Councillor pushes Ottawa ring road instead of 6th bridge

A city councillor says Ottawa needs a southern ring road to relieve congestion on the Queensway — instead of a controversial bridge over Kettle Island.

Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney floated the idea at Thursday's public works and infrastructure committee meeting as councillors debated updates to the transportation master plan, a guiding document setting out infrastructure priorities for the coming decades.

Tierney noted that Highway 417 is currently the only major east-west route for interprovincial and regional traffic, including trucks, which should be rerouted south of the urban core.

He made a motion, which passed by a vote of 9-2, urging all levels of government to pursue a "full and fair evaluation" of a southern ring road. The motion will now go to council for a final vote.

Tierney said it sends a clear message.

"We're saying this is really important to us," he said. "If the province is looking for some guidance for where they would like to provide some money to the city ... we've just indicated, it's this — it's not an interprovincial bridge."

Feds promised 6th bridge

The federal government pledged in January to build a sixth bridge spanning the Ottawa River over Kettle Island. That plan would direct truck traffic onto the Aviation Parkway, a small portion of which runs through Tierney's ward.

"Three billion dollars for an interprovincial bridge, we have no interest in that," Tierney said. "We have a bigger issue where all of our traffic is going through downtown and we see highway closures that really affect people's lives right now.

He said the time is right to push for the ring road, which the provincial government committed to exploring in a 2022 transportation plan for eastern Ontario. 

"We have to start looking at this as an option," Tierney said. "I've spoken to the minister provincially, as well as our mayor, and I think we have an opportunity here to at least get this on the vision board about what we want to do in the future."

Orléans West-Innes Coun. Laura Dudas supported Tierney's motion. She said another bridge won't solve Ottawa's traffic woes, since it would still dump trucks onto the 417 or the 174.

"I fully support the idea of looking at this. It would cost, probably, a lot, and I don't think it would be a burden that our municipal taxpayers would have to bear. It would have to be a provincial or federal burden," she said. "But I do think it's a viable option to consider."

But Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster questioned the idea. She worried that either option — a bridge or a ring road — would simply sink money into promoting auto use instead of transit.

"I just think the goal should be getting people out of cars," she said.

Stittsville Coun. Glen Gower warned that Tierney's motion could send a confusing message to higher levels of government and distract from the city's other funding requests, especially for transit.

"I just feel like this ring road has come out of nowhere today," he said.

Transportation plan includes billions in needed projects

Despite the vote, the motion won't add the ring road to the city's transportation master plan, which the committee voted for on Thursday.

The plan lays out $4.5 billion in transit infrastructure and $2.8 billion for roads that the city needs to keep up with population and employment growth to 2046.

But city staff admit that number isn't affordable, so the plan includes a list of priority projects that are more likely to get built. That includes $2.3 billion in transit projects and $1.6 billion for roads, including widening and new links to growing communities.

The expansion of the light rail system to Barrhaven and Kanata is also in the plan, with an estimated price tag of $8.3 billion, though the city is counting on upper levels of government to pay for it.

The top-priority projects on the list include transitways on Baseline Road and through southern Orléans. Major road expansions in Orléans and Stittsville are also on the priority list, as well as a realignment of Greenbank Road in Barrhaven.

Committee tweaks list of projects favoured for funding

Councillors mostly kept that list intact and sent it to council for a final vote, though there were a few tweaks. 

Barrhaven East Coun. Wilson Lo successfully moved to redraw plans to widen Prince of Wales Drive, removing a section near Merivale Road from the priority list and adding a section north of Fallowfield.

Lo also made a more controversial motion for a study that could change the alignment of the proposed LRT to Barrhaven. 

The tracks were originally set to run west of Woodroffe Avenue. But that would have required expropriating and demolishing low-income homes in Manor Village and Cheryl Gardens.

In 2022, council changed the route to avoid that, running the tracks over Woodroffe Avenue at an added cost of $50 million.

Lo's motion asked staff to evaluate going back to the original route. He said the new route is more complex, and noted that most of the low-income residents have already been forced out through renovictions.

"The reason that pushed for the realignment is no longer there," he said. 

But Gower countered that even if the original residents are gone, returning to the original route would still cost homes.

"Whether they're low income or moderate income, we're still going to be displacing people," Gower said.

Lo's LRT motion failed 4-7.