Moodie LRT station’s location bad for green space, city told
The closest community to the future LRT station at Moodie Drive would rather see the stop built farther away from its residents.
It’s unlikely the city will budge on the proposed location at the northeast corner of Highway 417 and Moodie Drive, but the Crystal Beach/Lakeview community is urging council members to consider building the station on the west side of Moodie Drive instead.
The finance and economic development committee on Tuesday heard from members of the community association who said most residents don’t want the LRT station to negatively affect trails and wildlife areas in the green space off Corkstown Road. They also fear construction would exacerbate flooding along the pathways.
The root of the controversy was best summed up by Bay Coun. Mark Taylor, who observed that the area is “where civilization meets wilderness.”
Peggy McGillivray, president of the community association, showed the committee pictures of the naturalized area under threat by the city’s plan to make a Moodie bus-rapid transit station suitable for LRT in 2023.
“They want to save what is there for posterity,” McGillivray said of the residents in her community who oppose the proposed station location.
Lynn Hart, who lives near Carling Avenue and Corkstown Road, wants the city to forget about building a station at Moodie Drive altogether and find a way to push trains into Kanata at a faster pace.
Hart is collecting signatures on a petition against the Moodie station location.
“We are opposed and we are being ignored,” Hart said.
It’s unusual for the city to hear criticisms over a rapid transit station being built close to a neighbourhood, although in this case the Moodie station would still be a halfkilometre from the nearest homes.
The city likes the idea of building an LRT station there because the Defence Department is moving into the old Nortel complex, which is about one kilometre north. The vision is that thousands of defence workers will take trains to Moodie station before transferring to buses for the rest of the trip.
Mayor Jim Watson acknowledged that DND’s relocation is dragging but he believes Moodie Drive is the right spot for the Stage 2 LRT terminus.
“My frustration, I think a lot of people’s frustration, is this is taking a long time,” Watson said. “We know they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars fixing up the old Nortel site for DND, so employees are coming. When they’re coming is not known at this point, but we definitely need a station there.”
The city will eventually extend LRT past Moodie Drive to Kanata. It’s on the books to happen after 2031, unless council finds a way of advancing the project in the next version of the transportation master plan, tentatively in the works for 2019.
It’s worth noting that other communities have succeeded in altering parts of the Stage 2 plan. Most notably, the Unitarian House convinced the city to shift the LRT alignment west of Westboro to avoid cutting through the Unitarian property.
But with Moodie, the city would be hard-pressed to find a good enough reason to locate a rapidtransit station farther away from a potential built-in ridership. Locating the station on the west side of Moodie Drive would require people to cross the busy road if they’re coming from the Crystal Beach neighbourhood. Plus, a chunk of Wesley Clover Parks could be required for a station.
Chris Swail, the city’s head of O-Train planning, said staff will work to design a station east of Moodie Drive that has a minimal impact on the surrounding land.
The Crystal Beach/Lakeview community has already won one battle over the city’s Moodie LRT plans, convincing the city to spend up to $15 million more to locate a light maintenance and storage facility on a narrow strip of land west of Moodie Drive, rather than on the western edge of the community.
Opponents of the proposed station location wanted the committee to defer a decision, but the mayor and councillors on the committee unanimously approved the updated Stage 2 blueprint to include the updated maintenance facility site west of Moodie Drive and the station east of Moodie Drive. Council will vote Sept. 13.