City hopes dealmaking strategy for LRT can convince NCC to unlock greenbelt for east-end road
The city's sought-after 100 days of diplomacy harkens back to a negotiation between the city and NCC over the city-desired route for the western LRT extension.
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Mar 28, 2022 • 1 hour ago • 6 minute read
After a 100-day negotiation secured federal land for the LRT expansion in Ottawa’s west end seven years ago, city council thinks the same strategy could unlock greenbelt land for a $306-million roadway and transit project in the east.
The National Capital Commission will need to agree to it, but so far there’s no indication the agency wants to give up more than 40 acres of open space for a new municipal road and Transitway stretching west from south Orléans.
With council now appealing directly to the federal minister in charge of the NCC, the city is trying to convince the agency that its preferred design to extend Brian Coburn Boulevard and a bus-only road west is the only acceptable way to build the project.
It’s yet another battle between the city and NCC over land in Canada’s capital.
The city needs to relieve traffic congestion for motorists travelling to and from growing Orléans communities and has planned to extend Brian Coburn Boulevard, and to build bus-only lanes, across the NCC greenbelt.
The official plan calls for development expansion in south Orléans to accommodate citywide growth projections. Those new residents will join thousands of other motorists and public transit users trying to access central and west Ottawa.
The NCC supports options that are closer to Navan Road and the Blackburn Hamlet Bypass, in line with the city’s original intentions for the project before detailed geotechnical studies exposed difficult ground conditions.
The NCC doesn’t want the project fragmenting farmland and natural areas in the greenbelt and running near the Mer Bleue bog.
But the city’s top-ranked, “technically preferred” design does exactly that, extending Brian Coburn Boulevard and the Transitway west to an expanded Renaud Road and Anderson Road and heading north toward Innes Road. Buses could access Blair Road en route to Blair LRT station. The proposed design includes a new multi-use pathway along the road. The road would run north of the bog, not through it.
The design is preferred, in large part, because it’s the least expensive option. According to a 2021 estimate, the road portion would cost $128 million and the Transitway portion would cost $178 million. The city would need to find the money for the work, but first it needs to have the design confirmed.
In the city’s preferred design, the NCC would need to make available 42 hectares of greenbelt land.
If the city went with an option the NCC prefers, the project would cost another $174 million. The city has argued that its own preferred option is broadly more ecologically sensitive than the NCC’s preference, according to a study that took 31 criteria into account.
The city’s sought-after 100 days of diplomacy harkens back to a negotiation between the city and NCC over the city-desired route for the western LRT extension through Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway lands. They inked the deal in 2015 and an LRT tunnel is under construction there today.
The NCC’s board is expected to receive an update on the Brian Coburn Boulevard dispute during a meeting in April.
NCC spokesperson Valérie Dufour said the agency worked with the city in 2013 on an agreed route “that better protects species at risk, as well as core natural areas and farmland in the greenbelt, including the internationally recognized Mer Bleu wetland.”
The NCC would still work with the city on a design based on two options running closer to Navan Road and the Blackburn Hamlet Bypass, even though those options are different from what the agency and city originally agreed to, Dufour said.
In a letter to city management in September 2020 underscoring the NCC’s position, CEO Tobi Nussbuam said, “there is great risk of public confusion … as to why an alignment option is being advanced by the city with the clear and unambiguous opposition of the affected land owner.”
Lucie Bureau, the NCC’s director of long-range planning and transportation, followed up with a December 2021 letter questioning the city’s proposal to provide “contaminated” land used for roads and a forest in Chapel Hill in exchange for ecological or agricultural lands in the greenbelt.
Council muddied the matter in February 2022 by roping in an unrelated NCC file on the other side of the city. The NCC wants to build new embassies on green space in Mechanicsville and council said no, with some councillors bringing up NCC opposition to the city’s plan for Brian Coburn Boulevard. The NCC has appealed that decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal.
Meanwhile, Orléans residents feel left out of city road projects. Several east-end community associations have backed the city’s plan to build the new road and Transitway.
Heather Buchanan, who’s on the planning committee of the Bradley Estates Community Association, said better road infrastructure in the area had been discussed by municipal government for about 30 years.
Over that time, south Orléans has significantly grown, with new developments regularly popping up and exacerbating a long-standing traffic problem.
“City approves the developments, they have to provide the infrastructure,” Buchanan said.
However, the city’s plan has been predictably met with opposition from people concerned about the environmental impact of building new roads in the eastern greenbelt. The local chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has voiced strong opposition.
The chapter’s executive director, John McDonnell, told councillors earlier this month that members sent 1,300 emails to the mayor and councillors, sounding the alarm over climate change and the loss of biodiversity and agricultural land.
“Simply put, greenbelt ecosystems are fragile and cannot support further fragmentation,” McDonnell told the transportation committee earlier this month, noting the sensitive biodiversity in the Mer Bleue sector. He accused the city of treating the greenbelt as a “bank of land to be developed rather than the ecological, educational and recreational gem it is.”
There’s also skepticism on city council about road expansions when precious infrastructure money could be used for sustainable transportation projects. Capital ward Coun. Shawn Menard has spent the term trying to convince colleagues they shouldn’t spend money on new roads since they’ll just get clogged with more cars.
On the other hand, east-end councillors see the Brian Coburn Boulevard project as a critical addition for a suburban community that has few main corridors to move heavy traffic and high-capacity bus routes. They see the transportation problem as a threat to Orléans’s economic development.
The project has been one of the largest advocacy files for Innes ward Coun. Laura Dudas and Cumberland ward Coun. Catherine Kitts as representatives of south Orléans residents.
“One of the more pressing issues facing the south end of Orléans is that development has outpaced infrastructure and development in the south end of Orléans has been absolutely explosive in the last 15 years,” Kitts said during last Wednesday’s council meeting.
It was Kitts who won support for the idea of a 100-day negotiation period with the NCC. During the council meeting, she thanked planning general manager Stephen Willis for helping her craft the motion.
That connection could be key. Willis was executive director of the NCC’s capital planning branch during the 100-day LRT negotiation in 2015.
However, when it comes to the east-end road dispute, the circumstances are notably different.
The LRT dispute had an Ottawa MP, John Baird, as the federal cabinet minister in charge of the NCC, with the future LRT system passing through his riding. Today, the cabinet minister overseeing the NCC is Hamilton-area MP Filomena Tassi; the governing Liberals have decided not to assign a local minister to the NCC oversight role.
Also, the Brian Coburn Boulevard extension, while it comes with a Transitway component that will one day carry battery-electric buses, would build a new road and expand other roads for cars across the NCC’s prized greenbelt. The LRT dispute was about building electrified mass public transit.
Time is ticking down if the city wants to avoid further delays.
The council term will end in November and there will be new political leadership at city hall. Transportation priorities, while proposed by city planners after careful study, could change with new political direction.
On Wednesday, Mayor Jim Watson, who’s not seeking re-election in the October municipal election, voted with the majority in favour of the city-preferred functional design of the Brian Coburn Boulevard and Transitway project. Of eight councillors who voted against it, two are publicly declared mayoral candidates: Diane Deans and Catherine McKenney.
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