Ted Raymond CTV News Ottawa Digital Multi-Skilled Journalist

Published Wednesday, August 17, 2022

The written closing submissions in the province’s public inquiry into Stage 1 of Ottawa’s light rail transit project are a summary of the finger-pointing seen and heard during the live testimony in June and July.

The inquiry posted the final closing submissions from nine involved parties, including the city of Ottawa, the Rideau Transit Group—which built and now maintains the Confederation Line—train manufacturer Alstom, and others.

A common theme that emerged is that the interested parties were not at fault, but were instead the victims of the other parties involved.

For example, Alstom said in its closing submission that micromanagement from the city of Ottawa, which Alstom said was inexperienced in major infrastructure development, was to the detriment of the project.

“To make up for this inexperience, the City retained an army of expert consultants to guide them through every aspect of the Project, from design and construction to operations and maintenance. Yet, the City often failed to heed its experts’ advice,” the submission said. “Instead, under extreme public scrutiny in Ottawa, the City was pressured to make short sighted decisions, to ‘act tough’ with its contractor partner, and, ultimately, to put the System into service before it was ready.”

The city, meanwhile, blamed the consortium it contracted to build the LRT system.

Noting several issues that plagued the line since its launch, including door failures, wheel cracks and two significant derailments, the city said all of the blame lies at the feet of the builder.

“RTG’s failures to perform its design, construction and maintenance obligations cannot be blamed on the City. In particular, these failures do not arise from the City’s procurement approach, the structure and content of the Request for Proposals, the adequacy of the Project Agreement, the City’s oversight of the Project or any of the other criticisms of the City’s conduct raised by Commission counsel during this Inquiry,” the city’s closing submission said. “None of those matters caused or contributed to the issues that led to the breakdowns and derailments.”

But RTG said the problems that arose when the system launched were “reasonably common problems” for a complex infrastructure project and blamed the impact to transit riders on city officials.

“The problems with the project had an outsized impact on Ottawa’s residents because their municipal government set unrealistic expectations,” RTG said. “Elected officials promised the public a turnkey system and campaigned on delivering it with no delays. When their own advisors warned them that no complex transit system, newly-built and operated, would launch problem-free, the political die was already cast.”

Alstom said its staffing and planning levels were appropriate and it overcame the challenges of building a new supply chain, but also said it was “set up to fail” from the very beginning.

“Unfortunately, Alstom’s maintenance team was set up to fail by circumstances out of its control, including a lack of transparency and information sharing from Ottawa Light Rail Transit Constructors (OLRTC) leading up to and during Revenue Service Availability (RSA), and RTG’s decision to shift the burden of a highly degraded and immature system from OLRTC to RTM and Alstom,” the train builder said.

“The City and RTG’s decision to start Revenue Service before the System was 100% ready presented enormous challenges for RTM and Alstom, as anticipated by RTG.”

The city’s closing submission said it felt at times that the “public sector was on trial” but staff defended their actions during the procurement, launch, and running of the system.

“[T]he City believes that a fair-minded and impartial observer can only come to one conclusion – the City’s conduct, and the conduct of its representatives, is not responsible for the previous and continuing issues facing the LRT,” the city said.

RTG stressed that it was ready to launch, but had issues with its subcontractor, Alstom.

“The Commission heard evidence from many parties that the Confederation Line was safe and ready for service at RSA. RTM was ready to perform its maintenance obligations at RSA,” the consortium wrote.

“Despite RTM’s readiness, it needed to rely on its subcontractor, Alstom. Though the RTG Parties’ constantly pushed Alstom maintenance (and it represented that it was ready for RSA), the reality was that Alstom maintenance was not prepared for RSA.”

Through all of this, the union representing transit operators said the problems with the LRT affected the entire transit system, had a negative impact on customers and, ultimately, on OC Transpo rank and file.

“Residents of Ottawa were promised that the years of disruptions to their roadways and transit networks during the construction of Phase 1 would be worth it because the light rail system would deliver this “safe and reliable” transit service from its inception,” The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 279 wrote in its closing submission.

“Regrettably, what the evidence has shown over 18 days of testimony and countless exhibits is that not only has the Confederation Line fallen far short of being a reliable form of public transportation, but it has also shown that virtually everyone connected with the project knew this was going to be the reality before the system’s public launch in September of 2019.”

The ATU blamed the public-private partnership model (P3) as inherently flawed.

“The adoption of a public/private partnership (P3) model for the construction and operation of the Confederation Line rather than having OC Transpo operate the system directly (i) unduly fragmented the operations and maintenance of the transit system; (ii) prevented OC Transpo managers from responding to service challenges; and (iii) generally led to a lack of public accountability for the system’s failures.”

The inquiry was called following two derailments in six weeks last summer, the second of which kept the Confederation Line closed for 54 days.

The commissioner leading the public inquiry into Ottawa’s light rail transit system has received a three-month extension to finish the final report, pushing the deadline beyond the Oct. 24 municipal election. Justice William Hourigan will have until Nov. 30, 2022 to submit his final report.

The inquiry originally had a deadline of Aug. 31, which would have enabled a final report to be tabled before the election, but it always included the possibility of an extension.

Mayor Jim Watson is not running for re-election in 2022 and neither are several city councillors.

Eighteen days of public hearings were held at the University of Ottawa from June 13 to July 7, with 41 witnesses testifying. The commission also conducted formal interviews with dozens of witnesses, hosted an expert panel on public-private partnerships, and received more than 550,000 documents related to the LRT system.