A Better Ottawa
Ottawa is set to grow by half a million people over the next 25 years. Streetcars could be the answer to a better public transportation system.
Ottawa’s LRT system provides fast long-distance transportation. But we also need to serve existing neighbourhoods as they become increasingly dense to accommodate projected population increases. We need a complementary streetcar system in the city’s core that will boost mobility for commuters, tourists, and those who live there.
A key part of the city’s new official plan, approved in 2021, is 15-minute neighbourhoods. These are compact, well-connected places with a clustering of a diverse mix of land-uses. This includes a range of housing types, shops, services, retail, schools, daycare facilities, employment, greenspaces, and parks. They are complete communities that support active transportation and transit and enable people to live car-light or car free.
In fact, urban high-density infill developments pay for themselves and provide the city with an additional $606 per person a year, compared to the additional cost of $465 per person a year to serve new low-density homes. Thus it would be an economic policy failure to force Ottawans to mainly have to rely on personal vehicles instead of giving them choice.
A city needs a well-functioning public transportation system to move people around. The expanded LRT will (hopefully) run smoothly and reduce traffic congestion by moving people in and out of the city’s urban core. The urban core will then require a complementary system in moving people within it.
Buses have not been able to do this properly. Streetcars could.
Ottawa used to have such a system. From 1891 to 1959 Ottawa had a sprawling streetcar network, which at its peak boasted 90.5 kilometres of track compared to the 55 kilometres that the O-Train will soon extend to.
The streetcar routes served much of the then-built-up centre of the city, including streets like Elgin, Bank, Sparks, Somerset, Laurier, Preston, Rockliffe, Rideau, Bronson, and even into Hull.
You could take the streetcar to work, to shopping, even to the beach.
By the 1960s Ottawa made the short-minded decision to prioritize cars over public transportation. The city believed that mobility would be increased by simply paving over homes and businesses for parking lots and wider roads.
Instead, this perpetuated induced demand; that can only be solved by reliable alternatives like active and public transportation.
While Ottawa ripped up its streetcar system, other cities around the world maintained and expanded their systems. For example, The Hague, Vienna, and Toronto started their streetcar systems in the 19th century and kept expanding them to hundreds of kilometres of tracks, moving hundreds of millions of users a year, and ultimately reducing congestion, pollution, and noise stemming from cars.
Ottawa now needs to catch up on lost years.
Streetcars have many advantages over buses. They are more affordable, even though streetcars require larger initial capital investments than buses; the capital cost is offset by significant operational savings year to year.
They offer a more comfortable ride than buses, incentivizing ridership.
Streetcars provide certainty for residents and thus are a catalyst for economic development.
Electrical streetcars are less polluting and noisy than diesel-engine buses.
Importantly, to ensure the full potential of streetcars, they should not mix in with general traffic. Instead separated designated lanes for streetcars would allow them to go faster and avoid car congestion. That congestion is among the biggest problems with using the bus in downtown Ottawa.
So in order to prepare for population growth and to build better neighbourhoods, Ottawa needs a complementary streetcar system for its urban core.
A Better Ottawa is an Ottawa resident advocating for a city that is more affordable, green, and accessible, and who shares insights and tidbits on Ottawa from an urbanism lens.