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“you don’t have a clue unless you’ve went through it or know some one who has.My daughter was 7 of age when she...” On Monday I went to the City’s open house on the Lansdowne Live plan. It was a zoo. Concerned Glebe-ites singing protest songs; people asking passersby to sign petitions against the “sole-sourcing” of the plan; and people handing out leaflets telling the truth about the deal.
Inside, it didn’t get much better. Tiny posters in small font, replicating the text of the City’s Lansdowne Live website. Each poster was surrounded by a crowd three or four people deep trying to read what was on display. There were officials from the city and/or the developer, but they were too inundated with people for me to get close to them.
It was insanity.
I went there to find out what was proposed, and ended up with more questions than answers:
What happens if the CFL team folds? The Ottawa Renegades lasted only four seasons. Aside from the $300k in annual rent[1], where would the team’s failure leave the city? According to the business plan, the CFL team is supposed to contribute $42 million dollars back to the city and developers.[2] That seems like an awfully large risk in a $200 million plan.
How will people get there? The transit portion of the slides seems optimistic. Lansdowne is far from the transit way, far from the planned LRT, and far from the nearest highway on-ramp. During peak use, the plan suggests that people will park and ride from the burbs to get to Lansdowne. That seems optimistic. Bank street becomes terribly congested for anything larger than a 67s game (eg, the Ex). Without a change in infrastructure, that seems unlikely to improve.
What about public use? The City of Ottawa is short on centrally located sports fields. There doesn’t appear to be an allocation of land for amateur sports such as soccer and ultimate. The plan would see a “front yard” that would serve as parking for large events. There’s no mention of use for amateur sports.[3] It sounds like they’d keep the winter bubble over the field at Frank Clair stadium, but that’s about it. Even though the pictures show fountains and a plaza, but I couldn’t find any mention of those in the posters or business plans.
What about the extras? The first phase of the plan is replacing the stadium and asphalt parking lot with something a little nicer and adding retail to the site. Phase 2 is the development of hotel, residential, and office components. The plan doesn’t describe what those developments will be. How large will each retail space be? What is the 41,000 square foot “unique food store“? Since the site is far from major arteries, it seems unlikely that a big box store would move in there. What will happen if the space can’t be rented out?
Aside from these questions, I have to say that the event didn’t feel like a consultation. It felt like something verging on a coronation, or perhaps a revolt. The vocal members of the crowd clearly didn’t like what they saw. The city and the promoters did little to answer visitor’s questions – although there was a Q&A session at Wednesday night’s consultation.
After reading the City/promoter’s docs I’m left with the simple conclusion: even though the Lansdowne Live proposal is no worse than what’s currently at the site, it doesn’t have much going for it. The proposal envisions Lansdowne as an attraction, but without the necessary transit to get visitors to the site. It lacks public space: no statuary, no gardens, no playing fields, no plazas, no skate parks, no amphitheater. Nothing.
[1] – Business plan, page 20.
[2] – Business plan, page 23.
[3] – Take a look at the stadium page and search for “winter”.
Against the recommendations of the Pie Palace legal staff, I am going to continue my habit of posting while tipsy. You have been warned.
Earlier this week, Public Transit in Ottawa ran a post about the proposed downtown tunnel in Ottawa’s new rail-based transit network, which implied that a downtown tunnel is both necessary and that there are no other options.1
We have many, many options for transit: we could put dedicated transit routes down Carling, under the Canal, or along Wellington, which would solve downtown congestion without having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building and maintaining a tunnel. Similarly, we aren’t tied to the (diesel) rail solution that the city is proposing: we could use buses or electric streetcars. If we wanted to solve downtown congestion without spending hundreds of millions of dollars, we could close downtown (north of Laurier, say) to private vehicles during rush hour and set the traffic lights to a permanent east/west green.2
Simply put: we have options. But that is not how the transit debate is being framed. On the left, we have city councilor Clive Doucet saying that world class cities need rail transit. On the right, we have a mayor saying that Ottawa needs a tunnel. Neither of those things are true. I think it would be awesome if we had a rail network, and I think a downtown tunnel would be nifty, but we don’t need either of those things. We could solve our transit woes more cheaply, and maybe even more efficiently with other options.
I would argue that our quasi-debate is obscuring the larger issue: Ottawa’s burbs are built for cars, and no amount of dedicated transit will be useful to suburbanites. Until we increase suburban density to a point where it’s economical to lay track (or dig tunnels) out to Nepean, Orleans, and Barhaven, public transit will continue to be an expensive and unattractive way to move most of Ottawa’s population.
The four possibilities proposed by city staff in March of 2008 were essentially the same, differing only in where the train would leave off and pick up with buses. Now we’re being told that we can’t do without a downtown tunnel, again, without anything approaching the level of deliberation and consideration necessary before dropping hundreds of millions of dollars.
Happily, the City of Ottawa is revisiting the Comprehensive Five Year Plan that decides how our city should grow during the next half decade (and will be having public consultations at Ben Franklin place later this month). It remains to be seen whether city councilors and staff will use this opportunity to address the root cause of our problems, or will continue addressing the symptoms.
As others have mentioned, the City of Ottawa has put together four possible plans for public transit in 2031. The four plans cover the same ground, they
The only difference is the mode: the first plan is entirely bus, with each of the other three plans phasing in gradually more light rail. Plan four has the most track, featuring rail lines from the current Baseline station to Blair with a dogleg down to Bowesville and the airport.
If I sound unexcited about the plans, it’s because they’re all pretty much the same. Swap tracks for Transitway, and add a few percentage points of capitol and ongoing costs, and they’re basically the same plan: what we have now. Even the growth projections for transit trips downtown are ho-hum: they project an overall rise of transit use (heading into the downtown core) of 10%.
Tomorrow: suggestions for what a transit plan should include.
