Now it’s up to the judge: Public hearings into Hamilton’s slippery parkway mystery have ended

Public hearings into the slippery Red Hill mystery wrapped up this week with disagreement over the public safety relevance of the parkway friction study at the heart of Hamilton's years-long judicial inquiry.

Council first asked for the judicial inquiry in 2019 after discovering friction tests on the east-end parkway were buried for years - despite hundreds of crashes documented by The Spec and long-standing rumours the road was slippery.

The bombshell discovery sparked emergency repaving, a speed limit cut and the threat of dozens of lawsuits.

Four years later, it is now up to Superior Court Justice Herman Wilton-Siegel to deliver findings on who knew what about the study, why it was buried - and whether its alleged suppression endangered public safety.

In closing submissions Thursday, lawyer for the city Eli Lederman acknowledged there was limited disclosure" of the now-infamous Tradewind Scientific friction report - but he also argued that had no significant impact on the safety performance" of the parkway.

Hamilton lawyers later emphasized a pavement expert hired by the city for the inquiry found friction levels in past years on the Red Hill were acceptable" - even before it was repaved - and that the collision rate for the parkway was comparable to other fast-moving roads.

That opinion differs from the central Tradewind test findings that parkway friction in 2013 was lower than - and in some locations, well below - guidelines used in the U.K. Separately, an expert hired by the judicial inquiry also provided an opinion that low friction could have been a factor in a high number of wet weather crashes on the Red Hill.

The Tradewind report was delivered to the city's top engineer, Gary Moore, in 2014 by Golder Associates, Hamilton's go-to consultant on Red Hill asphalt evaluation. In closing submissions, Golder lawyer Jennifer Roberts emphasized no expert has suggested low friction is exclusively to blame for parkway collisions.

But she said Golder more than once suggested friction improvements like microsurfacing to the city, including as far back as 2014. If those recommendations had been implemented - or even shared more widely - we might not be here," she said of the inquiry.

At the close of public hearings, Wilton-Siegel promised to deliver a report of his findings and recommendations to inquiry participants and the public at the same time." But that might not happen fast.

Inquiry counsel Emily Lawrence earlier cautioned that other judicial inquiry reports have taken months to complete. For example, a 900-plus page report of findings by the judge probing a Collingwood utility sale was published 10 months after public hearings ended in 2019.

Hamilton's inquiry has already stretched over four years to include 131,000 documents, sometimes-conflicting testimony from 75 hearing witnesses - and potentially $26 million in taxpayer dollars.

The wide-ranging judicial probe was asked to answer more than 20 questions related to not just the buried report, but also parkway safety generally.

That means the inquiry heard testimony on everything from aggregate used to build the parkway in 2007, to the safety implications of a curvy road design, to the appropriateness of how city staffers interacted with consultants.

A lot of information came out of months of public hearings. Here's a sample of what we've learned:

Was the buried Tradewind report important for public safety?

In reports and testimony, well-qualified experts notably disagreed about the value of the infamous hidden report.

Veteran Ontario pavement expert David Hein questioned both the testing technology and the U.K. standards used in the report. He called parkway friction acceptable" based on 2019 tests done ahead of repaving.

By contrast, inquiry expert Gerardo Flintsch, a Virginia Tech professor, accepted the validity of the Tradewind tests. He called parkway friction relatively low" and said it could have played a role - among other factors like speed and tight turns - in wet-weather collisions.

Who knew about the report?

The city official at the centre of the buried report mystery, former engineering director Gary Moore, testified he chose not to share the Tradewind report with anyone at the city because it made no sense whatsoever" to him.

Inquiry evidence shows a Spectator Freedom-of-Information request for friction testing helped force the release of the Tradewind report to council and the public in early 2019. But confidential legal emails also show city lawyers previously discussed whether they could withhold the conclusions of the report.

Was there wrongdoing?

That's a question for the judge - although a judicial inquiry does not make findings of criminal or civil liability. The second phase of hearings included expert opinion from veteran municipal manager Janice Baker on a broad range of questions about ethical governance and bureaucrat conduct.

For example, she was asked about the appropriateness of city staffers urging a consultant to remove conclusions about parkway lighting from a safety review and to soften and stage" a report.

Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com