Stop The Kettle Island Bridge

Canotek – Gatineau Airport corridor: A viable option

There is increasing interest and discussion around a bridge crossing alternative that may best minimize impacts to communities and environmentally sensitive areas, while still providing an efficient alignment for a high volume trucking route.

This option, known as the Canotek – Gatineau Airport corridor (Option 6a), is a variation on the Lower Duck alternative (Option 6).

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Community impacts are minimized:  Option 6a runs immediately adjacent to the Canotek Industrial Park on the Ontario side, and it directs trucks along Highway 148, an existing commercial route, on the Quebec side.  It connects to the Gatineau Airport industrial park on an existing 4-lane industrial road.  Trucks and industrial parks make sense; trucks and communities don’t.

Environmental impacts are minimized: Option 6a avoids the Greenbelt on the Ontario side, and runs adjacent to a cement quarry on the Quebec side.  If the quarry closes, which is expected within the next few years, the corridor could be routed through the abandoned quarry.

The 3 “Official” Corridors Cross 10 Communities

View Interprovincial Bridge Options in a larger map

The Kettle Island corridor (Option 5, red) would cross 10 densely populated neighbourhoods. It is only a few meters from some residences as well as health and education institutions in Cyrville, Overbrook-Forbes, Carson Grove, Manor Park Hill – Manor Park East and Viscount Alexander Park and Fairhaven, on the Ontario side. On the Quebec side, the corridor would be equally devastating to local communities, and would terribly impact Montée Paiement.

The Lower Duck corridor (Option 6, blue) is unnecessarily close to residential communities on the Ontario side (Convent Glen), and runs directly through Templeton, a long-established densely populated community on the Quebec side.  It runs through the Greenbelt and crosses the environmentally sensitive Green’s Creek.

The Gatineau Airport corridor (Option 7, green) would be about 1km away from Convent Glen at the Queensway but only about 100m from the nearest residential lots (in Convent Glen – Orleans West) at the point where it reaches the river. On the Quebec side, the bridge crosses the tip of McLaurin Bay, an environmentally sensitive area, then heads north passing over route 148 and through fields east of the Airport Boulevard to connect to the 50 near the Gatineau Airport.

Any new bridge will have negative impacts
But the Canotek – Gatineau Airport option is gaining an increasing number of proponents across many different stakeholders.  It may well represent the best possible option, and warrants formal consideration in the next phase of the project.

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Further arguments for an alternate route: Lower Duck/Beauchamp

In a previous posting, we presented an alternate route. Let’s call it Option 6B – Lower Duck/Beauchamp.

Here are a few points to reinforce the validity and overall attractiveness of this option:

• Ottawa wants to prohibit trucks on King Edward/Rideau Streets. Gatineau wants to limit trucks on Montée Paiement in the Kettle Island corridor. The solution may be to build a bridge outside of the city cores and designate it as a truck route in an essentially vacant corridor on both sides of the river – Lower Duck/Beauchamp.
• On the Quebec side, the corridor follows a new route through green space that is mainly bush land and on the Ontario side follows the same route as the current Alternative 6, away from communities.
• This variation on Alternative 6 offers many of the traffic/transportation advantages that Alternative 5, Kettle Island, does but it reduces significantly the main opposition to Alternative 5 i.e. the serious impacts on institutions and on people living in the corridor. Kettle Island is the worst option for transit and according to the consultant encourages car use. This new corridor would provide good connection to planned transit facilities on both sides of the river.

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An alternate route?

There have been a number of references in recent weeks to the fact that there may exist better options beyond the top three alternatives presented by ROCHE-NCE.  Each of the current alternatives has flaws – some to greater extents than others.

If there are better options, what would they look like?  And will the terms of reference for Phase 2 of the study permit further exploration of potentially better options?

Below is one suggested alternate route, a variation on Corridor 6 (Lower Duck), that just may be a more balanced option that could potentially better represent the broader needs of the National Capital Region.

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Kettle Island truck route – a closer look

We’ve identified on Google Maps a number of communities, institutions, and facilities that would be directly impacted by the Kettle Island truck route. 

This map is a work in progress, so please let us know if you can help us refine it. It would be ideal if you could provide:

1) Name of the impacted institution, school, facility, etc.
2) Street address
3) Website

It is best viewed in View Larger Map format, where you can zoom in and scroll across the entire length of the corridor, but see below for a preview.

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No to Kettle Island!

View Interprovincial Bridge Options in a larger map

The map begs the questions: Why is Kettle Island (in red) the only choice being considered? Shouldn’t other proposed routes such as Lower Duck Island (blue) and Gatineau Airport (green) that are both shorter and impact far fewer residential neighbourhoods be given further consideration as potentially viable options?

For more details on the devastating impact that the Kettle Island bridge would have on communities in and around the proposed corridor, click here.

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