Ottawa City Council endorses LRT project

Written by jrood

Ottawa City Council unanimously voted on July 14, to advance the Ottawa Light Rail Transit project. The approved report contains an updated cost estimate, within the budget of $2.1 billion, a new design plan and a clear and affordable path for OLRT implementation. "The vote today signals this Council's strong support for our improved plan to build an efficient, functional and affordable light rail system for our riders," said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson." The LRT will ease congestion on our downtown streets, reinvigorate our city core, create opportunities for smart development and lay the foundation for future expansion of our transit network." The revised Queen Street alignment outlined in the report improves ridership experience, brings the tunnel closer to the surface, reduces risk and improves cost certainty for construction. The report also recommends a Design-Build-Finance-Maintain procurement approach that will secure a fixed price contract to construct and maintain the LRT system from Tunney's Pasture in the west to Blair Road in the east. This 12.5km, 13 station LRT system includes a tunnel through the downtown core to address the transit bottleneck that slows service and challenges the reliability of the system today. "This report is the result of extensive work done over the last few months to deliver on the accelerated timeline and cost challenge from the Mayor and Council," said City Manager, Kent Kirkpatrick. "Staff was directed to initiate a more detailed review of the capital and operating budgets for providing public transit in Ottawa. As a result, the engineering and project teams have worked very hard rethinking assumptions and defining a better light rail system that can be built within the approved budget." The City of Ottawa commenced its request for qualifications process to identify firms with a proven track record in delivering successful LRT solutions to cities around the globe.

Tags: