Danger by design on Alta Vista Drive
David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 26, 2017 | Last Updated: September 26, 2017 10:25 AM EDT
A firm note telling a couple of hundred people people not to scamper across Alta Vista Drive to get between an office and a temporary parking lot will be enough to keep them safe, Ottawa’s city planners say.
The planners are asking city council’s planning committee to approve a three-year arrangement with the Canadian Medical Association on Tuesday morning, based on a faulty understanding of both traffic laws and human nature.
See, the association tore down its old headquarters on Alta Vista, just north of Smyth Road, last spring without a working plan for building a new one. The people moved into another office building the CMA has across the street, where they’ll stay until the new one is designed and up. The problem is although they’ve squeezed the workers in, the temporary office doesn’t have enough parking, so the CMA wants to keep using the parking lots for the building they tore down.
In Ottawa you can typically have parking lots as “accessory uses,” linked with buildings where people live or work, but a standalone parking lot takes special permission. Now that the old CMA headquarters is gone, the existing parking lots are accessory uses to nothing.
Seems like a simple thing, especially since the proposal is to allow it for just three years. But until then, we’ll be setting up a situation with parking spots on one side of a busy road, serving an office building on the other side of the busy road, with no crosswalk or anything.
On Alta Vista Drive there is a long straight stretch of road lined with low buildings set way back, a little piece of Kanata office park. Why would anybody be walking there at all? Each building has its own parking lot and the nearest store is kilometres away. The sightlines are decent but drivers won’t be on the lookout for people crossing because all the design cues will tell them that this isn’t a place where that happens.
The official solution is to get the CMA parkers to walk south to Smyth and Alta Vista, where there are traffic lights. That adds about 200 metres to the walk, which doesn’t seem like much if you’re able-bodied and the weather’s good, but it looks different in the dark in January. Anyway, in real life, people won’t walk 20 extra feet if it’s something they only have to do because of lazy-cheap design. Grass in every city is crisscrossed with tramped-down desire lines where designers and planners haven’t accounted for human nature.
The CMA’s application to the city includes a copy of a notice it’s put up in its office: “As part of our commitment for safe work practices and procedures, and safety in every activity, employees are instructed NEVER TO JAY WALK across Alta Vista. ALWAYS use the crossing lights at the corner of Smyth Road and Alta Vista Drive to ensure your safety.”
It will pave a couple of short connections from the parking lot to the sidewalk, so pedestrians won’t have to use the in-and-out driveway and to keep the extra walk as short as possible.
Good enough, says Ottawa’s planning department. The planners agree with the CMA that people’s safety is on them, not the owners of the building, parking lot or road, or the regulators.
“While the (planning) department has the ability to influence where people cross, it is ultimately every citizen’s responsibility to abide by provincial law and cross at designated locations,” the planners say.
In fact there is no provincial law requiring people to cross at designated locations. You’d think they’d know that.
The Highway Traffic Act says it’s illegal to cross against a red light. Crossing the road where there’s no signal is legal. There’s even a whole section in the Ontario Traffic Manual, the road-designers’ bible, about “uncontrolled crossings.” They should usually come with warning signs and ideally medians and curb bulges to narrow the gap. None of those is going in for the CMA.
“How much do we regulate versus educate and encourage people? There is a balance,” said Alta Vista Coun. Jean Cloutier, who’s OK with the plan.
The corporate connection between the demolished headquarters and the temporary one (it holds MD Financial Management, a CMA subsidiary that does financial planning for doctors) has meant some foot traffic previously.
“There was some people crossing before. That being said, we have to encourage people to always behave safely, always cross safely,” Cloutier said.
Nevertheless, he said, he expects the proposal will be revised on the floor in the committee meeting to cut the number of parking spaces from 116 to 44, allowing only one of the two old lots to be used. He hopes fewer people will drive.
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