Mayor sticks to guns as LRT vote looms
By Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Mon, Jun 19, 2006 12:00 AM EST
The City of Ottawa unveiled its light rail transit plan to councillors and the general public last week, but the plan had scarcely been introduced when Mayor Bob Chiarelli appeared to contradict himself.
"We're looking forward, very very much, to the public open houses, the consultation process, the tough questioning we're going to get from councillors," he said in a speech during an open house at city hall, adding that different stages of the plan have collectively passed through 35 council votes.
"And it's carried every one of those votes, and every one of them has been very hotly debated with a lot of tough questioning from council, and that's the way it should be," he said. "Something that's this important needs to go through the mill, and needs to be assessed from every possible angle before we proceed."
Mr. Chiarelli then immediately dismissed questions from journalists as to whether the project could end up topping $1 billion, a number that's been cited by rival politicians and community groups alike.
"It's absolutely incorrect, and it's totally politicizing the issue to use those types of untrue numbers," said Mr. Chiarelli, when asked about added costs (the total jumped from $729 million to $778 million in the past week alone). That's not including additional costs like the $24-million Barrhaven extension, or over $220 million in maintenance costs to be paid to the winning consortium, the Siemens-PCL/Dufferin Team.
The LRT plan has been subject to unfair scrutiny not applied to other projects across the board, he said.
"When we cost the building of a road, we don't include the cost of snowplows, snow removal, and the cost of regular maintenance for the next 20 years," he said. "That's what people are trying to do here, and that's just plain unfair, unreasonable, and politicizing the issue."
Chiarelli said 95 per cent of the project will be paid for without Ottawa tax dollars, as the federal and provincial governments are providing $400 million with the city's share to be handled by provincial gas tax transfer revenues.
But statements like that are what makes some local business leaders, especially development people like Ottawa Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) president Ian Fisher, nervous. He said the lack of details within the city's presentation this week leaves the city in an extremely tough spot negotiations-wise, especially the uncertainty surrounding a proposed station at the University of Ottawa.
"It's still not a firm deal, and it seems unusual to not have all of the pieces sewn up," he said. "Because that changes your ability to negotiate if you need it (the U of O station), so I think the city has done themselves a disservice just from a negotiations standpoint.
"It's been a very interesting week just to see the details, and I use details in quotation marks," he continued. "(The information provided last week) doesn't add much clarity to the financial issue, there's still some uncertainty, and from BOMA's point of view there are members who are very concerned.
"To me anything over $400 million is coming out of the city, and if it's coming out of development charges then it's going to be a trade off for builders."
Shirley Westeinde of the Westeinde Group, however, said the time for questioning is long over. She says the process has dragged on for such an extended period, and has undergone such a draconian public consultation process, that most criticisms right now are moot.
"All of this stuff should have come out a year or so ago when they called tenders," she said, adding that delaying the project only adds to the expense. "The submissions have already been made, and a lot of time effort and money spent, so why are we now questioning the east west, north south routes – it doesn't make any sense to me.
"It's really past the point of financially making sense to change this."
But Mr. Fisher said numbers tossed out by the city, such as an $80-million cost overrun if the project is delayed, are bogus. "I think the number of $80 million is being used as a scare tactic," he said. "I didn't see any substantiation of that, and I wouldn't commit out of fear of that number."
The plan as presented last week will be mulled by council and put to a vote in mid-July. Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans said councilors haven't been given nearly enough time or details to make an informed decision.
"I didn't feel that I was given enough information to make a decision of that magnitude," she said. "I've made it very clear to the city manager (Kent Kirkpatrick) that I've felt the info given to council at this point is insufficient to make a decision.
"And to his credit, the city manager did meet with me for an hour and a half, and he's promised to get me what I need."
Details like ridership projections, a breakdown of the value engineering, the original proposal call, and the original bid are all necessary before a decision is made, she said.
Presented last week was the proposed north-south line expected to connect the University of Ottawa, Rideau Centre, the downtown core and Carleton University with Riverside South and the Barrhaven Town Centre.
The proposed route is expected to be 29.4 kilometres long and supported 22 electrified LRT vehicles, along with 23 stations and three new park-and-ride facilities. The city says it expects 3,100 direct construction-related new jobs from the project, and another 5,500 jobs indirectly throughout the planned 40-month construction process.
Mr. Chiarelli said building the north-south route first, instead of a Kanata-to-Orleans route, is practical and makes sense.
"We already have a billion dollars invested in east-west transit," he said. "North-south has not had much transit. So, for many reasons, it was right to start and not the least of which is that we have a proven pilot project in the north-south at the present time."
