Councillors, commissioner decry lack of details about LRT's pre-launch woes
Yesterday, commissioners decried the lack of details about LRT's pre-launch woes
A trio of current and former members of Ottawa's transit commission felt they weren't receiving key information about the reliability of the Confederation Line in the days and weeks leading up to its 2019 launch, the city's light rail inquiry heard yesterday.
Those sentiments were shared by councillors Catherine McKenney and Diane Deans and citizen commissioner Sarah Wright-Gilbert, who testified on a panel with Coun. Allan Hubley, the commission's current chair.
Some of their concerns related to information shared in informal WhatsApp messages between high-ranking city officials, including Hubley, Mayor Jim Watson and now-former OC Transpo head John Manconi.
Deans, who chaired the transit commission until 2014 and sat on the city's finance and economic development committee until 2018, said she only learned of the existence of the WhatsApp group when Manconi was questioned about it Tuesday.
"It was confirmation that a lot of what I had been suggesting publicly in interviews was in fact absolutely the case — that there was more to it than met the eye, that all of the information was not being shared publicly," Deans told commission counsel Chris Grisdale.
"We're a public corporation spending public dollars and we should not be hiding that kind of information from public view."
'Casting about in the darkness'
Many of Grisdale's questions focused on the run-up to the Sept. 14, 2019 launch of the $2.1-billion Confederation Line, which by then was already more than a year behind schedule.
Citing testimony earlier in the week from Thomas Prendergast — a highly-regarded transportation expert and a key City of Ottawa consultant on the project — Grisdale asked Hubley if he'd ever discussed Prendergast's concerns about "maintenance readiness" with Manconi over WhatsApp.
Hubley said that was possible, noting he believed council eventually learned of those concerns anyway through briefings or memos. Details shared over WhatsApp would be "no different" than other confidential briefings given to committee chairs, he testified.
Yet Deans, McKenney and Wright-Gilbert all told the inquiry that information never trickled down to them.
"One person having information, to me, is like giving the foreperson of a jury all of the details, the salient details of the case. But that person doesn't tell the rest of the jury," Wright-Gilbert testified.
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"Without this information we were — as commission members — casting about in the darkness, trying to figure out why all of the sudden our brand new system has all of these issues, compounding one upon another."
The revelation of the WhatsApp group, Deans added, was confirmation there was an "inner cycle of information that all of us were not privy to."
Performance standards under microscope
The inquiry has already heard that during the LRT's 12-day trial run, the city relaxed the performance standards the line needed to meet before it could open to the public.
When asked about that, Hubley said he recalled discussions about altering the criteria but wasn't involved in them. He did agree he knew things changed before council did.
"Yes, I was aware ahead of them," Hubley told Grisdale. "Coun. Deans, as a [former] chair, can attest this is not unique to the transit or the LRT. Every single committee chair had these kinds of briefings with staff."
Deans agreed, but said if she was in Hubley's shoes, she would have shared that information in a "timely fashion."
"Frankly I'm shocked [the standards were relaxed]. That is not what … Mr. Manconi had emphatically promised members of council in Sept. 2018."
Grisdale also asked Hubley about a series "report cards" issued during the testing period, with the line passing some days and failing others — and if his fellow councillors would have wanted to be alerted to the results.
"Certainly, everybody wants to know as much information as possible," Hubley said. "However in the vacuum or the context of the situation, if we had published the results every day, it would have caused a lot of issues."
The inquiry is slated to resume Thursday, with consultants Derek Wynne and Sergio Mammoliti testifying in the morning and Watson appearing in the afternoon.
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