The decade since the city council decided to bid for a new East-West line and tunnel has not gone as expected. A sinkhole opened during the tunnel opening, the train opened more than 15 months late, and myriad technical problems stuck passengers before two trains derailed last summer. Now the lawyers of the main parties – including the city of Ottawa, the Rideau Transit Group and the train manufacturer Alstom – have presented their versions of who and what is to blame in the opening statements for four weeks of hearings. Mayor Jim Watson can attend some of the proceedings and was called to testify on June 30, but said last week that the public inquiry was a decision made by the county with which the city should “live” and he hoped it would not will disappear. from the recent credibility of the Confederation Line. On the other hand, the manufacturer and maintainer of the Rideau Transit Group system — a consortium of ACS Infrastructure, SNC-Lavalin, and Ellis Don — sees the work of the tram committee as an opportunity for frustrated riders to have the full picture “his contract” the city controls what information can be made public “. See what the opening statements have to say about some key issues.
The design of the train
The city and the Rideau Transit Group (RTG) both point the finger at Alstom. The city sees it as a subcontractor, RTG has not been able to properly maintain the trains it provided. RTG said it did not want Alstom trains, but went with them because the city “left no doubt that it wanted the Alstom vehicle” during the bidding process for the $ 2.1 billion contract. The fact that an Alstom train derailed last August should lead the Commissioner to consider why Alstom trains were selected a decade ago, RTG lawyers say. Emergency vehicles are parked near the scene of a derailed LRT train in Ottawa on September 19, 2021. The panel begins hearings on Monday and the public can attend and watch online at 9 a.m. (Nicholas Cleroux / Radio Canada) CBC News reported in 2019 that Ottawa was not getting Alstom’s tried and tested Citadis train as expected, but a brand new model called the Citadis Spirit. Alstom now explains that no train manufacturer in the world had an existing off-the-shelf train to supply in Ottawa. He joined the RTG supply team late, in 2012, and tried to meet the city’s prices and technical requirements under tight schedules. The city of Ottawa wanted a train to accommodate the unusually long 120-meter docks, with a capacity of 24,000 passengers per hour. That was more than double the 10,000 passengers that a light rail car usually carries and looks like a subway car, Alstom explains. “To date, the Citadis vehicles operating on the Ottawa Confederation line are the largest [light rail vehicles] operating in North America “.
Because LRT started late
Residents watched as the Rideau Transit Group failed to meet the original May 2018 delivery date for the new Confederation Line and then lost several more before finally opening to passengers in September 2019. Ottawa City Attorneys confirm the delay in saying that RTG is not coordinating the schedules of its subcontractors, especially the train company Alstom and Thales, who built the computer control system – but not the 2016 sinkhole that flooded part of Rideau Street. The city allegedly had a “limited role” as owner in a public-private partnership and realized the delivery date was no longer “realistic” in 2017, they say. A worker investigates the sinkhole in June 2016 as concrete is poured to stabilize the area and protect the foundations of nearby buildings on Rideau Street. (Patrick Pilon / Radio Canada) For the Rideau Transit group, however, the sink had a “significant waterfall effect” that pushed the work back by at least nine months. In addition, he claims that “defective municipal water supply infrastructure on the ground may have caused the sinking”. Alstom, however, said the delay began long before the sinking, when the city delayed “more than a year to finalize its design options” for the train carriages, delaying the development of a prototype by a year. Alstom’s lawyers continue to say that the Ottawa LRT was deemed fit for service very soon. “Everybody knew the system was not ready for revenue, but the city and RTG went anyway,” they said. “Instead of further delaying the launch of the revenue service, the city chose to start the system by September 14, 2019, no matter what.” “The result was predictable,” added Alstom’s lawyers, who say it made sense for RTG to receive the final construction payment and enter the maintenance period when it could transfer costs to Alstom.
The full relationship
It’s no secret that the city of Ottawa and the Rideau Transit Group have been battling each other for months – they have multimillion-dollar lawsuits. In the investigation documents, the city accuses the consortium, which has a $ 1 billion 30-year maintenance contract, of responding to the LRT’s many operational issues in a “short-sighted and ad hoc” manner. “Essentially, RTG expects to receive the full monthly service fee by providing skeletal maintenance services,” the city’s lawyers write. “When RTG pays for itself, performance improves.” Rideau Transit Group, however, sees the city of Ottawa as an “adversary” and “rigid” micro-operator. The consortium claims the city has demanded a $ 500,000 maintenance discount for a broken toilet mirror. When LRT developed problems in the fall of 2019 that stuck riders – something RTG said could have saved residents if it had had a “soft launch” – RTG lawyers suggested “the city is under political pressure to act” “hard””. Crowds of light passengers waited for a train to arrive at Tunney’s Pasture Station on October 10, 2019. A built-in computer failed, causing delays on the Ottawa LRT line for the third day in a row, shortly after the system opened. (Kate Tenenhouse / CBC) “The success of a [public-private partnership] “The project depends on the parties being true partners,” RTG wrote. The committee begins the hearings on Monday and the public can attend and watch them online at 9 a.m. They will run until July 8 and hear dozens of witnesses, including high-profile city and business officials. The city of Ottawa is represented by Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP. Rideau Transit Group’s lawyers are from Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP and Alstom’s Glaholt Bowles LLP. They are all companies based in Toronto. Everything will be overseen by Commissioner William Hourigan, an Ontario appellate judge. Ottawa Morning7: 32 Public investigation into LRT begins Documents released ahead of a long-awaited public inquiry into Ottawa’s light rail system reveal new details about the city’s informal train design and strained behind-the-scenes relationships.
