Stop The Kettle Island Bridge

Transportation Committee Meeting – a detailed account

From Judy Lishman, Chair, Manor Park Bridge Committee:

After a marathon session of Transportation Committee yesterday, (beginning at 9:00 a.m .and still going at 11:30p.m.) Councillor Wilkinson tabled a motion to recommend that the top 3 bridge sites proceed to phase 2. The motion passed 5 to 3. This is not the ideal outcome, but it was a victory for us considering the committee had been told by the city lawyer that because of the motion the council passed in June 2007 to support Kettle Island, any new motion on the subject would be out of order. This procedural debate took up the first 90 minutes of the meeting and was left unresolved. I had the opportunity to talk about this fix at city hall on CBO morning and CTV noon hour show and in an interview with CFRA. West end councillors led by Alex Cullen had voted in June 2007, to name KI as their preferred option in exchange for support from Rainer Bloess and the other far east end councillors’ support to take all west end bridge sites out of the study. Bloess and Cullen continued to support each others’ positions all day yesterday.

Steve Taylor then presented the report, followed by presentations from the public. The far east end was represented by 7 or so community association presidents who spoke as a group and whose only argument was that they didn’t want the extra traffic on 174 from a bridge in the greenbelt. Then they left. It was obvious that they were all show and no substance.

Two speakers from Lowertown spoke about the need to remove all the trucks from King Edward when the new bridge was built, but did not support any particular corridor. This position on trucks is supported by an OMB ruling and by a city resolution. This confirms our recent suspicions that when a new bridge is built, it will receive not 40% of the trucks from King Edward but 100% of them with the accompanying increase in all the health and safety impacts if it is built at KI. Taylor was pressed hard by the councillors to clarify this situation but as usual spoke out of both sides of his mouth. This situation has huge impacts on the whole decision making model and clarification is essential before any final decision is made on which corridor(s) proceeds to phase 2.

Two west end people spoke against preserving west end corridors and the remaining 40 or so speakers spoke eloquently and passionately against Kettle Island until after 6:30. Councillors Legendre and Bedard were in top form and fought tirelessly to oppose Kettle Island. They took every opportunity to hold Taylor to account and were highly critical of the fact that they were being asked to accept a report that was only available to them in summary and that the full report, which they did not have, was only in English. There were many times that Taylor’s credibility was questioned and, in fact, he was caught out in a direct lie to the councillors. Jacques and George by directing questions to our delegations allowed us extra time to make our case. Without their herculean efforts, we would not have achieved this step in the right direction.

There are still not enough votes to carry this resolution through council, but in the face of the forces lined up against us yesterday morning, this resolution to carry 3 sites forward was a monumental achievement. We still need to fight for the rejection of Kettle Island outright, and the truck situation will give us new ammunition. We are gaining ground.

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Transportation Committee recommends 2nd site for futher study

Following the strong public reaction against the consultants’ presentation of Kettle Island as the preferred corridor at the Transportation Committee meeting yesterday, the committee is recommending that the NCC take forward a second corridor, at Lower Duck Island, for further study in Phase 2 of the project.

See the CBC News article here:
CBC Ottawa: NCC should look at 2nd site for interprovincial bridge: Ottawa committee

City council must decide Wednesday whether to endorse the committee’s recommendation and ask the NCC to consider both east-end corridors for the second phase of the environmental assessment study.

If you haven’t already done so, now would be a very good time to send comments to your mayor and city councilors.

Mayor Larry O’Brien can be reached here: http://www.mayorlarry.ca/tell-larry/

Councilors can be reached here: http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/mayor_council/councillors/index_en.html

Alternatively, you can send an email directly to andrew.lomas@ottawa.ca and ask that your message be circulated to all councillors.

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Transportation Committee – meeting coverage

The consultants presented their recommendations to the City of Ottawa Transportation Committee today, and the public had an opportunity to comment on and question the findings. Strong objections were raised against Kettle Island by a large number of attendees, while a handful of Orleans residents reinforced their support – primarily based on the false perception that Kettle Island would have the worst impact on their commuting routes.

“We do not want any crossing that’s going to make our commutes, morning and afternoon, worse than they already are.”

What these east-end commuters continue to fail to realize is that this study has focused exclusively on interprovincial traffic. There is no consideration for any other traffic flow or existing gridlock within the National Capital Region, including commuting traffic from Orleans to downtown. The Kettle Island corridor, with on-ramps to the 417 essentially at ‘the split’, would have significant impacts on the commute from Orleans as thousands of new commuters and trucks from Gatineau pour onto the already congested highway.

There is a very good chance that these impacts could be just as bad or even worse than other east-end options.

Unfortunately, because these broader traffic issues are out of scope for the current project, we may never know until it is too late.

Here are a few links to media coverage of the meeting:

CBC Ottawa: Fight continues over planned Kettle Island bridge

CTV Ottawa: Residents say ‘No’ to bridge at Kettle Island

Ottawa Citizen: Residents fight over route of bridge

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