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City council has sent a warning shot at the Rideau Transit Group (RTG), threatening to end the LRT maintenance contract if the company doesn’t fix the problems with the $2.1-billion Confederation Line.

The caretaker agreement with RTG’s affiliate Rideau Transit Maintenance (RTM) is a 30-year deal, but the city after only about six months of full LRT operations is ready to go nuclear if it doesn’t hear credible fix-up plan from the company.

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“It’s time to give them a real kick in the pants to smarten them up,” Mayor Jim Watson said after a closed three-hour council session Monday afternoon.

Watson said sending a notice of default to RTG on Tuesday will be an unprecedented procurement move by the city.

“We’ve given them six months. We’ve seen some improvements, but clearly not enough to satisfy the public or members of council,” Watson said

Council, in the public part of the special meeting, voted 19-0 to send the notice of default and give RTG until March 31 to come up with a credible plan to fix the maintenance problems. There was no debate about the measure in the open session of the meeting.