Airport Parkway widening postponed until 2020 or later
Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 10, 2016 | Last Updated: January 10, 2016 5:41 PM EST
Drivers who are fed up with bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Airport Parkway are just going to have to suck it up because the cash-strapped city has delayed plans for widening the road until at least 2020.
An environmental assessment for widening the two-lane arterial between Brookfield Road and the airport is underway, and the first stretch, between Brookfield and Hunt Club Road, was to be completed by 2018, at an estimated cost of $31 million. But that target has now been pushed back for at least several years — and perhaps even longer.
According to River ward Coun. Riley Brockington, senior transportation planners told him last month that the work may not be finished for eight to 10 years.
He called the delay “excessive” and says staff “haven’t justified why it’s being postponed for as many years as it is.”
But a lack of cash appears to be the reason.
The 2013 transportation master plan was built on the premise that the city would collect from development charges and senior levels of government somewhere in the neighbourhood of $43 million to $45 million each year for growth-related road projects. But lower-than-forecast development charges, among other things, have forced the city to revise that projection to $26 million annually, wrote Michael Mizzi, the acting general manager of planning and growth, in a November memo.
“This new reality means that road projects will be introduced at a slower rate in order to match available funding,” Mizzi wrote.
On its website, the city says rapid growth in the communities south of Hunt Club, including Leitrim, Riverside South and Greely, has increased traffic volumes on the parkway, leading to rush-hour congestion, and the opening of Ernst & Young Centre has further increased traffic in the area of the Lester-Albion Road corridor.
The parkway is “extremely congested” between 7:30 and 9 a.m. as northbound vehicles bottleneck at Hunt Club and traffic comes to a virtual stop as commuters try to merge onto the parkway. In the afternoon, from about 3:30 to 6:30, the bottleneck happens at Brookfield and traffic remains heavy until Hunt Club. “It’s a very slow ride from Brookfield to the airport,” Brockington said.
Despite the gridlock, Frank McKinney, acting manager of transportation planning, confirmed in an email that the widening has been postponed until the second phase of the transportation master plan, which is 2020 to 2025. It was initially included in the first phase, between 2014 and 2019, but McKinney says it was deferred as part of the 2016 budget, which council passed last month.
“No one brought that to my attention,” said Coun. Diane Deans, whose Gloucester-Southgate ward includes the airport. “Changes in the budget are not supposed to be well-guarded secrets, and that seems to be what this is.”
Deans says the pinch-point from Brookfield to Hunt Club must be addressed sooner rather than later. “That’s where the road is failing,” she said. “If council was putting off this project for 10 years, council should have been told that was the impact of voting for that budget.”
Gloucester-South Nepean Coun. Michael Qaqish, says his top priority is the O-Train extension, which would add new stations at South Keys, Leitrim and Bowesville Road, giving many south-end residents a reliable alternative to driving.
But he’s still unhappy the work on the parkway has been postponed. “It’s disappointing but it’s a fiscal reality we’re facing,” he said.
A final open house related to the Airport Parkway environmental assessment will be held in early March and the transportation committee will get a report with recommendations by the summer.
mpearson@ottawacitizen.com
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http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-2020-or-later
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