hen I was a youngster growing up in Ottawa, I was able to take the streetcar from Westboro all the way to Britannia Beach in less time and more safely than you can drive today.
What mother today can put a ten year old with his friends on the streetcar and tell the driver to watch out for them until they get to the Britannia station? My mother did and my friends and I would come home from the beach tired and happy. Often we would fall asleep on the streetcar and the driver would wake us up when we got to our stop on Wellington Street.
That's the kind of community environment good public transit permits both inside your neighborhood and between neighborhoods. You can't do that in an urban landscape of big box malls and six lane roads.
This is the vision that I'm working for at the Region and is at the heart of the present conflict over trucks on King Edward and the MacDonald-Cartier Bridge. The Mayor of Gatineau, Monsieur Labine insists that Gatineau must have 24-hour truck traffic on King Edward and our reply is 'no, you don't'.
This is a clash not of personalities but two different visions of urban growth.. Take one look at Gatineau and you will see what I mean. Gatineau is a spaghetti of four lane urban roads, parking lots and big box stores. If you want to buy ten kilos of soap powder or spend 10 per cent less on a washing machine, a Gatineau mall is the place to go. The problem is reductions on some consumer items at the mall come with a heavy price for the community - acres of asphalt and densely travelled, high volume roads.
Residents on the Hull side have themselves begun to fight the constant intrusion of wider roads, trucks and cars into their community on McConnell-Laramie Boulevard. But much of the island of Hull and the city of Gatineau has already been eviscerated by a 1950s style of development based on the philosophy 'there isn't a road which can't be widened.'
We have gone down a very different route on the Ottawa side of the river. We've kept our downtown communities vital and we've built our busways and now we're moving towards a light rail system. If you think about it, the difference between the two sides of the river is really quite striking.
On the Hull side, bridges like the Champlain, the MacDonald-Cartier and the proposed Kettle Island bridge all exit into industrial-commercial areas and six lane roads. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Monsieur Labine prefers downtown bridges with 24 hour truck traffic including the proposed Kettle Island Bridge. His communities have nothing to lose and something to win.
But it's a different story on our side of the river. The Champlain Bridge exits onto Island Park Drive and the community of Westboro. The Macdonald-Cartier exits onto King Edward, the Byward Market and Sandy Hill, while the proposed Kettle Island exits into Manor Park.
So it should be no surprise that Ottawa politicians want to move the trucks which use the MacDonald-Cartier bridge onto a ring road outside of our high density downtown. Our preference is Cumberland where it can hook into the 417 without the new construction tearing up any established neighborhoods..
Closer to home, we see this same struggle over how our Region should grow in the battle over the Bronson and Alta Vista Expressways. Many of us feel that the right solution is not more cars and highway lanes but to reserve these corridors for light rail and keep our green space around the Rideau River at Lees Avenue and Bronson. Modern light rail is fast, comfortable, efficient (two rail tracks moves the equivalent of 18 lanes of road traffic) and at the same time creates a minimum of disturbance to
the community. The rail lines themselves are narrow and can support strong green edges without damage to trees and plants the way the salt spray of cars, access ramps, and road maintenance inevitably does.
Maybe I'll never fall asleep on the way home from the beach again but my vision for healthy neighborhoods and safe streets remains a region built around rail lines which move people from the suburbs to the downtown and across existing bridges to Hull.
Last weekend before the Glebe Centre Rockathon, Mayor Watson and I shared a few moments together at lunch. I felt that I had been holding my own in the "out and about sweepstakes" and made the mistake of listing my day's accomplishments.
Up at seven to supervise some tree planting at Fourth and Bank, then off to Heron Park North for a community clean-up, then down to Brewer Park for the tree planting there, a constituent problem on Marco Lane, then a stop for a coffee and sandwich before going to rock in the Rockathon.
Jim had done most of the above and an event in Alta Vista, plus after the Rockathon, he was off to Westboro. No matter what the future holds for Mayor Watson, he will be remembered as the Mayor of Ottawa who raised the bar on community presence to a record height.
All the best, Clive Doucet
Regional Councillor, Capital Ward
111 Lisgar Street
Ottawa, Ont, K2P 2L7
Tel: 560-1224 Fax: 560-6075
Email: doucet@rmoc.on.ca
Website: www.rmoc.on.ca/ward17