City selects three finalists for Trillium Line

The city has shortlisted three finalists to extend the O -Train’s northsouth Trillium Line.

In a memo sent to city council on Monday, city manager Steve Kanellakos says the rail department has pre-qualified two new consortiums, as well as a single firm, to extend the Trillium Line to Riverside South and build a separate spur to the Ottawa International Airport by 2021. The detailed bid documents for the project were to be released Monday.

As with the Rideau Transit Group consortium that won the contract to build the $2.1-billion Confederation LRT Line, two of the finalists are corporate groups assembled specifically for the Ottawa work. The finalists are:

Trillium Link (made up of eight companies, including Spanish infrastructure builder ACCIONA, Spanish railway vehicle and equipment maker CAF, Ottawa construction firm Thomas Cavanagh and Ottawa’s GRC Architects);

Trillium Extension Alliance

The city wants to tweak the proposed extension of the Trillium Line to bring trains almost a kilometre closer to … Riverside South …

(made up of seven companies, including Australian infrastructure builder Plenary, French road and rail company Colas and local construction firm Tomlinson);

TransitNEXT (made up of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin).

The city wants to tweak the proposed extension of the Trillium Line to bring trains almost a kilometre closer to fast-growing Riverside South as part of the Stage 2 transit program. The current blueprint has the Trillium Line stopping at a rural area along Bowesville Road, but a plan unveiled earlier this month would add about 800 metres of LRT track and move the station and park-and-ride lot south to Earl Armstrong Road.

Such an extension is beyond what the city can currently afford, but city officials have said they hope to work with the private-sector developers to see if partnerships can be found to accelerate the work, which is estimated to cost about $40 million (including the purchase of an additional train).

In June, the city announced it had shortlisted three international construction consortiums to bid on extending the Confederation Line west to Bayshore and Baseline and east to Trim Road by 2023.

In all, the next phase of rail and all its add-ons are supposed to cost $3.6 billion. According to Kanellakos’s memo, awarding contracts for both procurements is expected next year, with construction to begin by spring 2019.