Light rail mess tests Watson’s reputation
Jim Watson has spent his political life as a man who may not excite you with bold visions, but you can put your money on him to get the job done. That reputation is being severely tested by the Confederation Line debacle that has turned Ottawa’s light rail venture into a public embarrassment.
This week, council took the extraordinary step of imposing a three-week deadline on the Rideau Transit Group (RTG) to produce a credible plan to fix the problems or have the 30-year maintenance contract terminated. It also emerged that city manager Steve Kanellakos had briefed Watson on SNC-Lavalin’s failure to meet the technical scores for LRT 2 — a day before council voted to approve the $1.6-billion Trillium expansion. The councillors didn’t have that information when they voted.
Some councillors cried foul. Watson said in a written statement that he was never involved in the LRT procurement, and was only briefed because the scores had been leaked to the media. Press secretary Patrick Champagne said that because Watson is head of council, staff deemed it necessary to inform him of the leak. The statement said it was to ensure that if the issue was ever raised in council, he would know that the information could not be divulged, based on legal advice. (Legal advice at the time was that disclosing the information to council would breach procurement confidentiality and, potentially, cause the city legal and financial jeopardy. The city later did divulge the information).
It’s all part of the LRT drama that has turned into a nightmare. Watson said in an interview that the Confederation Line “is clearly the most challenging file I’ve ever dealt with. It is a heavy burden and I look at it with a great deal of angst,” he said at a breakfast meeting. “You
Watson’s emotions have ranged from frustration to anger and dismay.
feel the pressure of making sure we have the right number of trains, and you feel a knot in your stomach to see the number below 12 or
13,” which is the number of trains needed for optimum rush hour service.
Watson’s emotions have ranged from frustration to anger and dismay as solutions elude the city. He says critics on social media have attacked him “non-stop” for doing nothing, but they don’t see the effort being made every day to find answers. There’s hardly any consultant or expert he hasn’t met or canvassed in search of a breakthrough. He has been on the horn constantly with the president of train manufacturer Alstom, pressing for answers. “You think you are making progress on one issue and then another issue pops up,” he says. “It is stressful.”
Watson acknowledges the service is “substandard” and fully understands the frustration of riders who face constant breakdowns. But no one saw it coming. Once the Confederation Line opened to rave reviews, there were high expectations of success. With such a project, kinks were inevitable, but these would be fixed in short order. It didn’t happen.
Underlining the complexity of the problem and lack of immediate answers, Watson talks about solutions in months, not weeks.
“We will get through this over the course of the next several months so that we can be proud of the system and not be embarrassed by it,” he says.
But there is no guarantee.
The city has threatened to cancel the maintenance contract, but that gets us nowhere right now. It is doubtful the city would go that far, but even if it were so minded, this will get bogged down in legal challenges. Besides, how soon the city could find a competent replacement company is a big question, as is how the system would be maintained in the interim.
“We still have 120,000 people a day who are using the system and we have to have that service. To simply walk away doesn’t answer the obvious question: What are you replacing the system with if you just walk away?” Watson said.
What’s clear is that there are no easy fixes to this mess and transit riders must brace for more pain.