Lansdowne 2.0 (Northside Stands/Arena Redevelopment) | U/C

[Richard Eade]

An anecdote from my week at the Volleyball Nations League (VNL) that was just held in the Lansdowne arena:

Parking was easy at first, because we got to the City’s Second Avenue parking structure pretty early on week-days.
(I was a bit peeved to park on the first floor and try to buy an all-day spot – only to find out that the 1st and 2nd floors have a maximum time limit of only 2 hours. You need to go to the 3rd or 4th floors to be able to stay longer. Trial and error. Better signage would help.)

We didn’t get to the parkade early enough on Saturday, however, and it was packed – even on a rainy day. We left and made the mistake of turning onto Bank St. The traffic was literally stopped and stayed that way. The only movement came from people giving up and cutting through The Glebe to Bronson – which is also what we eventually did. A whole lot of time and gas later, we found a street parking spot way down on Riverdale. This also meant that we had to return to the car to move it a couple of times – so more wasted gas.

Final thought about parking: Unless you can get into the parkade early, the option is finding a spot on the street – which —, big-time. This rubbish that city staff is spouting about there being lots of on-street parking available only encourages a huge waste of time and increases emissions. There needs to be adequate off-street parking available for the area. Right now, there isn’t. The idea that difficult parking encourages people to take public transit is a fallacy. It might work for a minority, but it just pisses off the majority who travel to an event or destination.

On public transit – it — along Bank St. The (evening) buses are fairly infrequent and they get caught up in traffic. Instead of the 15-minute drive, I tried the bus at 22:15 on Saturday night. I thought that on a Saturday, things might be better. The suggestion from OC Transpo was to wait 15 minutes for the #7 to Carleton; transfer to the #2 after a 2-minute wait; then transfer to the #88 at Heron, after a 5-minute wait. Three buses with a 2-minute buffer between them – what could go wrong? It was a trip that was predicted to take almost an hour and a half.

The next option was to wait 27 minutes for the #6; then transfer to the #88 at Billings Bridge, after a wait of 31 minutes. This trip took almost 2 hours, but it was the one that I was surer of making the connection on.

During our meal breaks, throughout the day, the young fellow with me lamented that the sidewalks along Bank were too narrow and crowded through The Glebe. His comment was that if they had more parking garages, they could use the “parking lanes” for sidewalks. When I countered that the traffic would get worse, he said that no-one drove in those lanes anyway – so it was already, effectively, one lane.

Attendance at VNL was over 7,000 people for the games. There were two or three games per day. The meal breaks between games were long enough for folks to go to the local restaurants, supporting local businesses. Will VNL want to reduce their audience to only 5,000 people at the new arena? Or will they simply not come to Ottawa? It is not as if an international sporting event is limited to one city.