No pricetag yet for breaking LRT maintenance contract
Mayor holds meeting Monday to explore city's legal options
Frustrations with light rail are running so high that the City of Ottawa is looking at its legal options, including how it could terminate its 30-year maintenance contract with Rideau Transit, but there is no price yet for what such a move would cost.
On Monday, city manager Steve Kanellakos answered an official inquiry Coun. Shawn Menard had made in January saying the contract is so complex, it would require "significant time and resources" to give a detailed breakdown of the cost of breaking the 30-year agreement.
"That is due to the fact that the cost to the city of termination must necessarily include not only those costs directly associated with termination, but also any costs arising from setting up an alternate service provider," Kanellakos wrote.
The City of Ottawa has a contract with the same Rideau Transit partnership that built its new train system to maintain the new Confederation Line and its future extensions west to Moodie Drive and east to Trim Road.
Rideau Transit, which is made up of ACS Infrastructure, SNC-Lavalin and Ellis Don, in turn has subcontracted the maintenance of the tracks, switches and trains to Alstom, the French company that built the fleet of Citadis Spirit vehicles.
Everything on the table
Calls for the city to disentangle itself from Rideau Transit have grown louder in the past week, after another rash of problems on the Confederation Line.
The fleet ran with as few as six of the required 13 trains last week, and twice riders had to abandon stopped trains and walk alongside the tracks back to stations, including in the tunnel.
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Even Mayor Jim Watson, who had previously said the city's focus should be on getting the trains working and not on lawyers, has now been asking for legal options.
Before meeting with lawyers Monday afternoon, Watson couldn't say if he would want to cancel the contract.
"I don't want to do anything rash or knee-jerk to simply say that I'm doing something, because we don't want to cause more harm."
But Watson wants all options on the table for a special March 9 meeting of the finance and economic development committee, when council members will discuss a not just the maintenance contract but the decision to award SNC-Lavalin the contract to expand and maintain the Trillium Line.
On Monday, the city released hundreds of pages of documents related to that Stage 2 rail procurement that chronicle how SNC won the competition despite a poor technical score.