FROM LEBRETON TO LIGHT RAIL

The future of LeBreton Flats might be the biggest thing they’ll have to deal with. The National Capital Commission and the RendezVous LeBreton group, starring the Ottawa Senators’ Eugene Melnyk, are negotiating the plans in secret, with a major announcement about their progress due in November, just after the election. The city’s involved, too, but isn’t in charge.

If the NCC and RendezVous LeBreton reach a deal, city councillors will have to decide on things like how much money to kick in for public amenities and services in a development focused on a new arena for the Sens and paid for by acres of condo and commercial construction. We’ll live with their choices forever. The Lansdowne redevelopment was big but in comparison it was only practice.

Are we happy with what we got there? Do we think we can do better?

The next stage of light-rail construction, extensions to Moodie Drive, Algonquin College, Riverside South and Trim Road, isn’t fully nailed down but it’s well along. The planning is where it should be by now and the city has billion-dollar funding commitments from the provincial and federal governments. What comes after that, though, is not certain.

What if the provincial government punches out of infrastructure funding for a while and we can only do some of what’s on the city’s list? Will it be rail to Barrhaven? To Kanata and Stittsville? Electrifying the line to south Gloucester?

Doucet has made regional rail on existing industrial tracks, and especially a link across the decrepit Prince of Wales Bridge to Gatineau, the centrepiece of his campaign. Repairing the bridge has been on Ottawa’s to-do list for 15 years but it never quite reaches the top. Moving commuters across the Ottawa River is an obvious need in the capital but it’s not wholly in either Ottawa’s or Gatineau’s interest to take it on — for each of them, it means spending their own taxpayers’ money to help residents or employers in the other’s territory.