Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[waterloowarrior]

Cut transit plan to 'realistic' level, city told

Patrick Dare
Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

OTTAWA-On the eve of a major vote on expanding Ottawa's transit system, the chairman of city council's planning committee said the city should cut $500 million worth of projects from the first stage of the plan.

The city needs to recognize the reality of limited federal and provincial government funds as it starts the final debates about what transit projects to do first, said Peter Hume, who is the councillor for Alta Vista Ward and president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

There's no point in insisting on a very expensive transit plan, then complaining that other levels of government won't fund it, he said.

"What is going to be realistic in the current environment? The affordability question is really critical," said Mr. Hume. "We need to have a dose of realism about what we can expect our funding partners to support."

In a joint meeting of the transportation and transit committees Wednesday, councillors are to debate the staging of a list of rail, bus and road projects that chart the transportation system until 2031. By then, officials expect the city could have a population of 1.1 million residents. The current population is about 870,000.

Mr. Hume said there will be new federal and provincial programs to fund transit in the future, but Ottawa needs to trim its projects for the next few years to fit the money that is available.

Failure to do so could result in the city treading water in a year's time - with a big plan and no construction.

Mr. Hume estimates that in addition to the $200 million the federal and the provincial governments have each pledged for transit projects, there will be an additional $200 million each for the first projects.

Assuming the city pays its traditional one-third of the cost by spending $400 million of its own, that makes for $1.2 billion for the first set of projects.

He said it's fine to have an ambitious, long-term plan, but the proposed projects must be staged in such a way that city taxpayers and other governments, which are providing money, understand and support them. For instance, he said the city could choose to complete bus-transitway projects, plus build a north-south electric commuter-rail service. Or it could build its proposed commuter-rail service from Blair Station west via a downtown tunnel to Tunney's Pasture.

The whole long-term public transit plan is worth $5.1 billion and calls for electric commuter rail running from Blair Station in the east to Baseline Station in the west and also to Riverside South. Much of the plan involves laying rail track on the existing bus transitway inside the Greenbelt. It also calls for running bus transitway to the farthest suburbs.

College Councillor Rick Chiarelli said the ambitious plans were drawn up when everyone assumed the federal government would be adding a lot of money to its city infrastructure funding, but those assumptions are out of date.

"In a recession government, you can't count on anything," he said. "If the money doesn't come, we will be delaying and deferring things."

Nancy Schepers, the deputy city manager in charge of the transportation plan, said officials planning the transportation system tried to make the spending more easily digested by keeping the first stage to $1.7 billion. She acknowledged that a shortfall of federal or provincial funding is one of the major risks of the project.

The city's spending plan for the first stage includes $600 million for a downtown tunnel, $227 million for the rail corridor from Blair Station to Tunney's Pasture and $390 million for electric trains.

Stittsville-Kanata West Councillor Shad Qadri said the current financial problems of governments don't negate the need for transit and the city cannot start to cut out parts of its plan to fit trimmed budgets. He said there's no point in building a downtown tunnel unless you have trains running from Blair Station to Tunney's Pasture.

Arguing that the federal government will benefit from rail transit that delivers loads of workers to government offices, Mr. Qadri said that if the federal and provincial governments can't give Ottawa the money, the city should borrow it from them.

"The time has come for the city to put its foot down and say we need public transit," Mr. Qadri said.

© Ottawa Citizen 2008