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A post on Transit Ottawa reminded me of a recent poll on CFRA.
89.6% of respondents believed that Clive Doucet and Alex Cullen wanted to cancel road projects because “[they] aren’t interested in keeping taxes down; this is just a thinly veiled attack on car owners by a couple of public transit lovers.”
That’s the first time I’ve heard “transit lover” used as an epithet. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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.
The Citizen reported on Kitchissippi Councillor Christine Leadman’s new transit proposal yesterday. Ms. Leadman repeated Clive Doucet’s proposal: with the eastern train heading down Carling, instead of following the Parkway.
Interestingly, Nancy Schepers (city manager for planning, transit and the environment) says that her department didn’t seriously consider Carling as one of the potential routes the train could follow. Which isn’t surprisingly, considering that the four plans were essentially identical. Ms. Schepers also says that the Carling route would be “far more expensive
” than the parkway route – which is odd, given that we haven’t seen a detailed cost analysis of the parkway route yet.
It’s a pity that this proposal didn’t go anywhere, because Carling has many of the attributes that make mass transit work: it’s surrounded by housing, and it has existing “destinations” along the route (Carlingwood mall, various medical centres, and a mix of stores). The Parkway is an easy route to follow since there isn’t any development there, but that’s precisely why it makes a lousy transit corridor.
Update: I forgot to credit the photo author. The photograph was taken by paulshannon.
Ottawa is a world-class city and deserves a transit system worthy of that status – together we’re getting it right.
For some reason, Mayor Larry likes to keep saying Ottawa is a “world-class” city. Then again, he also liked to say that “zero means zero” (or is that 4.9?).
I suspect it will be a few more generations, a few city-wide fires, and a revolution or two until Ottawa becomes a world-class city to rival Paris. We don’t have the boulevards, landmarks, or public transit system to rival the French capitol.
About the only place we can hope to compete is with our on-street food vendors. We have two advantages: our culture accepts eating while walking and we have a large francophone population. It’s only a matter of time before some bright lad or lass at Algonquin discovers that crepes can be made and sold on the street.
“Oh! But what about beaver tails?” you say. The answer to that is simple: savory crepes. Do beaver tails have ham, tomato, feta? No. What about cheese? No. Beaver tails are a culinary dead-end. Crepes are like prokaryotes. There isn’t a gastronomic niche crepes can’t handle. Bring on a Canadian school of crepes, I say.
Sure, our city is a sprawling mess. Sure, our future transit plans are pretty much what we have now (with a little more tunnel). Sure, our city has few landmarks almost no public art. Sure, we don’t have much in the way of urban parks. But we can at least have some decent street food, dammit!
You haven’t lived until you’ve been on an OC Transpo bus as it fishtails around corner after corner after corner.
Ottawa’s been buried under 30 centimeters of snow this weekend, with the possibility of more on the way. I live downtown and things weren’t bad: side streets were buried, but the main roads and sidewalks had been cleared. Busy stretches of sidewalk that weren’t cleared were quickly trampled into a walkable state. Wandering down Bank Street this afternoon the it seemed like an ordinary Sunday: stores were open, people were walking to and fro with their coffee, groceries, and other sundry goods. When you’re walking, a foot of snow isn’t a problem (unless you have mobility problems).
Then I hopped on a bus and headed to the ‘burbs, and witnessed a completely different story. Only the main roads had been plowed. Sidewalks were doubly buried – first under mountains of snow that had been pushed off the roads, then under a dumping of natural snow. The only way to get around was to walk on the road. Fortunately most drivers were polite enough to give pedestrians a wide berth.
I won’t say there’s a moral to this story. Those living in the ‘burbs are used to getting around by car, so after digging out their vehicles, it was probably an ordinary Sunday for them as well. But it seemed pretty clear that squeezing people into walkable neighbourhoods lessened the load on city snow clearing infrastructure.
Image by preciouskhyatt.
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.
