Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph Potvin
Yes, because City of Ottawa and (former) City of Hull and the NCC tore all that out. And continues to do so. When does the destruction of major infrastructure stop?
Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com |
I am not sure how far back you are referring to when it comes to ripping up rail infrastructure. But lets start from the 60's and go from there.
I know a lot of people lament that the rails along the canal were ripped up, terminating the use of Union Station. The same is true, to a less celebrated extent, of the lines that used to lead into Lebreton. But, you have to consider the context of the time. Rail travel was on the decline. Cars where on the rise. The city, and region, was even smaller than it is now. The NCC wanted to turn Ottawa into a proper, beautiful, capital city, and get rid of the industry that was right at the edge of the core. They moved the train station outside of the core, and built a big, modern building which was very much a symbol of the thinking at the time. The NCC was trying to build a modern capital city for Canada, a country that was coming into its own in the world, and they pursued a vision that made sense at that time. Yes, hindsight has lead us to question some of those choices, but it was over 50 years ago, and it is hard to fault them with the choices they made. And no amount of wistful thinking is going to change those choices.
Now, the 60's didn't see all the rail lines removed. There was still the line which is now the Trillium line, the POW bridge and the lines in and out of old Hull. And from the late 60's to the first few years of the 2000's, all that happened was their usefulness declined. They became less and less relevant for freight with each passing year until they started to be near as makes no difference, completely disused.
In the early 2000's, anyone could have come along with a proposal for those lines. VIA could have used them to cross into Hull. The City of Ottawa could have used them for commuter rail. Even the NCC had the opportunity to use them for interprovincial transportation issues.
At that time, the only group that was able to find any kind of viable use for them was OC Transpo, with their pilot project on the now Trillium Line. And though that corridor will not reach its full potential until it is upgraded to the same standard as the Confederation Line, it has still proved incredibly valuable. Not just for the inner city neighborhoods it serves and connects, but for the urban growth it is fueling, even in its limited state.
The rail lines that were built 100 years ago served a different need in a different city. Just because they are in the city, doesn't mean they have value today. OC Transpo changed the use of a line that was probably just a few years from being abandoned and torn up, and turned it into something valuable. But it worked because it actually served neighborhoods, a University, and connected with the Transitway, close to downtown (and served an emerging neighborhood at that end). If there had been any use for the POW bridge and the service those lines could bring to Gatineau, it would have been done by now. But it hasn't because that part of the line isn't particularly useful for inner city transit.
And as far as regional rail goes, the same is true. The lines that do still exist don't effectively serve the modern city. And maybe if you went all the way back to the 60's and stopped those lines from being ripped up, there would be infrastructure that might serve modern needs. But as I said, that was a different era, and those choices cant be undone. There is no cheap way to bring a modern rail network to Ottawa. The infrastructure that is being ripped up is old and antiquated. It is not major infrastructure.
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