April LRT detour start and overnight work

I have two important notes regarding the LRT construction bus detour to pass on this afternoon. One relates to the disruption of recent overnight work and some overnight work still to come.

More importantly, I need to note that I and my office have learned that the information passed on in our recent open house was incorrect. The bus detour is scheduled to begin in April, not June. This is obviously significant, and we are in the process of updating information that my office has already put online.

With respect to noise. I’d like to follow up on the noise issue that residents in the vicinity of the foot of Roosevelt experienced recently. I’ve received an apology from the LRT team, and we are working on providing that same apology to those of you in closest proximity to this event.

The LRT work has a blanket exemption for noise including overnight work that I signed off on but with certain expectations set out. Normally, I’m approached with events that will generate overnight noise and I have the chance to work with them on mitigations and notice. The work at Churchill noted in this thread was an example of necessarily done overnight but properly communicated and, where complaints were received, mitigated.

The LRT team has a contingent of workers who work on overnight shifts. On the nights in question, they were not able to work on a planned project elsewhere on the line and so that overnight team was sent to work on the Roosevelt site where they’re preparing the temporary detour roadwork and bridge. There are two activities happening there. A civil team is building the road, and a structural team is pre-assembling the bridge. The two teams do not have sufficient space to work safely on the south side of the bridge concurrently (the north side has sufficient space). Last week, the overnight crew was sent to work on backfilling the embankment rather than be sent home. That should not have happened without notice and, frankly, given that it was not planned work I question whether it should have happened at all.

The bridge is expected to be put in place during the first weekend in October. They have not asked me for further night work until then.

The work on Scott Street, though, may require some overnight work from October 1 to mid-November. They are working with deadlines related to things like the winter closures of the asphalt plants and the constraints of construction in colder temperatures, which become more understandable in light of the April detour commencement rather than June, as noted above. The work would not be constant throughout that period, nor through the whole corridor at once. At the outset they have agreed to limit the work to four nights per week (leaving the weekends free) and timely communications about where they are working. They will not be working along the entire stretch at once but in smaller blocks, and overnight work would not be constant. We have secured a commitment from the constructor to let us know at least 12 hours in advance when they expect to have to work overnight. If you are in close proximity to Scott Street, and would like to get notice of these overnight work events, please send an email to Tom.Pechloff@ottawa.ca, and we'll pass those on as soon as we receive them.

All I can say today is that once the detour is constructed, virtually all of the noise associated with this project will be the from the buses on Scott and we can expect that there would be no further significant overnight work. Our experience during the Stage 1 construction was that the conversion of the trench to rail is minimally (if at all) disruptive. Construction of the stations is obviously heavier work, but I have been told again that this will not happen at night.

The construction associated with the bus detour has been disruptive. I recognize that, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.