Deans is right; public talks on LRT issues necessary

With $2.1 billion on the line for the lightrail project, municipal politicians who are tasked with watching over it aren’t getting public, regular updates on major developments, according to one councillor on the city’s finance committee.

Coun. Diane Deans says while the committee gets quarterly construction updates, “that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for some public accountability and transparency.” The committee, she says, hasn’t “seen the principals of RTG (Rideau Transit Group) in a very long time.”

That’s because, quite simply, councillors haven’t asked for more robust updates. But Deans is on to something by requesting city staff provide them.

She says she’s worried about serious incidents — from the sinkhole that opened up on Rideau Street last June, to the crane tipping over (there were no injuries) last month, to the gas leak downtown on Tuesday (the city is still calculating the final tab for that.) And she’s concerned about whether or not RTG is going to make its timelines. The city has been carefully, subtly relaxing its position on a Spring 2018 opening.

“There have been very few answers,” Deans told us. “It’s absolutely imperative that the taxpayers, the people who are footing the bill of the biggest project in the city’s history, have some answers to this. You start wondering, are we rushing this project? Are we creating safety issues? What are they? I think there needs to be some discussion about those issues in a public forum.”

She’s right. Safety concerns (in the end, there may be few) and other unexpected incidents (which happen on big projects, unfortunately) are slowly raising concern among the public, which until now was mostly just concerned with construction inconvenience along major traffic routes. It’s perfectly legitimate to want more detailed information, on a regular basis, starting now. Just when the finance committee, which Mayor Jim Watson heads, will hear back about detailed reporting is anybody’s guess; there is no timeline. City staff should hustle to comply, though. The downtown parts of the LRT work are supposed to be finished by June 1, just a month before hundreds of thousands of visitors converge on the capital for Canada Day. Will RTG meet that deadline?

Deans says she’s received pushback from some colleagues for her bullishness on the file. “There seems to be this veil of secrecy that is shrouding this issue and I cannot for the life of me understand why,” she says. There shouldn’t be. Taxpayers deserve to know what’s what. The surprise is that no one has been asking for it until now. More transparency can only be good for the city, and for its marquee transit project.