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The flash-flooding damage to west Ottawa’s future Moodie light rail station last month was shocking, according to a nearby city councillor.
“It’s truly a disaster. We are all anxiously awaiting the assessment to know what the impact will be,” wrote College ward Coun. Laine Johnson on social media Monday after a tour of the station that will be one of the western ends of the Stage 2 O-Train expansion.
She told CBC News Tuesday that the stones that hold the tracks in place were almost completely washed away.
Crews will have to replace the tracks where that happened, but the overhead wires will also likely need to be taken out to bring in the vehicles to make repairs.
“It was a pretty profound, pretty crappy Monday morning meeting, honestly, to be there and see what will have to be redone,” she said.
College ward Coun. Laine Johnson said crushed stone, or ballast, that holds rail tracks in place and insulates them from the ground was washed away or ruined by July 1 flooding. (Laine Johnson/Bluesky)
Ottawa was hit by severe thunderstorms on Canada Day that dropped nearly 167 millimetres of rain over about five hours on areas west of downtown. It was one of the city’s rainiest days on record.
The storm exposed flaws which will now be looked at, Johnson said.
“They have everything that should be acting appropriately for a station like this, but given the historic volume and intensity of the rain, it wasn’t able to keep up,” she said.
Emotions are also running high for those working on the project, Johnson said.
“From what I understand, when they came on site on July 2, these guys had tears in their eyes because this is a labour of significant physical work, but also, they care about seeing the trains run,” Johnson said.
2027 opening in question
Ottawa’s Transit Services general manager Rick Leary said last month contractors were investigating the storm damage to the extension and what it will take to repair it.
Video shared with CBC News from the afternoon of July 1 shows several centimetres of water flowing over train tracks in the Moodie station area.
Four other stations along the future Line 3 to Moodie were impacted, he said: Sherbourne, New Orchard, Queensview and Pinecrest, plus the the Kichi Zībī Mīkan tunnel near Westboro Beach.
WATCH | Last month’s updates on the damage:
Canada Day storm damage may delay LRT expansion
Heavy rainfall on July 1 inundated several newly constructed stations along Ottawa’s western LRT, leaving transit officials and contractors assessing the extent of the damage.
In a memo to councillors on Aug. 5, the city’s director of rail construction Richard Holder said a report on damage and repairs is expected early next year.
Leary spoke to residents at a town hall Tuesday night and said it’s too soon to say if 2027 is still a viable target for the expansion’s opening.
There’s currently no timeline for when repairs at Moodie station will begin. An update is expected at the next transit committee meeting in September.
Holder was quoted by CTV earlier this month saying the city could open the Algonquin College leg of the west extension before the Moodie leg. The city’s media relations team then forwarded a memo signed by Holder saying that is “a very preliminary option that must be fully examined.”
The 11-station west extension is part of Ottawa’s broader Stage 2 light rail extension project, which brought Line 2 and 4 trains south to the airport and Limebank stations early last year.
The five-station eastern extension to Trim Road is awaiting its formal three-week test run, which has been complicated by this year’s problems with train wheels. It will not be ready at the start of the city’s campaign to boost transit to match the end of summer vacation starting Aug. 30.
When the Stage 2 routes were finalized in 2017, the plan was to have it all up and running by 2023.