Stars align for diverse public transit visions in Ottawa ahead of 2022 municipal vote
There hasn't been much indulgence for competing theories about how to expand transit in Ottawa, but openings have emerged for those discussions to potentially happen.
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Publishing date: Feb 13, 2021 • 6 hours ago • 4 minute read
If public transit is a pillar of every credible mayoral campaign, a gigantic federal funding program, a delay to Ottawa’s transportation master plan and the COVID-19 pandemic are three developments that could help support differing visions for transit expansion ahead of the next municipal election.
Now is generally the time contenders would start seriously thinking about a run for the mayor’s office in the October 2022 vote.
This past December, just after the midway mark of the 2018-2022 council term, Mayor Jim Watson suggested he was on the fence about seeking a fourth consecutive mandate as mayor next year. His decision this year will ultimately keep adversaries away or launch a wide-open contest.
A campaign that ignores public transit planning is generally a losing one, but there hasn’t been much indulgence for competing theories about how to expand transit in Ottawa.
However, openings have emerged for those discussions to potentially happen.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday announced a major funding program that had municipalities gushing. The federal government will spend $3 billion annually on public transit projects starting in 2026, answering calls for predictable upper-tier support for transit infrastructure.
When someone asks local political hopefuls how they could possibly pay for a transit scheme, they now have an easy answer.
The Watson public transit plank of a hypothetical re-election bid is obvious: extend LRT to the suburbs left out of the first two construction stages.
In fact, in praising Trudeau’s announcement, Watson basically said the new money would be used to bring LRT to Barrhaven, Kanata and Stittsville.
Conversations about other ways to expand high-capacity OC Transpo service have been muted for about seven years. This is partially because the city plans projects according to the transportation master plan and the current plan hasn’t been updated since 2013, when the big splash was the Stage 2 O-Train project.
The city told council last August that an updated transportation master plan won’t be done until fall 2023, a significant change from the original April 2022 timeline. The delay makes sense since the master plan depends heavily on an “origin-destination” study of how people move around the region and the results, which will now be based on work scheduled to begin in fall 2021, would be skewed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It means the current council won’t have an opportunity to lock in a transit vision for the city and there will be time for the next city council, under a mayor’s leadership, to massage the blueprint after the term of office begins in November 2022.
It seems to be a given that a Stage 3 LRT expansion will figure prominently in the 2023 transportation master plan. The Stage 3 projects, which have been roughed out through council-approved environmental assessments, have estimated costs of $3 billion for Barrhaven and $1.85 billion for Kanata/Stittsville.
Both lines could be built in phases.
Then again, pouring money into expanding the Transitway network, especially with the addition of more electric buses in what could be a greening of the entire Transpo fleet, is also an option.
After all, the city is approving remote rural areas for development, like the Algonquins of Ontario “Tewin” project, that will require bus service. It’s also designing new subdivisions, like one in south Orléans with about 5,000 homes, next to future bus rapid transit corridors. A Transitway on March Road through Kanata North has been on the books for years, and Baseline Road is eyed for a Transitway linking up with O-Train stations.
Then there are the rail schemes lingering on the city’s backburner.
In the 2014 mayoral race, Mike Maguire pitched using existing CN and Via Rail lines to run commuter rail service, an idea that was virtually laughed away by LRT diehards.
Five years later, city staff told council they were interested in negotiating the acquisition of two CN rail corridors that together run between the Kanata North area and around Highway 417 at Walkley Road because they “could be very beneficial for longer-term transportation infrastructure needs.” The city, in fact, already owns similar railway corridors cutting through Kanata North and Stittsville.
There has been virtually no discussion about other potential LRT projects. The prospect of a Carling Avenue rail line faded after the city pursued the Stage 2 western LRT extension, but high-density residential proposals for the Carling area have been coming into city hall. There has been little consideration of ways to run LRT across other inner-urban communities.
The current LRT blueprint is the main focus of council and the pandemic hasn’t knocked anyone off track when it comes to running and building the O-Train system.
There will be a time, however, when the impact of COVID-19 on the travelling habits of Ottawa’s workforce will crystallize. It will likely happen after the origin-destination study is complete.
With that data, the mayor and councillors of the 2022-2026 term could decide if a multibillion-dollar suburban LRT expansion is still worth it in the short-to-medium term, or if there are others ways to spend billions of upper-government dollars to help transit customers more easily get around the city.
jwilling@postmedia.com
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https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...municipal-vote
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