Doucet: Things fall apart — at least they do with Ottawa's LRT

When Bob Chiarelli was mayor, his initial plan for rail was right. After him, things just got weird.

I have this memory from Bob Chiarelli’s last term as mayor (2003-2006). We were coming up to the next election and the two of us were waiting for the start of one of the last city council meetings for that term. More to the pass the time than anything, I turned to Bob and said, “Why bother running for mayor again? Why not just let (Alex) Munter and (Larry) O’Brien fight it out?”

There was a pause and Bob kind of grimaced and replied something like, “Because we’ve got to the corner, but we need another four years to turn it. If we don’t, it’s all going to fall apart.”

I did not reply because I didn’t think he was right. I thought he was speaking from political ego not reality. In three terms we had accomplished a great deal. We had piloted the start of the north/south line by converting an old freight rail line into a city service with great success. Ridership had exceeded all expectations.

We had procured and signed a world-beating contract with Siemens International to build the first leg of a city-wide surface rail line from Barrhaven to Confederation Square for $600 million. It was the longest, cheapest urban rail service to be built in North America. Siemens engineers were already arriving in Ottawa looking for accommodation.

We had bought the Prince of Wales bridge for $10 million with the idea to use the bridge to build a rail leg across the Ottawa River to defeat the biggest bottleneck the city’s transit had: STO buses and OC buses choking up the downtown.

So no, I didn’t agree with Bob. I thought we were fine. We had done what we had set out to do when we were first elected in 1997. He could leave and, if elected, I would go the following term.

I was wrong. Bob was right. We didn’t turn the corner.  O’Brien was elected mayor and tore up the amazing contract with Siemens. We spent years in court with Siemens, and ended up paying millions in damages because the procurement process had been impeccable. We had even won an award for it. Didn’t matter; the city went back to the drawing board and a tunnel under downtown instead of a surface system won the day.

I fought it as best as I could. It was clear a tunnel was the wrong decision for all kinds of reasons, costs being only one. Tunnels cost a minimum of five times more than surface rail. They are more fragile, more costly to maintain and would limit our ability to expand the system to Gatineau and so on.

They were four very difficult years. The public got tired of the turmoil and elected Jim Watson mayor. He promised to deliver everything O’Brien wanted, but in a more “collegial” way.

Then things really got weird, because collegial never happened. As the LRT inquiry has made clear, the actual management of the project shifted to secret back-chat conversations between the mayor and the Rideau Transit Group. Councillors such as Allan Hubley kept vital information from the council.

There was a cave-in on the Rideau Centre station that apparently had nothing to do with another back-room decision to change the station to the lowest point on the entire Rideau River watershed. Wheels were downgraded on the trains against the recommendations of the contractors, or council knowing. There were complex public relations games between the contractors and the city manager. Meantime, the entire city bus system was re-routed to force riders to use the tunnel and train. The city transit system became slower and harder to use, not easier and faster. Then COVID struck.

It was such a little moment when Bob turned to me and said: “Because we’ve got to the corner, but we need another four years to turn it.” But it plays often in my mind because it’s a corner that, 20 years later, we still haven’t turned.

Clive Doucet was a four-term city councillor. The book he wrote during his time on council, “Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual” was shortlisted for the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award. His latest book is “Grandfather’s House, Returning to Cape Breton.”

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