Will the Trillium Line open in September? All signs point to likely not

After being closed for almost three years already, the Trillium Line is supposed to open in less than six months.

But will we really be riding the north-south rails soon after Labour Day? All signs point to likely not.

The latest LRT Stage 2 update to council earlier this week confirms that SNC-Lavalin — which is expanding the Trillium Line under the corporate name TNext — is working to "accelerate critical works that would enable the handover to the City by August/September 2023."

The fact that SNC-Lavalin and the city are trying to "accelerate" the project clearly shows it is behind. The quarterly report also hedges its bet on the timeline, which the city considers "a best-case scenario on the information we have available to date."

• SNC-Lavalin's 'poor' LRT bid should have been tossed, evaluators found

As we know from a number of witnesses who testified at the Ottawa Light Rail Transit Commission last year, best-case scenarios rarely play out in the reality of huge projects.

During the inquiry — which looked into the electric Confederation Line, not the diesel Trillium Line — one rail executive talked about how everyone in a project suffers from "optimism bias," or the belief that everything will go perfectly.

It's good to see the city has learned that lesson.

While SNC-Lavalin may still be saying the train system will be finished around Labour Day weekend, rail construction director Michael Morgan is putting some clear qualifiers around that claim.

Garage, track not finished

The Trillium Line extension is a $1.2 billion part of the $4.66 billion Stage 2 expansion. It revamps the city's original five-stop rail line, which opened in 2001 and closed in May 2020 for this work.

Once the Trillium Line (also known as Line 2) opens, it will have 16 kilometres of new track reaching Riverside South, eight new stations, a four-kilometre airport link and a connection to Line 1 at Bayview station. Twenty-seven years of maintenance are included in the contract.

• LRT Stage 2: What Ottawa will get for $4.66B

Even without a possible further delay, the project is a full year late.

In an email to CBC, Jacelyn Daigle — who is filling in for Morgan during March break — said "work is progressing well."

However, a number of items are still outstanding. 

With less than six months to go until the city takes over the system, the new Walkey Road maintenance and storage facility is not finished.

Not only does the construction need to be completed, but the three buildings will also require occupancy permits.

Also, the track isn't finished.

There has been lots of progress. When Morgan last updated council in November 2022, only 65 per cent of the track had been laid. 

Today, that number is 95 per cent. It's unclear whether all this laid track is actually ready for trains.

The 1.8 kilometres of remaining track has to be installed on elevated parts of the rail system — the Hunt Club Bridge, at the VIA Rail crossing and at the airport.

Once that's done, there's signal testing, operator training, system-wide commissioning, regulatory approvals and permits to be completed, not to mention the trial testing of the fully extended Trillium Line.

 All in five-and-a-half months.

Enough winter testing?

The fact the track is not finished also brings up another issue: end-to-end winter testing.

Our seven Swiss-made Stadler FLIRT diesel trains have been tested while parked, as well as travelling on parts of the track this past winter. One train arrived last October.

• 5 things to know about the Trillium Line's new Stadler trains

According to the city, our new train is "an existing Stadler product that is used in many locations around the world, including in northern European climates." T

This is in contrast to the trains used on the Confederation Line that, as confirmed in last year's inquiry, had never been used anywhere.

However, because the entire rail system isn't finished, the city may accept the Trillium Line before full winter testing.

That's against the advice of Justice William Hourigan, the commissioner of the LRT inquiry.

"A provision should be made for climate-specific testing of the full system, including dynamic testing," he wrote in his report.

"For instance, there should be specific requirements for dynamic winter testing — not merely testing during the winter — in locations like Ottawa that have a severe winter climate."

It's not clear that dynamic testing of the full system will happen before we receive our latest new train.

An official schedule update is expected at the next LRT subcommittee on March 29.