City drops the hammer on developers, utilities who slow traffic and damage roads
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 26, 2019
The City of Ottawa is sick of developers and utility companies mucking up the roads with too much risk falling on municipal taxpayers.
Proposed changes to the 16-year-old road activity bylaw would give city hall more protection against cheaply done road repairs when companies, or even one of its own departments, need to dig up part of a road to access underground infrastructure.
If staff recommendations receive council’s endorsement next month, home builders, Hydro Ottawa, Bell Canada and anyone else who needs to crack open roads and sidewalks could pay more municipal fees and come under greater scrutiny by new municipal inspectors starting mid-year.
Many of the utility lines that deliver water, sewer, gas, phone, internet, and electricity run under the roads. Work on those lines inevitably means the road needs to be dug up so workers can access the infrastructure. New homes, for example, need connections into the lines that run under roads and sidewalks.
According to a city report published this week, 5,334 road cut permits were issued in 2018. Most of the permits are in the urban area, with only 14 per cent of those issued between 2016 and 2018 issued for a rural community.
Those road cuts can be annoying to a neighbourhood if the work to reinstate the road is shoddy.
Under the current rules, permit holders are required to make any necessary repairs on their road cuts for three years before the city is on the hook. The proposed changes would knock the warranty period down to two years to offset stricter measures imposed by city hall.
Part of those stricter measures include charging more fees for road cuts.
The city is supposed to charge a pavement degradation fee for road cuts on arterial roads based on the age of the road and size of the cut. According to the report, the city hasn’t been collecting the fees since 2013 because of the “administrative burden” of assessing the road cuts and collecting the apparent scraps of money. (The city says between 2003 and 2013, the most collected in one year was $30,000).
Now, the city wants to go after pavement degradation fees for more roads, not just arterial roads.
The proposal would have the city also charge the fee for cuts on roads classified as local, collector, major collector and municipal freeway. City departments would have to pay, too.
The city anticipates more revenue would come in from pavement degradation fees. The estimated $330,000 extra would be spent on road resurfacing projects starting in 2020.
In addition, the city wants more financial protection against bad road-cut repairs. It has been collecting $2,500 per cut as a security deposit, but corrective work costs more.
Insurance provisions would also be impacted by the bylaw changes. Instead of requiring permit applicants to have an insurance policy worth $2 million, the city wants to increase the insurance requirement to a $5-million policy.
The changes would come into effect on July 1.
The city wants to hire two full-time inspectors, bringing the number to three inspectors, and acquire three new vehicles to enforce the bylaw.
A second phase of the bylaw review, which will generate a similar report in 2020, is expected to have more recommendations on the amount the city charges for pavement degradation fees.
The next phase could bring stronger rules on cutting into all newly resurfaced roads. A higher level of scrutiny is applied to permit applications for only arterial roads that have been resurfaced or reconstructed in the previous three years. The city wants the same rigour applied to all roads.
The proposed bylaw changes also aim to make sure the city’s traffic flows aren’t messed up during the road work.
Anyone who wants to cut the road has to submit a traffic management plan if the road is an arterial or collector with a bus route, which means more than 75 per cent of the arterial and collector roads don’t require a traffic plan during a road cut. The city now wants all road cut permits for collector, major collector, arterial and freeway roads to come with a traffic plan.
Where the city currently bans road work during peak periods — between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. — on arterial and collector roads with bus routes, it now wants to extend the afternoon prohibition 30 minutes to 6 p.m. and also apply the weekday time restrictions to all collector, major collector arterial and freeway roads.
The proposed bylaw changes would also provide a longer notification period so the public would know earlier when the work is scheduled to happen.
Construction and utility companies have raised red flags over the proposed bylaw changes.
According to the city report, the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association has warned that the proposed changes will impact smaller builders. Bell Canada told the city that it’s “unreasonable” to require traffic plans for more roads and to expand peak-hour road work restrictions. Hydro Ottawa expressed concern about having to create traffic plans.
Council would need to approve the amendments to the bylaw. The changes must first get the transportation committee’s endorsement on April 3.
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