NCC demands could double west LRT tab

City looking at alternatives to ‘preferred option’ in West

Giving the National Capital Commission what it wants in a light-rail line in exchange for access to the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway could cost $1.7 billion, nearly double what the city hopes to pay to extend the rail system west.

That would cut deep into the money available for transit all over the city, from Kanata to Barrhaven to Orléans, for decades to come.

The city and NCC have been sparring all week over city planners’ wish to run tracks west from Dominion station at the west end of the existing Transitway trench, using land along the parkway until a jog southward at Cleary Avenue. Continuing west in a tunnel under Richmond Road before meeting the parkway again adds up to $900 million at an early estimate. The city calls it the Richmond Underground, though only about half the route is subterranean.

Mayor Jim Watson describes the price as fitting “within our affordability framework.” A plan devised by the city treasurer says Ottawa can afford to spend about $7 billion on new transit infrastructure until 2031, including the $2.1-billion first leg of the rail system — but only $4 billion of that is for rail. After the first leg, there’s precious little money for other expansions. Just as important, the route doesn’t put tracks atop Byron Tramway Park, a massively unpopular idea in McKellar Park.

But the Richmond Underground would use a lot of NCC parkland near the Ottawa River and the NCC is clearly not on board. Commission chair Russell Mills insists the city can’t run tracks on the parkway or the surface of the park next to it. He’s suggested alternatives, though.

“If it was underground, for example, so that there wasn’t impact on the green space,” Mills said in an interview. “If it moved more quickly to the Richmond-Byron corridor … that might be an option.”

The city has not seriously explored the idea of a tunnel under the parkway land. At a session nearly a year ago, consultant David Hopper said a high water table would make construction expensive. Further, the planners assumed the NCC wouldn’t accept a project that tears up several hectares of parkway.

Now that Mills has suggested it’s a possibility, the planners have been working feverishly to figure out the price.

“It’s too early. We don’t have a costing for it,” said Coun. Keith Egli.

Egli chairs city council’s transportation committee. “We’re not at the detailed design stage at this point.”

He stayed until midnight at a consultation on the rail plan Thursday and then met deputy city manager Nancy Schepers, who’s in charge of the rail planning, to take stock Friday.

“We’ll be looking at opportunities to lower or maybe to cover over the railway corridor between Dominion and Cleary station, which might address the NCC’s concerns about preserving parkland,” he said. “It’s a fluid process. We’ll adapt and modify.”

Hopper and his team have already spent much effort on getting the tracks off the NCC land sooner by cutting across Rochester Field. They’ve even looked at a route that numerous residents of McKellar Park called for at the city’s open house Thursday evening.

In this option, the city would dig a tunnel starting just west of Dominion station, run it south to Richmond Road and continue it until Richmond meets the parkway again. With stations at Cleary Avenue and New Orchard Avenue, the planners estimated the cost of that line at $1.7 billion. (The figures are actually for lines running all the way from Tunney’s Pasture to Baseline station, but they’d be identical except for the stretch in the middle.)

That option came sixth among 15 possibilities the planners assessed. In its favour,

CITY it doesn’t divide neighbourhoods and it would be as good as any route at promoting ridership. Counting against it, construction would be long and the underground stations would probably be simple bunkers that don’t do much for their surroundings on the surface. Especially for the price, the planners considered it a bad deal.

Because the full-length tunnel flunked out of the planning process early, it didn’t get as close a look as the route the city favours. The $900-million “Richmond Underground,” which uses Richmond only half the way, saves some money by having the New Orchard station built at tunnel depth but open at the top; the $1.7-billion version includes two fully underground stations, which are more expensive, but they could be changed.

What does Egli think of the idea? “It costs $1.7 billion,” he said with a tired chuckle. “It’s not all about finance. Obviously. But it’s an important part of it. The more that is spent on this portion of light rail, it means there’s less money to spend on transit projects to the south, the east, for the foreseeable future.”

In fact, at the same time as the more detailed planning on the western LRT extension is going on, other planners are examining whether it’s a good idea to extend a rail line to Orléans, where transit ridership is famously high. The city’s current plan is to run rail to all the suburbs eventually, sometime after 2030. But Orléans is due for two busways before then, aimed at taking OC Transpo buses off Highway 174. Thanks to a move by Cumberland Coun. Stephen Blais, the planners are assessing the wisdom of skipping the first busway and building a rail line from the start.

Blais, recovering from a heart attack but paying increasing attention to city business, sensed an opportunity on Friday.

“It’s clear the NCC wishes to stall LRT heading west and add substantial cost to Ottawa property taxpayers and as such we should be focusing on Orléans and heading south to the airport,” he said by email.

There’s a dedicated and uncontroversial route for it and Orléans residents commute on transit more than anybody else in Ottawa, he said.

The planners haven’t told him yet whether they think it makes sense to build a rail line to Orléans before a dedicated busway, “but I am confident that the analysis will come back positive.”

If the NCC wants a tunnel in the west, he added, the NCC should pay for it.