Aon Insurance Brokers/Risk Consulting Secured Towards 2017 Start of Railway Operations
Gatineau, Québec. 6 October 2015. Eight companies signed the Moose Consortium Project 125 Agreement on Friday, which marks a historic business milestone in their ambitious plan to develop and operate a 400 km private-sector interprovincial passenger railway throughout the Greater National Capital Region in time for Canada’s Sesquicentennial in 2017.
“This might be the most significant and sustainable infrastructure project being attempted anywhere in the country for Canada’s 150th Anniversary”, said the Consortium’s Coordinator, Joseph Potvin of The Opman Company.
The Consortium is pursuing a 100% commercially financed and operated passenger railway service on existing railways. Double-decker trains will traverse Ottawa and Gatineau, and will operate all the way out to six semi-rural towns of the Greater National Capital Region including Smiths Falls, Arnprior and Alexandria in Ontario, and in Québec, service will go to Montebello, later to La Pêche (Wakefield) once the Consortium completes track repairs, and to Bristol after rebuilding that line.
The eight companies forming the Moose Consortium include: REMISZ Consulting Engineers, Business Model Fulcrum, Dr. Bill Pomfret & Assoc., The Opman Company, Limelight Advertising & Design, Sandelmen Software Works, Wilson Young & Associates and MTBA Associates Inc. Architects.
The inaugural meeting in Gatineau this past Friday included discussions with two executives of Aon Reed Stenhouse, Canada’s largest insurance brokerage and risk management firm, which is now the Moose Consortium’s broker of record for all risk management needs.
The relationship with Aon is a major step towards completing the last of three requirements that the Canadian Transportation Agency has identified towards the Consortium’s application for a certificate of fitness. The business group plans to submit a single application encompassing the full 400 km extent of this commercial interprovincial passenger rail service.
“As part of the Moose Consortium, this summer we completed initial plans and drawings detailing an estimated $41M rehabilitation of the interprovincial Prince of Wales Bridge between Ottawa and Gatineau” said Wojciech Remisz, President of REMISZ Consulting Engineers. “In addition to train service, our design adds dedicated cycling and pedestrian trails on the west and east sides of the bridge”, he said.
Infrastructure upgrades such as this will be commercially financed, without dependence on taxpayer funds. Both infrastructure and operations are premised upon a dependable and sustainable revenue base that doesn’t require taxpayer subsidies.
This is the first proof-of-concept project of the “Property-Powered Rail (PPR) Open Market Development Model” developed by Potvin from The Opman Company of Chelsea in collaboration with several of the other firms, and peer-reviewed with international experts.
This past June, Potvin was invited by the US-based SMART Institute (Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation) to bring the PPR into discussions at a strategy workshop in Philadelphia where officials from Amtrak and other companies were considering how to develop new mass transit systems throughout the US.
And in July, Michael Lachapelle of Business Model Fulcrum, another Moose Consortium member firm, presented the PPR model in London England at the first International Conference on Transportation and Public Health. Following his session, Dr. Luise Noring, Program Director of the Copenhagen School of Business began developing plans for a multi- institute research study to compare the Moose Consortium’s commercial metropolitan railway concept for the Ottawa-Outaouais region, with the publicly funded metropolitan railway being planned for the cross-border region around Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden.
Noring said she saw the global relevance of the approach taken by the Moose Consortium, suggesting “it will be possible to transfer experience of the Ottawa-Outaouais infrastructure investment to North America and the world”.
The eight participating firms are wrapping up their quarter-million dollar Phase 1(a) of a five- phase planning and development project. “We’ve assembled our ‘Class D’ financial estimates of aggregate revenues and costs relating to the infrastructure and operations”, said Potvin.
By incrementally upgrading existing infrastructure, the Consortium expects to create permanent full-time jobs, and a wide range of business linkage opportunities, with no boom/bust cycle typical of mega-projects.
“The prospect of impacting and growing the Greater Capital Region in such a sustainable way is thrilling”, commented Ian Garland, President of Wilson Young & Associates. “Doing so without picking the taxpayers’ pocket by using good ol’ entrepreneurship is very exciting.”
Passenger rail services of the Moose Consortium offer a practical way to integrate all public and private transportation services across jurisdictions throughout the Greater National Capital Region (NCR).
“What better way to celebrate Canada’s 150th Anniversary than by having a group of entrepreneurs take the initiative to re-create an interprovincial railway throughout our Greater National Capital Region”, added Peter Gabany of Limelight. “We’re not saying it’s easy, but in a certain way we’re just re-living some of the same types of challenges as had to be overcome during the time of Canada’s Confederation.”
The formal agreement signed on Friday included a corporate restructuring. The original company created in 2011, “Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises Inc.” is being purchased by newly founded “Moose Consortium Inc.”
Additional Information:
Joseph Potvin
Director, Moose Consortium Inc.
joseph.potvin@letsgomoose.com
joseph.potvin@onyvamoose.com
819-593-5983
Dear Mr. Potvin,
I am so excited to hear about this proposal. Is it approved? What is the status? How can we, as private citizens, help in moving this along?
I can imagine one day in the future when trains are powered by renewable energy in place along the tracks (solar, geothermal, wind) so as to become completely CO2 neutral 🙂 Is that possible? One dares to dream.
We take the train, the bus, I cycle to work. I no longer own a car. It is very difficult to get to friends and businesses in Aylmer and Manotick on weekends. This could really open up local tourism.
Could there be a stop adjacent to Parc Gatineau for those of us with no personal vehicle?
Ms. Burpee,
Thank you so much for your comments. Currently Moose Consortium has its application for development authorization being reviewed by the Canadian Transportation Agency. Their typical review timetable suggests that we should have an answer by the beginning of October. In the meantime our work proceeds on multiple fronts.
Private citizens can assist by writing to the Canadian Transportation Agency (secretariat@otc-cta.gc.ca with reference to Agency case number 16-03348) to outline why you believe Moose’s whole-region plan conforms with Canada’s National Transportation Policy ( See: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-10.4/page-1.html#h-4 ) Our proposed system will be a federal-level service, because it is interprovincial. It would also be very helpful for private citizens to ask the Canadian Transportation Agency to enforce its existing laws relating to the main line track at Bayview Station and across the Prince of Wales Bridge, in order to ensure the continuity of the ONLY remaining interprovincial railway connection linking the Ontario and Quebec parts of Canada’s Capital.
Regarding a stop close to Gatineau Park, Moose has asked the NCC for its perferred location. Currently however the Municipality of Chelsea has declared itself determined to remove the section of track that runs through its territory. Moose is challenging this at both provincial and federal levels. So something else private citizens can do is to write to ask the NCC (ref Sections 11-13 of the National Capital Act http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/N-4/page-2.html#h-7 ) to protect the only realistic transit connection to Gatineau Park. As for Aylmer, yes Moose has met with MP Greg Fergus, and with Quebec MNA Andres Fortin, to discuss re-developing that secondary linkage once our primary system concept is assured.
When dreaming of a “future” with trains powered by renewable energy that are CO2 neutral, it’s important to reflect on the fact that Ottawa and Gatineau (i.e. the Hull & Aylmer sectors) already had an extensive and fully electric LRT service between the 1890s and the 1950s. This region was served by two locally developed and fully private-sector electric LRT companies that, at their peak carried 30 million passengers annually on 90 rail cars over 100 km track, employing 350 operators. The Ottawa service was opened in 1891 by entrepreneurs Thomas Ahearn and Warren Soper, who had already founded the region’s first telecom giant, Ahearn and Soper Electrical Contractors. In 1894 Hull entrepreneur Théophile Viau, banker Jacques-P. de Martigny, and millwright Stanislas Aubry raised funds from a Montreal financier and a physician from Saint Jérome to create the Hull Electric Railway. In 1901 these two electric railway services integrated north-south across the Alexandra Bridge, and the conveniently inter-changed passengers with Canadian Pacific’s wider system which linked together Arnprior, Montebello, Alexandria, Bristol, Maniwaki, Smiths Falls, and beyond in all directions. However, through coordinated federal-provincial-municipal government intervention in the late 1940s, the cities of Ottawa and Hull took over the urban electric railway companies, and both then consistently ran deficits as municipal operations. By 1959 the NCC, Ottawa and Hull shut down the railway operations altogether, and they removed most of the track network by 1963. Transit was re-developed entirely through public-sector municipal bus fleets and highways. Since the post-war government take-over, Canada’s National Capital Region has never again enjoyed an integrated transit service. Even today it endures a perpetually sub-optimal patchwork of municipal transit initiatives, each serving limited objectives constrained by the partial mandates and budgetary limitations of the separate inward-looking jurisdictions.
It’s strategically important to consider why some cities shut down their electric LRT systems, and persist with cumbersome inter-jursidictional transit, while others continually modernize them. In this region, the federal government holds the regulatory prerogative for a whole-system and whole-regional perspective.
RE: “I no longer own a car.”
My next car’s a train!
Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | http://www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | http://www.onyvamoose.com
joseph.potvin@letsgomoose.com
joseph.potvin@onyvamoose.com
Can’t wait for the moose train to arrive in Wakefield.Its the only solution for the the old track bed that will not increase taxes and will only be paid for by the actual users.Thank you,John.