Not on my commuting route
Concern around increased commuting time, the main reason eastern Ottawa favours Kettle Island over other alternatives, has been recently raised by the Blackburn Community Association (Get on with the bridge, Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 22). The poor chaps want to save their 5 minutes per day to get to work.
Never mind that the Kettle Island corridor passes through 7 km of established residential areas, and would spew poisonous diesel fumes from over 1700 trucks per day into the lungs of 100K residents, families, and children living in the immediate vicinity of the corridor. And never mind that the Gatineau Airport corridor, a much more preferable option in my opinion, would pass through 0 km of established residential areas.
The fight against the Kettle Island bridge is founded upon protecting health, safety, and quality of life within our communities. I would argue that this is a much more noble and worthy fight than one based on “not on my commuting route”.
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December 28th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Poor misguided Blackburn/Orleans residents. I can imagine most of these east enders will go to work on the 174 or get on the 417 at Innes Road (to go downtown). If they took any time at all to be properly justify their conclusion that Kettle Island/Aviation Parkway will reduce their traffic woes, they would come to the conclusion that they are completely misguided. Their current nightmare, being the famous 417 “split” will become several times worse. The current proposal is to put a “NEW” ramp in to feed Gatineau traffic from Aviation Parkway straight into the split heading towards downtown. This would be hundreds if not thousands of “NEW” cars. Maybe the Blackburn Community Association should look for a new representative to protect their morning commute. This issue is giving me a headache with so many misguided decisions.
January 8th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
You will note that Bob Monette, councillor for the Orleans Ward, actually said in the media (I believe it was in an article in Metro Ottawa) that the reason why Kettle Island was a good choice is because it would “least affect the commute from Orleans to the downtown core”.
Mind you, I am sure that not everybody in Orleans agrees with this. I am convinced that if we had a global transportation plan that included a bridge in the Canotek industrial park area, a widening of the 174 to accommodate traffic, and a plan to fix the ’split’, many people in Orleans would find it reasonable and even useful to have a bridge that would improve their access to Gatineau without affecting existing communities.