Source Link: Richard Bercuson, The Ottawa Citizen
My first reaction to the Christine Leadman-Clive Doucet transit plan unveiled last week was shock.
How did they get their hands on my clever, thoroughly researched alternative?
Neither had ever been to my home, let alone near my encrypted computer. Then I remembered the time I once shared a space in Fifth Avenue Court with Capital Councillor Doucet. He was ogling art at a vernissage as I was ogling bacon and eggs in the adjacent restaurant. Was his interest in local artisans a clever diversion?
Other than that chance non-meeting, I’ve never crossed paths with the chap, nor with Kitchissippi Councillor Leadman.
Imagine my relief after seeing their proposal. It wasn’t at all what my plan looked like. They focused on the broad strokes of the entire region. My plan views the region as an adjunct to the future mega-development of the east end.
Besides, the definition of east has changed over the years. When I moved to Ottawa in the early ’80s, Tenth Line Road seemed like the edge of the time zone. It would be reminiscent of the late Charlton Heston in the final scene of Planet of the Apes. After seeing a partially demolished Statue of Liberty, he realizes he has been on Earth the whole time.
“Look dear,” I’d have commented to my wife, “a bylaw officer’s car idling for a half-hour in the middle of summer in Fallingbrook Shopping Centre. Golly, even out here, we’ve been in Ottawa the whole time!”
Our family didn’t consider living in such a nether region because we knew flights into town were too infrequent to be useful.
Now the town of Rockland seems more like a suburb, a darned attractive one if you want to escape Ottawa city politics and walk your dog off leash just about anywhere.
For the most part, people live where they move and it’s up to city planners to adjust accordingly. They can’t apply the Yogi Berra philosophy: nobody goes there because it’s too crowded. In fact, people are going east en masse, crowded or not.
Except the east now includes places like Vars, Carlsbad Springs, Navan, Embrun, and Casselman. The latter three even have junior hockey clubs, a surefire sign of civilization.
Using the Blair Road Transitway station as the gateway to the east seems at first to make sense. Every proposal to date says as much. I guess it’s because transitway roads are deemed to be easily convertible to rail, the original intention.
You know what’s easier than roads converting to rail?
Rail.
My eastern-centric plan uses the Via Rail station. Now regular readers will recognize I’m no fan of VIA. Did I mention yet the station’s snack bar has lousy food? I digress. I’m willing to give the company a fresh start. If we’re to have a tunnel from downtown going anywhere east to serve the most people the best way, let’s direct them to where the rails already are.
To begin with, the Via station is closer than Blair Road. It’s bigger and has more parking. You can line up more taxis at Via than at Blair. There are seats and LCD TVs; Blair has none. It has employees needing something to do.
My plan uses Via as the gateway, with trains heading along the 417 on existing lines to the aforementioned towns. At the 417-174 split, a new line would split off, dropping passengers at Blair before riding the 174 median into Orléans and points east. It would rumble to stations on the 174 and to smaller hubs currently used by buses.
When it hits Trim Road, the rail line would slither up the hill to Innes Road. There it would utilize swaths of open land through developments such as Avalon, swaths originally designed for mass transit. Finally it would head west, doubling back over the 417 around Walkley Road to the Via home base.
At each rail stop, there would be bus links. Thus would the east end, the true east end, be properly served.
The offence rests.
Sadly, this won’t happen. No hue and cry from readers, no amount of picketing city hall and no e-mail barrages to our beloved eastern councillors will change things.
Had I known that Mr. Doucet and Ms. Leadman were working on something, I might have invited them for coffee at the Blackburn Tim Hortons and made my pitch.
Instead, we’re being railroaded into more busing. Sigh.
Richard Bercuson is an Ottawa teacher and writer.
