“The fall of the land makes a natural amphitheatre. Visible just beyond the performance grounds are the Canadian Aviation Museum and historic Rockcliffe Airport.”

The natural setting and surroundings of our cultural institutions and historic attractions are an instrinsic part of their value. Destroying this degrades the institutions themselves and tarnishes our national image.

Maria Cook has a true appreciation for our cultural landscape. She also has a gift for describing it and promoting its significance. It is a topic worth further discussion.

Communities should be given a chance to shape and substantially contribute to Phase II, including the development of its consultation process. Formal public consultation ‘hearing’ milestones are designed to defend/promote and finalize a decision, with fewest mofications, leaving communities with the fustration of reacting.

Regarding the ”choosing and contracting consultant services, through a Request for Proposals process – completion by September 2009 ”: To the extend that is legally possible, particularly selection cirteria, this process should be open and scrutinized accordingly.

Thoughful consideration should also be given to the fundamental nature of the lead expertise for a project with such profound social impact and broader urban planning implications. Transportation engineers are likely inclined to favour and promote the most ‘performing’ route serving trucks and cars with minimal capital costs.

Hubert des Courtis
Civil Engineer E.P.F.L.

Accusations of NIMBYism are often an effective tactic for undermining perfectly reasonable arguments for opposing development by implying that opponents are so focused on their self-interest that nothing they say merits consideration. However, properly understood and addressed, such opposition helps to define and promote the public interest by forcing decision-makers and their consultants to revisit their assumptions about what this means in the context of particular developments. The best approach to perceived NIMBYism is therefore to deal directly and openly with concerns that engender it.

In this case, the weight assigned by the NCC’s consultants to their study’s evaluation criteria reflects various policy preferences and values which were never disclosed, let alone publicly discussed before the release of their recommendation. The result is a recommendation based on obsolete planning ideas that again sacrifices the needs and interests of people and communities within the greenbelt, where all inter-provincial crossings are currently located, to the demands of the heavy trucking industry and Gatineau and other commuters, and also to the detriment of densification and other efforts aimed at creating a liveable and sustainable city.

The lack of transparency in dealing with these concerns and not NIMBYism is why crossing sites in addition to Kettle Island had to be included in the next phase of the inter-provincial crossing study. It is also why this phase of the study should be done by different consultants than those who conducted the first phase.

The next phase could be led by urban planners supported by transportation engineers and not vice-versa. Fully agree that community experts and potentially impacted stakeholders be fully engaged in the drafting of terms of reference, in the consultant selection and in the design of the consultation process. The public consultation process needs to be upgraded to ensure public views are also sought on drafts, not just positions.

At the provincial level, transportation ministers could formally share oversight responsibility for the crossings with other interested colleagues (e.g., communities, health, environment)

Bravo on your web site.

Unfortunately, a Kettle Island option will be on the table for the next few years, unless we kill it asap.

A new couple is moving here from Toronto. They ask their future coworkers where to buy a house. They say, “stay away from Orleans, they have traffic problems like no other part of town.” If this is obvious to people moving here. Properties values have no choice but to drop. Does this seem outrageous to think. Imagine that in a pamphlet to Orleans residents.

NON AU PONT ILE KETTLE

La solution a PRIVILÉGIÉR serait le corridor Lower Duck .

This misinformation about KI is being spread by pamphlet all over Orleans. It is also cited repeatedly in the media. It is false information that is being used to convince the public that the current study is solid and that KI is the right choice.

I don’t think this is either reasonable or honourable.

But how do we deal with the unreasonable? How do we deal with the lies and misinformation that the media and politicians are spreading to gain political ground? How do we fight the bear and the fox?

Why is there even talk about a new bridge anyways?

WE need roads before they need more crossings…

You’ve hit dead on and I agree with your comment 100%. It is so ridiculous and I would say even irresponsible for The Citizen to try to make its readers believe that a quick decision equates instant job creation. It is such short term thinking. At the rate the city is growing, we need a bridge for tomorrow’s expanded Ottawa and so we must look further eastward.

In any event, no matter where the bridge is built, it will have the same impact on job creation. In fact, perhaps tying the bridge in to an industrial sector (such as Canotek) would have an even greater and lasting economic impact.

I don’t understand why The Citizen is backing so strongly the Kettle Island option. I’d like to know who signs their position paper and if they have some sort of vested interest in seeing the bridge built there.

Jack Aquilina

It’s interesting that when you go to the King Edward bridge outside of rush hour (and construction is completed) that there is manageable traffic around that area.

It is very sad that we don’t see surveys showing what the people of Ottawa and Gatineau want!!!!!

For Gatineau Airport no expropriations would be required, and this is not in dispute.

Given a choice between expropriation with fair compensation; or reduced property values (not to mention health risks, community impacts, noise, etc.) with no compensation…I know which one I would choose.

Fortunately, this can be avoided entirely with the Gatineau Airport route.

To make the process fair, these factors should have been brought into the selection criteria. Instead, the problems were left to be dealt with in the mitigation phase of the EA.

A mitigation expropriation is still an expropriation and should be counted as such.

A valuable post for this site would focus on the expropriation requirements for other proposed locations, given that it’s zero for Kettle island. Does anyone have the details on this?

I find it appalling that the idea of turning a national capital scenic parkway into a designated truck corridor for 18 wheelers is still on the table—worse still, the idea of building a truck route that would skirt past the front driveways and back yards of several densely populated residential neighbourhoods and come within 25 metres of the Montfort Hospital and 15 metres of Our Lady of Mont Carmel Elementary School.

Why is the NCC still considering this preposterous proposal? Their consultant has promised to find ways to mitigate the harm in Phase 2 of the EA.

Opponents of the Kettle Island corridor are quite aware of the consultant’s mitigation measures, and we don’t need to waste $4 million dollars on Phase 2 to find out that they won’t work.

A case in point is the solution proposed to reduce the safety hazards at the corridor’s intersections. There would be 15 level crossings along the Kettle Island corridor where heavy commercial vehicles would have to gear down and mix with commuter traffic, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians all trying to reach their destination as fast as possible. The consultant’s proposed answer to this problem is to construct roundabouts.

Tell me, how will tourists to our beautiful capital feel about sharing a roundabout with 1700 heavy commercial vehicles per day—or up to 4,000 big trucks a day, should the City act on its resolution to ban trucks from King Edward Avenue.

Furthermore, there is no known way to mitigate the harmful effects to air quality caused by the high levels of particulate matter in diesel exhaust, and there is no known way to reduce the harm caused by the spillage of toxic materials that might be transported by these trucks.

Ms Lemay, we know we need a bridge. The current deplorable situation in Lowertown must be fixed. But there are better corridors that don’t route trucks through densely populated established communities.

I am getting so mad about this issue, that I will reiterate my opinion (as technical as city council’s original decision) that we build no bridge for car or trucks. Let Gatineau work with the City of Ottawa to improve their transit and let the Province of Quebec finish their highway to Montreal.

Christophe

Yes, the answer to my question is extremely obvious. I just don’t understand why the people against Kettle Island are the only ones that seem to get it!

One might ask why the NCC and the MTO/MTQ felt compelled to pay the consultants $2.8M (before taxes) to complete a study to determine the best location for a bridge when City Council could make that same decision WITHOUT any information and 18 months sooner?

.. is that this consultants report was designed to favour a Kettle Island bridge from the beginning, by weighting factors in a way that favoured this option. You are right that their support of this route has biased the findings, especially the way they have chosen to weigh the judging criteria.

You have also illustrated that when one looks at other factors, including existing urban and environmental plans, a Kettle Island bridge option runs counter to these plans. In essence, a patch work of plans overlay one another and will not make any sense when stitched together.

Given that the Federal Government has just placed a bid on a large tract of vacant land at St. Laurent Blvd. and Hwy 417**, with the purported aim of constructing a new federal government office complex, and there will be no access to or from this complex from the east end of Ottawa using Hwy 417, I have to wonder how, with the exception of transitway users, federal government employees who live in Orleans/Cumberland/Rockland etc. and rely on Hwy 417 to commute to work, are supposed to drive to this new complex? It seems to me the government and NCC planners involved in these projects aren’t doing the best job of communicating their needs to each other.

This just goes to show that the overall transportation needs of the city must be considered as a whole, not as individual projects that might conflict with each other.

* Roche/NCE Interprovincial Crossing Environmental Assessment
(http://www.ncrcrossings.ca/en/2006-029%20kettle%20EN%20-%203.pdf)

** “Public Works makes land bid” The Ottawa Citizen January 27, 2009
(http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Homes/Public+Works+makes+land/1220595/story.html)

The Province of Ontario has recommended extending Phase 1 to provide further study of the top three corridors with respect to transit, impact on communities and economic benefit. In so recommending, they are indicating that they do not have sufficient information to go on for choosing the best interprovincial crossing at this time. We hope the NCC will agree with the recommendation this funding partner.

Second, when the study moves forward into Phase 2 (with or without KI)the contract for Phase 2 will be put to tender. NCE-Roche may presumably bid for the contract, but they do not automatically have it.