City happy with LRT construction, not making ‘rider ready’ guarantee for fall
Posted Jul 3, 2018 07:48:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Four months ahead of the hand-over date for the City of Ottawa's LRT Confederation Line, the head of transportation will not promise that the system will be “rider ready” by its current November 2 deadline.
On 1310 NEWS' The Rick Gibbons Show, Transportation Manager John Manconi touted construction progress, highlighting a number major milestones that the $2.1-billion project has achieved — including a train running under full automated control — but he refused to say the November date is “iron-clad”
“I don't give those types of guarantees and really, you don't want a general manager that can give those guarantees, because simply, there are too many variables in a project of this scope and scale,” he explained. “The analogy I make is: Builders; when they're building homes, they can't give you fixed guaranteed dates on things like that.”
Manconi said the Rideau station is a complex piece of the project which has a lot of integral pieces and each needing to be checked. He added that safe operation of the system is paramount.
Manconi expects to have a better idea of how ready the train will be toward the end of this summer.
Listen to the full conversation with Transportation Manager John Manconi:
