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At least one city councillor believes the city should abandon any ideas of locating the western light rail along the Ottawa River Parkway after the National Capital Commission has continually indicated it’s against the idea.
“We should take them at face value and move on,” said Councillor Peter Hume, who chairs the planning committee. “What I want on planning matters is clarity, and the NCC has been clear.”
Hume was responding to a number of articles in the Citizen this week that indicate the NCC is against allowing the second phase of the LRT project along the parkway, which is owned by the NCC and has a protected shoreline.
Marie Lemay, the NCC’s chief executive, told the Citizen’s editorial board on Tuesday that a recent presentation by the city left the commission unconvinced that the project meets its criteria for “capital building,” and that “right now, we wouldn’t be able to recommend use of the parkway.”
Those sentiments were conveyed to city officials last week in a letter, obtained by the Citizen, written by the NCC’s vice-president of capital planning. In the letter, François Lapointe wrote that “the western extension of light rail needs to equally support high quality city building, rather than focusing on the most rapid transit option.”
Although Hume seems happy to move on from the parkway option — the city’s preferred route, in part because it is the cheapest — other councillors balked at the suggestion, saying the NCC should wait for the environmental assessment, which is expected about a year from now. The EA is looking at three options for the western expansion of LRT from Tunney’s Pasture to Baseline Road: the existing transitway, part of which goes along the Ottawa River Parkway; the Richmond Road/Byron Avenue corridor; and Carling Avenue.
“I’m not going to pre-judge the outcome of the EA process,” said Mayor Jim Watson, who added that the NCC board of directors hasn’t made a decision one way or another regarding light rail on the parkway.
“My advice to the NCC is that they, too, should wait for the assessment process before they pre-judge what the route is for transit in the west end.”
Although he said he doesn’t “want to jump to conclusions,” Watson pointed out that buses already run along the parkway — 130 buses per direction during the peak hours, to be precise — and that they would be replaced with quieter, less polluting electricity-powered trains.
The mayor also said that “you’d have to look at what the alternatives are. I suspect that if you ask people along Byron Avenue if they want a train on their front doorstep, they wouldn’t be too pleased with that.”
Watson didn’t back away from the possibility of using political pressure to get LRT onto the parkway, if that option was supported by the EA.
“We may have to go to lobby the NCC and the federal government for a specific route or for additional funds,” Watson told reporters. “We want to make sure … the NCC board knows the cost implications of their decision. It’s fine to say they’re against something, but we know that the cost is substantially more to go along Carling Avenue.”
He said if the NCC denies the city the parkway route, the federal government will have to give the city more money for a costlier route.
Most councillors adopted a wait-and-see approach, but it’s difficult to determine what would bring the NCC onside with the parkway route.
Councillor David Chernushenko said he could support swapping “a whole heap of buses” that currently travel along the river with light rail, as long as it did a good job quickly transporting commuters to the west end. And he’d want to see a plan to add localized tramway routes in a later phase of the light-rail plan.
But he’s not up for developing the area along the Ottawa River.
“That is a gem having the river there,” said Chernushenko. “Other cities have allowed development right to the edge of their waterways and ended up regretting it and trying to claw it back. I’m for protecting it.”
As is Councillor Peter Clark. Like most others, he said he’s withholding judgment until he sees the EA, although he remembers when the NCC didn’t want the city to put the transitway on the parkway. They worked it out.
Still, he said putting the LRT along the river “is a valid concern. The river is an asset, and we should protect our assets.”
“I’m as irreverent as anybody,” said Clark, but the parkway “isn’t suitable for development.”
It’s unclear then, what kind of agreement the NCC and the city will be able to reach. According to this week’s developments, the NCC’s primary complaint is that the city’s plan does not support capital city building.
According to Lapointe’s letter, the NCC has found that the plan to expand the LRT westward would not achieve, among other things, “integration with communities and commercial areas … and successful assimilation with transit-oriented development opportunities.”
It’s hard to imagine that the NCC would allow commercial development along the Ottawa River Parkway, nor is it clear that Ottawa residents would allow it. So how could the NCC’s demands be met?
“We’ve been critical of the NCC for being vague,” said Hume. “They’re being fairly clear now. We should respect that and move on.”
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