Developer renovates cancelled Ottawa north-south light rail plan

Ottawa city staff have been asked to review a new version of the north-south light rail plan cancelled by city council last December.

The request was passed unanimously by Ottawa's transit and transportation committees Wednesday after the modified plan was proposed by a major Ottawa developer.

S. Lyon Sachs, president of Urbandale Corp.,proposed thatthe new version:

• Run north from Barrhaven and through downtown to the Via train station instead of stopping at the University of Ottawa.
• Pass through downtown via a tunnel.
• Have fewer stops than the original proposal.
• Use faster trains.

Urbandalehas been building a large subdivision in the Riverside South neighbourhood that would have been serviced by the cancelled plan.

Sachs, who said he worked onhis proposal for three weeks, estimated it would cost $1.1 billion.

Councillors and Mayor Larry OBrien said they were interested in a legal opinion about whether the plan would allow them to get out of the $177-million lawsuit launched by Siemens Canada, PCL Constructors and Ottawa LRT Corp., the companies who were to design, build and maintain the rail line until city council cancelled their $778-million contract.

Tunnel study could start immediately

Meanwhile, the costs and technologies that could be involved in building a proposed transit tunnel throughdowntown Ottawashould be studied now and not next spring, the committees decided earlier in the day.

The committees took the first step toward building such a tunnel by recommending that an environmental assessment study begin immediately, as downtown businesses had been pushing for.

"We're anxious to move ahead," transit committee chair Alex Cullen told reporters during a break in the meeting.

The tunnel was a key recommendation in a report issued by O'Brien's transportation task force in June. But city staffurged the committees towait until the overall transportation plan has been completed in spring 2008 before going ahead with the tunnel study.

Cullen said that would cause unnecessary delays.

"Any rapid transit plan is going to have to deal with the downtown, and we know from the start that we need to look at a tunnel," he said.

Hume Rogers, a spokesman for the Downtown Coalition that represents businesses in the city's core and a member of the mayor's transportation task force that originally recommended the tunnel, agreed.

"The problems throughout the downtown core are going to get worse, so the faster we can get a tunnel in there to solve the problem, the better we are," he said.

The committees' recommendation must be approved by city council before the study can begin.