I share the concerns of many that we don’t need more roads in the downtown neighborhoods nor the inner suburbs. They merely encourage / enable more car traffic to the detriment of a denser, more pedestrian friendly city. After all, all those cars have to get to and from the new road link. Here is a petitition to help stop the Alta Vista highway:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-AVTC
In this article: http://www.yourottawaregion.com/news/article/955911–opposition-mounts-against-alta-vista-corridor Councillor Hume is quoted as saying that opposition is “nowhere near a tidal wave.” The petition is one way to add a bit to that cresting wave.
Now I do think that the AVTC could have been useful as a LRT route, or even as a roadway provided there were appropriate measures to remove the traffic from other adjacent overused roads that blight neighborhoods. But just a new road, without corresponding traffic volume reductions, and with only vague promises of future transit … no thanks. Save the bucks.
I can see only one purpose for this road. To get vehicles from Conroy/Hunt Club and the Findlay Creek areas downtown a little bit faster. I really don’t see what other purpose it serves. This road will be brutal to the area residents…like another 417. In fact, why take the 417 in from the south east when you can take this new road to Smyth and scoot up Main Street into downtown. This is really ill conceived.
This roadway could be built for much cheaper if we decided to simply build a connection from the transitway through a Transit-piority intersection with Alta Vista drive and then to a new north entrance to the hospital. This would eliminate the need to construct an overpass over the transitway, another one over the 4 lanes of Riverside drive, and the shifting of Riverside Dr westward to enable construction of that overpass.
This could probably cut the cost in half at least. What would we be giving up for this simplification? The ability for cars to connect to the hospital direct from Riverside Dr.
What would we still get from this? Direct access from the Transitway to the hospital for transit and emergency vehicles and if we choose also for cars from Alta Vista drive which would provide some de-bottlenecking of the Smyth road access to the hospital.
So why won’t our politicians engage in discussion of an alternative such as this? Probably because they fully intend to build the whole road in the fulness of time…regardless of the lip service they pay that this is not their intention….especially if they can in the future point to the fact that they’ve already invested 55m$ and built the overpasses over the Transitway and Riverside Dr just waiting to be connected up to the Nicholas-417 interchange.
Also, just reflecting on different ways to visualize the 55m$ cost of this road. It’s hard to grasp a number that large by itself. What if we tried to think of it this way. Imagine 10,000 cars per day access the hospital from the North & West — directions which would use this new road —. (I don’t have the real numbers but they are probably not too much different from that). Now perhaps 50% of those cars would use the new road. That works out to $11,000 per vehicle. Perhaps 1/2 of those vehicles are employees and 1/2 are patients and their visitors. So, we are essentially investing $11,000 per employee so they can drive to work faster as well as $11,000 for those making visits to the hospital to speed up their drive as well.
Actually tho…when you think about it further you realize most patients and visitors go to the hospital at non-peak times when there is no congestion on Smyth road…so the new 55m$ road to the hospital doesn’t really reduce their trip time…other than making it perhaps slightly shorter and more direct.
I’m really having a hard time understanding the cost/benefit economics behind this kind of a roadway.
Thank you for your article.
At the budget review with Peter Hume last week, my husband did actually bring up the idea of LRT through this area as an alternative to a road, pointing out that once the road is there, it becomes that much more difficult to change/ add to it.
Unfortunately, although his comment was applauded by some in the audience, his comment seemed to fall on Mr. Hume’s deaf ears.
I’d have expected more flexibility from Mr. Hume on that proposal. Much more.