Parkway plan may be shelved once again
City considers launching new smaller transportation -related studies
Never mind doing a more-detailed environmental assessment of The Parkway — on Monday, city councillors will discuss a plan to shelve the idea for now.
Instead, councillors will review a proposal to do a series of smaller transportation-related studies first.
Those would include a transit route review, for instance, as well as an examination of possible traffic signal upgrades and a cycling network study.
Those would be “feeder” studies would inform an update of the Transportation Master Plan, states a new city staff report.
But that wouldn’t necessarily spell the end of debate over whether or not to build The Parkway.
“Council approval of these ‘feeder’ studies would also answer the questions from opponents of The Parkway that not enough effort has been given to alternative, less capitalintensive, solutions,” the report states.
“Only after the need is confirmed would a larger individual EA be undertaken to plan the future north-south/east-west high capacity arterial network.”
For about 70 years, the city has been debating whether to extend The Parkway as a north-south route across Peterborough. To do so would be to pave over a ribbon of green space that serves as a recreational trail, which some citizens have opposed.
But in 2013, city council approved a $79-million plan to complete The Parkway over 20 years as a way to alleviate traffic congestion on local roads (mostly in the city’s north end).
Yet the project stalled after more than 80 citizens appealed the Parkway plan with the provincial government, which later ordered the city to do a moredetailed environmental assessment of the corridor before construction could begin.
Now it appears council might wait before starting that EA.
The new report states that the half-dozen proposed studies would be expected to cost a total of about $3.6 million.
The city already has about $2.4 million set aside for Parkwayrelated costs, and the report says the money can be “reassigned” to fund the studies.
The remaining $1.2 million was already approved in past budgets: the city was already planning to do some of the six transportation studies anyway (ie: one that looks at upgrading traffic signalization).
Meanwhile a Parkway EA would cost anywhere from $2.5 million to $4 million and take at least five years to complete.
One of the six studies would concern five houses the city has bought that are in The Parkway route.
They would be demolished if The Parkway is extended, but in the meantime the city needs to decide what to do with them.
Two of the houses are already rented, the report states, but another two are vacant and would each need about $75,000 in renovations to be rentable.
A fifth house — at 813 Fairbairn St. — is in poor shape. The report states that the cost to renovate would be so high that it’s likely to be demolished.