Committee approves light rail through Unitarian campus
Cleary Station opposition packs finance committee meeting
Ottawa West News
By Emma Jackson
2015-06-30
Members of the First Unitarian Church and their tenants are taking their fight to the provincial level after the city’s finance and economic development committee approved plans to run its western light rail extension through its backyard.
“It’s a blemish on the city that they can disregard seniors and a child care centre to force fit this through when there’s a better alternative,” said former city councillor Alex Cullen, who spoke at committee of behalf of the River Parkway children’s centre that operates on church property.
The church campus east of Woodroffe Avenue and north of Richmond Road is directly in the path of the city’s plans to extend its light rail network from Tunney’s Pasture to Bayshore station after 2018.
CHANGE OF PLANS
It didn’t used to be: the city’s original route in 2013 skirted the private campus just enough to avoid an outcry.
But the National Capital Commission stopped those plans in its tracks when it refused to let the city’s project run through its land as planned. That prompted a 100-day working group to negotiate a new route, which, when the winning route was revealed this March, ended up running directly underneath the Unitarian campus.
It’s not just the church that’s taking offence. The property is also home to 130 seniors who live at Unitarian House, a non-profit and non-denominational long-term care facility that leases space from the congregation. The other tenant is the River Parkway Children’s Centre, which offers day care to 74 children throughout the week.
Members of all three groups packed a city committee room on June 29, but they couldn’t convince Mayor Jim Watson or his colleagues to change their plans.
It was the last chance for the community groups to speak their minds on the issue. The committee was meeting to consider functional designs for three light rail expansions east, west and south of the downtown Confederation line, before council finalizes the decision July 8.
These extensions make up the city’s stage two light rail package, an ambitious 30-kilometre project that will add 19 stations to the rapid transit network by 2023. But the Unitarian tenants only care about one station: Cleary.
According to the designs approved by the committee June 29, Cleary Station will be built entirely underground just north of the church’s campus, to accommodate a light rail track which will pass underground in a cut-and-cover tunnel on its way west-bound to New Orchard Station.
It won’t pass directly under any buildings. According to the designs the train will instead pass under existing parking lots, laneways and gardens about six metres underground. It will be about 18 metres away from the seniors’ home and the daycare.
That’s too close for comfort, according to the long line of speakers who urged the committee to reject the design and instead go ahead with an alternative route that would take the underground tunnel through Rochester Field and Byron Linear Park instead.
That option was considered during the 100-day working group, but it scored lower on the city’s feasibility analyses. The advocates said the analyses were flawed and should be revisited to take the effect on the seniors and children into account.
SHAKY GROUND
According to them, the problems with the approved route are two-fold: first, the two-year construction period will turn the campus’s tranquil lawns and gardens into a noisy, dusty construction site that will disrupt the children’s nap times and could be seriously detrimental to the health of the fragile residents who live in the long-term care facility – it might even kill them, one resident suggested.
“This is a matter of more or less life and death,” said 92-year-old Tom Dent, who lives at Unitarian House. “By the time this construction starts I’ll be 94 or 95 so I would guess my last two years are going to be spent in a construction site.”
And once the construction is over, the residents who have survived will then have to deal with the long-term noise and vibrations of trains constantly whizzing by beneath their feet.
But city staff assured councillors the reality won’t be nearly as dramatic as the speakers suggest. The construction will be annoying, yes, but light rail implementation manager Nancy Schepers said there are mitigation measures that can be worked into a procurement contract to make sure the site is as clean and quiet as possible.
First and foremost, that includes enforcing the city’s own noise bylaws, she said. They can also build temporary sound barriers or bring equipment onto the site further down the line so they’re not driving near the campus.
As for any long-term disruptions from the new rail service, Schepers said they’ve already solved these issues with the National Arts Centre and the CBC, who were also concerned about the vibrations of the downtown line affecting their programs.
There are many ways to sound and shock proof the train, she said. Rubber pads under the tracks buffer the contact between the train and the tunnel floor and therefore limit sound and vibrations enormously, for example.
But Cullen wasn’t buying it.
“The problem is if the mitigation doesn’t work then they’re going to have to expropriate us,” Cullen said. “Why take this risk when you have a perfectly good alternative going under Rochester Field and Byron (Linear Park)? Why put the seniors and the childcare centre at risk?”
Mayor Jim Watson was firm in his belief that the committee approved the right design.
“We’re never going to find unanimity,” he said. “There’s often fear of the unknown. People aren’t sure what it’s going to look like, and the natural reaction is ‘I’m against it.’”
http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/news-...ves-light-rail-through-unitarian-campus/
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