Egli now open to LRT line on Carling Avenue

Former opponent says route is still an option

The city needs to take a good, long look at the prospects for running light rail along Carling Avenue before rejecting it in favour of a more northerly route, says the incoming chair of city council’s transportation committee.

“Before we discount an alternative, we need to ask a lot of questions,” said KnoxdaleMerivale Councillor Keith Egli in an interview Thursday.

He is set to take over leadership of the committee from Kanata North’s Marianne Wilkinson in a midterm shuffle of assignments, if city council approves. “They say it’s too expensive. Well, are there alternative ways of dealing with it?”

That’s a major change in tone from Wilkinson, who has said repeatedly that Carling Avenue is just wrong for rail.

Consultants working for the city (and overseen by the transportation committee, which is in charge of planning major transit projects) are waist deep in a study of the best route for the system west of Tunney’s Pasture, the western end of the line through downtown a contractor is about to start building.

The three main options all have pros and cons: ❚ Existing Transitway trench and Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway: By far the cheapest option at about $500 million, but the National Capital Commission, which controls the parkway, is very leery of allowing trains to use it and there are few options for intensification around new stations. ❚ Existing Transitway trench and then a corridor along Richmond Road and Byron Avenue: Mid-priced (about $1 billion) and with many opportunities to serve existing residents and businesses and attract new ones, this is the general route a preliminary report from the consultants favoured. A vocal segment of nearby residents, fearing the loss of parkland along the route and noise in their neighbourhood, hate it. ❚ Carling Avenue, likely with a jog along the existing O-Train track: Carling had a wide median suitable for construction and few nearby residents to raise objections.

The consultants found that numerous logistical challenges, such as preserving northsouth crossings of Carling as the years pass, would require elevating the track at a total cost of about $2 billion.

Carling is better suited to a trolley service with frequent stops, they say, rather than being a major commuter route to and from west Ottawa.

When the consultants presented a status report late last spring and asked for permission to narrow their focus by taking Carling Avenue off the list, Egli was one of numerous councillors who said no and requested a full assessment of all the options.

“I think we needed a bit more of a breakdown” of the Carling cost estimates in particular, he said Thursday.