Nineteen stations part of Watson's new transit plan for Ottawa
By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN October 9, 2013 12:05 PM
OTTAWA — Hoping to position himself as a transportation visionary before next year’s civic election, Mayor Jim Watson announced revisions to the city’s master plan for transit, roads and cycling Wednesday morning that hopes to extend rail west, south and east by 2023.
The $2.5-billion plan to have light-rail or O-Train service in tendrils extending to Bayshore, Baseline, Leitrim and Place d’Orléans relies on $975 million each in funding from the federal and provincial governments, which Watson said will be part of a package of top-priority requests that also includes money to clean up the Ottawa River and expand social housing.
It also means pushing back other long-planned transportation projects, such as a parkway through Alta Vista that would better connect south Gloucester to downtown by road.
The Wednesday-morning speech was to be followed by a Wednesday-afternoon revelation of the fine details, which were absent in the morning. Watson wanted as much focus as possible to be on what the plan contains, rather than what it doesn’t.
The single biggest element is a $500-million plan to extend light rail east beyond the Greenbelt to Place d’Orléans, skipping a previous plan to first build a separate Transitway line next to Highway 174 that would later be converted to rail.
“We could go slowly and build each segment of the network over a protracted period of time, suffering wasteful and disruptive conversions along the way, or we can move ahead and use public transit to define how we grow,” Watson said. “Leapfrogging,” as he called it, will save money in the long run by building sooner a system we know we’ll need eventually.
Orléans, whose commuters use public transit in much greater proportions than those from any other suburb, is the only community outside the Greenbelt to get light rail anytime soon, in the mayor’s vision — the previous plan was to start contemplating LRT extensions that far in 2031.
Kanata gets an LRT extension as far as Bayshore, and a dedicated Transitway west of that.
Barrhaven gets the LRT line as far as Baseline, hooking into the existing Transitway. That rail line is the one that runs west from Tunney’s Pasture and was the subject of so much controversy last spring, with the city still negotiating with the National Capital Commission over land it needs along the Ottawa River. The plan assumes that’ll be sorted out.
South Gloucester gets an O-Train extension running as far south as Bowesville, with a stop at Leitrim (the plan also includes new stops at South Keys and Gladstone Avenue). There’s no plan for full LRT service in the near future, or for a spur to the airport, which the city says isn’t worth the cost, though the airport authority may build a “people-mover” to a nearby station.
The plan also includes numerous widenings of suburban roads, from Carp Road to Brian Coburn Boulevard, “because realistically most of our trips are in personal vehicles,” Watson said. And the 2014 budget will be the first to include dedicated funding for pedestrian and cycling bridges, starting with one that’s already in the works between Somerset Street East in Sandy Hill and Donald Street on the other side of the Rideau River.
The detailed plan is to be presented at a 3 p.m. joint meeting of city council’s transportation committee and the transit commission. It’s to be followed by about a month of public consultations and be approved by city council by the end of the year.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
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