Coalition reponse to Kettle Island
January 10th, 2009 Posted in News and Commentary, Project Critique, Your Participation
A coalition of communities submitted an open editorial to the Ottawa Citizen, formally rejecting the Kettle Island bridge, and addressing some of the recent publications of Citizen columnist, Ken Gray, who has repeatedly dismissed objections to the bridge.
The Op Ed was published on Jan. 5, and is signed by 13 representatives of communities that would be negatively impacted by the Kettle Island bridge.
Click here to read the Op Ed.
Tags: coalition
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January 14th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I wrote to Mr. Robert Tennant, one of the Board Members of NCC on the eve of the Baord Meeting to consider the proposed Kettle Island Bridge.
It was sent c/o the NCC with a request to provide copies to the CEO & Chair of the Board.
Here is my message:
Dear Bob:
I sincerely hope you will oppose the plan to put the new bridge across Kettle Island.
The consultants have made their recommendation using the wrong criteria and all of Manor Park, Rockcliffe, New Edinburg and Centretown want the bridge constructed further from the City’s core area.
Furthermore, there was insufficient consideration given to the Montfort Hospital and the impact on its new expansion.
Also, the NCC’s parkways were never to be used for transport trucks and the Kettle Island proposal ignores this policy.
Our concern is the weighting of the selection criteria which has led them to the conclusion that Kettle Island is the best option.
(The weighting is not even that significantly greater using their ranking, than at least two of the other options.)
When I spoke to one of the Principals of the consulting firm, he said that more than 50 % of the trucks using Macdonald-Cartier Bridge are local traffic. This is possibly correct if you use the Transport Canada definition of a “truck”, which includes SUVs and Minivans.
Our concern is the articulated vehicles most of which are NOT serving the local communities.
The City’s own studies have shown that large trucks on inter-provincial routes prefer to use Ontario roads as they are wider and can handle the large trucks better than Quebec roads, hence they come through Ottawa and block Rideau and King Edward streets.
(Bob Chiarelli confirmed this to me.)
The Lower Duck Island choice would be better and so would the Masson ferry route. At your recent public meeting at the Casino I spoke to a representative of the Gatineau Airport (who was not given a chance to speak) and he said they would prefer the Duck Island option as it would
serve their airport better. This makes eminent sense to me.
These other options are not going to adversely affect the lives of nearly as many people as would the Kettle Island proposal, and surely humans take precedent over other cost and environmental factors.
Bob Chiarelli worked hard to get a ring road built around Ottawa-Hull when he was Mayor and had a lot of studies done of the routes.
He concluded that we need a ring road as a long term solution for traffic around the National Capital, such as most other large cities have. He was leaning toward a Private Public Sector Partnership (PPP) financing solution with the bridges financed by tolls.
This would reduce the amount of government funding required and made the solution possible, faster than if it was solely financed by government.
If we construct the new bridge further East as a PPP project we will be starting toward this goal.
I believe this is the best solution.
Please vote against the Kettle Island route and try to convince your fellow Board members to do the same. “