Ottawa's Light Rail Re/Up/Set

Today, Ottawa's mayor and certain of the council are spinning their version of City Hall's latest light rail trainwreck like a 37-million-buck pinwheel. Maybe hoping that dizzying fuzzyheaded quadrupeds such as myself unto pukin', will compel us to ignore the fact that this week's good news on the light rail front is, ummm, last week's out-of-court contract settlement with Siemens AG.

Because, you see, during the election, the mayor famously vowed to "hit the reset button" on the previous administration's fatally flawed north/south light rail plan. Once in the mayor chair, he airly persuaded council to nix that signed and sealed deal in favour of his (unarticulated) better idea, claiming his vast business experience told him the penalty would be negligible. Last week the city paid Siemens that vast-bucks legal settlement.

Now we learn that the first leg they're thinking of building under the new improved light rail plan is, ummm, that fatally flawed north/south line. Because, hey, Siemens, by a huge coincidence, had already drawn the plans and done the environmental studies, before the mayor smacked that big ol' expensive button.

What Hizzoner and council apparently failed to clarify among themselves was that when you hit "reset" on a system that's nominal in the first place, you merely waste a lot of time rebooting - in this case, enough years that the damn thing would've been close to done if we'd stuck to the original plan - to get much the same system. Apparently, I am not the only one confused by council's inability to grasp this.

Sometime long before he was elected, the mayor shaved his head bald. I am not party to his reasons. My head is still as fuzzy as nature intended well-dressed coyotes about town to be. But at this point, I'm thinkin' he could hot-wax and buff that sucker 'til it glows in the dark, and he'd still look totally fuzzyheaded, next to me...