Now that new LRT plans are a go, city turns its attention to consultation

Package includes many positive points, but there are issues that shouldn’t be dismissed

The city will hold an “interactive information session” on its next round of light rail plans a week after city council’s finance committee approved the plans Friday.

This is just enough to say the public will get to ask questions about the plans without subjecting those plans to any real threat — even the parts that should be threatened.

Mayor Jim Watson has learned from previous councils’ habits of listening too much.

Whether Ottawa should build light rail used to be controversial and city council gave a lot of provisional approvals for things, often by narrow margins only achieved by promising nothing was definitive yet and we could pull the plug later. Which councillors once did.

Call it dithering, call it analysis-paralysis, call it cowardice. Whatever it was, it was bad. But now we’re overcorrecting.

“Staff have conducted many consultations with stakeholders and residents to inform the recommendations before us today,” the city’s rail-planning chief, Chris Swail, told the finance committee, which Watson chairs.

Twenty-seven consultations in all, Swail said, though many of those have been invitation-only, in apartment buildings or with particular interest groups.

The results of those consultations are scrambling some important decisions we already made about what we’ll build where and when.

“I disagree with pushing this at such lightning speed through council,” Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans said. Construction is not planned for almost three years, she pointed out. We could give this another couple of weeks.

She and other south-end councillors wanted a public meeting where residents could put local questions to the top rail planners on this $3.6-billion collection of projects.

No way. One session for everyone is what they’ll get, in City Hall’s council chamber at 6:30 p.m. on March 1, though it’ll also be webcast.

Their tedious questions about shutting down the O-Train for 16 months can compete with concerns from Kanata and cheers from Orléans.

The overall rail plan has much in its favour. It extends rail in all directions across Ottawa, farther and faster than its less refined version, circa 2013, would have.

Watson and the city government have cajoled the provincial and federal governments into paying more than their usual shares to get even more kilometres of track laid.

Councillors heard Friday from a parade of business, construction industry and education leaders raving about how thrilled they are. But it has flaws. One I’ve harped on is the plan will widen Highway 174 from the 417 split to Jeanne d’Arc Boulevard alongside the new eastern LRT leg, a project that was on the city’s list of things it might do someday but not any time soon.

Building rail and adding a lane for cars is cheaper if we do it together, so that’s the plan.

Even though the city has an analysis, not included in any public report, that says doing so will rob 10 per cent of the anticipated riders from the rail line and still leave the 174 overcrowded.

The city figures a new lane will add room for 1,800 cars an hour but will draw in 1,500 more drivers who would otherwise take transit or carpool or travel at a less busy time.

The 174 will still have a vehicles-to-capacity ratio over one at rush hours. In the manuals, any ratio over one is considered severe congestion — an F, in the way engineers grade the “level of service” a road provides.

The 174 would be F’d with two lanes, F’d with three.

Plus, widening the 174 west of Jeanne d’Arc will worsen congestion between Jeanne d’Arc and Place d’Orléans, in the city’s own models, which will surely lead to calls to widen the eastern highway, too. None of it will get people to work in the morning any faster.

How much will the ridership bleed affect fare revenue for the rail system? Deans asked.

Transportation and transit general manager John Manconi said he didn’t know. His staff have worked up some estimates but he’s skeptical of some of their assumptions so he doesn’t trust the results.

He’ll try to have some numbers before city council takes a final vote March 8.

Anyone could speak to the committee on Friday — for five minutes at the most, and no questions unless they’re rhetorical.

Actually seeking more information in a committee presentation is against the rules.

David Jeanes, a transportation expert who has been involved in transit in Ottawa for years, rhymed off concerns about everything from the placement of a rail yard to whether we should drive a harder bargain when we buy more trains.

There’s 540 pages of documentation in these reports that came out one week ago, he pointed out.

“I need to cover 1.8 pages per second in my five-minute presentation.”

Jeanes spoke, the mayor thanked him, the committee moved on.

If you’re a city councillor and want to hold a public meeting, go right ahead, Watson told the committee, wrapping up the brief debate.

Nobody’s stopping you. But let’s not get hung up.

“We have a reputation around the country for getting shovels in the ground on projects that had withered on the vine, in some cases, for decades,” he said.

The appearance of unity is a big asset when it comes to getting funding from the federal and provincial governments.

They obliged him. Deans dissented on a couple of points, like the 174 widening, but otherwise the rail plan passed unanimously. dreevely@postmedia.com twitter.com/davidreevely