NEW: Former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson has issued his first public statement since the release of a scathing report into Stage 1 of LRT. ottnews OttawaLRT
In his statement, released Friday, Watson said he read the report upon returning from vacation.
“The Commissioner found that Rideau Transit Group , the consortium that won the contract to build, operate and maintain the LRT system, was at fault on many fronts throughout the project,” he wrote. “Upon my return from a long-planned vacation, I read the report produced by Justice Hourigan following the provincial public inquiry into Stage 1 of Ottawa’s LRT system.
The Commissioner found that Rideau Transit Group , the consortium that won the contract to build, operate and maintain the LRT system, was at fault on many fronts throughout the project.
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Ottawa's transit woes take a licking in LRT inquiry reportThe private and public partners behind the $2.1-billion Ottawa light rail transit (LRT) train wreck did not get off lightly in the Nov. 30 LRT Inquiry report. Former Ottawa mayor Jim Watson, who also starred in the failure of leadership during the so-called “freedom convoy” occupation, got full credit for misguiding city council and the public as to where the LRT system was heading, demanding it start early despite it not being ready. Abruptly departed city manager Steve Kanellakos and former transportation manager John Manconi joined Watson as incompetents whose use of WhatsApp to hide the truth from city councillors share the shame stage. The Rideau Transit Group (RTG), selected by private sector builders to lead the project, were criticized as inexperienced, short-cut artists. The wheels literally came off the poorly selected and untried Alstom Citadel Spirit trains. Two derailments to date, one large sinkhole delay, poorly designed tracks, and consistently unreliable service: all are hung up in the scathing LRT report. To its credit, the LRT Inquiry—itself costing around $10-million—offered detailed explanations of what went wrong with the malfunctioning light-rail system. The report dissected complex interactions and technical problems with the 12.5 km-long Stage 1 LRT Confederation route. Matters like failed electric switches, overhead wiring failures, the poor relationship between Alstom-Thales, the gap between an initial safety auditor and an independent certifier were among the lesser-known problems that the inquiry exposed. One area explored in the report was the geographic risk that played a role in the Rideau Street sinkhole. I doubt, however, that type of risk is over, and as consultants’ documents that I received indicated, the issue of geographic risks was never fully seen or debated by city council. As someone granted limited standing in those LRT inquiry proceedings—largely based on my freedom of information (FOI) experiences in trying, despite ma
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