Ottawa won't hit the transit re-set button again
Peter Raaymakers
Published on: July 29, 2014, Last Updated: July 29, 2014 1:08 PM EDT
It looks like this October’s municipal election will have at least one thing in common with the last two: A focus on public transit plans among Ottawa’s mayoral candidates.
On Sunday, candidate Darren Wood was profiled by the Ottawa Citizen. His major concern was Ottawa’s financial situation, which Wood believes is so dire that the city must “scrap” the light-rail transit plan that city staff, councillors, and citizens have spent the last eight years refining and constructing. Although Wood’s platform appears to be changing as people engage him through social media or in person, he’s been exceptionally firm on his reluctance to use debt for the sake of infrastructure development like the city’s LRT project.
Wood is actually the second mayoral candidate to take issue with the current plan due to its cost. Mike Maguire, who also ran for mayor in the 2010 election, called the current Confederation Line “erroneously expensive” in an interview with the Citizen. Although he doesn’t mention cancelling the current project (which will run from Tunney’s Pasture to Blair and includes the tunnel that’s currently being bored under downtown), he has pledged to cancel the second phase of the plan in favour of commuter rail using existing rights-of-way — something he also proposed four years ago as an alternative to the current plan. (Maguire also wants OC Transpo “opened up for competition,” which is the same transit privatization plan he set out in 2010.)
Both of these men would be wise to learn from the most obvious lesson of the 2010 mayoral election: The citizens of Ottawa aren’t interested in hitting the re-set button on transit again.
In 2010, Ottawa voters had their choice of 20 mayoral candidates — many of whom, including Maguire, offered their own transit alternatives. Clive Doucet wanted to move back to surface-level LRT, as opposed to a tunnel. Andrew Haydon’s last-minute campaign sought a tunnel for buses instead of trains. Jane Scharf wanted Ottawa to build an electric gondola system. Joseph Furtenbacher proposed light rail along the 417/174 corridor. Transit was the main issue of the election, and there was no shortage of alternative plans for Ottawa voters to choose from.
Yet in the end, voters were strongly supportive of the current plan. Eventual winner Jim Watson secured more than 48 per cent of the vote based on his support of the current plan and his insistence that it not go over budget. Failed incumbent Larry O’Brien also supported the plan we have today, and he brought in another 24 per cent of the popular vote. All told, nearly three-quarters of voters selected candidates who supported the current plan. Although other factors came into play, as well, the result was a resounding pledge of support for the city to move forward on the current plan, with the caveat that costs be controlled and debt-financing be responsible and manageable.
Looking back to the 2006 election, it’s easy to see why the people of Ottawa were not interested in starting all over on transit plans. Larry O’Brien campaigned on re-assessing the plan that Bob Chiarelli had put together to electrify the O-Train and extend the tracks, at street level, north into downtown and south to the airport and through Barrhaven. When O’Brien won, the plan was cancelled amidst much controversy — notably about rising costs, which direction it should go, whether the federal government was fully committed to its funding pledge, and whether Ottawa would be better served with a downtown tunnel.
Cancelling that plan cost the city a reported $36.7 million settlement. It had been signed to a fixed-cost $880-million contract for 29 kilometres of rail lines, as opposed to $2.1 billion for the 12.5-kilometre Confederation Line. Development plans based on the O-Train extension, notably in Barrhaven and Riverside South, were orphaned by its cancellation. And in the end, it set light-rail in the city back by nearly a decade.
But even though the Confederation Line will be long overdue when it is finally fully operational in 2018, we can be thankful that it’s a good plan. It’s expensive, but you get what you pay for, and the investment in a downtown tunnel is worth it — the cancelled O-Train extension might have delayed the need for a tunnel, but eventually one would have been necessary. Although the city is bringing on significant debt to finance it, this is the kind of project worth accumulating debt for. It will modernize Ottawa’s transit infrastructure, and the benefits of the line will be enjoyed by generations. And the $2.1-billion contract is fixed-cost, so any construction-related overruns shouldn’t affect the bottom line for taxpayers in Ottawa.
We’re so far into the Confederation Line that cancelling it would be ridiculously costly. Even making changes to the contract that’s been signed would be expensive. If a motion to cancel the plan were brought forward, it wouldn’t be supported by a council that will probably be populated by a good number of the current councillors who voted unanimously in favour of the Confederation Line.
Voters in Ottawa proved in 2010 they have no interest in once again “hitting the re-set button,” to borrow a phrase from former mayor Larry O’Brien’s 2006 campaign. It seems strange to me that two people who’ve put forward their names to run for mayor have failed to recognize this — especially Maguire, who was told in no uncertain terms during the last election that his plan doesn’t resound with voters. Transit is a pretty big deal in Ottawa.
What’s been interesting to watch has been the evolution of Jim Watson as he’s recognized just how supportive Ottawa residents are regarding major investments in transit. As a Member of Provincial Parliament, Watson was very sceptical about the affordability of the current plan. In the lead-up to his mayoral campaign, he became supportive — as long as the plan’s costs were controlled. As mayor, he doubled down: He’s become the strongest supporter of the Confederation Line and championed its unanimously-supported $2.5-billion extension.
Watson realized some time ago that Ottawa voters are supportive of public transit investments, and that knowledge helped him win the last election. Unless one of the other candidates makes that realization soon, it’s likely the people of Ottawa will give him another one.
Peter Raaymakers is a lifelong Ottawa resident and the executive director of TransitOttawa.ca.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...t-button-again
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