diesel trains, not electric trolley cars; that it should go down Montreal Road before it goes south to empty fields; and that it must be extended to the big-box stores in Barrhaven.

Good to see councillors in the game, but it's going to be difficult now to change the city's north-south rail plans in any substantive way. Councillors have locked themselves into a bidding process that will keep them out of the train decision until the last minute, and then their choices will be somewhat limited.

A bid selection committee composed of the mayor, two councillors and senior staff will determine which bid offers the best overall value after expert committees have verified that the bids deliver what the city is asking for and the financial numbers add up. The selection committee also has the power to ask the preferred bidder to reduce the scope of its bid to get within the city's budget.

The final decision will be made by the whole council. They can add or subtract from the scope of the bid, city manager Kent Kirkpatrick says, but only within limits. For example, the city's agreement with the federal and provincial governments specifies the rail line must have double track.

Councillors can even choose design elements from the losing bids that they want the winner to incorporate. They can walk away from the whole project, too, if they think it doesn't offer enough value for the money. What they can't do is choose a winner other than the one the selection committee selected. That's big lawsuit time.

Councillors have asked staff to come back with more information at the next council meeting. Kirkpatrick says he hopes to release some of the bid details before a selection is made, so councillors and the public can get a feel for what is being proposed.

The session at which councillors revealed how little they know about the largest construction project in the city's history could have been avoided if staff had realized the politicians and the public want to be kept up to date. It should be obvious that a flow of information is necessary, but the rail project doesn't even have so much as a single communications person to help in getting the facts out.

In the absence of information, there are a lot of dire rumours.

The most popular one is that the rail bids will either come in way over the city's $725-million budget, or balloon later with taxpayers on the hook.

Staff say the $725-million project cost is a limit. There just isn't any more money. If the cost is to go higher, councillors will have to find something else they don't want to do. Each of the consortiums is spending about $5 million on its bid and no one has pulled out yet. That's seen as a good sign the companies are going to be able to give the city what it wants within its budget.

If the construction cost does rise, that will be the train builder's problem, Kirkpatrick says. The deal the city will sign is for a fixed price. Cost overruns must be covered by the builder.

While many councillors don't seem to realize it, the process they approved will, in the end, give them the limited control they want. Even when the issue finally comes to them in June, it wouldn't be too late to decide the north-south train gives too little bang for too many bucks, but most councillors haven't been able to figure that out yet. Don't count on them ever understanding it.

Contact Randall Denley at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

CFRA Poll (AM 580)

Do you want the City Auditor to report independently and publicly financial implications for developers who own vacant land along the North-South route of the Light Rail train?

Yes. This route design raises serious questions 88%
No. This route is designed to provide incentive for future development on the southest side of the Rideau River 11.1%

Total Votes: 1397

Light-rail officials seek to allay council's concerns
Councillors order review of documents to see which can be made public

Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, February 09, 2006

Officials overseeing Ottawa's north/south light-rail project tried to allay concerns of city councillors yesterday during an information session on the progress of the bidding process.

The session was added to yesterday's city council meeting to address councillors' concerns about the amount of information being given to them and the public, and to correct inaccurate rumours surrounding the $750-million project -- such as the rumour the extension to Barrhaven was being axed. It's still on the table, city manager Kent Kirkpatrick said.

It is a crucial time in the project as the environmental assessment nears completion and bid deadlines approach for three competing groups, but staff and consultants insist that everything is proceeding properly.

"Any deviation from the principle and the process, I would be reporting," said Howard Grant, a consultant hired to make sure the bidding process is done properly.

Mr. Grant said that there must be confidentiality in order to ensure the bidders aren't stealing ideas from each other, but that any councillor can see details of the bids or any other aspect of the project upon signing a confidentiality agreement.

Part of the problem, Mr. Grant said, is the process being followed on the project.

Usually design aspects of a project are approved and made public with groups then bidding on the contract. The process council approved for this project rolls these two stages together, and also includes what kind of trains will run on the system, in order to save time and money.

This means three key aspects of the plan are subjected to bidding process secrecy, and it has resulted in several councillors feeling shut out and nervous.

"I feel like I'm blindfolded," said Councillor Diane Deans. "I don't even know what questions to ask."

Councillor Diane Holmes, among others, agreed.

"It like a totally closed shop that I have little access to, and I'm feeling uncomfortable with this," she said. "I want to see as much public presentation as possible on as much of what can be made public as possible."

Council ordered the light-rail project team to make a list of reports and documents the team has and for the materials to be reviewed to see if they can be made public.

If they can't, staff must state the reason. Councillors and staff are also working on plans to get regular updates throughout the rest of the project, which is scheduled to start construction this summer and be running by 2009.

Coun. Maria McRae said she hasn't felt a need to find out more information yet because it's too early in the process. She wants to see the final plans and the costs when it's time to make a decision. "I've had no difficulty getting answers to questions and information when I need it," she said. "I'm confident things are moving ahead and there will be sufficient opportunity for council to have its say when the time is right."

Mr. Kirkpatrick assured councillors that the preferred bid is selected, which will be done by a panel that includes two councillors and the mayor, final approval rests with council.

"The process is performing very well to date," Mr. Kirkpatrick said. "Council will have an opportunity to review and make changes before anything is done."

The design aspects of the bids, where the route will go and how it will be built, are due in mid-February. The cost estimates are due at the end of the month. After this, the bids will be examined to see if they conform with what the city wants. If they do, they will go to the selection panel, which will choose the preferred bid. After that, the bid goes to committee and council.

Coun. Gord Hunter said it would be negligent to not try and get council involved in the decision-making at an earlier stage. He said at the next council meeting he intends to bring a motion demanding that happen. "The way it is now, council comes in at the end of the process when everything is all but done. That's way too late in the process," he said.

"All the horses are out of the barn before council gets to decide if we are going to close the door."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Lack of clarity on LRT process divides council

Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Mon, Feb 6, 2006 12:00 AM EST

The foggy secrecy surrounding city hall's light rapid transit project has exposed a fractured and divided city council, with some councillors defending the process and others openly condemning it.

The $725-million project, weeks away from a contract application deadline for bidding consortia, has been under fire recently by residents unhappy with what they say has been a lack of public consultation by the city. And now, some councillors have joined the rising chorus of concerned voices demanding more openness from city officials.

"I think it started out as a consensus driven process," said Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans. "When it started out there was an air of confidence that this would be a consensus-driven process.

"Fast forward to today, and I would tell you my view is that it's no longer a consensus-driven process. It's a time-driven process that has a veil of secrecy overarching it."

It's a process that's proved effective as a strip of sandpaper with the general public. A recent online poll reflected over 90 per cent of almost 2,000 respondents are unsatisfied about the city's enforced secrecy amid rumours the project could top $1 billion when all is said and done.

At issue are a host of concerns involving everything from the placement of stations and maintenance yards in green space, to the trains' method of propulsion (electric versus diesel), to a tunnel through the downtown core and rumours of escalating costs. Just last week, Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder suggested tacking a $30 million extension on the north-south line to the Barrhaven town centre.

And in all cases, say the city's critics, their suggestions and concerns have been completely railroaded.

"They keep saying this is the biggest infusion of federal dollars into a single project in Ottawa history," said David Jeanes, rail expert and president of lobby group Transport 2000. "And yet nobody really knows exactly what they're doing and why it needs to be so secret."

And secret it is – Ms. Deans says a confidentiality agreement binding council to silence, generated by the city's LRT office and fairness commissioner Howard Grant, has circulated among councillors. The agreement, swearing all who sign into silence "without limit in time," gives the right to peruse countless thousands of pages of consultants' reports and RFP stipulations surrounding the project.

"The people that have signed it, the mayor and the other councillors that have signed it, cannot disclose any information about this project," she said, naming Alta Vista Coun. Peter Hume, Goulbourn Coun. Janet Stavinga, and Mayor Bob Chiarelli as having signed the document. "Not now, not after the award of the contract, and not in the foreseeable future."

Bay Ward Coun. Alex Cullen said it is normal in any business negotiation for there to be a blackout period. This allows each bidding consortium time to evaluate the city's contract criteria while respecting each other's corporate secrets.

"There are very, very strict rules to ensure integrity and ensure the process is fair, but the secrecy element leads to the notion that something is being kept from the public," Cullen explained. "But you cannot run a competitive process where everyone gets to look over your shoulder and sees what you're doing. It's just sound business practice. However, once the RFP process is done and there's a winning bid, then we come right back into transparency and openness and all that."

Mr. Cullen said once a contract is awarded details of everything, from who won the bid, to how it was won, to the elements that went into it and everything that led to a winner being declared will be made public.

Trouble is, that won't be until at least next April. Critics like Mr. Jeanes and Ms. Deans want details now. Not corporate details, they say – just facts about what the city's committing to, how much they're willing to pay, and how long it's going to take. Mr. Jeanes has already been involved in lengthy consultations with the city and says he's left bewildered by decisions like the city presenting its own custom-designed train specifications to bidders, instead of the other way around.

"When most people go shopping for cars, they go and look to see what the dealers have," he said, adding that the city also requested customized stations he thinks could cost almost $3 million apiece as opposed to the current half-million dollar O-Train stations.

"But here the city decided up front that it was going to describe the ideal vehicle that it would want, and of course that potentially results in a very expensive vehicle because its customized to the city's requirements."

It is assertions like this that have Ms. Deans and other councillors steamed, although bureaucrats at city hall maintain the project is full steam ahead. Rejean Chartrand, the city's go-to guy on LRT, says the city received a thumbs-up environmental assessment from the province last month and is emphatic there's been more than enough public consultation on the matter.

"As you recall, we had a very exhaustive consultation process over the summer, and I think it's fair to say that the great majority of businesspeople are comfortable with the direction that the city took," he said.

But Ms. Deans said she's not satisfied, and neither are her constituents. "There are consultants' reports that have formed the rationale (for the project)," she said. "Why can't I see those? Why can't the public see those? I want the details.

"I want to see what they're using to make decisions, because ultimately the buck stops with council."

Even Mr. Cullen concedes the project has been pushed to the edge of accepted business norms, and sooner or later council's going to have to be publicly updated on the project's proceedings.

"The concern we have is that right now we're in a bit of a... well, we need an update," he said. "We need to be told, given progress reports, told how we're doing in accomplishing our goals. And that's coming.

"We've hit a period of time where there's more rumour than facts, and we do need to be kept up to speed.”

By Jim Donnelly

jim.donnelly@transcontinental.ca

http://www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/285348029120187.php

City hides the truth about light rail

Randall Denley, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Saturday February 4th, 2006

City councillor Diane Deans was frustrated this week when she sought more information on the city's light-rail project and was told she'd have to sign an oath of secrecy before staff would reveal it to her.

It's reasonable to keep some details confidential during the bidding process, but Deans is right on the larger point. Neither councilors nor the public know nearly enough about this enormously costly project.

That's not a result of secrecy so much as it is staff who are overly eager to get it built and councillors who haven't been diligent in asking the obvious questions. No doubt there is a lot of information in the boxcar load of reports staff have asked councillors to rubber stamp over the past few years, but major issues remain unaddressed.

Deans wanted to find out exactly what city staff are asking three competing consortiums to build. Her concern level went up when she discovered quite late in the process that the maintenance yard for the new trains will be in a greenspace area not far from homes.

Councillors were told what the new north-south line would consist of in theory, but there has clearly been some give and take over the last few months as staff and the bidders revise the plan. What will we really get in the end?

Unfortunately, we won't find out until the deal is all but done. A report describing the recommended bidder will go to city committee and council in June. Construction is supposed to begin in August. That doesn't exactly leave a lot of time for public scrutiny.

All three groups are being asked to meet the same specification, so the issue will be decided on price, including the cost of the associated long term maintenance contract. All that will be left for councillors to mull over is what the city manager in charge of the project calls 'look and feel' issues. That would include things like station design and street-level design where the train passes through the downtown core.

One could actually argue that it's not productive to involve city councilors in the details, but what is inexcusable is their failure to address the big issues associated with the transit expansion.

Let's start with the east-west line. This 47-kilometer line will cost something more than $1 billion. And yet it will do little or nothing to aid the daily commuter crawl from Kanata and Orleans to downtown. The line will pass south of Orleans and Blackburn Hamlet, then intersect the north-south line somewhere between Greenboro and Walkley stations before heading towards Bells Corners and its terminus in Kanata. Rail will serve either the Corel Centre and southern kanata or head north to the Kanata North Business Park. In effect, it's a new transportation corridor to carry people east-west around the downtown.

An additional 23 kilometers of track will allow trains to travel from Bells Corners along Carling, where they will meet the north-south line. An eastern spur will run along Rideau Street and Montreal Road, connecting with the east-west line.

With inflation these next two phases of the rail plan will conservatively top $2 billion. How much impact will they really have on transit ridership? The city keeps telling us that its big transit expansion plan will let it hit a goal of 30 percent of peak ridership.

That's not even close to true. according to the city's own ridership study. It says the end effect of all the city's transit expansion, including light-rail, will be to increase the public transit share of the peak commute from 17% today to 21 % by 2021. Without rail and transitway expansions, transit's share would actually erode, so the transit spending spree will help, but its effect is being greatly oversold. Why can't the city just tell us the truth?

The city has also never properly explained how transit will ultimately work as it passes through the downtown core. The city's official plan estimates the total transit demand downtown will be nearly 2.5 times larger by 2021. The city imagines the number of jobs downtown will increase by 50 percent to 120,000. About half of the people working downtown now take transit, but the city thinks it will be 80% by 2021. And yet the streets that will carry buses and trains will be near capacity when the north-south light rail starts. Where is all the rest of it supposed to go?

Let's finish with the point that really should have been discussed first. The premise underlying the big transit expansion is that there will be a large population increase, many more people will work downtown and traffic congestion will be horrifying without a huge expenditure on public transit.

There are just a few problems with that. I'm a skeptic on the big population expansion, but let's say it happens. Rather than spend gigantic sums to get everyone downtown, wouldn't it make more sense to rely on teleworking and disperse office jobs to the suburbs, to shorten the commute? Even if we really did all need to go downtown, it's difficult to imagine how the transit expansion will be affordable.

The city's scenario for population growth and transit demand imagines a problem and then begins to solve it a t great expense, but no one has the remotest idea of where the rest of the money will come from for the rail solution. The city certainly can't afford it.

If the basic underlying questions had been properly answered, maybe people wouldn't be so concerned about the details now.

Contact RANDALL DENLEY at 596-3756 or by e-mail, rdenley@thecitizen.canwest.com

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Harder calls for extended light-rail line
Barrhaven councillor pushes for $30-million change to plan

Patrick Dare, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Nepean Councillor Jan Harder, who has built her political career on cutting spending at city hall, says the city should spend $30 million more on its commuter-rail project to properly serve Barrhaven residents.

Ms. Harder says the city should change its design of the north-south rail line to add a 2.5-kilometre leg.

This would take passengers not just to a station at Woodroffe Avenue and Strandherd Drive, which is the current plan, but also farther west to the Barrhaven town centre at Strandherd and Greenbank Road.

The Barrhaven town centre station was in the original $600-million plan, unveiled in 2004 with equal $200-million contributions by the federal, provincial and city governments.

But when more detailed planning was done, costs increased, and the final link to the town centre was dropped from the first phase of the project.

In the current plan, the city leaves links to the town centre and to the Ottawa Airport for a second stage of development, when more money is available. The city also hopes to be able to run commuter trains across the Ottawa River to Gatineau.

Ms. Harder, who represents Barrhaven, says delaying the extra Nepean link would be a big mistake.

She says Barrhaven -- the fastest growing community in the city -- has the lowest rate of public transit use in the city. Simply building the rail line over the Rideau River isn't good enough because it won't put enough Barrhaven people close to the service, she says.

David Jeanes, the president of Transport 2000, agrees that the current plan for the commuter rail line courts the risk of running "trains with nobody on them," at least during non-rush hour times, because the service won't run close enough to the majority of residents.

The north-south commuter line will run from the Rideau Centre west to Bayview Station, then south along the corridor where the current O-Train operates, then down through Riverside South in Gloucester.

The twin-track electric system is to cross the Rideau River on a new six-lane bridge that connects Earl Armstrong Road in Gloucester with Strandherd Drive in Nepean.

Eventually, when the area is completely developed, traffic would be heavy enough that the train would get its own bridge. The current plan, for Phase 1 of the project, includes a park-and-ride at the Woodroffe-Strandherd station with 800 spaces.

The city manager in charge of the rail project, Rejean Chartrand, said an extra leg can fairly easily be added to the project.

The city will have no problem with right-of-way along Strandherd and the terrain is generally flat. Adding a station there will encourage more development in the area. If city council adds the link to the project, the additional work can be negotiated with the consortium that is picked this spring to do the project.

The trouble with adding more track in Nepean is purely a question of cost: $30 million for construction and another train car or two.

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative MP for Nepean-Carleton, who lives in Barrhaven, said yesterday he is becoming concerned about informal reports of tens of millions of dollars in additional costs being attached to the commuter-rail project.

He said the federal government's commitment of $200 million for Ottawa's rail line was "very generous," and "that's what the federal government intends to deliver."

He said the federal government expected the rail project to be built for $600 million. "Now it's up to Bob (Chiarelli) and the team to keep the costs in line," said Mr. Poilievre.

Treasury Board is expected to approve the transfer of $200 million in July or August, once the final price and the winning consortium for the project have been set. So far the project is on schedule. If it stays on time, people could be riding the train by 2009.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Light-rail gets rough ride along the route
S.Gloucester residents oppose installation of maintenance yard in area's coveted greenspace

Alexandra Zabjek

The Ottawa Citizen

Saturday, January 21, 2006

South Gloucester residents opposed to having a railway yard in their area are staging a last-minute effort to block Ottawa's plans to build a maintenance facility for light-rail trains in a area greenspace.

Peter Hillier, a 12-year resident of Emerald Woods, a community west of Albion Road, is upset that city staff have pinpointed a swathe of land sandwiched between his community and the Airport Parkway, as the preferred location for the railway yard.

The other leading option for the project is Walkley Yard, now used to service the O-Trains.

The greenspace off the parkway is a popular recreation spot, said Mr. Hillier, who regularly uses the trails with his family. A railway yard that would service, clean and store 21 trains each day from the north-south light-rail transit line, along with the facility's access road, would disrupt the community, he said.

"It's a valuable project," Mr. Hillier said. "But it's not a valuable use of space when it negatively impacts the environment and when it negatively impacts the quality of life of residents."

In December, Councillor Diane Deans organized a packed information meeting for area residents, many of whom said they were only hearing about the city's plans for the first time

Dubbed the Lester Road site, the area in dispute is officially zoned for institutional use --it is meant to support government -- but no one guessed the property might be used for industrial purposes, said Ms. Deans, who also favours the Walkley site.

"Intuitively, if you have a choice between an existing yard and a greenspace, all of it leads to the Walkley site," said Ms. Deans.

City staff -- who this month received environmental approval from the provincial government for the Walkley site, the Lester Road site and a third site, which lies south of the airport -- disagree.

The Walkley site would cost millions of dollars to develop, said Rejean Chartrand, the city's director of economic development and strategic projects, since the city does not own the property and because it does not lie directly on the north-south rail line. The estimated cost for the whole rail project is between $650 million and $750 million.

Mr. Chartrand also said that since the north-south train line will cut through the disputed greenspace, the community will already be losing much of its access.

The city's transportation committee will review the proposed locations for the railway yard at the end of March, and city staff have until that time to seek more community feedback on the issue.

Mr. Hillier, however, feels that city staff have already made a decision.

"If your out is the process, that's not responsible planning.

"At our best effort, we can try to convince the transportation committee to opt for the common sense approach, to re-use a brown field, versus interrupting and undermining a set of communities and a greenspace."

Mr. Chartrand said the rail project will still be on track for construction to begin this summer, even if the transportation committee rejects the recommendation of the Lester Road site for the future railway yard.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

Coalition of public transit supporters wants city to abandon 'Cadillac' plan for something simpler

Patrick Dare
Ottawa Citizen

While the Green party's election platform is unquestionably pro-environment, one city Green candidate, David Chernushenko, thinks Ottawa's commuter rail project should be shelved, given the way it's designed.

Yesterday, Mr. Chernushenko, the Ottawa Centre candidate and deputy leader of the Green party, joined with the president of Transport 2000 and a community group to call for a rethink of Ottawa's biggest municipal project.

Mr. Chernushenko said the commuter-rail project is becoming a "Cadillac" public ransit system, with estimated costs already soaring from $600 million to $725 million for a north-south electric train service.

To build this system from the Rideau Centre to Riverside South and South Nepean, city officials are determined to get rock cuts done and double tracks laid, he said.

These are hugely expensive things to do and often involve giving up greenspace, all to serve thinly populated parts of the city.

As well, the full system proposed by the city for north-south service won't be running until 2009 at the earliest, and an east-west line several years later.

"This is not the smartest route to go", said Mr. Chernushenko.

Instead, he and Transport 2000 president David Jeanes said the city should undertake smaller transit projects that can be linked. For instance, the O-Train should be expanded across the Prince of Wales Bridge to Gatineau to relieve the capital region's bridge congestion.

Diesel commuter trains could be run in outlying neighbourhoods, while electric trains could run downtown, said Mr. Jeans.

While an all-electric system is touted as the clean-air way to go, Mr. Chernushenko and Mr. Jeanes said modern diesel technology would be better for the environment than adding a big new load to the power grid, possibly causing Ontario's power managers to hold off on closing a coal-fired electricity plant.

"It's just not worth it", said Mr. Jeanes, who also has concerns about the location of the train stop in South Nepean and the lack of a link to the Ottawa International Airport.

Mr. Jeanes said the O-Train's diesel cars have proved to be impressively reliable and ran on time during last month's snowstorm when OC Transpo's big buses were spinning their wheels, jackknifing and wrapping around utility poles.

He said diesel commuter train lines can, in some cases, be built in a couple of years.

The City of Ottawa has picked firms qualified to build the north-south rail service. The city will soon get their proposals and the successful consortium of companies is to be selected in the spring.

For the north-south rail service, the federal government is kicking in $200 million and the provincial government an equal amount, while the city is on the hook for the rest.

Councillor Alex Cullen said that while the city wants to build a proper commuter-rail system, concerns about escalating costs could halt the proposed project and lead to changes along the lines suggested by Mr. Jeanes and Mr. Chernushenko.

Councillor Diane Deans also said she is increasingly worried about the commuter rail project because of its encroachment on greenspace and the secrecy surrounding the design planning and awarding of work. She said she's even had trouble getting project documents form managers in the rail project office at City Hall.

"Council has t take back the decision-making on this," said Ms. Deans.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006

LRT debate finds fresh fuel with provincial report

By Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Mon, Jan 16, 2006 12:00 AM EST

The results of the province's environmental assessment of Ottawa's north-south light rail proposal have left a conspicuous trail of overjoyed public officials and furious residents in their path.

"We've received last week from the province their initial review and assessment of the EA," beamed City of Ottawa director of economic development and strategic projects Réjean Chartrand. "And that initial assessment fully supports the city's direction on every aspect of the light rail program.

"We need to move forward and this really gives the city great confidence to move ahead, because the approval of the EA process is a significant milestone," he continued, adding that residents are free to debate the results with the city until Feb. 3.

And debate they will. Just days after the provincial report was received and released by the city, a closed-door meeting with Coun. Dianne Deans and the Emerald Woods Community Association convened to discuss the land usage involved within the north-south corridor.

At issue was the recommendation to use green space along the Airport Parkway and between Emerald Woods in South Gloucester as a site for the for the North-South LRT's maintenance yard, as opposed to brownfield sites at the Walkley rail yard or Leitrim.

"The Greenboro rail yard has been offered at a price, but city staff prefer the green space because the city owns it," said Peter Hillier, a resident who attended the meeting. This, according to the city, makes the usage more cost-effective, but residents argue it makes sense to run it though existing rail yard facilities at Walkley.

"The residents aren't so happy with it," he went on. "This was supposed to be a strategy meeting between the residents and Counc. Deans, to determine the way forward in influencing the decision to use the Walkley site instead of interrupting a greenspace and residential community."

Instead, he said, it was made clear to residents that the decision has already been made by the city.

The proposal up for assessment was reviewed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and includes 31-kilometre of twin-track, access to 34 stops and stations, four new park and ride lots, and 17 electric substations to power the trains.

City officials say proposals between three main bidders for the LRT project – expected to cost around $725 million – are to be received by the end of February with a contract tendering not long after. Construction is set to begin this coming August, and Coun. Peter Hume, a member of the project's contract selection committee, says it's right on track.

"The light is at the end of the train tunnel, so to speak," he said. "We're still moving along, and nothing has caused us to deviate from our schedule."

Just which company scores the city contract is premised entirely on what is called "performance specifications," which means essentially the city has told them the requirements of what they need completed. Now, all the companies need to do is come up with a pass/fail proposal.

City officials say they're also developing the legal agreements required for any contracts in a parallel process – essentially pre-negotiating the contractual agreements concurrently with the bidding stage to save time.

Mr. Chartrand, too, is insistent the project will go ahead as planned now that it's gotten a provincial green light and positive EA. "We had a very exhaustive consultation process over the summer," he said. "And I think it's fair to say that the great majority of businesspeople are comfortable with the direction that the city took."

Mr. Hillier and his fellow residents, however, aren't impressed. "No one is suggesting that the LRT isn't a good idea," he said. "It is a good idea. However, the north south route only serves one community, really, and that's the Riverside South.

"And you have communities in between that are being negatively impacted."

© The Ottawa Business Journal 2006

Chernushenko favours smarter approach to investing federal money in Ottawa's light rail transit project

Ottawa Centre Green Party candidate David Chernushenko is criticising the City of Ottawa's existing plan for light rail transit (LRT), calling instead for a smarter approach that will deliver a better result at a lower cost and with less environmental impact. The federal and provincial governments have pledged $200 million each toward the first phase of the project, with the city contributing the balance of the projected $725 million cost.

Says Chernushenko, "The expansion of the O-Train is the right thing to do. The Green Party supports federal investment in public transit and other initiatives that help build vibrant and healthy communities. But why do we need to build a high cost all-electric system that will take at least 15 years to fully implement, which will only further strain to Ontario's overtaxed hydro grid?"

"I believe in the reduce-reuse-recycle philosophy for sustainable municipal infrastructure. Ottawa's existing rail lines could quickly be deployed with the same proven diesel LRT technology used in the O-Train pilot project. We could get more people out of their cars and riding the trains faster, and at a much lower cost to taxpayers. In fact, had this incremental approach been taken following the launch of the pilot project, we would today be enjoying a service running from Gatineau across the Prince of Wales Bridge down to a new "park-and-ride" at Leitrim Road, and a starter system going east and west -- all at a fraction of the cost of the currently planned north-south route, which will not be operational until 2009 at the earliest."

Adds Chernushenko, "As the MP for Ottawa Centre I would fight to ensure taxpayers get the very best value for their transit investment. Residents deserve a system that can be deployed rapidly to communities inside and outside the city, and which is fully capable of incremental expansion and integration with electric LRT as part of a long term solution."

Media Release, Green Party