Council OKs $4.6B Stage 2 transit contracts, the largest infrastructure approval in Ottawa's history
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 6, 2019
Ottawa’s $4.6-billion Stage 2 transit expansion is a go.
City council voted 19-3 on Wednesday to sign contracts with two construction groups to extend the Confederation Line LRT to Trim Road, Algonquin College and Moodie Drive, and extend the Trillium Line to Limebank Road and the Ottawa International Airport.
Kiewit and Vinci, under the name East West Connectors, will construct the Confederation Line extensions, and SNC-Lavalin, under the name TransitNEXT, will construct the Trillium Line extensions and maintain the line.
Voting against the largest infrastructure project in the City of Ottawa’s history were councillors Rick Chiarelli, Diane Deans and Shawn Menard.
Self-described LRT supporter Deans said she doesn’t have confidence in the decision-making process, especially since she couldn’t get a straight answer on how the winning contractors scored in the bidding process.
“I got a song and a dance,” Deans said. “I got a hundred different ways of dancing around it and I didn’t get a simple answer.”
However, Coun. Jan Harder said council should be trusting city staff who put together the Stage 2 package and recommended the winning contractors.
“I don’t think anybody else has the expertise of the team that put this together,” Harder said, looking around the council table.
Mayor Jim Watson said no councillor can say he or she supports LRT and then vote against LRT. Council should be “visionary, bold and move forward,” he said.
“This is not a difficult decision to make at all,” Watson said.
“Residents in all parts of the city are demanding we bring light rail to their part of the city as soon as we can.”
Council plowed ahead with expanding the O-Train network without yet having a working Stage 1 LRT line. The Stage 1 builder, Rideau Transit Group, which is a partnership of SNC-Lavalin, ACS Infrastructure Canada and EllisDon, has missed three deadlines and now says it can deliver the 12.5-kilometre LRT line by the end of June.
The exact cost for Stage 2 is $4,657,445,229.
The cost is $1.2 billion more than what the city last estimated before asking for construction bids.
The federal and provincial governments had committed to providing $2.366 billion for Stage 2. The city will use gas tax transfers, development charge revenue, transit taxes and borrowed money to pay for its share. The city plans to borrow $1.6 billion at an interest rate of between 3.5 per cent and 4.75 per cent.
The Confederation Line expansion will continue to use Alstom Citadis Spirit LRT vehicles supplied through Rideau Transit Group, which will also maintain the full LRT line. The Trillium Line expansion will put Stadler trains on the main line and run the existing Alstom Coradia Lint trains on the airport spur.
There was a failed effort led by Coun. Catherine McKenney to delay the vote until March 27, but the city’s external procurement lawyer said it would be impossible to finalize the deals by March 29, which is the commercial close of the Trillium Line deal. Delaying could add millions of dollars to the contracts and the upper levels of government need a city commitment before confirming funding for Stage 2, council heard.
“I just find the drama off-putting,” Deans said.
“We have to ask ourselves whose interests are we here to protect today,” McKenney said, adding that she’s “desperate” for Stage 2, but she’s not comfortable with the short turnaround time to make a decision on the contracts.
There were two especially persistent lines of questioning by councillors during the meeting: the vetting of SNC-Lavalin as a contractor and the bid scoring of the winners.
Councillors like Carol Anne Meehan hammered away on the city’s decision to recommend hiring SNC-Lavalin for the Trillium Line work, especially considering the saga involving the company on Parliament Hill. City staff said the company’s financial capabilities and ability to complete the project cleared the due diligence.
But several councillors, like Deans, McKenney and Chiarelli, couldn’t get a straight answer about whether the recommended builders met a city-set score. City staff, based on outside legal advice, wouldn’t say if Kiewit/Vinci and SNC-Lavalin achieved a minimum technical score of 70 per cent. They wouldn’t even say who was tasked with scoring the bids.
Construction on Stage 2 is scheduled to begin this year.
The mammoth expansion project will come with transit and traffic headaches.
Shutting down more of the Transitway for rail conversion will eventually mean all sorts of bus detours and traffic slowdowns at various times over the course of construction.
There will be buses diverted to Scott Street between Tunney’s Pasture and Dominion Station. The southeast Transitway between Iris Station and Algonquin College will eventually close, diverting buses to Iris Street and Woodroffe Avenue. Most of the buses that normally travel on the Transitway between Pinecrest and Moodie stations will be diverted to Highway 417.
The most significant disruption for all sorts of traffic will likely happen in the Richmond Road corridor, where a cut-and-cover tunnel will be dug out on Byron Linear Park.
In the eastern leg, most of the significant re-routing will happen between Blair Station and Highway 174. As for other traffic, Montreal Road will be reduced to one lane under Highway 174 during the warm months to reconstruct bridge piers.
The biggest transit crunch will probably involve the Trillium Line. It has to close in May 2020 for more than two years. A replacement bus route will run.
Hunt Club Road around the Airport Parkway could see traffic snarls to allow construction of a bridge.
If the Stage 2 construction timeline holds up, the Trillium Line expansion will be done in 2022, the Confederation Line between Blair and Trim stations will be done in 2024 and the Confederation Line between Tunney’s Pasture, Algonquin College and Moodie Drive will be done in 2025.
The city has already spent about $600 million on Stage 2, considering the train purchase from RTG, property costs and initial design work.
Council members voting in favour of the Stage 2 contracts were Watson, Harder, McKenney, Meehan, Glen Gower, Keith Egli, Matthew Luloff, Jenna Sudds, Riley Brockington, Laura Dudas, Jean Cloutier, Theresa Kavanagh, Mathieu Fleury, Allan Hubley, Scott Moffatt, Eli El-Chantiry, Jeff Leiper, Tim Tierney and Stephen Blais.
George Darouze, whose father recently died, wasn’t at the council meeting.
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