Greenbelt development - the debate begins

[waterloowarrior]

Plans for the Transitway and for the Longfields neighbourhood go a while back. this ppt has some info http://www.barrhavenbia.ca/planning/...nceptmar07.ppt

[Dado]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Was that land kept aside for after the Transitway, or did they get lucky there that no one wanted to develop it?

If anything, the "luck" was in securing the land for the N-S LRT corridor.

Originally Posted by S-Man

I'm not sure if the Barrhaven Transitway corridor was factored into initial plans - Barrhaven was supposed to get LRT along a perpendicular route in 2006 but then it was cancelled. The Transitway wasn't announced until 2009, I think. I think they got lucky and the final phases of retail were able to incorporate the last-minute corridor. The earlier finished phases just had their parking lot gouged out for the Strandherd bus underpass.

I'm rather stunned at the level of ignorance of the City's Rapid Transit planning on display here. To put it simply, all Transitway corridors outside the Greenbelt have long been reserved.

The land for the Southwest Transitway to Barrhaven/South Nepean Town Centre was secured in the late 1990s, and south from there all the way to Cambrian Rd in another couple of EAs in 2005 and 2006 (the former being the N-S LRT EA). No parking lot was "gouged out" for the underpass; it was put into a reserved corridor between parking lots that had become overgrown with weeds and whose uses seemed to have been limited to a few picnic tables for retail workers and stowage of garbage containers.

All developers long ago knew that the Southwest Transitway was coming. They knew that it would go under Strandherd and would be trenched through the northern part. There was no luck in it. As above, the "last minute" business was really concerning the N-S LRT corridor and how it would integrate with the BRT corridor. Indeed, it was all so last minute that the later 2006 EA for the Southwest Transitway extension to Cambrian ended up modifying the 2005 EA for the N-S LRT with respect to how the two facilities would link up east of Greenbank. That link-up location lies to the south of the current development, as does much of the rest of the future South Nepean Town Centre.

Barrhaven was never supposed to get an LRT corridor; what it was always supposed to get is the BRT corridor that it is now getting. It was only in the 2003 TMP that someone came up with the idea to send LRT to Barrhaven via Riverside South rather than a saner route along the Southwest Transitway and railway corridors.

As far as rapid transit to the suburbs goes, Barrhaven has been unusually fortunate. It is the only one with a dedicated transitway across the Greenbelt and the only one to get a transitway built through the suburb itself and it was slated to get LRT. Kanata and Orleans continue to rely on freeway bus lanes, and only as far as March Rd and Place d'Orléans, respectively. This is despite the fact that both Kanata and Orleans have much larger ridership than Barrhaven.

As for the term 'town centres', I think in the '80s the city was actually thinking 'Town Car centres'.

Of course back then it was the RMOC and the townships.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

And that's just it: the foxes were left in charge of the henhouses, and they built shithouses. (How's that for a mangled metaphor?)

The city should have dictated the terms and forms of the "town centres". Instead we got Orleans, and Kanata Centrum.

Or they could have done something even simpler: just bought the land outright and planned and developed the damned things themselves.

[S-Man]

Easy, Dado - I apologize for my ignorance, though it's more like confusion (there was a lot of stuff going on in the mid part of the last decade).

I agree that Barrhaven has been very fortunate when it comes to transit and infrastructure. Likely a reason why it grew by 25% in the last census.

[lrt's friend]

As far as rapid transit to the suburbs goes, Barrhaven has been unusually fortunate. It is the only one with a dedicated transitway across the Greenbelt and the only one to get a transitway built through the suburb itself and it was slated to get LRT. Kanata and Orleans continue to rely on freeway bus lanes, and only as far as March Rd and Place d'Orléans, respectively. This is despite the fact that both Kanata and Orleans have much larger ridership than Barrhaven.

Both Orleans and Kanata got their Transitway. It's called the Queensway.

Transportation to these two communities is a factor of when they were planned, prior to the idea of Transitways and rapid transit. As a result, there is a lack of planned rapid transit corridors except in the newer sections. This has increased costs to deliver rapid transit dramatically and beyond the capacity of the city to fund.

So, we had a choice. Build rapid transit to the south more cheaply where corridors were set aside since day one or don't build it at all. The cost of getting the Transitway out to just Moodie Drive is going to be huge and this is why it has taken so long.

Part of the problem is that we are encouraging development where it is so expensive to deliver transit instead of encouraging development where it is cheap to provide transit. We will see the results on our tax bills.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Both Orleans and Kanata got their Transitway. It's called the Queensway.

Yes, they have bus lanes on the Queensway. And bus lanes on Woodroffe between Hunt Club and the railway tracks at Fallowfield were all that were needed for Barrhaven, especially since bus lanes are what is used further north on Woodroffe where there are far more streets to worry about. That money could have been spent instead on an actual Transitway station at Fallowfield.

Transportation to these two communities is a factor of when they were planned, prior to the idea of Transitways and rapid transit. As a result, there is a lack of planned rapid transit corridors except in the newer sections. This has increased costs to deliver rapid transit dramatically and beyond the capacity of the city to fund.

There are planned transitway corridors both east and west. They have existed at the conceptual level since the mid 1970s. But just because they are planned doesn't mean they aren't going to be costly to build - we need look no further than the recently-developed plan for the section of the West Transitway running north-south between Kanata and Stittsville on an elevated roadway for proof of that.

So, we had a choice. Build rapid transit to the south more cheaply where corridors were set aside since day one or don't build it at all. The cost of getting the Transitway out to just Moodie Drive is going to be huge and this is why it has taken so long.

Are you talking about the entire run from Lincoln Fields to Moodie Drive, or just from Bayshore? The bit from Bayshore isn't that expensive, and most of the expense could be avoided if the City and its consultants stopped pussy-footing with the MTO: no more requirements to build three underpasses to get under multiple ramps when rearranging the interchange layout from parclo to diamond would do the job for far less expenditure.

[waterloowarrior]

JOINT STUDY TO ASSESS CUMULATIVE EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURES ON THE NATIONAL CAPITAL GREENBELT – STUDY REPORT

http://app05.ottawa.ca/sirepub/mtgvi...&itemid=115265

[waterloowarrior]

some open houses finalizing the Greenbelt Master Plan
http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/plac...c-consultation

[J.OT13]

"Finalizing"? How is that possible? It's only been 4 and a half years.