Province Must Step Into LRT Mess: THE VOTER

06/03/2024

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Just basic leadership is hard enough to find at Ottawa City Hall.

I feel that it would be beyond fanciful of me to contemplate, let alone expect, mature leadership from the current crew that are occupying the Laurier bunker. Every now and again, a mature leader comes out with an immature idea – it’s a momentary slip. I am beginning to think that when a mature idea or behaviour springs forth from city hall, it’s the reverse of the previous notion and a Laurier Loser has accidentally, through no fault of their own, stumbled upon something of worth.

it’s well past time for the various players to come out of the sandbox and stop trying to ensure that someone else is getting the blame for what has happened and continues to happen. I’m fairly certain that there’s enough blame to go around and none of them – the city, Rideau Transit Group and Alstom – is coming to the table with clean hands. Maybe it’s time to send them into a room with instructions not to come out until there is a solution and a costed plan to implement it. If the discussions are on a no-prejudice basis, would they be able to step away from their “protect my turf, preserve my backside” mode of operating that is just keeping us all spinning in circles? There is a solution to be had somewhere and we just need to the rhetoric to stop long enough that it can be found.

If the residents of Ottawa were presented with a detailed, costed plan that would cure the LRT’s woes, I believe they would be prepared to support it. I personally would need any plan to go through an independent, third-party verification so I could put aside my overwhelming but natural skepticism about anything these people might produce. I’m sure the cost would be enormous to finally turn the Good Ship LRT around but, against that, I would weigh the cost of continuing as we are and having what will likely be a larger sum of money spent in dribs and drabs to apply band-aid solutions but never actually fixing the problem.

Part of the problem seems to be that the three players don’t trust each other and are approaching this as if it had to be a zero-sum game where I can only win if you lose. That needs to change to a win-win-win where all come out ahead along with the long-suffering residents of the city. Otherwise there is no way out of the morass we find ourselves in.

I hate to sound like a broken record but the province needs to step in, turn off the money tap and force the various parties to sit down and work out the solutions. Without such a firm intervention by someone, I have no hope that there will be an end to this mess in my lifetime or beyond. Like many other Ottawans, I resent watching good money being thrown after bad into the LRT money pit. Most of us dislike having to have a Plan B available when going out to use OC Transpo.

It’s time for a change and, lacking mature leadership around the LRT table, the province needs to act decisively and put a stop to this nonsense.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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