Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard Eade
There should be a big question as to who cost the taxpayers the money: Was it the man who was elected to stop the N/S LRT project; or was it the Mayor and Council who pushed the previous plan through to a point that they thought couldn't be stopped right before an election? Was it right for the previous Council to create a condition which would cost huge sums of money for canceling the project and then put the plan to the electoral test?
Was it Larry O'Brien who cost the City the money if he was simply doing what he had been elected to do? The cost of canceling the project was well publicized in the media before the election. In fact, the reported costs were far in excess of what it actually cost in the end. The previous mayor, Chiarelli, even tried to use the cost of cancellation to his political benefit during the election. I think the public was aware that it would cost money to get out of the deal and voted in O’Brien any way.
I am curious as to how you attribute the cost of the cancellation exclusively to Larry O’Brien?
|
As I recall, the N-S plan had been through numerous votes of City Council and had been approved at each point. The final plan was also approved by a substantial majority 4 months before the municipal election in 2006. I think that City Council had every right to do so given the history of the plan. Much of the opposition was from special interest groups and even then it came very late in the process. The public was disinterested until almost the last minute. The other opposition came from Alex Munter who was using the issue to bolster his election campaign. His solution would almost certainly have been equally problematic.
LRT was up for discussion in the 2006 election as a result of a letter written by Larry O'Brien to John Baird. What followed was some rather underhanded politics. For example, the release of a particular clause in the contract by John Baird designed to embarrass Bob Chiarelli eventhough that clause was a standard clause designed to protect the city in the event that funding got delayed. That clause was not designed to allow the city to back out as we clearly found out.
We should not fault the previous city council for the approval of the plan. As we are now learning, no plan is without its flaws, and the current plan has some major flaws in the public eyes, as did the previous one. The previous plan was designed to accomplish something meaningful within the funding available at the time. We were in no position to build a tunnel at that time.
During the election campaign, Larry O'Brien did not specifically campaign to press the reset button. All he said was that he planned for a 6 month reassessment of the plan. This amounted to the same thing as it turned out but the language presented made it sound a lot less risky to the electorate than it was. In any event, what really brought Larry O'Brien momentum was his zero means zero campaign slogan which was backed up by his success as a businessman. So much for slogans.
Before the vote that ended up pressing the reset button in December 2006, the city solicitors advised City Council of the risks of doing so. Despite this, they decided to press the reset button anyway. At that point, Larry O'Brien told the public not to worry and that he would be able to avoid a settlement with Siemens. Something that has proven false.
Given the fact that Larry O'Brien cast the deciding vote in both votes that ended up in pressing the reset button, he has to accept the most responsibility in this whole debacle. Of course, he should not be alone in shouldering the blame. A few City Councillors reversed their votes between July and December 2006 despite the legal risks so they should share some responsibility. John Baird's involvement is also not without fault.
Some have criticized Bob Chiarelli for not selling his plan effectively, but this was all complicated by the fact that the plan was already approved and shouldn't have been an election issue. It was supposed to have been a done deal. Trying to sell the approved plan would normally be a city responsibility and since this all fell within the election campaign, it did not occur as it would have favoured one particular candidate. By the time the whole issue blew up during the campaign, it was already too late.
I think we have to understand the history of the original plan to understand why it came about. Basically, it was designed as an upgrade to the already successful but temporary O-Train and because much of the line ran through green fields, it could be built relatively cheaply considering the length of the line. It was also built to serve the growing south community that lacked adequate road infrastructure. It was designed to prevent the need of a North-South Queensway. It was also designed as a learning tool for a more expensive subsequent east-west route, which needed more time in order develop proper routing as well as much more money. We are still waiting to develop that proper routing. Yes, there were flaws to the plan, but there were many merits. Just like the Transitways were very innovative when they began, the O-Train was going to be equally innovative because it was to be built as a community developed instead of the standard practice of waiting until development was already completed. Hence all the associated talk about smart growth that surrounded the North-South plan.
Because the current plan is compromise upon compromise and trying to appease the majority and a downtown business lobby instead of doing what needs to be done with the kind of money involved, we are likely to achieve very little. Basically, we are trying to remove as many buses off of downtown streets as possible and not much else. This is why the plan is so expensive and why the route is so short and why we had to use the cheapest route outside of downtown despite the enormous disruption that it is going to create.
As a result, the majority of the current city council is to blame for approving this plan. This is further true because the first phase could cripple the rest of the plan. If only the first phase gets built, the plan can only be said to be a dismal failure.
Although I am a big supporter of the idea of bringing LRT to Ottawa, I am an even bigger supporter of improving transit in Ottawa. As a result, I would be more supportive of Andy Haydon's bus tunnel idea than the current LRT plan, which I consider much too expensive for what it accomplishes and far too disruptive.
Prev
Linear Mode
