Roads/Bridges projects/issues

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by adam-machiavelli

Much of London works like this and it still functions. The key is to reduce the commuting distance between home and work. The City took a step in the right direction by adding suburban town centres in its first post-amalgamation land use plan. Now it should focus on filling it with tens of thousands of jobs and adding equal numbers of new dwellings east of the O-Train tracks, and west (and also north) of the Rideau River.

The problem is the "suburban town centres" are mostly big box plazas, which hardly encourages any sort of density or jobs (other than retail jobs).

[lrt's friend]

Now it should focus on filling it with tens of thousands of jobs and adding equal numbers of new dwellings east of the O-Train tracks, and west (and also north) of the Rideau River.

We cannot do that until we have transit upgrades in place. I don't see a Bank Street subway in our plans.

[DubberDom]

I think the move to intensification and public transit is misguided. The environmental challenges of the fossil fuel car will give way in the next 10-20 years as we shift to other technologies (plug in hybrids, electric etc..). We need to adapt to the "city of tomorrow".

The idea of "work in downtown" needs to be changed. Why are we cramming everybody downtown every morning? We should use Flexible Office Hubs for all major employers, especially government.

Imagine if you work for a government department, say CRA... do you really have to work in the main CRA office? Why couldn't government build local satellite office Hubs in Orleans, Kanata, Barrhaven and Gatineau where employees could have access to their work files and work from there? For sure this would not work for everybody, but it would be ok for a lot of workers. You would create mini-downtowns in the communities where the people live and work... we have to change our thinking.

Good article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsec...-Demographics-of-America.html?c=y&page=1

Particularly the section about "Smart Sprawl"

[Ottawan]

While I don`t doubt that it could be efficient, that sounds like something very close to my version of hell.

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

I think the move to intensification and public transit is misguided. The environmental challenges of the fossil fuel car will give way in the next 10-20 years as we shift to other technologies (plug in hybrids, electric etc..). We need to adapt to the "city of tomorrow".

The idea of "work in downtown" needs to be changed. Why are we cramming everybody downtown every morning? We should use Flexible Office Hubs for all major employers, especially government.

Imagine if you work for a government department, say CRA... do you really have to work in the main CRA office? Why couldn't government build local satellite office Hubs in Orleans, Kanata, Barrhaven and Gatineau where employees could have access to their work files and work from there? For sure this would not work for everybody, but it would be ok for a lot of workers. You would create mini-downtowns in the communities where the people live and work... we have to change our thinking.

Good article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsec...-Demographics-of-America.html?c=y&page=1

Particularly the section about "Smart Sprawl"

Offices aren't just warehouses for desks. They're people places where teams communicate and function. Working remotely from team members imposes a real cost on team effectiveness. And video conferencing and related technologies only partially bridges the formal meeting spaces. It does nothing to restore the informal flow of information that is very important to effective teamwork.

We need to improve the ability of people to travel throughout the city at all times of the day. I agree that we don't need to cram everyone downtown. Hubs on rapid transit are fine. And organizationally adjacent teams could work in other hubs. That way you could get travel for inter-team meetings during the day without giving up significant time and cost in driving and parking.

If you don't need your car during your workday then it makes it that much easier to not use your car for your morning and afternoon/evening commute.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

I think the move to intensification and public transit is misguided. The environmental challenges of the fossil fuel car will give way in the next 10-20 years as we shift to other technologies (plug in hybrids, electric etc..). We need to adapt to the "city of tomorrow".

Umm, we tried that in the 1960s. Things like congestion and wasteful use of land will not go away with electric cars.

Good article:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specia...tml?c=y&page=1

It's by Joel Kotkin, one of the apologists for sprawl. There's a certain cadre of American polemicists, Kotkin among them, who are adept at spotting the rest of the world's flaws but oblivious to America's.

[DubberDom]

Advocates of strict intensification are fighting a losing battle. There is no way than I (or anybody else I know) would ever raise my family in a 3 bedroom highrise downtown condo... NO THANKS! The suburbs is where the families are, and where they want to be.

Urban Yuppies can whine and moan, but that is the reality. Our society will not change. Those buying downtown condos are empty nesters, DINKs or professionals who don't have time to do anything else but work. I lived downtown for a year before I had kids, I would never raise a family there.

So instead of fighting suburban sprawl, you need to think about how we can make it work.


As for using remote offices and work from home, this could be done a lot more than what is currently done, especially in Government. I work in the private sector and have both a home office and a corporate office. With the technology, it is easy to work around a flexible schedule and minimize my time sitting unproductively in traffic (although the kids are home in summer so I spend more time at the office for peace and quiet)

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Advocates of strict intensification are fighting a losing battle. There is no way than I (or anybody else I know) would ever raise my family in a 3 bedroom highrise downtown condo... NO THANKS! The suburbs is where the families are, and where they want to be.

Urban Yuppies can whine and moan, but that is the reality. Our society will not change. Those buying downtown condos are empty nesters, DINKs or professionals who don't have time to do anything else but work. I lived downtown for a year before I had kids, I would never raise a family there.

So instead of fighting suburban sprawl, you need to think about how we can make it work.


As for using remote offices and work from home, this could be done a lot more than what is currently done, especially in Government. I work in the private sector and have both a home office and a corporate office. With the technology, it is easy to work around a flexible schedule and minimize my time sitting unproductively in traffic (although the kids are home in summer so I spend more time at the office for peace and quiet)

I'm in agreement with you, although I have a different model: a high-density ribbon near transit stations and major urban corridors (including in the suburban mini-hubs), with lower densities surrounding for those who don't want or like that. Remember the density of many residential areas within the Greenbelt is lower than in some areas in the suburbs.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Advocates of strict intensification are fighting a losing battle. There is no way than I (or anybody else I know) would ever raise my family in a 3 bedroom highrise downtown condo... NO THANKS! The suburbs is where the families are, and where they want to be.

That's a bit of a straw man argument. There's plenty of options in built form between high rises and detached houses on large lots. Moreover, there's plenty of evidence that lots of families are not exactly happy with the suburbs, either.

I don't want to live in one of our suburbs because I can't find one that looks even vaguely like Westboro or the Glebe - and these are not exactly high rise neighbourhoods for the most part.

Urban Yuppies can whine and moan, but that is the reality. Our society will not change. Those buying downtown condos are empty nesters, DINKs or professionals who don't have time to do anything else but work. I lived downtown for a year before I had kids, I would never raise a family there.

So instead of fighting suburban sprawl, you need to think about how we can make it work.

If you actually believed that, you'd do better to start referencing New Urbanists than people like Kotkin. New Urbanism is about making new suburbs work better. I'd like to see new suburbs built to a higher standard, because then they might become places worth considering to live in. Why, for example, are there no streets like Richmond/Wellington in Westboro/Hintoburg or Bank in the Glebe in new suburbs, since there's clearly a demand for it? To people like Kotkin, acres of asphalt and entire landscapes designed for the car are not things to be concerned about.

"Sprawl" is a lot more than low density residential development, which is not really even the problem with sprawl in Ottawa anymore. These days it's everything else that characterizes suburban development. It's the entire model of separating everything from everything and requiring a car to do anything. It's the wasteful way of using land - everything with its own parking lot, useless setbacks, large unused expanses of grass, wide roads and road allowances. It's the design of what is built: single-use stores with nothing else above or beside them, streets that meander to confuse people, exposed arterials with nothing on them, oversized intersections that make it difficult for pedestrians to cross, detached houses with snout garages dominating entire streetscapes. Overall, there's just a sense of a lack of quality and lack of thought into how outward growth is realized - and it's going to be with us for decades and possibly centuries. Fundamentally, there's no sense of building for posterity - we carry out suburban development as if it's a new plasma TV or something, when in fact things like the road grid and land uses will be there for a long long time.

[waterloowarrior]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Advocates of strict intensification are fighting a losing battle. There is no way than I (or anybody else I know) would ever raise my family in a 3 bedroom highrise downtown condo... NO THANKS! The suburbs is where the families are, and where they want to be.

Urban Yuppies can whine and moan, but that is the reality. Our society will not change. Those buying downtown condos are empty nesters, DINKs or professionals who don't have time to do anything else but work. I lived downtown for a year before I had kids, I would never raise a family there.

So instead of fighting suburban sprawl, you need to think about how we can make it work.

Our society has changed. Household sizes are declining, the number of people living alone is increasing, the number of children per household is getting smaller. Family size went from 4.3 persons in 1921, to 3.7 in 1971, to 2.5 in 2006

Ottawa is "ahead" of that trend compared to other big Canadian cities. The traditional family (Married couples with children) is only 30% of households. Ottawa leads the nation's big cities in the percent of empty nesters and has the second lowest percentage of families with children that have 3 or more children (17%). Most households (59%) in Ottawa have only 1 or 2 people.

Families with children are still quite significant and many people without kids still have preference for detached homes... but from your post it sort of sounds like you are marginalizing the significance of these 1-2 person household types when in fact they are the majority of households. Also, like Dado talked about, there's a huge range in types and location of housing between downtown condo and suburban detached home.

This info is from the 2001 census, not sure how much has changed since then, I guess we'll find out in a couple of years.
http://www.ottawa.ca/city_services/statistics/counts/counts_oct_03/index_en.shtml

But the projections are for household size to continue to decline




Here's the City's research on household/housing types and projection they are using for their growth projections and Official Plan policy
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/statistics/new_growth/projections/household/index_en.html

this one is particularly interesting, talking about housing types and age groups
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/statistics/new_growth/projections/household/propensity_en.html

[DubberDom]

I'm not marginalizing people who live in condos, townhouses or anything, don't get me wrong, there is a need and demand for these, but the reality is that a majority of families will continue to want to live in the 'Burbs.

As for character, do you think the Westboro was cool when they were building new homes there 80 years ago? No. The suburb regions will develop an identity with age.

As for empty nesters, if you follow the research, most of them end up staying in the communities when they raised their kids, or where their children live. Hence all those "Adult Lifestyle" communities. I'm 36 and have a very large circle of friends. Out of the 30 or so "parents" in this group, only my parents have moved into town, all the rest all live in the suburbs, most in single homes.

The stats about size of families has no bearing of the size of homes people will want. To twist the stat you quoted, the avg house in 1850 was 700sf and families had 8 kids, in 1920 it was 1000sf and families had 6 kids, in 1950 1200sf and 4 kids, 1990 2000sf and 2 kids and 2010 1.5kids and 3000sf

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

I'm in agreement with you, although I have a different model: a high-density ribbon near transit stations and major urban corridors (including in the suburban mini-hubs), with lower densities surrounding for those who don't want or like that. Remember the density of many residential areas within the Greenbelt is lower than in some areas in the suburbs.

Absolutely

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Advocates of strict intensification are fighting a losing battle. There is no way than I (or anybody else I know) would ever raise my family in a 3 bedroom highrise downtown condo... NO THANKS! The suburbs is where the families are, and where they want to be.

I'm in the suburbs with my wife and kids because we want a secure greenspace for little kids. But if we had been able to find a townhouse that backed onto a shared secure greenspace then we would have been happy to buy that instead of the sfh he have.

It's a little OT, but I wish there was a model for building sfh's with shared greenspace. I don't want my house to be a condo, but I would be happy to have a shared yard area covered by a condo agreement. Heck, that and a shared underground garage would be fine uses of the 'condo' shared cost and governance idea.

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by Dado

Fundamentally, there's no sense of building for posterity - we carry out suburban development as if it's a new plasma TV or something, when in fact things like the road grid and land uses will be there for a long long time.

I wish they'd outlaw curvy streets. How is a street like that ever supposed to get redeveloped?

[waterloowarrior]

Highway 7 expansion to be finished in 2011
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Highway+expansion+finished+2011/3301130/story.html

BY JENNIFER PAGLIARO, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN JULY 20, 2010 4:31 PM


OTTAWA — The expansion of Highway 7 west of Ottawa is on track to be finished in 2011, Transport Minister Kathleen Wynne said on a visit to the construction site near Carleton Place.

“We’re in a very rapidly growing part of the province and that’s why we’re investing $319 million to improve our highway infrastructure in the Ottawa-Carleton region,” Minister of Transportation Kathleen Wynne said, standing on the site at Cemetery Side Road that will be be made into two new lanes of traffic. “Our investments will improve the way we travel in and out of our communities today, but well into the future.”

Construction on the final phase of the project has been underway since earlier in the year.

By late 2011, the ministry plans to have completed a two-lane expansion to Highway 7 from Ashton Station Road to Cemetery Side Road, just east of Carleton Place.

The $107.4-million project is part of the McGuinty government’s $32-billion Open Ontario infrastructure plan. Ottawa-Nepean MPP Bob Chairelli said the lane increase will help improve safety, reduce traffic and boost local economy.

“There have been too many fatal accidents and serious accidents on this road,” Chairelli said. “The road does not have the capacity to meet the demands now of the growing communities.”

He said daily commuters from Almonte, Perth, Carleton Place and Beckwith create bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway.

“You can’t pass. People get frustrated. They get angry,” he said.

Expanding the highway also means those “bedroom communities” will be able to draw more visitors from the city, Chairelli said.

Phase 1 of the project widened the highway to four lanes from Highway 417 to Jinkinson Road in 2008. The second phase is widening another 12 kilometres of Highway 7, set to finish in late 2010.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Dado

Why, for example, are there no streets like Richmond/Wellington in Westboro/Hintoburg or Bank in the Glebe in new suburbs, since there's clearly a demand for it?

None of those streets were built in a day; they all evolved over time. In fact, there are still a bunch of used car lots in Westboro.

None of the suburbs have been around for as long, so how can they be expected to have evolved to the same point already?

Another factor is land ownership. Something like a big box mall is usually owned by a single landowner. The lease agreements will usually include exclusivity clauses- for example that Tim Horton's will be the only coffee shop in the complex. This limits opportunities for competition like you have in Westboro or the Glebe, where the adjacent blocks are owned by different entities.

Based on all the above, it is the ugliest suburban streets today- think St Joseph in Orleans, Robertson/Richmond in Bells Corners, Hazeldean in Kanata- that are likely to become more like the main streets that you are thinking of.

Barrhaven will be difficult, since there never really was a traditional "main" street- most of the shopping is in complexes owned by single landowners, whose incentive to create a competitive marketplace is low. The best opportunity will probably be in the Longfields subdivision, where the city is selling off land parcels piece by piece.

[Luker]

As stated before the numbers never look right nor ad up, its quite upsetting

“We’re in a very rapidly growing part of the province and that’s why we’re investing $319 million to improve our highway infrastructure in the Ottawa-Carleton region,” Minister of Transportation Kathleen Wynne said...

The $107.4-million project is part of the McGuinty government’s $32-billion Open Ontario infrastructure plan.

Seems about right eh mcguinty, thanks for watching out for your home, and not be toronto centric as expected from the provincial chumps.

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

Highway 7 expansion to be finished in 2011
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Highway+expansion+finished+2011/3301130/story.html

BY JENNIFER PAGLIARO, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN JULY 20, 2010 4:31 PM


OTTAWA — The expansion of Highway 7 west of Ottawa is on track to be finished in 2011, Transport Minister Kathleen Wynne said on a visit to the construction site near Carleton Place.

“We’re in a very rapidly growing part of the province and that’s why we’re investing $319 million to improve our highway infrastructure in the Ottawa-Carleton region,” Minister of Transportation Kathleen Wynne said, standing on the site at Cemetery Side Road that will be be made into two new lanes of traffic. “Our investments will improve the way we travel in and out of our communities today, but well into the future.”

Construction on the final phase of the project has been underway since earlier in the year.

By late 2011, the ministry plans to have completed a two-lane expansion to Highway 7 from Ashton Station Road to Cemetery Side Road, just east of Carleton Place.

The $107.4-million project is part of the McGuinty government’s $32-billion Open Ontario infrastructure plan. Ottawa-Nepean MPP Bob Chairelli said the lane increase will help improve safety, reduce traffic and boost local economy.

“There have been too many fatal accidents and serious accidents on this road,” Chairelli said. “The road does not have the capacity to meet the demands now of the growing communities.”

He said daily commuters from Almonte, Perth, Carleton Place and Beckwith create bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway.

“You can’t pass. People get frustrated. They get angry,” he said.

Expanding the highway also means those “bedroom communities” will be able to draw more visitors from the city, Chairelli said.

Phase 1 of the project widened the highway to four lanes from Highway 417 to Jinkinson Road in 2008. The second phase is widening another 12 kilometres of Highway 7, set to finish in late 2010.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[blackjagger]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Barrhaven will be difficult, since there never really was a traditional "main" street- most of the shopping is in complexes owned by single landowners, whose incentive to create a competitive marketplace is low. The best opportunity will probably be in the Longfields subdivision, where the city is selling off land parcels piece by piece.

Chapman Mills Dr will probably end up being the main street, though if the plans for Riocan Ave and Marketplace Ave it could become a grid based multi block core. But for now, based on what I have been told, Minto will be building only mixed use along the Chapman Mills corridor between Longfields Dr and Greenbank Rd.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by blackjagger

Chapman Mills Dr will probably end up being the main street, though if the plans for Riocan Ave and Marketplace Ave it could become a grid based multi block core. But for now, based on what I have been told, Minto will be building only mixed use along the Chapman Mills corridor between Longfields Dr and Greenbank Rd.

The problem with this is that Minto owns all of this land, and Chapman Mills Marketplace is leased out via a single landlord (RioCan). I don't think that can turn into a thriving, "grid based muti block core" unless individual parcels within that grid are sold off to different landowners. Only then you would have true competition and variety.

[blackjagger]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

The problem with this is that Minto owns all of this land, and Chapman Mills Marketplace is leased out via a single landlord (RioCan). I don't think that can turn into a thriving, "grid based muti block core" unless individual parcels within that grid are sold off to different landowners. Only then you would have true competition and variety.

Very true. Yet at the same time if Minto didn't own all the land it might never happen or worse it would just be more townhouses and single family homes by multiple companies. At least this way there is a plan, which Minto feels they can make money at, that follows the CDP and promotes an urban feel with higher density and mixed use on major streets. Richcraft owns the land behind Ross‘ Independent Grocer store and there is the driving range behind that will be up for grabs when the owner wants to sell, so there will be multiple developers sadly, as tracts instead of individual lots.

I agree it’s not as perfect a situation as Bank St, Richmond/Wellington, Elgin St or even Main St. But at least the intent is there and a plan to make the Marketplace more than just a suburban big box wasteland. Remember it’s a big field as of right now.