John Dance
This image from the MTO’s final environmental assessment report for the replacement of the Queensway bridge over the Canal gives a sense of the enormous impact the work will have on Old Ottawa East, including detours of Colonel By parkway and pathway traffic onto Main and Hawthorne and the use of Ballantyne Park for at least two years.
Image by Ministry of Transportation of Ontario
In its recently released final environmental study report of options for replacing the deteriorating Queensway Bridge over the Rideau Canal, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) maintains its recommendation that requires two-year detours of the Canal parkways and pathways for their under-the-bridge portions. Local residents, community associations, businesses and Councillor Shawn Menard are not happy. After almost seven years of effort – but with little consultation with residents and local businesses – MTO is trying to push ahead with a recommended option that has been vigorously opposed by those most affected since it was proposed by MTO two years ago.
This option replaced an earlier one that didn’t require two-year detours. MTO came up with the revised option to save two non-heritage buildings and to avoid possible damage to a large watermain under the Canal. However, MTO did not attempt to assess the community’s support of trading off the demolition of the two buildings for two-year detours, nor did it consider other means of ensuring protection of the watermain.
“The final solution we acknowledge has some less desirable effects but these are short term,” Steve Taylor, project manager of BT Engineering, MTO’s consultants for the project, wrote in an email responding to one resident who criticized the recommendations. But most residents who have reviewed the final recommendations do not consider the two-year detours to be a “short-term effect.”
“Although individual communities were not involved in the public outreach, we believe that the City transportation staff and Council members involved have provided input on their behalf,” Taylor noted in his response. Again, communities and businesses who have commented do not share the view that “the City transportation staff and Council members” should be providing input on their behalf, especially when transportation staff and councillors – with the exception of Councillor Menard – never consulted with communities and businesses.
In response to the final environmental study, Councillor Menard provided MTO a detailed 11-page critique of the recommended two-year detour option and other aspects of the report, including some comments pertaining to the other three Queensway bridges (Metcalfe, Elgin and Main) that are part of the “downtown” bridge replacement project.
The Mainstreeter specifically asked MTO why the final report does not comment on the “societal delay costs” for Canal parkway users, residents and businesses living with the two-year detour. Instead, the report notes that the recommended option will result in just a four-day detour over an extended long weekend for Queensway users, thus avoiding “high societal delay cost for freeway lane closures.” In short, “freeway users” are treated with care while local residents are ignored. MTO did not provide a response to the related question.
Similarly, the Old Ottawa East Community Association (OOECA) has opposed the recommended option and has written to the Minister of the Environment asking him to “direct the MTO to reassess its Transportation Environmental Study Report before it is finalized.”
With the support of the Glebe and Old Ottawa South community associations, OOECA cites a variety of failings with the final recommendation including the detours, the destruction of Ballantyne Park which is to be used as a bridge staging area, dangerous detour routes for pedestrians and cyclists, the environmental assessment giving no evaluation weight to socioeconomic impacts on the neighbouring and surrounding communities, and not recognizing the cumulative adverse impacts of major municipal and provincial construction projects along Main Street and Hawthorne Avenue.
In a brief survey of local businesses conducted by The Mainstreeter, none of those contacted had been consulted by MTO or asked for their perspectives on the recommended option. As Gordon Martin of Cyco’s Sports on Hawthorne says, “Never heard anything. We’ve been hung out to dry.”
This lack of consultation with business owners contradicts MTO’s response to a related question posed by The Mainstreeter to which they answered, “MTO completes a thorough review of impacts to local businesses and works to minimize these impacts [and] wherever possible staff work directly with local businesses to provide support and assistance during construction.”
Parks Canada and the NCC have ensured that neither the boating nor the skating season would be adversely affected by the work, but they did not request reductions to the recommended two-year detours of the pathways and roadways.
In posing questions to MTO, one slight glimmer of hope emerged that thedetours might not last a full two years, as Taylor responded, “The length of time the detours will be utilized will [be] subject to a subsequent detail design process and may be less than the timeline in the Transportation Environmental Assessment Report. However, the TESR has provided an estimate [two years] and this is based on a reasonable estimate of construction activities.” We’ll see.
