Roundabout thinking on roundabouts from Ottawa city planners
Many roads in West Carleton are a mess of potholes and cracks, but the biggest roadwork expenditure this year? A single-lane roundabout has a pricetag of $3.3 million.
Randall Denley
Publishing date: Sep 15, 2020 • Last Updated 23 hours ago • 3 minute read
Ottawa’s roads are notoriously bad due to years of underspending on repairs, but the city has a plan to catch up over the next several years. One might have hoped that a feature of the plan would be doing the most important things first, but that’s clearly not the case in West Carleton-March ward.
The ward’s major roads require major repairs and have for years. Donald B. Munro Drive, one of the two main roads in Carp, is a mess of patches and broken pavement. Carp Road north of the village is in such rough condition that heavy truck traffic is vibrating residents’ houses. North of Carp, the grandly named Thomas A. Dolan Parkway resembles a corduroy road.
So, it was a bit of a surprise to discover that the city’s big expenditure in West Carleton this year was not reconstruction of any of these roads, but instead was a roundabout at a rural intersection near Kanata. It was an even bigger surprise to discover that the single-lane roundabout has a pricetag of $3.3 million. It’s almost unimaginable where the money is going, unless they are going to dig a hole in the ground, then bury it.
The “problem” the city is correcting is a minor back-up of cars at the existing four-way stop signs at Huntmar Road and Richardson Side Road, north of the Tanger Outlets. At peak demand, 25 or even 30 cars can be waiting at the stop sign. To find a higher priority, one need only turn on to Huntmar. The road is a mess of cracks and patches.
The $3.3 million doesn’t buy any repaving of that road, but there will be pedestrian crossovers, on the off-chance that someone might want to walk from Kanata to Carp. A small part of Huntmar closer to Kanata will be repaved in two or three years, possibly. The rest of the road, well, who knows? Certainly not the city.
It’s worth noting that traffic demand at the Huntmar-Richardson intersection is partly due to the fact that the city has allowed a suburb called Arcadia to be built near the outlets, but a road that would connect the suburb to the rest of Kanata has been delayed for years. That $32-million project finally started this year. Now, Arcadia residents have to drive a circuitous route to get out of their neighbourhood, but when the new road is complete, use of the pricey roundabout will surely decline.
One of the arguments in favour of roundabouts is that they are supposed to be cheaper than traffic signals. Asked for a simple cost comparison, city staff gave a roundabout answer. First, it was that the cost of the roundabout and the signals was “comparable,” a feature shared by any two numbers. A follow-up elicited the information that the costs were “similar” but no numbers were available, not even the cost of a typical traffic signal.
In addition to the roundabout, the city is spending $7 million on improving West Carleton roads this year, but the chief criterion seems to be light use. Only three roads get the full resurfacing treatment and one of those is a short stretch in Constance Bay that leads to a dead end.
In an interview in the Community Voice weekly newspaper, ward councillor Eli El-Chantiry defended the roundabout project, saying that it will keep cars moving and reduce emissions. Environmentally, this would be the roads equivalent of installing a single LED bulb in your house. Plus, the councillor pointed out, traffic signals can be unreliable when there is a power outage. OK, right.
Here’s a novel thought. Perhaps the city should identify the roadwork it intends to do in the next five years, ward by ward, then present that plan to residents to see if the city’s priorities line up with theirs. Clear plans and reporting on results are the heart of good government. Right now, the city’s roads plan is about as transparent as a bucket of tar.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author of the new mystery Payback, available at randalldenley.com Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/de...-9671cd821e3a/
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