St. Laurent Blvd Transit Priority Corridor [Innes Rd to Hemlock Rd]
 

Plan to build bus lanes on St. Laurent Boulevard will require property acquisition

By Josh Pringle, CTV News
Updated: September 25, 2025 at 9:55AM EDT | Published: September 25, 2025 at 7:56AM EDT

https://i.imgur.com/u7hSXg3.png

The $260 million plan to create a transit priority corridor along Ottawa’s St. Laurent Boulevard with bus lanes and cycle tracks will affect 79 properties, with eight properties requiring full acquisition by the city.

Ottawa’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee will vote Thursday to approve the functional design for the St. Laurent Boulevard transit priority corridor environmental study.

The plan would see 5.2 kilometres of St. Laurent Boulevard, between Hemlock Road and Innes Road, redeveloped with bus-only lanes, new two-metre cycle tracks, improved sidewalks and crosswalks and transit priority at several intersections.

The Transportation Master Plan approved earlier this year confirmed the need for transit improvements on St. Laurent Boulevard, including bus lanes south of St. Laurent Station. There are 10 OC Transpo bus routes that use St. Laurent Boulevard to provide transfer opportunities to O-Train Line 1, and the road is “heavily used by out-of-service buses” accessing the OC Transpo garage on St. Laurent, according to staff.

The proposed St. Laurent Boulevard transit priority corridor includes the creation of bus only lanes between Lemieux Street and Innes Road/Industrial Avenue, the creation of a median multi-use pathway between Lemieux Street and Tremblay Road, wider sidewalks and cycle tracks on other areas of St. Laurent Boulevard, and transit priority at several intersections.

Here is a look at the proposed St. Laurent Boulevard transit priority corridor:

• Hemlock Road to north of Montreal Road: Two travel lanes, upgraded sidewalks, dedicated cycling facilities and enhanced bus stops. Staff say buses will operate in “mixed transit.”
• Montreal Road to north of McArthur Avenue: Two vehicle lanes in each direction, with upgraded sidewalks, dedicated cycling facilities, and bus stop enhancements.
• McArthur Avenue to north of Lemieux Street: Staff say a northbound lane would be added through reallocation of an existing general-purpose lane. “In the southbound direction, the EA recommends buses operating in mixed traffic with transit priority at intersections,” staff said. There would be upgraded sidewalks, dedicated cycling facilities and enhanced bus stops.
• Lemieux Street to Tremblay Road: Staff say this segment is the “most complex” due to the connection with the St. Laurent O-Train station and the Highway 417 interchange. There would be two general purpose lanes in each direction, a northbound bus-only lane between Hwy. 417 and the LRT station bus access ramp, and a median multi-use pathway with barrier protection from the adjacent lanes.
• South of Tremblay Road to Innes Road/Industrial Avenue: Staff say the preferred solution is to maintain the existing four general traffic lanes and “widen the corridor to provide continuous bus lanes” in each direction, along with wider sidewalks and cycle tracks.

The report says the plan also includes a new multi-use pathway to connect to the St. Laurent O-Train Station from St. Laurent Boulevard.

According to staff, the St. Laurent transportation priority corridor would save northbound OC Transpo buses 4.4 minutes during weekday afternoon travel periods and improve bus reliability by 29 per cent.

Staff say the recommended functional design for the St. Laurent Boulevard transit priority corridor affects 79 properties, with eight requiring full acquisition due to the degree of the project’s impact. According to the report, the remaining 71 properties would be impacted “varying amounts,” which would “affect operations/functionality of the property, or encroach on yards, signs and parking areas.”

The price tag for the recommended plan is $260 million in 2025 dollars, while the price to design and implement a phased implementation design is $241.

The report does not say when construction could begin on the project.

“Implementation of all segments remains contingent upon key factors such as funding availability; future development/redevelopment; and City Council priorities,” staff said.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/articl...y-acquisition/

Project website:

https://ottawa.ca/stlaurentblvd

Interesting features:

Some major expropriation at Montreal Rd and Donald St:

https://i.imgur.com/bzqgFMM.png

https://i.imgur.com/rJvAuVm.png



And a MUP in the median under Hwy 417:

https://i.imgur.com/0C8BQSA.png


https://i.imgur.com/GFym1UH.png

I really truly despise how every bus stop is not just far-sided, but really super far-sided, which makes it hard to connect from one bus to another on the many disjointed trips that our transit map forces many daily users to make.

(Other than the "near-sided" westbound Montreal Road stop, which is not even portrayed at all, it is that far removed from the intersection.)

I feel like the Baseline BRT should be given priority over this project. I would have to imagine it carries more PPH by a decent margin but I don't have those numbers.

The cost of this project would also "cover" OCs operating deficit for 5 years or something. Capital expenditures are great but not at the cost of operating expenditures. Perhaps the busses wouldn't be stuck in so much traffic if people were in the bus rather than parked in their car in front of it.

I think that this type of thing is why there is so little trust in the City. The northern 2 km of this 5 km project does nothing positive for transit – yet this is called a Transit Priority Project. Really, this is probably $60M of transit work and $200M of cycling infrastructure and acquiring the land to put it on. Why can’t the City be straight with the public?

This has been named a Transit Priority Project. Looking over the first 1.75 km of the plans, the section between, Hemlock and Cote, for transit improvements. Here are my findings:

• St. Laurent already has formalized bike lanes north of Montreal Road.
• Stops north of Meadow Park removed. Leaves about 330 metres between SB stops.
• NEW Crosswalk added between bus stops north of Karen, accessing Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.
• Landscaping (trees) removed from the high-rise buildings at Dunbarton/Brittany @ St. Laurent.
• NB left-turn lane onto Dunbarton lengthened. No buses use Dunbarton.
• Road widened between 505 and 520 St. Laurent (location 10+820) resulting in a longer crosswalk.
• Double-lane, NB from Montreal is extended about 75 metres.
• SB bus stop moved to south (far-side) of Montreal.
• Pads for shelters are shown for NB and SB bus stops at Montreal Road, but actual shelters are not mentioned.
• Right-turn slip-lanes added from NB St. Laurent to EB Montreal and WB Montreal to NB St. Laurent.
• Montreal Road to get the same ‘Complete Street’ make-over.
• SB right-turn lane onto Morin removed leaving no SB bus stop for almost 2 km!
• NB left-turn lane onto WB Montreal extended about 45 metres.
• The sections of treed boulevard south of Camil are removed.
• The NB bus stop in front of the school has been removed, leaving 330 metres between Noranda and Clarke.
• There should be a crosswalk at the north access to the school, with a bus stop on either side, replacing the Noranda stop.
• NB right-turn lane onto Clarke has been removed.
• SB right-turn lane onto Cote has been removed.

I see nothing that is a real benefit for transit. This portion is not for transit, but is for cycle infrastructure, primarily convert bike lanes into segregated cycle tracks. There are improvements, south of Montreal Road for cycling, but transit appears worse.

Next section, between Cote and McArthur:

• SB right-turn lane onto Guy has been removed.
• SB left-turn lane into Rideau HS has been removed.
• NB right-turn lane into Rideau HS has been removed.
• NB bus stop at Guy has been moved north (far-side) of the intersection.
• SB bus platform moved closer to Guy intersection.
• NEW NB bus stop added just north of McArthur intersection.
• Pedestrian and cyclist crossing is now enabled on the north side of the McArthur intersection.
• SB right-turn lane onto McArthur extended about 75 metres north, but right-turn channel removed.
• SB buses can use the right-turn lane to proceed straight through (Impedes right turns on red).
• Transit signal priority given if bus is waiting in right-turn lane. (Wasted if stop made south of McArthur.)
• Short length of bus-only lane south of McArthur intersection. (Not needed if transit priority given.)
• McArthur widened and returned to angled intersection.
• Trees removed from S-W corner of McArthur intersection.
• NB left lane becomes left-turn lane about 200 metres south of McArthur – about 100m before current turn-lane.
• NB bus stop, south of McArthur, moved north about 50m. (Tighter distance for bus to move over before turn.)
• NB traffic bottle-necked to one lane for last 200m before McArthur intersection – when bus needs to move over!
• NB bus-only lane shown between McArthur and Donald.
• SB right-turn lane onto Donald extended about 90m.
• SB left-turn lane onto Donald extended about 20m.
• Only N-W corner of relatively new St. Laurent @ Donald intersection will remain.
• SB buses can block SB right-turn lane onto Donald.
• NB bus-only lane continues across Donald.

The McArthur intersection is a mess. South-bound, the right-turn channel has been removed, meaning that there needed to be a longer storage lane for vehicles turning onto McArthur. The the SB bus is added into that right-turn lane – except that the bus is going straight through; so a bus will block right-turn on red movements. This means that there needs to be an even longer storage lane. There should never be more than one SB bus waiting at the signal. It will get into the right-turn lane and eventually get to the stop-line as vehicles ahead make their turn. There needs to be a right-turn channel so that vehicles can continue to turn while the bus waits to cross. This should be the same as NB at Ogilvie. A channel need not be incompatible with cycle tracks.

Then there is the short length of SB bus-only lane south of the McArthur intersection. Placing a stop in that lane can negates any transit priority through the intersection. If the bus needs to stop, then the other traffic has caught up to the bus by the time it needs to pull away from the stop. This simply becomes a bus bay that can trap a bus during peak traffic. It would be better to put the SB stop on the island created by the right-turn channel – similar to Baseline at Prince of Wales. That auxiliary lane should simply be an acceleration lane.

North-bound is a recipe for accidents. There are two general lanes before and two general lanes after this intersection. EXCEPT, 200m before the intersection, it narrows to only one lane going straight through. Just like Baseline west of Woodroffe, when people find that they are inexplicably in a turn lane, they will try to quickly shift out of it. This results in a lot of turbulence in the lanes. This happens to be exactly where the NB bus is trying to move all the way over to turn left onto McArthur. This is crazy. Leave the # 14 bus stop on McArthur, just after the left turn, as it is now.

Two straight-through lanes should be maintained, with the left-turn lane diverging as its own lane. The NB bus-only lane is distinct from the two general traffic lanes north of Donald, and it can continue to be separate through the McArthur intersection. The NB bus-only lane can be pushed into the 4m boulevard beside the cycle track. By moving the bus stop south (near-side) of (or even within) the intersection, a channel could be created so that the bus could continue past the intersection, to merge north of it into the right general traffic lane. That would be true transit priority.

Lest you have the idea that I do nothing but complain about what the City designs (although it is probably too late to change your mind about that), I have put pen to paper – OK, finger to mouse – and used the City’s plan as a starting point. I liberally used cut & paste to create what I think is a better idea. (The graphics are not perfect, but I think that they illustrate the ideas.)

The overview of McArthur to Donald:

https://i.postimg.cc/x82Dcs97/Mc-Art...a-Overview.jpg

In this diagram I have continued the NB bus-only lane between Donald and McArthur so that the two general traffic lanes remain. This will remove a lot of the traffic turbulence from the City’s planned bottle-neck, allowing the # 14 to more easily shift to the left-turn lane. I have also moved the NB stop at McArthur into the intersection. (A NB stop can remain between Donald and McArthur, if it is useful. I have left the SB mid-block stop, as a reference.)

I have pulled the SB stop at McArthur to the north (near-side) of the intersection, and I have made the SB acceleration lane from McArthur no longer Bus-only. The bus would now stop at the island formed by the SB to WB right-turn channel.

Here is a larger view of the McArthur intersection. (Ignore the text. I didn’t bother to remove it all.)

https://i.postimg.cc/RhB5NPvY/Mc-Arthur-Idea-Detail.jpg

On the NB side, I am imagining the bus stopping at a STOP sign, but being able to proceed when the way is safe. The bus would not need to be held back by the traffic light. This gives the bus an advantage for speed and merging back into the mixed traffic lane.

Notice that I have stops on McArthur. I am not trying to make a few stops do everything. Yes, it will mean that customers might need to walk between stops, but that is common for most intersections where buses meet. Since both the # 7 and # 14 travel the same route to/from St. Laurent Station, the only two expected transfers would be from SB # 7 to WB # 14 or from EB # 14 to NB # 7. Both of these are marginally better in this plan than in the City’s plan.

So, this is mostly a cycle project.

Just like speed cameras, fines mostly to cover administration, maintenance and to cover new caméra installation.

In what sense? They were asked to study an area for transit priority and they found the two northern segments will require minimal improvements. Do you want them to implement bus lanes for no reason?

Staff were pretty clear that the two northern segments had low priority and wouldn’t happen (if they happen) for decades. The only thing that will happen in the northern segments is securing property as redevelopment occurs.

Are the bus lanes south of the 417 not transit priority?

I hope that you are not trying to be serious with your comments.

In what sense is it more a cycling project than a transit project, you ask? Anyone who looks at the first image (post # 1 of this thread) will easily see that there is a longer length of purple (labeled as ‘Complete Street’ enhancements) than there is any other colour.

You ask “Do you want them to implement bus lanes for no reason?” If that is the choice, then my answer is YES!. It is certainly being done for the cycling tracks. North of Montreal Road, for example, there are currently fully functional bike lanes – yet, at great expense, fully segregated cycle tracks are being installed.

As for property acquisition, a great number of properties are being affected because the final roadway needs to be very wide to include all the elements of a ‘Complete Street’ – except that additional space for transit is not generally being included. As with the Mark Motors property, as sites were redeveloped, a widened RoW could have been worked into the plan. In time, only a few properties would have needed to have land expropriated.

South of the 417, I’m curious about the bus-only lane in to Tremblay. I suspect that it is to be used to turn buses around – but couldn’t they simply do that at the St Laurent Station? Am I pleased that the buses are getting their own lanes south of Tremblay? Yes. Although having to widen out two overpasses will be expensive – more so because of the extra width needed for segregated cycle tracks. As vtecyo mentioned in the Roads/Bridges thread, if the overpass north of Innes (over the disused rail corridor) could be removed, I think that that would be a better solution over widening that area.

Then, of course, there is the question of whether full bus-only lanes are actually needed south of the 417. The buses running along that stretch are the # 19, #40, and # 41. The main ones to worry about are the 40s. Each of them only runs every half hour or so (despite being erroneously labeled as ‘Frequent’). Each has a scheduled travel time between St. Laurent and Elmvale of about 9-10-11 minutes, regardless of the time of day – so the scheduling does not indicate much variability due to running in mixed traffic. The two bus routes are spaced apart by about 10 or 20 minutes north-bound and by 13 or 17 minutes south-bound. Is this frequent enough or are the buses negatively influenced enough by traffic to require separate transit lanes? I don’t know, but I’m glad to see them being recommended.

From my point of view, there is usually a reason to improve transit. Adding separate bus-only lanes (or even entirely separate corridors) should be the priority. If there is no practical option to add bus lanes, then priority at intersections should be the minimum. (But these need to actually help buses – not be bus bays, as depicted for McArthur.) In Ottawa, transit infrastructure should sit higher on the priority ladder than cycling infrastructure. In this project, there is land being expropriated, not to benefit transit, but to convert bike lanes to segregated cycle tracks.

OC Transpo’s operating budget for 2025 is $856M, and it will likely be about a Billion-dollars next year. And the service provided is not good enough to attract riders-by-choice. Cyclists in Ottawa are a relatively small group. You could put cycle tracks on every road in Ottawa and the number of people riding on them to get to work on a January morning will never come close to the number who are busing to work at the same time. On the other hand, providing a transit system that efficiently moves people quickly and easily from origin to destination in a reliable manner, has potential to draw many more people onto transit.

There is a transit plan and a cycling plan that has been in the works for decades with an understanding that when roads need to be rebuilt that is the time to implement the plans.

It's disingenuous that someone would say that this is primarily a cycling project when more than 80% of the ROW is still dedicated to cars.

There is a clear relationship between transit, walking, cycling and TOD, you need to address all of the factors in order to make them all succeed. Ottawa's Cycling Plan has a section framing this:

In essence TOD won't be successful if the area is not pedestrian- and cyclist- friendly. The plans are not to address current car-centric habits, they are laying the foundation for the future some of us may not see.

Kitchissippi, your bias for cycling is showing through – just as mine for transit is clear.

I am not suggesting that this St. Laurent plan is all about protecting the cars’ supposed right to the road. Certainly, St. Laurent is still predominantly a roadway for moving traffic. I could argue about your “80%” number, since, for example, at St. Laurent and Camil, the cross section gives traffic 17.5m and active transportation (cycle tracks, sidewalks, and buffers) about 16m of width. But, yes, this is still a major north-south roadway and it still needs to move a lot of vehicles. Throttling traffic is not good for a city, as it reduces economic opportunities.

This plan is being ‘billed’ as a TRANSIT PRIORITY PROJECT. The amount of transit benefit is small, compared to the amount of cycling benefit. This is not a project that primarily improves transit through the corridor – it primarily improves cycling. City staff has learned, however, that advertising an expensive project as a CYCLING project gets a lot of push-back from tax-payers who think that cycling is impractical in Ottawa. Staff has found that labeling something as an improvement to transit gets a much better reception. Thus, despite the limited amount of transit improvement, and the greater amount of cycling improvement, this has been tagged as a TRANSIT project. This is what is disingenuous.

This plan is one of CYCLING improves, first; then a few transit improvements (with some downgrades, as well); and lastly, a denigration for general traffic.

And, I agree that TOD needs to make it convenient for people to minimize car use. This generally means that the project should be designed to favour active transportation within and immediately around it. However, the main element is in the name, TRANSIT Oriented Development. If TRANSIT is lousy, then there will not be TOD. No developer is going to try to sell a project that is oriented to abysmal transit. TOD happens when it is developed around transit that takes people easily and efficiently to where they want to go. Excellent TRANSIT should be prioritized over cycling. Otherwise, it would have been called Cycling Oriented Development.

Superior transit and cycling infrastructure are certainly not mutually exclusive. As you point out, if people want to live ‘car-light’, they pick places that provides them usable transit for longer trips, cycling for medium trips, and walking for local trips. A 15-minute neighbourhood is quite limited if walking is the only option. Cycling opens up the possibilities to a wider area. However, if transit is so poor that 15 minutes doesn’t even get you as far as walking, then the limitation remains and people will need to drive.

I would say that the implémentation of 4.2.1 has been a dismal failure so far. If it wasn't, transit ridership would be rebounding much more quickly as has occurred in many other Canadian cities. Taxpayers have clearly shown this failure to delivery on this policy. Many parts of the city that had direct and even fréquent service to Downtown now require not one but 2 transfers. This is success? Furthermore, LRT is not rapid as originally advertised with what appears to bé permanent 'temporary' go slow orders. As far as TOD, that is all great, but it is existing taxpayers living in existing neighbourhoods who funded this project. I drive through one of those neighbourhoods yesterday, where all transit has been removed and it is a 1 or 2 km walk to closest transit route running hourly on reduced hours that really doesn't take you anywhere of interest . And that is well inside the Greenbelt.

My point is this:

If it is 2050 and the only thing to come of this plan is the segments south of the 417, then it can not in any way be labeled a cycling project.

The recommendation is to pursue the work south of the 417 if funding is provided by higher levels of government. The rest is being approved for future proofing, it will not happen until well after the mid 2040s, if it does happen.

Minor point: In the two northern segments, the majority of property acquisition is to facilitate the Montreal road slip-lanes (for cars) and the other is the weird and unnecessary stuff at Hemlock.

Meh. Y'all are whiners. I want this and every major boulevard in the city to get this treatment. It finally creates a street where all traffic flows properly. Those time savings and reliability improvements for transit are not small. It should also setup Saint Laurent to develop more. Less car dealerships and furniture plazas. More condos and restaurants.

As for the "it's for bikes". If that was true, the project wouldn't be so expensive. Repainting bikes lanes is cheap.

On the section south of Montreal Road, it would be pretty much impossible to make the corridor worse for cycling. So yeah, it improves cycling.

It also improves walking by a lot. Currently the situation of most of the sidewalks hugging the curbline makes it horrible for walking. Just having the cycle tracks to add some buffer space is going to be great. And, of course, being better for walking also makes it much better for transit since people just don't teleport to bus stops.

I seem to have been interpreted as being against adding cycle tracks to St. Laurent. I am not against adding them. I am against using the guise of a transit project to install them. The City needs to be clear and transparent about what it is doing. This is not principally a 5-kilometre long transit project.

That said, I think that the plan does make cycling better; I think that there are places in this ‘Transit Plan’ that actually make transit worse; and I think that there are things that make it worse for other vehicles.

As I have brought up before, the intersection at McArthur, for example, is poorly designed, in my opinion.

https://i.postimg.cc/Prd6Fg7k/Problems-at-Mc-Arthur.jpg

There are better designs that will actually improve transit, while still adding cycle tracks. One suggestion is to add a right-turn channel and pull the south-bound bus stop back to that island on the north (near-side) of the intersection. Once that is done, a queue-jump becomes useful.

As designed, south-bound vehicles turning right onto McArthur can flow freely while they have a green signal. However, they will be moving slower than the straight-through lanes beside them. The bus will be within the slower stream of right-turning vehicles. (Currently, the bus moves in the straight-through traffic lane.)

Once the signal goes red, the vehicles turning left from north-bound St. Laurent have priority over those turning right. Based on the lengthened left-turn lane, the City is expecting a lot of vehicles to be turning onto McArthur. This will restrict the flow of those turning right to just a trickle. If the bus is lucky, it will creep up to the head of the line, at the stop-line. There it will wait – blocking any more people from turning right – until it gets a queue-jump signal.

The queue-jump will allow the bus to cross the intersection before other vehicles. This is normally done to allow the bus to merge into, or cross, the travel lane without conflict. It works well in places like east-bound Heron at Riverside, and west-bound Baseline at Prince of Wales. (Both of those two examples have near-side stops.) However, placing a bus stop immediately across the intersection, within a short bus-only lane nullifies the benefit of a queue-jump.

The bus crosses the intersection first - only to stop. By the time the bus is ready to pull out into the travel lane, the traffic has caught up and is blocking the bus’ movement. The short bus-only lane that the bus is trapped in is too short to get up to speed for a ‘zipper’ merge, so the bus must try to ‘muscle’ its way out, into traffic. This is precisely why OC Transpo has argued for the removal of existing bus bays – because leaving them can be difficult.

Overall, with the new plan, south-bound buses will have a better chance of getting trapped in a slow lane of right-turning vehicles, and they will still get dumped into a bus bay after the intersection.

But that is just one example of how this plan could potentially make transit less reliable, while not fixing a known issue. The north-bound lanes actually increase the danger level.

North-bound, the left general traffic lane becomes the left-turn lane. Prior to there, and north of McArthur there are two straight-through lanes – but it inexplicably necks down to a single through lane for this short section. This will catch many drivers off-guard, resulting in a good number of cars quickly trying to merge into the right lane. This is the exact place where a bus will be trying to merge the other direction, to get to the left-turn lane. This weave is dangerous and should never be designed that way on purpose.

The north-bound bus-only lane should be moved to where the 4m-wide boulevard is, immediately beside it, so that two traffic lanes can be maintained. A left-turning bus will have a safer time crossing two non-turbulent lanes over crossing through a weave.

Also, the west-bound bus stop on McArthur, immediately after the left-turn should be maintained. The turning bus should not need to stop on St. Laurent north of Donald. That gives the driver ample opportunity to merge left. And, it gives riders an easy ‘out’ is they are on the wrong bus. Many times, I have seen riders suddenly realize that they are on the wrong bus – usually when it makes an unexpected turn. Having the stop just after the turn allows those riders to exit without having to wait, and then walk several blocks back.

That is kinda the reason for consultation. To get feedback.

The obsession on this forum with opposing cycling is a bit bizarre. And I say this as someone who is not a cyclist and cares most about transit.

When they are redesigning a major corridor, they are obviously going to try and improve transit and cycling. If transit isn't done to the same standard as cycling, that's not some grand conspiracy. JFC. It's usually either:

1) Incompetence from designers who don't take transit and aren't transit nerds.
2) A deliberate choice to favour motorists or limit roadspace taken away.