City won’t consider rail to airport
Transportation chair offers up possible shuttle instead
Ending the O-Train line at the Ottawa airport instead of going past it to Riverside South would be a boondoggle and the city won’t entertain it, says the chairman of city council’s transportation committee.
The airport authority is the only major institution so far to object to the city’s proposed new master plan for transportation, a compendium of road, transit, cycling and sidewalk projects that’s supposed to last till 2031. It includes a $99-million plan to extend the current O-Train south from Greenboro to a new station at Bowesville south of the airport, but no direct connection for air travellers, a decision the airport authority said last week is short-sighted.
The authority would prefer a $70-million O-Train extension that ends near the Ernst & Young Centre on Uplands Drive and has hinted that it is willing to fight to get it. The city is underestimating the costs of the Bowesville route, the authority says, and it adds that it is going to require the authority’s land to make the line work, land it has a responsibility to protect for the airport’s future. It’s very reminiscent of the National Capital Commission’s resistance to letting the city run light rail along the Ottawa River west of downtown.
“I think the proposal that they want us to follow up on is spending an awful lot of money for little gain, whereas the proposal we have on the table is to spend a little more money for a much more significant gain,” said Coun. Keith Egli, who is shepherding the transportation vision. “We’re talking hundreds versus thousands (of passengers).”
A consultant’s report prepared for the city says the Bowesville route would bring about 5,000 new passengers onto transit, day in and day out. A shorter line ending at the airport could be just as good, but only if it also comes with an extra $120-million busway to south Gloucester to make up the difference.
“You look at that analysis, you get a whole lot more bang for your buck going to Bowesville than with the spur line,” Egli said. Also, he said, the airport has a good bus connection. It’s not as sexy as a speedy train but it’s still significant service. “We have the 97 in place already. I think it runs every 10 minutes, and it’s not a full bus. People do use it, but there’s more capacity than is utilized.”
There is room to negotiate how to connect the planned O-Train line to the airport terminal, Egli said. Many cities have rail service close to their airports that doesn’t quite reach the terminals but is linked via a “people-mover” that also hits other important locations. Newark has a monorail on a loop, Egli pointed out. Boston has buses that serve a subway stop, parking lots and car-rental agencies. Maybe Ottawa should have one that runs to the nearest O-Train station, or one that also goes to the Ernst & Young Centre and the big private parking lots that are a bit farther from the airport terminal. “I’m quite happy and the city’s quite happy to sit and discuss, let’s call it a third way if you will, and look at if we can create some sort of a shuttle,” Egli said.
The airport has only asked for the city to keep both options open and to study them both carefully, so there isn’t a fight yet. But there is plenty the two sides could fight about. The old freight line the city intends to use cuts through airport property, and a station at Bowesville would impinge on more of it. The $99-million cost estimate also doesn’t include the cost of tunnelling under an extended east-west runway the airport intends to build, which the consultants figure would be covered by somebody else because it’s not strictly part of the cost of the rail line.
As the airport’s statement from last week asks: “(T)he report mentions that a tunnel will be required, but indicates that funding will come from others. Who are these others?”
The airport authority, said Egli, because it would need to figure out what to do about the public rail line. “I guess you could look at it in the sense of, if this was a development, generally speaking if this was a development, this would be funded by the developer. If the airport wants to expand, they are the developer,” he said.
City council’s transit commission debates the transportation plan at a meeting starting at 9 a.m. Thursday at City Hall. Egli’s transportation committee is to take it up Nov. 15, with a city council vote after that.