Rethinking the Queensway

[rocketphish]

Demolish the Queensway

Jonathan McLeod, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: October 20, 2014, Last Updated: October 20, 2014 2:25 PM EDT

As we wind through this election, candidates speak on many topics and pet projects, but one issue has been neglected. It is time to champion Ottawa’s next great mega-project: eliminating the Queensway.

Get rid of it. Tear it up. Smash it to pieces. We don’t need it running through the heart of our city. As we welcome LRT in the coming decades, we should say goodbye to this monument to failed city planning.

In the core of the city, the Queensway has taken over valuable space in our community. It cuts through our heart, separating our downtown core from adjacent communities. These neighbourhoods are starved for space. We continue with development in Centretown, but we are forced to build up. There is no new land to develop.

The Queensway could provide us with a new stretch of land. It may not seem like much, but it provides an extra north-south block of space stretching the entire distance of downtown. It can give us greenery and park space, shops and cafes, entertainment and business.

Soon, it will be time to revitalize Elgin Street, a valued main street in Ottawa. Currently, the Queensway is a harsh end for the street. Removing it, we connect Elgin Street to the Glebe and the Canal. We could create a water feature similar to Patterson Creek or Brown’s Inlet. What was once a concrete barrier could be an oasis right in the heart of our entertainment district.

Further west, the elimination of the freeway could add to the rejuvenation of Preston Street and Little Italy. Whereas now we have separate entertainment areas linked by an underpass, we could link the two halves of the street. The restaurants, bistros and pubs of Preston Street are a joy. We could enhance that joy.

The Queensway does not merely waste the prime land it sits upon, it also wastes much of the adjacent space. Border vacuums — the areas adjacent to freeways and other urban areas — litter Ottawa. These areas, lacking development, are riddled with blight. Lees Avenue, Catherine Street and Raymond Street become de facto on and off ramps for the thoroughfare. The speed and traffic is a danger and deterrent to pedestrians and cyclists. Border vacuums limit and partition economic growth, as travel across them is restricted.

The question becomes: what would we do without the Queensway? The simplest answer is that Ottawa needs a ring road, and, thankfully, we are building that sort of infrastructure. New developments like the Hunt Club extension and Vimy Memorial Bridge can move people around the core, rather than through it. There is talk of extending Brian Coburn Boulevard and expanding Earl Armstrong Road. These would connect us east-west.

And, luckily, the National Capital Commission supplies Ottawa with freeways along the Ottawa River.

More importantly, we are building light rail. The Confederation Line will move people through downtown more efficiently than our cars can. If we begin eliminating the Queensway from the centre, its destruction mirroring the development of the LRT, people will be able to walk, bus, drive or cycle to LRT hubs to get downtown quickly.

And during peak hours, the Queensway doesn’t even move people quickly. This is the scourge of induced demand; our road development takes on a Field of Dreams quality. We build it; we drive. More road infrastructure increases traffic congestion. Communities that eliminate road space see a reduction in traffic, as transportation habits change accordingly.

Ever-expanding freeways are a counterproductive relic of a flawed past. They rob of us green space, clean air and economic development. Smart growth requires a new vision.

It’s time to demolish the Queensway.

Jonathan McLeod is a general fellow with the Canadian Council for Democracy. He writes about local matters at stepsfromthecanal.wordpress.com.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-the-queensway

[Cre47]

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-the-queensway

[Norman Bates]

Originally Posted by Cre47

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-the-queensway

Lunacy.

Go to winnipeg with its perimeter highway or Saskatoon with its circle drive. Now that's failed planning.

The Queensway may not be perfect - mostly because the folks in old ottawa east blocked the collector lanes it truly needs - but it cannot be replaced by a ring road.

Simply removing tractor trailers from the Queensway during two hours at the morning and afternoon peaks will solve whatever congestion we now have.

[silvergate]

Originally Posted by Norman Bates

Lunacy.

Go to winnipeg with its perimeter highway or Saskatoon with its circle drive. Now that's failed planning.

The Queensway may not be perfect - mostly because the folks in old ottawa east blocked the collector lanes it truly needs - but it cannot be replaced by a ring road.

Simply removing tractor trailers from the Queensway during two hours at the morning and afternoon peaks will solve whatever congestion we now have.

Removing tractor trailers will not stop the congestion. Give this idea 20 years to grow though. Eventually it might be possible to, if not eliminate the highway entirely, then perhaps turn it into an at grade main street. It all depends on how transportation changes in the coming years.

[BenTheGreat97]

^^^

That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

A ring road would never replace it, and would just further encourage sprawl. Just because it's congested at peak times and isn't the best planned highway in Canada (lots of highways fall in the same boat as the 417 there) does not mean we should tear it up and start new.

[DarkArconio]

The main issue with articles like this is that they assume we can make drastic changes to solve our infrastructure issues. The reality is that infrastructure is build incrementally over decades, and building a better future requires incrementally better decisions now. The LRT is a great example, build great transportation options other than huge roads, and people will go to them. The goal shouldn't be to demolish the Queensway; the goal should be to make it obsolete!

[S-Man]

I have no idea why The Citizen runs this guy's pie-in-the-sky, postmodern/progressive rants each week. I'm getting more than sick of it.

There's taking a look at what we as a city can do better, and then there's this. A guy who opens his eyes each morning and sees that EVERYTHING IS WRONG, GUYS!

The Citizen as of late is trying my patience.

[1overcosc]

I would love to see the Queenway buried through the downtown core but that would be ungodly expensive. The best we can do is what Toronto is doing with the Gardiner Expressway--fill the roads along it with skyscrapers and build a network of skybridges and pedestrian tunnels between them to isolate people from the highway.

[MaxHeadroom]

Originally Posted by silvergate

Removing tractor trailers will not stop the congestion. Give this idea 20 years to grow though. Eventually it might be possible to, if not eliminate the highway entirely, then perhaps turn it into an at grade main street. It all depends on how transportation changes in the coming years.

As much as idealists like to think about the idea, the Queensway is never going away. Look at the design of any new subdivision in suburban areas - it's all designed around cars: double car garages, big driveways, wide streets with lots of room for street parking, and low density that makes walking places difficult and implementing effective transit expensive.

It's more important to give residents and businesses choices about transportation options so the economy can grow. Outside the core and transitway, buses are stuck in the same traffic as joe schmoe in a car. Yes it's important to have rail transit, but it can't serve everywhere and a decent, but not excessive, road network is essential.

[c_speed3108]

While the Queensway is not perfect, the result of not having it would be a ton of raods along the lines of King Edward Avenue.

No one loves trucks, but the reality is they are how goods get to stores and such. It is much better to give trucks and heavy traffic a proper route.


This is what is even happening on King Edward and Rideau. No one wants trucks there but they will at least for the time being.

When the road was redone they did not adequately round out corners and such to accommodate long trailers. Sadly I can picture what the result of that is going to be (and it ain't pretty) The result is much better to properly accommodate this stuff than not. The Queensway is a big part of that.



The other thing is that looking at Historical photos of the city, statements like "the Queensway divided neighbourhoods" or "the Queensway cut through neighbourhoods" are not accurate. The land where most of the Queensway (particularly the downtown part) was previously a railway, which if left as a railway would have and did cut those areas in half every bit as much as the highway does. Actually the highway with overpasses and landscaped embankments probably actually is less impactful than level crossings and chain linked fences - but I suppose that is a matter of opinion.

[Dado]

It is a little unfortunate though that the Queensway was built as a freeway.

Had the NCC not come up with its railway removal plans and had the MTO not in turn distorted them by turning a proposed Parisian boulevard into a freeway, in all probability Ottawa's major east-west freeway would have been built further south along the Baseline Rd-Heron-Walkley axis.

[Mulder]

Originally Posted by c_speed3108

The other thing is that looking at Historical photos of the city, statements like "the Queensway divided neighbourhoods" or "the Queensway cut through neighbourhoods" are not accurate. The land where most of the Queensway (particularly the downtown part) was previously a railway, which if left as a railway would have and did cut those areas in half every bit as much as the highway does. Actually the highway with overpasses and landscaped embankments probably actually is less impactful than level crossings and chain linked fences - but I suppose that is a matter of opinion.

Coming from Toronto, I find it very interesting that while the gardener has been seen as the barrier to the waterfront, I don't find the Queensway to be a barrier at all between downtown. Then again, on the east end of Toronto you have both the Gardiner and train tracks.

[JeffB]

Originally Posted by MaxHeadroom

Yes it's important to have rail transit, but it can't serve everywhere and a decent, but not excessive, road network is essential.

Ultimately, the LRT isn't supposed to replace the road infrastructure, but complement it. Unfortunately, people like the fellow who wrote this piece get the idea that it is either one or the other.

[waterloowarrior]

The impact of the Queensway on the ground is much worse in the inner suburbs than downtown... I find the inner city overpasses quite short and not much of a barrier. We even have separated bike lanes going under the Queensway. There could always be improvements but overall it's not bad.

However it would be an interesting exercise to see how the Queensway is being used as a cross-town route vs a feeder into downtown. You can see the data for the Gardiner here - only a small percentage is being used for crosstown trips.
http://www.gardinereast.ca/sites/def...esentation.pdf

The argument could be that the urban redevelopment benefits would outweigh the small amount of traffic using the highway to get across town (if this is the case in Ottawa). One issue I see with this is that Toronto has lots of potential routes to get around downtown while the canal, rivers and railways limit Ottawa's potential alternative routes. Toronto is on a grid with few geographical constraints while Ottawa already has major issues with limited alternative routes (e.g. for trucks).

[Dado]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

The impact of the Queensway on the ground is much worse in the inner suburbs than downtown... I find the inner city overpasses quite short and not much of a barrier. We even have separated bike lanes going under the Queensway. There could always be improvements but overall it's not bad.

Agree, west of Carling/Kirkwood or let's say Cole, the Queensway becomes far more of a barrier due to the fact that it is at general grade and everything else has to go up and over it on overpasses with lengthy approaches.

Freeways and expressways like the Queensway really should be sunk in trenches or elevated on embankments so that they don't interfere as much with the rest of the urban grid.

Sunk freeways are less visually obnoxious (and easier still to hide in the long term by covering over) and also probably constrain noise better but with the continued dominance of internal combustion engines they also likely contribute more to local (i.e. immediate neighbourhood) air pollution than raised freeways.

[c_speed3108]

I find a bit factor in the impact of highway design is the ramp design.

Things like clover leafs tend to expand the interchange area rather drastically vs a design where the ramp huge the side of the highway only angling outwards slightly to accommodate the increasing embankment.

The other aspect is how the ramps integrate into area streets at intersections. Some are definitely better than others. For example the Lyon street WB on ramp is just an ordinary intersection vs say the off ramp at Metcalfe that is a real mess for pedestrians.

[eternallyme]

With no Queensway, Ottawa would have uber-congested urban arterials and most of them would need to be 8, 10 lanes wide. As it is, Ottawa has very few 6-lane arterials.

[waterloowarrior]

Combined discussions from a couple different threads on the same article and moved them here...

[Aylmer]

I'm not saying it will happen, but it could work. One thing's for sure, the predictions of carmageddon would be exactly as valid as they were in San Francisco, Seoul, Portland, Paris, Madrid, New York, etc.

However, much as I'd like to see it, I'd rather see the Nicolas done away with first - it's shocking to have that monstrosity cut the university and the city from a UNESCO site. They're going to be removing two lanes of it during the LRT construction and once traffic mayhem fails to materialise, I would absolutely love it to be kept a two-lane street.

I'm glad this article was published and I truly hope that it starts some talk (hopefully accompanied by thinking).

[flar]

Ridiculous. Without the queensway we would spend our entire lives stuck in traffic.

You need a car to live in most of Ottawa, end of story. No amount of public transit will change that, it's the way it was built.

During non rush hour I can be downtown in 10 minutes via the queensway and leave when ever I want vs 30 minutes by bus and up to 15 minutes waiting.

During rush hour the transitway is equal or better than driving.