New interprovincial bridge needed for regional growth and vital to downtown development
Too many trucks on Rideau Street, say neighbourhood representatives
By Derek Spalding, OTTAWA CITIZEN September 4, 2013 8:00 PM
JUST BUILD IT ALREADY: A CITIZEN SERIES: Ottawa’s never been short on big ideas, but we always seem to fall short when it comes to making them happen. In this series, the Citizen’s City Hall bureau checks in on some of the apparently good ideas that still haven’t made it off the drawing board.
Interprovincial Bridge
The idea: Build a new interprovincial bridge between Aviation Parkway in Ottawa and Montée Paiement in Quebec
The cost: $1.16 billion
The problem: Lack of political support and fierce opposition from communities that back onto the Aviation Parkway.
The status: The Ontario government walked away from the latest attempt just as the joint study group was about to move ahead with detailed design plans for a new bridge.
OTTAWA — The need for another interprovincial bridge linking Ottawa and Gatineau plays out every day on the downtown streets of the nation’s capital.
A steady stream of southbound eighteen-wheelers rolls off the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge onto King Edward Avenue before turning on to Rideau Street bound for Hwy. 417. Loads of drywall, plastic tubing and a host of other materials are mere centimetres from the sidewalks and just metres from storefronts.
Until June, there had been a plan eight years in the making to possibly eliminate truck traffic that uses the bridge as a highway connection by building a new bridge farther east, crossing the Ottawa River at Kettle Island, but the joint project headed by the provinces of Ontario and Quebec and the National Capital Commission was abruptly killed this summer.
Building a bridge between the northern portion of the Aviation Parkway in Ottawa and Montée Paiement in Gatineau was designed to reduce truck traffic in Lowertown and position the region for anticipated growth. Instead, in one unilateral decision by Ontario Transportation Minister Glen Murray, the plan died when he announced Ontario would no longer support the proposed Kettle Island corridor.
In the wake of that decision, groups in downtown Ottawa and some city councillors are left baffled how to resurrect the plan and solve their ongoing problem.
“It’s madness that a G8 capital can be the only (major) North American city that doesn’t have a bypass route,” said Josh Moon, a lawyer who, on behalf of the Rideau Business Improvement Association, asked Murray’s office why the bridge plan was cancelled.
The response was a 300-word email that did not answer the question in any meaningful way. But, for Moon, the latest joint study clearly shows the need for a new crossing. The detailed report on transportation indicates the Macdonald-Cartier and Chaudière bridges carry an estimated 3,700 truck trips per day, with that figure expected to reach 5,800 by 2031. At that point, the Macdonald-Cartier alone would see about 4,200 trips per day.
That level of heavy-duty traffic is far too dangerous for pedestrians and it dampens the potential for economic development in the area, says Moon and others living and working near Rideau Street.
Accident statistics from Ottawa police show that 446 collisions, including two fatalities, were recorded between 2008 and 2012 on King Edward Avenue along the stretch of road between the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge and the intersection of Rideau Street. The route truck drivers take to get to the highway has been altered over the years, but the problems persist, explained Moon, a former chairman of the Rideau BIA.
“You can tinker with that route all you want, but it’s still moving a massive amount of goods through a city,” he said.
But even armed with the statistics and studies, there seems to be a lack of political will, at least on the Ontario side, to build a new bridge. Yet, the only way it will move ahead is with broad support from two cities, two provincial governments and the federal government, said Rideau-Vanier ward Coun. Mathieu Fleury. So far, however, he can’t get much support even from his own council.
When the NCC announced plans for the Kettle Island option, several councillors opposed the project, including Mayor Jim Watson, who at the time said any new federal and provincial money should be spent on light-rail transit.
Madeleine Meilleur, MPP for Ottawa-Vanier, vowed to urge her Liberal government not to fund the project because of its proximity to neighbourhoods in her riding. She was on hand to celebrate when Murray made his announcement.
The minister said Ontario would not support the Kettle Island option because it does not address the problem of truck and commercial traffic in Ottawa’s downtown and is a break from traditional master planning. But the joint study he killed shows that a new bridge, coupled with truck restrictions on Macdonald-Cartier, would reduce truck traffic even as regional traffic numbers grew.
Murray did not respond to requests for interviews regarding the province’s plans now that the bridge project has been cancelled.
But the truck traffic problem in Lowertown is just one reason for building a new crossing. Several studies over the past few decades, including two reports produced in the 1990s, have shown the need for another bridge on Kettle Island to accommodate increasing interprovincial travel.
The first was released in 1994, identifying Kettle Island as the best location for a bridge. The eight-year transportation analysis started in the 1980s and was conducted by a team of representatives from various levels of government, including pre-amalgamation City of Ottawa, Gatineau, the NCC and the former Ottawa-Carleton regional government.
That report looked at the existing capacity of the bridges and determined that no matter how much additional transit was put in operation, there still needed to be more crossings for regular vehicle traffic.
“Some people say we don’t need one. (They say) we could use transit to accommodate the demand for the foreseeable future by increasing transit share,” said Arto Keklikian, a senior transportation planner with the NCC. “These studies show that based on the land-use scenarios there would still be at least two lanes required in addition to all the maximum transit you could use.”
Fleury has since asked for a meeting with Murray to discuss how the interprovincial truck route along King Edward interferes with the city’s plans of increasing density in the downtown.
“The sooner the better in terms of process, but what that process is up to the province,” Fleury said about the lack of response from the minister. “I’m putting the pressure on them to let us know what that (process) is. Whether that means a bridge or whether it’s a tunnel, I’m not getting into that game. It’s their problem; we live it, but it’s their problem.”
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