Ottawa’s General Manager of Transportation Services says the 2018 budget is not at risk because of the launch of LRT.

Councillor Tobi Nussbaum raised concerns on Newstalk 580 CFRA's Ottawa Now with Evan Solomon Tuesday, saying he was “genuinely puzzled” why City Council was not informed about a possible delay to the revenue service availability date for the Confederation Line, which is supposed to be May 24, 2018. Nussbaum also said he was concerned that City staff may have somehow agreed not to levy financial penalties against Rideau Transit Group (RTG) as a result of the delay, though he admitted he didn’t know if that was the case.

The concern is that if LRT doesn’t launch by mid-year, as laid out in the budget, it could affect ridership and fare revenues.

John Manconi told Ottawa Now on Wednesday that the Councillor’s concerns are unfounded.

“Nobody at the technical briefing session or during the question period or anything like that has said, nor have we said to date, that the LRT is delayed,” Manconi says. “There is nothing that has been shared with the City to suggest the LRT is delayed. We do not have an end service date that we have put out there. The word ‘delayed’ is inaccurate.”

Manconi says RTG delivered a written statement on November 24, regarding revenue service availability for May 24, 2018, but it came with conditions.

“It’s a six month notice to say, ‘Dear City, the project is all complete, it’s gone through the testing, commissioning phase, the safety certification, and thousands of other elements it needs to do.’ They hand over the keys to the City and we then decide when to put the train into service.

“They provided that written notification on November 24th, but there were conditions attached to that and what we said is, ‘We are not prepared to accept a conditional yes to that clause. We need clarity and we need a locked-in, highly confident revenue service availability date. Bring us a detailed schedule. Tell us if, in fact, you are going to be delayed. Tell us how you would mitigate any potential delay and oh, as a reminder, we have all these financial penalties and clauses we can use, and we want a firm date provided to the City.’”

Manconi says the notion that those penalties will not be applied is wrong.

“At no time have we said that we’re waiving any of the penalties or financial disincentives for any potential delays. I need to make that crystal clear,” Manconi says.

He says RTG had some concerns with meeting the May 24th date, but the City does not know how long any potential delay might be.

Council was not told, Manconi says, because the information staff had from RTG was incomplete.

“We don’t bring files that we don’t have all the details or all the information to Council,” he says. “If we went out and said, ‘Council, we got this note and we think they might be late,’ RTG would probably have serious concerns about that. We are under a contractual obligation with them to be respectful partners. We brought back to them we wanted clarity and a comprehensive plan, and we worked right to the day before the technical briefing to bring the best available information.”

Manconi says bringing the incomplete information to Council could have put the City at legal risk.

Staff maintain Ottawa will be riding LRT in 2018.