Wildeofoscar/Wikimedia via CC4.0
Alayne McGregor
Where should the Gatineau buses go? While Ottawa’s light rail system has removed most of its buses from downtown, buses from across the river still clog Wellington Street in downtown Ottawa.
The Société de transport de l’Outaouais (STO) is now working on a replacement service: an electric tramway from Aylmer to Ottawa. It presented possible routes to Ottawa councillors in September, but the presentation left as many questions as answers – and whatever route is chosen will have major implications for Ottawa’s downtown.
Ottawa City Council is scheduled to make a choice in November. But, according to both Councillor Catherine McKenney and the Ottawa Transit Riders Association (OTRA), a lot more information is needed first.
After crossing on the Portage Bridge, the proposed STO tram would either run in a tunnel under Sparks Street (with two stations), or go along Wellington Street on the surface (with three stations). The Wellington Street option could either have the tram share space with traffic on its entire length or run without traffic between Bank and Elgin Streets. From Portage Bridge onward, the surface tram would run on batteries (without overhead catenary wires) to preserve the visual aesthetics of Confederation Boulevard.
No costs were given, but the city staff report noted that “underground construction is more complex and more costly than the surface option.”
Currently, there are more than 200,000 inter-provincial crossings daily, with about one-quarter on public transit. The report said that the tramway would replace about 70 percent of the STO buses running into Ottawa.
McKenney said the city needed a plan to remove STO buses from the downtown, “so that we can reallocate that space to pedestrians, to cyclists, ensure we are providing as much public space as possible. So I think that it’s very important that we have the link.”
However, they thought that “things have changed significantly enough” since the link was first proposed. “We’re in different times now, so I think that much of it will have to be reconsidered.”
They didn’t care for either STO proposal. “I know it’s called a tramway but it’s a large system that, if it did run down Wellington, it would require fencing and it would block access to the street. I would prefer almost an electric streetcar that just did that loop, between Portage, Wellington, back up the Alexandra Bridge, just to do that loop into the city where we could leave Wellington open. We could close it to all other traffic and it becomes pedestrianized.”
OTRA board member Stuart MacKay said OTRA needed to see much more detail before supporting any proposal.
“Our main concern is just making sure that there’s reliable connections between any proposed site and the LRT stations which are already there. We’d like to see more on how that’s going to work, how those connections are going to be made. At the end of the day you want to make sure that these two systems are easy to access, easy to connect for riders because if you don’t have that, especially in the wintertime if people have to go outside on the street and then connect to an LRT station or vice versa, that’s going to be an issue.”
Currently, he said, riders working at Place du Portage still report that STO inter-provincial buses are unreliable. “You’re still waiting to make those connections.” And pre-pandemic, in the morning rush “you’d see people lined up 80 or 100 deep waiting for that one bus to get across the river to their office buildings.
Would demos block the tram?
He thought Ottawa City Council would most likely support the tunnel. When the report was discussed at the city Transportation Committee on September 2, most speakers favoured the tunnel, citing concerns about the aesthetics of the tram.
“The other thing that was raised during the council meeting – and we’ve heard this from some of our members – is that stretch of Wellington is not very pedestrian or bicycle friendly right now. I think a lot of people would like to see that street become a bit more livable, and become a bit more alive because it is pretty much a throughway right now. If you were to put an above-ground tram you just wouldn’t have the room to do a lot of stuff.”
He pointed out that “that section of Wellington is used quite a bit during the course of the year, not just for Canada Day but if you’re having demonstrations or marches. If you’re going to open up that section of Wellington and use it for those events, which will happen, then you couldn’t run a tram down.
“Then you’d have to reroute with buses and you’ve just spent all this money on a brand-new transit system that, on the first Canada Day, Wellington would always be closed off. So, if you’re trying to get people in and out of the downtown core on Canada Day or other major events on the Hill and in the Parliamentary precinct, it doesn’t do much good to have a system that can’t run.
“So I think the underground option probably is the best at this stage, and it’s a bit closer to the [Ottawa] LRT stations so you can actually make those underground connections and make the system a bit more integrated. … If you have those connections it will actually increase usage of the LRT in itself because they’ll see it as a more integrated system.”
He hoped the STO would learn from problems with the downtown Ottawa LRT stations, which pre-pandemic were “jam-packed because the stations simply weren’t big enough. We need to ensure that there’s enough space, that doesn’t feel cramped, and that if you have connections they’re good connections, they’re not just a dinky little tunnel connecting one station to the next. Take a page from other cities that have underground connections, like the PATH in Toronto which actually has a bit of a livable space which you can put shops or services down there and widen it out.”
McKenney, on the other hand, didn’t consider blockages from demonstrations a major problem with the surface option. “We’ve got electric trams in cities all over the world. I think that we can manage that here in the City of Ottawa.”
A commuter-only option?
One concern with a tunnel is that it would reduce the visibility of Centretown and its businesses to commuters. MacKay said that’s part of a larger concern: that the LRT is “still viewed as a commuter-only option. It’s to get people in and out of the downtown core, rather than a way to connect with the rest of this central part of the city.”
As well, the proposed tunnel raises the longstanding problem of what to do with Sparks Street. “How do we make that a better destination and a gateway to Centretown? [Is] the city going to take this as an opportunity to redesign the downtown core as not just a place to get through but a place to get to?”
Will this system show off Centretown?
In Washington, DC, he said, when you leave the subway at Union Station, you immediately see the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Washington Monument. “Yes, I’m here now in a capital city. We don’t have that. We don’t like to show off or to make these stations or these connections friendly. Not just to commuters but to travelers, to tourists to ordinary people.
“That’s going to be a serious question that I hope City Council talks about. Can we make these a showpiece for this section of Ottawa?”
LRT stations need to be “a bit more open, more visible and not crowded into office buildings. How do we do that? If the community doesn’t step up and say this is it what wants to see out of this, then we’re just going to let the designers of this new system have their say. As we’ve seen with the [Ottawa] LRT stations, they’re going to try to make them less of a showpiece than they really should be.”
Not enough Ottawa responses
Public consultation on the STO proposals happened in the height of this summer from June 22 to July 19. McKenney said this was not nearly enough consultation. She was concerned at the low response rate to the questionnaire from Ontario residents: only 574 responses compared to 928 from Quebec.
The tramway left questionnaire respondents divided: half thought a tram on Wellington was compatible with preserving the image of Parliament Hill, while one-third disagreed. Forty-eight per cent of Ontario residents disagreed, as opposed to 24 percent of Quebec residents.
The report on the questionnaire results said that, “For many, a tramway would disfigure Wellington Street and would not be appropriate, especially given that the City of Ottawa has spent significant amounts of money to conceal its transit network. For others, a tramway in the National Capital, thanks to its style, would give the city a romantic character comparable to Europe’s major cities, and would send a strong message in favour of public transit.”
MacKay said more individual community consultations with community members, with businesses, with transit organizations like OTRA were needed. The city needs to be much more specific in its questions and do more outreach, he said.
“Seek out different groups and get as many voices as you can at the table. It could be a very exciting project for everybody if it’s done right. It’s a real symbol of what we are as a national capital.”