The frustrating, darkly funny story of Ottawa’s LRT mess
Posted June 28, 2022 6:05 am.
Last Updated June 28, 2022 7:05 am.
In today’s Big Story podcast, the City of Ottawa paid millions of dollars for train cars that wouldn’t run in the winter. The doors stuck if people tried to open them to get out. One derailment shut down the system for weeks on end. The story of what should have been the crown jewel of Ottawa’s transit system turned into a tragic comedy.
We’re joined today by Fatima Syed, the Ontario Reporter for The Narwhal. Fatima wrote about the Ottawa Light Rail Transit system ahead of a public inquiry into how the project went so haywire.
“Literally anything that could go wrong with this train system, went wrong,” she said.
The results of the inquiry could provide a valuable lesson to other municipalities across Canada. Because there’s nothing as valuable to a city as public transit done right, and nothing more demoralizing than public transit done wrong. So what sent Ottawa’s train project so far off the rails?
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