Barrhaven Blues

I attended the public consultation for the new transit plans for the city of Ottawa. There were four main proposals on the table, all of which involve (glory be) a downtown tunnel:

1. Bus transitways everywhere (Orleans, Kanata Barrhaven, Ottawa Airport, Riverside South), including in the tunnel;
2. Extension of the O-Train from Riverside South and the airport through a dual-mode downtown tunnel (shared with buses) and ending near Ottawa U, with the same bus transitways in the peripheral regions as proposed in option 1;
3. A light rapid transit (LRT) line from Baseline to Blair, with the O-Train as it is currently and bus transitways everywhere else; and
4. LRT from Baseline to Blair and from Bayview to Riverside South via the airport (replacing the current O-Train), with a bus transitway from Hurdman to Greenboro along with the other bus transitways to the other suburbs.

After attending, and hearing the anger at a lack of LRT service to Barrhaven, I wrote a letter to the mayor. Part of what I wrote is appended here:

"... essentially it's up to you, or to another politician with the courage, to stand up and say that those lines should all be red. That rail connections to Kanata, Orleans and Barrhaven will help get people out of their cars in those areas, will revitalize the local bus networks there (by filling them up with people heading to stations like Trim, Terry Fox, and Barrhaven Town Centre, and with more frequent service to boot). We need someone to end the madness on express buses in Barrhaven, many of which are already full before they reach Fallowfield at current population levels (much less what that would look like by 2031) and prevent a potential bus bottleneck at Baseline, currently the "minimum" terminus of the rail line as outlined in Option 4.

Vision requires articulating a series of goals, outlining why they are important to EVERYONE in the city, and pressing everyone to invest in the future.

Ottawa has the chance to be an even more livable city, but we only get to kick at this can once in a generation. Sure, some say that we can revisit some of these ideas later on, but in truth (as I'm sure you've learned) political will for large-scale change can only be marshaled sporadically. We have it now, and we need to capitalize on it."

Between now and 2031, the projected end date of the proposed plan, Barrhaven's population will grow by a whopping 129%, from 64,500 in 2007 to 147,600 in 2031. For some reason, the city's plan does not include a plan to move people from the area of quickest residential growth to the main employment zone as rapidly as possible. It's poor urban planning, to say the least, to do that when the opportunity to install LRT is staring us in the face.

And since Kanata's population will grow by 83% over the same time period, and it is also home to Scotiabank Place and several of the major high technology employers, don't you think it'd make sense to extend LRT westward, to beyond Lincoln Fields and into Ottawa's professional sport and hi-tech centre?

We can only hope that the final iteration of the rapid transit plan reflects the big city Ottawa has become, not the small dreams of those who wish the capital was something that it's not.