My opinion is that the city is designed piecemeal and not built to any cohesive overall plan. And if it does try to make even limited plans, it seems to begin, but fail to carry them through.
The roadway planning in this city is lacking. There are too many major roads that simply become residential streets. The M-C Bridge was planned to connect with the Vanier Parkway, but instead (due to the fuss kicked up) it was simply connected to a residential street, King Edward.
There were a couple of attempts to plan major north-south roadways within the city, but each time, things got started and then abandoned. The Alta Vista Parkway is a great example. The corridor exists, but it hasn’t been built because of local dissent. So people coming from the south need to disburse onto (what were once) residential streets.
There needs to be an organization (and I’m looking at the NCC, and the City of Ottawa) that sits down with a map and charts out proper east-west and north-south transportation corridors. These need to be fairly straight, fast, and efficient at moving large numbers of vehicles – including public transit vehicles – from one area of the city to other areas. They need to have limited access; only at larger collector roads.
Is the city designed like this now? No, not at all. There is the 417/OR174, and the 416, but that is about it. Even Hunt Club was degraded from what it was envisioned as.
Will it be easy? Of course not. It means changing huge swaths of the city. But it can be done over time. The corridors need to be defined and protected. Properties that need to be bought should be bought as soon as practical. They can be leased/rented out until enough properties have been collected to start making changes. And, most of all, the plan needs to be completed – despite negative backlash.
Some (inconvenient) truths about a city:
- There will ALWAYS be traffic! A switch to zero-emission vehicles still leaves the roads clogged.
- There will ALWAYS need to be roadway connections within the city, and most of those connections will be outside of a 15-minute radius. People have had freedom to make choices. They are not going to revert to restricting themselves to the limited selection that happens to be nearby.
- Public transit will NEVER be as fast and convenient as a private vehicle.
Having main routes that get people and goods across a city is imperative. From them, a proper collector network, between neighbourhoods, can handle the traffic. This is how you keep a city moving while keeping huge numbers of vehicles out of residential areas. Restrictions in main transportation corridors simply pushes traffic onto residential streets, making them ‘traffic sewers’.
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