Ottawa LRT plans: Stage 2 plan wins council's approval
Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 8, 2017 | Last Updated: March 8, 2017 5:11 PM EST
Ottawa city council voted Wednesday to approve the ambitious $3.6-billion Stage 2 rail and road blueprint for expanding the city’s LRT network to the east, west and south, but not before also looking north.
Council asked Mayor Jim Watson to formalize talks with Gatineau Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin aimed at improving the rapid transit connections between the two cities with a special focus on the potential future use of the Prince of Wales bridge, which the City of Ottawa owns.
Approximately 60,000 people travel between Ottawa and Gatineau on a typical weekday, but Watson says a day doesn’t go by that he isn’t asked about improving connections between the two cities.
One possibility that’s been bandied about for decades would see the O-Train’s Trillium line extend north across the Ottawa River and connect to the Taché-UQO Rapibus station in Gatineau.
“We need to make sure Gatineau is onside,” Watson said, adding it’s an idea Liberal MPs on both sides of the river support.
That’s key because the city will need federal funding — in the range of tens of millions of dollars, based on preliminary estimates — to upgrade the bridge for rail.
Watson said Pedneaud-Jobin “is interested in looking at that as another transportation link between the two provinces.”
“We want to find a better way to get people out of their cars and into transit,” he said.
The Stage 2 LRT plan would extend the Trillium Line south to Bowesville Road in Riverside South and include a four-kilometre spur to the Ottawa International Airport by 2021.
An eastern arm to Trim Road would be completed by 2022, followed by western links to Algonquin College and Moodie Drive by 2023.
The package includes building 23 new stations, buying new buses and trains, and widening the city-owned Highway 174.
“This is obviously a very historic and exciting day for the city and its future,” Watson said.
It’s a far stretch from six years ago, when the city had no realistic plans and no financial backing from other levels of government. “When we had discussions with the federal and provincial governments, quite frankly they didn’t take us all that seriously because we did not have our act together,” Watson said.
Now, Ottawa is building LRT farther and faster than anyone believed was possible, he said.
Several councillors continued to question the need for widening the 174 at a time when LRT is being extended to Orléans. The city has an analysis, not included in any public report, that says widening the highway will take 10 per cent of the anticipated riders from the rail line and still leave the 174 overcrowded.
But Cumberland Coun. Stephen Blais, who chairs the transit commission, defended the move as a modest, cost-effective expansion of the 174 to add a carpool lane.
“We need a multi-modal transportation system that provides options for everyone,” he said. “Not everyone can walk to work, not everyone can bike to work, not everyone can take transit to work. We need a complete system for all residents of Ottawa and I’m very proud the Stage 2 plan does that.”
Meanwhile, extending the western terminus to Moodie Drive, instead of Bayshore Shopping Centre, will mean residents from Kanata and Stittsville will be able to take a local bus to Moodie station in 2023 and hop on the train, Kanata South Coun. Allan Hubley said.
“That is a huge move forward from the original date of 2031 just to start the planning process,” he said.
Council approved several minor tweaks to the plan.
Barrhaven Coun. Jan Harder wants the city to study the feasibility and priority of converting the southwest Transitway to rail between Algonquin College and Barrhaven, which she notes is the fastest growing area of Ottawa. A rail conversion there isn’t part of the current plan until after 2031.
Stittsville Coun. Shad Qadri asked staff to explore the possibility of building a new park-and-ride lot at Moodie station.
And Blais requested public washrooms for Place d’Orléans station, which is projected to have more higher transfer volumes than other stations with washrooms. Because installing washrooms at Place d’Orléans station was part of the initial plan, before the extension to Trim Road became a reality, staff say it won’t add to the capital budget.
Although Wednesday’s approval brings the city another step closer to putting the Stage 2 project up for tender, the city still needs to secure federal funding, which Watson said he hopes will happen before the end of May.
“I have every indication we will be hearing positive news,” he said.
The Liberals committed to $1 billion to the project during the 2015 election, but the city is also hoping to get an additional $150 million for the extensions to Trim Road and the airport.
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