West Gatineau Tramway & Downtown Loop | Proposed

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

It sounds as if the Feds put very little importance on this issue. Based on previous examples, giving the NCC the job of ‘Studying’ the issue is likely to simply add a delay that is far too long and result in no further action to actually implement a solution. Basically, it sounds like they selected the ‘Do Nothing’ option, but want it to appear as if they are doing something.

That's kind of my interpretation as well. They don't need to study the overall Tram project. That's already been done. Fund the Tram and do a study on the possibility of tacking on the loop.

The Kettle Island Bridge, rebuilding Alexandra, the loop and the Market Public Realm are all interconnected and should be considered as one project. But the STO tram as proposed now does not effect any of that.

[rocketphish]

McKenna backs NCC's increased involvement in capital transit planning
"The reality is the NCC plays an important role. We have to think about this area as not Ottawa and Gatineau, but as one region."

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Apr 21, 2021 • 21 minutes ago • 3 minute read

Catherine McKenna, the city’s senior federal cabinet minister, likes to see the National Capital Commission taking a bigger role in planning transportation, including public transit, despite a criticism from Ottawa’s mayor that the agency is needlessly dipping into municipal matters.

“The reality is the NCC plays an important role. We have to think about this area as not Ottawa and Gatineau, but as one region,” McKenna said in an interview Wednesday, two days after the federal budget announced more transportation responsibilities for the NCC.

The federal Liberal government is directing the NCC to look at the potential for a tramway connecting the two cities, essentially sending the agency on a mission to study the idea of a transit loop between the downtowns.

Ottawa has the Confederation Line LRT cutting through its downtown and Gatineau wants to build a rail system from the west end of that city into downtown Ottawa. The transit systems operated by OC Transpo in Ottawa and Société de transport de l’Outaouais in Gatineau run buses between both cities.

The decades-old idea of a transit loop has come chugging back largely thanks to Gatineau’s transit aspirations.

“I think we need to be very thoughtful,” McKenna said. “I’m saying this now in my role as minister of infrastructure and communities. You can’t just look project by project. You need to have this holistic view: How do people get around and how do we make investments, with taxpayer dollars that limited, that are going to make sense?”

The Gatineau transit project, which has a minimum estimated cost of $3 billion, proposes to either build a rail tunnel under Sparks Street or to set the rail line on the surface of Wellington Street after the tramway crosses the Portage Bridge. The Sparks Street tunnel option would cost between $500 million and $900 million more.

McKenna said her department was looking at the options, but she pointed out the huge cost for a tunnel and the need to be mindful of spending tax money.

It’s good to have the NCC look at tramway connecting Ottawa and Gatineau when considering impacts tourism and businesses, while working to prevent climate change, McKenna said.

Ottawa-Gatineau functions as a single region, McKenna said. She referenced the controversy over the checkpoints that Ontario Premier Doug Ford ordered at Ottawa-Gatineau crossings to illustrate the “artificial” nature of the border.

Including the Ottawa and Gatineau mayors as members — albeit, not voting members — of the NCC board also brings in the municipal voices on matters like transportation, McKenna said.

While Gatineau Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin saw value in a transit project office at the NCC, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson didn’t think “another bureaucracy” was needed for public transit in addition to the municipal governments.

Watson especially doesn’t want the federal government to become sidetracked from Ottawa’s next big transit project bringing LRT to the western and southern suburbs after the current Stage 2 expansion.

The head of the City of Ottawa’s transportation department, John Manconi, echoed Watson’s skepticism about the new transit-planning authority at the NCC.

“I’m not sure what the challenge is that we’re trying to close off, but it’s the federal government prerogative to do that,” Manconi said, talking up the good working relationship between Transpo and STO, including when it came to fare systems, transit planning and interoperable control centres.

One thing the two mayors agree on is that there shouldn’t be another crossing between the cities.

The NCC is working with Public Services and Procurement Canada on studying whether Ottawa-Gatineau needs a sixth interprovincial bridge. They’re looking at studies from eight years ago to see if a top-ranked corridor over Kettle Island is still the best location for a new crossing.

(The NCC falls under the oversight of Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand).

Asked for her position on whether on the region needed a sixth bridge, McKenna said she was waiting to hear what the studies said.

As for the notion that building another bridge for cars flies in the face of achieving climate change goals and increasing public transit use, McKenna said “all of this is connected” and stressed the importance of understanding transportation patterns after the COVID-19 pandemic.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...-involvement-in-capital-transit-planning

[Nepean]

I am torn about this idea. While an interprovincial tramway would be amazing, the NCC only gives me nightmares, as their awful track record is legendary. The NCC has an anti-Midas touch when it comes to urban planning, so I can only dread how they would screw up public transportation if they were given a mandate to look at travel between Ottawa and Gatineau.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Nepean

I am torn about this idea. While an interprovincial tramway would be amazing, the NCC only gives me nightmares, as their awful track record is legendary. The NCC has an anti-Midas touch when it comes to urban planning, so I can only dread how they would screw up public transportation if they were given a mandate to look at travel between Ottawa and Gatineau.

I share your concerns except the article actually points to the problems. Watson is focused on Ottawa's needs only. I doubt that Gatineau is much better. There is a lack of vision for the metropolitan area as a whole. The end result is that we can never build another bridge across the Ottawa River and any STO tramway can only minimally impact downtown Ottawa. Both are bad long-term policy.

We cannot funnel all interprovincial traffic through the centre of the city forever and our transit systems need to be much better integrated.

What I would hope is that any interprovincial tramway loop would allow access to trams from either side of the river. In other words, an Ottawa tramway could also be connected to the loop in the future.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Nepean

I am torn about this idea. While an interprovincial tramway would be amazing, the NCC only gives me nightmares, as their awful track record is legendary. The NCC has an anti-Midas touch when it comes to urban planning, so I can only dread how they would screw up public transportation if they were given a mandate to look at travel between Ottawa and Gatineau.

The NCC also has an anti-transit history. There has never been a major transit project in Ottawa that they haven't made more expensive or less useful because of some garbage notion of the national significance of a plot of grass.

[Nowhere]

The West Gatineau LRT is going to face the same issues as the cancelled 2006 North / South LRT and I expect it to be cancelled as well.

The lack of grade separation will cause frequent crashes that will paralyze the whole system every time. I don't know if it's still the case, but renderings showed that they were planning to run the Chemin d'Aylmer trams right along the sidewalk rather than the median due to limited space, which would make it even more prone to crashes.

In Toronto, streetcars were involved in 549 crashes in 2017, which is more than one every day. Not too much of a big deal in Downtown Toronto where you can take another streetcar, bus or subway line nearby or walk to destination if you're close enough, but it is a big deal when you have no other option than waiting an hour to get a spot on overcrowded shuttle buses and maybe lose your job because of it.

There's also the issue of traffic lights. Either you make the trams stop at red lights, making it pretty useless to build a LRT in the first place (which is what the Eglinton LRT in Toronto will do on the above ground sections), or give priority to the trains like in Calgary or Edmonton, which will limit the frequency to 4-5 minutes, otherwise cars would never be able to get through the lights. Trams that can carry 600 passengers every 4 minutes won't carry any more people that articulated buses every 45 seconds with a capacity of 110 people each. Giving priority to the trams will also make drivers mad, which might cause people to vote for an anti-transit mayor eventually.

Another issue is that if we go ahead with the LRT to Le Plateau and BRT to Aylmer option, the trams would avoid the Université du Québec and Les Terasses de la Chaudière, which is a big deal.

The downtown loop would be regularly closed because of events and protests, so we might as well use specially branded, frequent electric buses painted with another color.

I know it's not gonna happen, but I would prefer to see 2 fully segregated LRT lines with a Sparks Street tunnel : one that would replace the Rapibus and one along Des Allumetières, which would link to downtown Aylmer with BRT along Wilfrid-Lavigne. We could find the money to build that by cancelling the Kettle Bridge Island for now, but again, I know I'm dreaming.

[passwordisnt123]

Every time somebody suggests the NCC study anything I'm reminded of this quote recited by Wayne Scanlan:

Decades earlier, before the Senators were even conceived as a franchise, co-founder Bruce Firestone had his eyes on LeBreton as the perfect site for an NHL team. He once shared with me an interesting conversation he had with then-NCC chair Jean Pigott in 1987. Pigott died in 2012.
Jean Pigott: “Bruce, do you want the public or private answer?”
BF: “Are they different?”
JP: “Yes.”
BF: “What’s the private answer?”
JP: “No.”
BF: “So, what’s the public answer?”
JP: “We’ll agree to study it.”
And then Pigott added, “Bruce, we’ll study it until you give up and go away, or you die, whichever comes first.”

[VANRIDERFAN]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

Every time somebody suggests the NCC study anything I'm reminded of this quote recited by Wayne Scanlan:

That's a scene right out of "Yes Minister"

[J.OT13]

The NCC has had a bad track record in the past, but I'm confident they've turned a corner over the past few years. They want to make transit better and link the Ottawa and Gatineau systems. They know that the new bridge, the Alexandra replacement, the Gatineau tram and the loop are all interconnected, and seem to want to work in a concessive way to plan all of these as one project.

I do have some concerns with the surface Gatineau tram, but I'm pretty confident it will work as long as it has its own RoW (not grade separated, just its own RoW/lanes). Issue in Toronto is that cars and streetcars share lanes. The proposed routes are relatively straight (few turns), so conflict with cars should be limited. Priority will be key, but I can't see a frequency of less than 4 minutes on branches or 2 minutes in the loop.

As for the concerns over protests and celebrations, those mostly happen on Wellington and Rideau. During those times, the trams can terminate at Lyon and the Market.

[rocketphish]

NCC board approves development concept for LeBreton Flats, hopes library parcel 'sets the tone'
The NCC board of directors on Thursday OK'd the final concept plan and learned the identities of three development teams.

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Apr 22, 2021 • 1 hour ago • 4 minute read


<snip>


NCC awaits marching orders for transit planning in capital

The NCC is, like everyone else, waiting to see what the federal government has in mind when it comes to establishing a transit-focused project office at the agency.

It would be one of two NCC-involved offices set up to manage transportation planning in the capital region, according to this week’s federal budget, which also calls for an office at Public Services and Procurement Canada to look at the need for a sixth Ottawa-Gatineau bridge.

The NCC has been working on an interprovincial crossings plan and reviewing the work of past studies, which made a corridor over Kettle Island, in the area of the Rockcliffe Airport, the top-ranked option for a new Ottawa-Gatineau bridge.

Nussbaum said the NCC hopes to have the plan finalized in the fall.

When it comes to public transit, the federal government wants the NCC to look at the potential for a tramway between Ottawa and Gatineau.

Recent momentum on a transit “loop” idea comes from the City of Gatineau’s plan to run a tram from the west part of the city, across the Portage Bridge and into downtown Ottawa.

“We see this as a possibility to explore in partnership with them and the City of Ottawa and many others what the feasibility of further work on the transit side is,” Nussbaum said.

The federal budget, however, doesn’t identify new funds for the NCC to operate new project offices, something that Nussbaum said he’ll explore further with the government.

The federal budget gives the NCC an extra $35 million, spread evenly over five years, for the agency to acquire and upkeep federal assets, green infrastructure and spaces in the capital region.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...flats-hopes-library-parcel-sets-the-tone

[PHrenetic]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

Every time somebody suggests the NCC study anything I'm reminded of this quote recited by Wayne Scanlan:

Originally Posted by VANRIDERFAN

That's a scene right out of "Yes Minister"

Good Day.

Yep - Bureaucratese 101 basic reading/watching list.
You know you've graduated when you can listen to a Sir Humphrey monologue and understand every word and how it applies. And it does, every time !

EnJoy!

[rocketphish]

So far, the NCC's doing a better planning job than Ottawa Council
There is some good news in the commission's ideas for transit and LeBreton Flats, once you accept that an unelected federal board is the key player in changes that will affect our downtown for generations.

Randall Denley
Publishing date: Apr 27, 2021 • 1 hour ago • 3 minute read

It has been a big few days for the National Capital Commission. First, the federal agency was given the lead role in planning a potential interprovincial transit loop downtown, then it released its new plan for LeBreton Flats.

There is some good news in both of those developments, once one accepts that an unelected federal board should be the key player in changes that will affect our downtown for generations. That acceptance is made easier by the stunning void in Ottawa city council leadership on either the transit loop or LeBreton.

The transit loop plan takes last year’s half-baked Gatineau transit proposal and turns it into something that will benefit Ottawa greatly. Gatineau wants to bring electric trains into the centre of Ottawa, but the plan was to stop at Elgin Street. Former NCC board member Bob Plamondon and Hull-Aylmer MP Greg Fergus had a better idea: to extend the rail line across the Alexandra Bridge back into Quebec, linking tourist sites and federal workplaces.

The plan attracted a broad range of community support, with the notable exception of Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson. Most mayors would have understood that adding federally funded transit in the core would create construction jobs, improve transit connections to Gatineau and boost tourism. Not Watson.

Months later, the mayor still fails to grasp the merits of this gift horse. His reaction to the announcement of an interprovincial transit planning office in the NCC was more of the petulant fussing that has become his default position.

The mayor complained that the federal government was interfering in municipal matters and creating a new bureaucracy. Given the magnificence of Ottawa’s unfunded plan to extend transit to Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven, there is “nothing left for the NCC to plan.”

It was a shockingly amateurish response from a guy who has spent his entire life in politics. If Watson is going to get his suburban LRT expansion, he will need the federal government to write a cheque for about $1.5 billion to cover half the cost. That quest will not be assisted by dumping on the loop project, which is being supported by Catherine McKenna, who is both the city’s senior federal cabinet minister and the MP for the riding that would benefit most.

McKenna defended the loop idea by pointing out the obvious, that Gatineau and Ottawa make up one region and the NCC already has responsibility for interprovincial transit planning.

Perhaps Watson is disgruntled because the transit loop wasn’t his idea but instead has been pushed by community leaders who are doing his job for him and doing it better.

On to LeBreton. The NCC’s new plan is a familiar-looking box but without much in it. It offers a park here, a wished-for cultural area there, some housing, some retail, some offices. Affordable housing on some of the most expensive land in the city is a feature. What’s missing is any real driving force to make this modest plan happen. The NCC will start with a small corner of the LeBreton emptiness, the area around the new library. To its credit, the NCC has attracted three credible development consortia for this tentative first step.

The ultimate fate of LeBreton will be determined in decades to come, as federal governments and NCC leaders come and go.

It would be both easy and accurate to describe the NCC’s vanilla wafer of a plan as far less than what could have been accomplished, but let’s be fair. Ottawans have been complaining about the LeBreton mess for decades but our civic leaders never figured out what we wanted done there, preferring to leave the vast hole in the middle of the core as someone else’s problem.

It’s a sad day when one can argue that the NCC is doing a better job of improving our city than our own elected city politicians.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author. Contact him at [email protected]

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/denley...-better-planning-job-than-ottawa-council

[zzptichka]

NCC staff is fine.

Some NCC board members, on the other hand, make it seem like they have zero understanding of city planning with their questions and comments during board meetings.

The fact that they need to be flown in for those meetings 4 times a year is a stupid waste of money on its own. Hopefully, once the pandemic is over they keep most of those meetings online.

[J.OT13]

last year’s half-baked Gatineau transit proposal

Half-baked? The City of Gatineau planned their tram proposal with a potential loop in mind. Of course they will start with the minimum needed to serve their (and Ottawa's) population.

I agree Watson's being an ass about this whole thing. A leader needs to have a regional approach and not always look after their own wants. The loop will benefit more people than spending Billions on converting existing Transitways.

For LeBreton, that really has little to do with the City. The NCC has near full control.

[Baybreeze12]

This is the third time in recent memory that I've found myself somewhat agreeing with Randall Denley. Even a broken clock I guess...

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Half-baked? The City of Gatineau planned their tram proposal with a potential loop in mind. .

Typical condescension from south of the Ottawa River!

[Acajack]

Just got this in an email from STO. Have not looked at it yet.

http://www.sto.ca/index.php?id=892&L=en

[Aylmer]

[SL123]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Just got this in an email from STO. Have not looked at it yet.

http://www.sto.ca/index.php?id=892&L=en

Lots of interesting details. i had no idea they were planning on closing a part of Laurier to traffic.

[Soi-Fon]

Hang the fork up, is that a proposed building or a land development idea? On that lot? In Gatineau?