Push The Contractors On Light Rail: BENN

Work expands to fill the time and space available and old adage goes.

Case in point. Stage 2 of the Confederation Line now has no end date in sight. Something to do with the pandemic having eaten the contractors’ homework. We don’t know what the pacing item is. The city does not believe that the residents of Ottawa can handle any level of detail beyond “trust us”. This is in contrast to the failure to open the Trillium Line extension. The reason that came out was not in a report presented to council. No, it was in an interview when the now departed for greener pastures Michael Morgan, the city’s rail director, let slip that the contractor cannot get the automated switch system that controls access to the tunnel under Dow’s Lake to work properly.

The following observations are restricted to the western extension, from Tunney’s Pasture to Lincoln Fields, and then the southern leg to Algonquin College and the western route to Bayshore and onwards to Moody Drive.

They are laying track at a snail’s pace. Dual lines in some places. Single sets still in others. Others as in in the trench leading west out of Tunney’s Pasture. You know, the trench that has existed since Andy Haydon was top knock at the former Region of Ottawa-Carleton. Anyways, sometimes crews are visible, sometimes they are not. I am talking about the single day shift. There is no second shift. No sense of urgency to finish everything except that one (or more?) lagging element.

Some stations appear to be almost ready. Almost, because there has been no visible action to complete the last five to 10 per cent of either of the structures beside Algonquin College. Same for Iris. The one at the Queensway? Still waiting to see any action there. Lincoln Fields is a bit more of a mystery to me, but based on the view from the bus and from Carling Avenue, it appears to be somewhere similar to where the Algonquin facilities are. Almost done, but no visible activity. Dominion Station rose out of the trench recently. Westboro Station? It looks like a crew was setting up forms for concrete this past week. All of which is to say that it appears that the station building crews, who are not using equipment not normally found around most building sites, are being moved around. In short, no sense of urgency.

Which takes me to the problem. Construction is a disruptive activity. Roads are closed. Traffic is re-routed. People are inconvenienced. Some of the people can re-route themselves around these now perpetual obstructions. Others, notably the residents in adjacent neighbourhoods and the business owners along those routes, have no alternatives. The attitude demonstrated daily down at city hall is that these ‘unfortunates’ just have to put up with the inconvenience. For the greater good.

For the record, I am not one of these ‘unfortunates’. I am not one of the business owners who has the pleasure of paying the full amount of base rent due on their leased site. I am not one of the business owners who sees their sales being decimated. Decimated as in divide by 10. I am not one of the business owners who has seen my livelihood, my prospects of selling my business to fund my retirement, crushed.

However, I am sympathetic to their situation. Which is far more than I can say for the attitude demonstrated daily by those who report to work, at least notionally, at city hall. The people with secure incomes, not based on actual productivity. The people who if they chose to stick around long enough have a pension to fund their retirement. Including the people who stand for re-election term after term because they recognize that this is the best paying job they will ever have.

I am not asking the city to somehow subsidize the losses. Too complicated. Too expensive for a city that has declared itself perpetually low on money. Especially so when one considers the secret settlements reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars to – wait for it – the contractors who have allowed their work to expand to fill the time and space available.

What I am asking is that the municipality recognize the consequences that the city has allowed to be inflicted on the residents and businesses in the affected neighbourhoods.

To require, as contrasted with merely suggest, that the contractors pick up the pace. To complete everything that can be completed promptly. Then to clean up and clear out. So those who have been affected the most can get back to what approximated normal half a decade or so ago. Because that is what compassionate people would do. Then there are the selfish people, or those who are totally oblivious to the world around them. They don’t care what they inflict on others.

Over to you councillors. Are you compassionate? Or are you selfish? Or just oblivious?

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

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