City mum on Scott Street detour for buses
Residents want plan for LRT build
Nearly a year after the city agreed to a light-rail construction plan that means turning Scott Street into a replacement Transitway for two years, nearby residents are still waiting to find out just what that will mean for the major road that cuts through their neighbourhood.
“It goes back to 2007, when we were involved with (planning a downtown rail tunnel), when we were beginning to ask the city, during LRT construction, what do you plan to do?” said Jeff Leiper, a director of the Hintonburg Community Association and formerly its president. “We’ve known it was coming for quite some time. It was obviously more conceptual then, but we knew, conceptually, that Scott Street would have more buses during the construction. And as time has gone on we’ve been waiting to get more specifics, and we haven’t got them.”
Scott was recently rebuilt and redesigned to add bike lanes. Then last December, city council accepted a bid from rail-building consortium Rideau Transit Group (RTG) for the $2.1-billion LRT construction project that included a proposal to widen the road so it could have dedicated bus lanes: The rail line is to end at Tunney’s Pasture, and Transitway buses won’t be down in their usual trench while RTG is working there.
But what Scott Street will look like, how pedestrian crossings will work, what can be done for people who live close by — none of that’s clear, Leiper said, and there have been no meetings since June. Minutes from that meeting, produced by the city’s own rail office, promise a bunch of answers to residents’ questions at a fall followup that hasn’t been scheduled. A “safety review” is underway, but it seems not to involve the community.
“Mechanicsville kids cross to get to Connaught or to Devonshire ( elementary schools). I guess that’s underway, but there’s been no discussion — we were surprised to find out that was underway. With no discussion with the community, which doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
A public session promised for November has been downgraded to a closed-doors session with just a few people, he said, and he’s been warned the city won’t have much to add. Maybe in the new year.
That meeting is itself the subject of a dispute. Coun. Katherine Hobbs said Wednesday that the closed-door meeting was at the Hintonburg Community Association’s request, but she’s now insisting it’ll be an open house at the Hintonburg Community Centre, with the date yet to be determined.
“I understand the valid community concerns, given the issue with buses running down Scott. I share those concerns and am adamant in my conviction to work to ensure the community is protected during the few months of construction where detours will occur,” she said.
The fact the project is a public-private partnership (P3) with the rail-building group complicates the issue, the city said in written answers to questions from the Citizen.
“Due to the P3 nature of the project and the timeline of the (Transitway) detour, which is not scheduled to go into effect until 2015, the design and preparation of the Traffic and Transit Management Plan for the West BRT Detour has just begun,” the statement said. “Consequently, we have been unable to present a final design of the detour to the community.”
Previous meetings with the community, three of them this year, have informed the process, and the statement promises that residents’ views and advice will be reflected in what the Rideau Transit Group comes up with.
Leiper hopes so. There won’t be much opportunity for tinkering.
“As we get closer to the wire we’re running out of time for alternatives,” he said. The time when the big bus detour is supposed to start, in about 2015, seems like a long time away, but with complicated construction plans to be carried out first (for Scott itself, for bus turnarounds and ramps to the Transitway, for the work on the Tunney’s Pasture station), the clock is ticking.
If the buses can’t go somewhere else, the community association wants a design that puts buses on the north side of Scott and car traffic on the south. That would provide some buffer for people who live on Scott Street. “Their windows will be nine feet from 192 buses an hour,” Leiper said.
The biggest concern is there seems to be no definite plan for putting Scott right again. Nobody has put it down in writing or attached a budget to it. (The city’s position is the “reinstatement” of Scott Street will be up to city council, which will make the decision when it approves the plan for the larger neighbourhood.)
It’s particularly galling the city coughed up $80 million in a couple of weeks to change its proposal for a western extension of this first LRT line to soothe residents who didn’t want to see and hear it close to their homes, Leiper said.
“The path of least resistance, and something that would make sense from a scheduling and car perspective, to keep running buses along Scott Street,” Leiper said. He’s worried that OC Transpo won’t want to inconvenience commuters coming from the west and heading to Gatineau by making them bus to Tunney’s Pasture, transfer to a train to get to LeBreton Flats, and then transfer again to another bus to cross the river.
Turmoil in the rail office hasn’t helped. It’s without a full-time director, two of its four managers were pushed out last month, and consultant Brian Guest left in September. Three different people have been in charge of Scott Street just in the past year or so, Leiper said. “We’d like to see staff, longtime city staff, dealing with this issue.”
Staffing hasn’t been a factor, the city’s statement said.