No built-in penalty for breaking gas line near Hwy. 417

City begs commuters to try other routes, take the bus or work from home

Puncturing a major gas line along Hwy. 417 and tying up traffic from east Ottawa for a week comes with no punishment other than paying to fix the pipe, says the chair of city council’s transportation committee.

This past Sunday’s break of the gas line along the westbound highway, between Vanier Parkway and Belfast Road, has been wreaking havoc on east-enders’ commutes all week and has prompted the city government to beg people who use the 417 east of downtown to work from home if they can and try to bus it or drive outside rush hours if they can’t.

“It was a long, long wait. When I was on the road, it backed up a little beyond Blair,” farther than usual and moving more slowly than usual, Coun. Stephen Blais, who represents Cumberland ward, said of his trip downtown one day this week. “Given how much construction is already taking place and given the amount of inconvenience these construction projects are already posing on residents of the east end, having this additional lane closure certainly does not help.”

Exactly what happened isn’t settled yet, but the city has said the puncturing of the gas line was “related to Highway 417 construction activities.” The Rideau Transit Group, the consortium building the city’s light-rail line and also widening the 417 east of Nicholas Street, won the contract in part because it committed to a minimal disruption of traffic during the five-year effort, submitting a detailed plan for which lanes of which roads (and which sidewalks and other routes) would have to be closed and when.

“If, during the construction period, they exceed those construction plans, it’s real,” said the rail project’s director at the time, John Jensen, speaking of the financial penalties for unexpectedly disrupting traffic. Different streets got different point values to calculate just how disruptive a closure would be. Shutting down a lane of Hwy. 417 for a week, the length of time it’s expected to take to fix the major gas leak believed to have been caused by an RTG work group, would be a big deal in that reckoning.

But the highway work, though it’s included in the contract, doesn’t count.

“The 417 contract does not come under the mobility conditions in the LRT contract,” Coun. Keith Egli, who chairs the transportation committee, explained by email. “The contract combines (Ministry of Transportation) standards and specifications with the Infrastructure Ontario BuildFinance model.”

In other words, that part of the deal with the Rideau Transit Group is a fairly ordinary highway construction contract and doesn’t include penalties for creating much bigger traffic tie-ups than expected.

“A review of this incident is still pending but, if it is determined that RTG is responsible, then under the contract they will be responsible for damage and repair costs incurred by the utilities and associated scheduling impacts,” Egli wrote.

That means the consortium would have to pay to fix the leak and deal with any delays it causes in the highwaywidening project. But there’s no compensation — even if it went to the local government — for delaying thousands of people in traffic.

The smell of natural gas was plain — even outdoors, even amid traffic — so it was clearly a major break, Blais said.

“I think this council has been very clear ... that we take these kinds of mistakes very seriously and I would have hoped and do hope that our contracts have clauses in them to protect taxpayers, both from additional costs and from additional inconveniences, especially with a megaproject like LRT and the widening of the 417,” he said.

“That’s one of the things I’ll be getting into more deeply once the lane is back open.”