Missed the consultations? Submit comments online.
If you were unable to participate in the first round of public consultations, please take the time to submit your comments and feedback online. The consultants have prepared a Do-It-Yourself online kit that provides the opportunity for you to identify and document all of your concerns associated with Corridor 5 (Kettle Island).
I urge you to complete this process, as this feedback will identify the community attributes and corridor characteristics that need to be considered and protected through the analysis, design, and final selection process.
Click here for a link to the DIY kit on the consultant’s website. The DIY kit will be available online until the end of June, possibly longer. So please provide your input sooner than later.
To help guide your feedback, click here for a map that identifies many of the communities, institutions, and facilities that would be impacted by a Kettle Island trucking route.
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June 21st, 2011 at 8:16 am
I completed the form provided on the website, however there was no link provided with the form to submit my comments. How can I find out if the Genivar group has actually received my comments? What good is the do-it-yourself kit if nobody gets the answers?
June 21st, 2011 at 10:27 am
There is a ‘Register’ button on the online form, after the boxes soliciting your input. Presumably, clicking that submits the form to the consultants.
If you are unsure about whether or not your feedback was received, send an email directly to info.crossings@genivar.com asking them if they received it, and expressing your confusion.
You may also want to CC the NCC at info@ncc-ccn.ca.
Let us know what you find out.
June 21st, 2011 at 10:56 am
Other than nimby-ism, what are the concrete objections to using the corridor which has been set aside on both sides of the river for thje past three decades or so for its intended purpose? If you look at the current three options objectively, the corridor five option seems to make the most sense in terms of stated goals for a new bridge and it would impact far fewer people and would be the least costly for tax payers. I am truly curious.
June 21st, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I have received a reply stating that my inquiry was read, but as yet no confirmation that my form has been submitted for consideration.
June 21st, 2011 at 2:42 pm
To Erich Ess:
A route up Aviation Parkway will cut the East End in half. This will further impede East West flow along Montreal and Ogilvie, which are already saturated during rush hours. The length of lights required to get trains of trucks through will be sufficient to delay commuters in cross-town traffic. Depending on where the exits off Aviation are located, you may also cause problems for Hemlock which is already at capacity (despite being a residential street).
The impact on the split will also be terrible. The split is already bad and there is not sufficient space to create a proper four-way interchange.
In short, not only will corridor 5 impact communities, but it will impact city-wide traffic, by complicating east-west traffic flows and the split.
The balkanization of the East End (which will be cut by major thoroughfares and the loss of the only North-South greenspace corridor between the Vanier Parkway and the Greenbelt should be added to the regional impacts.
Add to this the loss of pedestrian and bicycle accessibility to the Ottawa River Parkway and institutions like the Montfort Hospital, Cite Collegiale, and the Canadian Aviation Museum, only complicates the situation further.
This is not just Nimbyism. Corridor 5 is a bad choice for the city as a whole. It will impact traffic in the whole of the East End.
Finally, Corridor 5 will contravene the city’s own efforts at densification. The result will be urban sprawl on the Quebec side for new dormitory communities. This will add to Ottawa’s traffic problems, not mitigate them.
I would not underplay by any means the impact that a corridor 5 bridge would have on communities, but it will also adversely affect city-wide transportation in the whole of the East End.
June 21st, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Erich – Wouldn’t you agree that the pollution, noise, and health hazards associated with a trucking route accommodating thousands of trucks a day should be kept far away from residential areas and communities?
The Kettle Island corridor would run within a stone’s throw of nearly 7 kilometers of established, developed areas – most of which are residential.
For the other two options currently being considered, because the routes keep their distance from densely populated areas, the relative impact on people is far less. So either of these options would impact far fewer people than Kettle Island.
Costs in Phase 1 were calculated to +/- 20%, as reported by the consultants. The costing scores (higher scores indicate lower costs), which represented a combination of estimated capital and operating costs for the three corridors currently on the table were:
Option 5: 24.64 (Kettle Island)
Option 6: 24.74 (Lower Duck)
Option 7: 22.54 (Gatineau Airport)
So, the Phase 1 consultants concluded that, of the three options currently being considered, Option 7 is the highest cost alternative (it had the lowest score), Option 5 is slightly less expense, and Option 6 is the least expensive (being 0.4% more cost effective than Option 5).
But because this was all estimated to +/- 20% at best, it’s safe to say, that each option would cost about the same amount to build.
And any perception that one alternative is more or less expensive than another is, at this point in the process, simply unsubstantiated.
I hope this helps you to understand some of the objective reasons as to why Kettle Island does not make the most sense.
June 22nd, 2011 at 9:15 am
Thank-you both ccredico and DM for your replies and the information. In reality then, none of the options seems to make sense. Both corridors 6 and 7 would feed trucks and traffic onto the 174 which is bursting at the seams as it is and will cause the split to be more of a nightmare. Given the thousands of commuters going back and forth from the far east end, I would actually think that more citizens would be impacted by the increased traffic flow and overflow into neighborhoods than those who live around option 5. My thinking had been, since the majority of the truck traffic is local and a great deal comes from the Walkley commercial/industrial area, that 5 would make logical sense as it would be a straight shot to the Quebec side without impacting the 174 or the split.
Also, corridor six would cause the expropriation of about 80 homes and businesses on the Quebec side (including some of the oldest homes in Gatineau) as well as the destruction of a 19th century cemetery. As a Canadian, I find that completely unacceptable and would argue that such a move will impact people far more significantly (getting the family home torn down and being forced to move) than anyone in either of the other two options.
I think that I have come to the conclusion that none of these corridors make sense. That the stated goals will not be met no matter what option is decided upon. I hope that they aren’t simply building a bridge, for the sake of building a bridge.
June 23rd, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Erich
You have reached the correct conclusion. None of the three corridors makes sense. The NCC-led team is mired in 1950s thinking.
Sustainable Solutions/solutions durables is a group encompassing communities from downtown to Orleans that shaere this view. For more information look at the website http://www.ssd-ottawa.ca/
June 23rd, 2011 at 2:56 pm
I think Eric has drawn the right conclusion. They are trying to address 2 perceived problems: trucks on King Edward and Gatineau car commuting times and one issue muddies thinking about the other.
First, we still don’t have good information on where trucks using King Edward are coming from or going to. There is different information floating around about how many trucks using King Edward are local deliveries vs. passing through en route to Montreal or to the 416 and points west. Completion of Hwy 50 on the Quebec side would help a great deal to solve the origin-destination Montreal destination problem. A bridge in the west end would better serve the others. King Edward will still remain a truck route if only for local delivery. We still don’t know the scope of the problem we are trying to solve and we really don’t know how much the King Edward problem can be alleviated by any of these proposed options.
King Edward truck traffic is only one piece of the puzzle although for some it has become the raison d’etre for a bridge somewhere else. Fantasies abound of a future King Edward as an elegant truck free boulevard.
Serious consideration should be given to a King Edward corridor tunnel or some variation on a tunnel along the lines of Rue Berri in downtown Montreal. The Ontario government needs to step up to the plate to seriously address the truck problem where it exists and not rely on the NCC to transfer the problem to another corridor at minimal provincial and municipal cost. We shouldn’t be distracted by bogus arguments about why a tunnel isn’t feasible. Tunnels exist and function well in many cities of the world.
Second, the pressure from Gatineau commuters for a bridge is understandable but short sighted. Corridor 5 is short term and short sighted because it fails to take into consideration future links to light rail and public transit on both sides of the river. It would dump heavy traffic into the most populated residential corridor of the three proposed and ad to gridlock on the 174 and 417. It is short sighted because growth in the Gatineau sector is west around Alymer, not east. It is also short sighted if economic growth in the east end is considered desirable because by that criteria, the need for a cross river link is further east. Some growth is continuing in the east past Orleans and there appears to be interest on the Gatineau side to develop an industrial area around the airport and link it to Ontario side through the proposed corridor 7.
This study should be stopped and rethought from a longer term urban development perspective integrating housing development, transit and economic development plans on both sides of the river.
November 16th, 2011 at 11:47 am
The tunnel by-pass is something I would have to agree on; from the Lees circle to the bridge. At Lees, rolling stock would have a choice: Ottawa centre or Gatineau centre. At Foreign Affairs, the choice would be Ottawa centre, 417 East or West. No citizen wants to increase by-passing traffic or trucking in their own neighborhood, and to have it imposed on them would like it less so. It just makes more sense to bury four kilometers of traffic and trucking underground, where it is already, rather than create more problems by moving part of it elsewhere. Detractors of the tunnel option should consider that a good job is a job well done, and paying twice is the consequence of cheap solutions. Also, a tunnel would make Ottawa look smart on Google maps.
J.A.M.