CANADA: The Rideau Transit Group consortium has been selected as preferred bidder to design, build, finance and maintain the Confederation Line, a 12·5 km light rail route with 13 stations in Ottawa.
The consortium comprises SNC-Lavalin, ACS Infrastructure, EllisDon, Dragados Canada and Veolia Transportation Services. Alstom would supply Citadis cars assembled in Ottawa.
The decision was approved by City of Ottawa Council on December 19.
According to the city council, the schedule should see construction ‘substantially complete’ by the end of 2017 and services begin ‘by 2018’. The fixed-price contract of C$2·1bn means ‘Ottawa taxpayers will not be financially responsible for cost over-runs related to construction’.
The national and provincial governments are each contributing C$600m. The city is allocating up to C$192m in federal road fuel tax transfers to the project and C$287m of provincial fuel tax receipts to capital infrastructure. The remainder of project funding will come from ‘development charge revenues and transit reserves’.
