Old thinking won't solve our bridge problem

Kettle Island was rejected earlier for good reason, writes Patrick Bendin.

Despite being symbols of unity and harmony, bridges can also be sources of division and seemingly irreconcilable differences. While a mind open to the lessons of experience can create conditions for resolving them, the opposite mindset usually leads to dysfunction and paralysis.

The latter fate likely awaits the National Capital Commission's (NCC) interprovincial transportation plans, which seem set on solving long-standing traffic problems with the same thinking that created them.

In 2007, the NCC conducted a multi-year study on behalf of the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments on whether and where to build one and possibly two interprovincial bridges. Public consultations pitted communities along the Ottawa River against each other in a game of musical chairs that ended in 2013 with Kettle Island as the last potential location standing.

A bridge at Kettle Island would connect to the Queensway along the Aviation Parkway which runs through established neighbourhoods and next to a major hospital and important cultural institutions. Residents from the surrounding area opposed the plan, as did the head of the Montfort Hospital, who feared that interprovincial traffic would impede ambulances and endanger lives. They were joined by local politicians including Tobi Nussbaum — then a councillor for the Rideau-rockcliffe ward and now NCC CEO — who criticized the recommendation for failing to adequately consider the crossing's effect on adjacent neighbourhoods. He also stressed the need to avoid transferring Ottawa's downtown traffic problems to other communities. Unwilling to ignore these and other concerns, the Ontario government withdrew its support.

The withdrawal echoed premier William Davis's decision to cancel the Spadina Expressway's expansion in 1971, which had been under construction in Toronto since the 1950s. It effectively acknowledged that people voicing legitimate concerns about the effects of transportation infrastructure on their communities, whether downtown or elsewhere, are not enemies of the public interest, and governments that act on them are not caving in to so-called NIMBY opposition. When Davis passed away, his obituaries and related media reports cited his decision as one of his notable achievements.

The federal government nonetheless disagreed with the withdrawal and quit the scene until 2019 when it announced a unilateral interprovincial bridge initiative. Rather than start anew, it directed the NCC to update the previously rejected study. Based on the same evaluation factors, it unsurprisingly concluded that Kettle Island remained the “technically preferred corridor.”

The conclusion was carried forward into the Long Term Integrated Interprovincial Transportation Plan which, amid much talk about process, vision and long-term goals for different modes of transport, will proceed on the basis that a new bridge “in the east” is the best option.

While this evokes possibilities other than Kettle Island, it nonetheless still conflicts with Nussbaum's admonition against transferring traffic problems from one area of the city to another and betrays indifference to the consequences for affected neighbourhoods.

The plan's approach contrasts with the ambitions and achievements of other metropolitan areas. These include capping urban expressways, replacing them with less disruptive roadways, parks or new neighbourhoods, or as Boston, Miami and Seattle did, burying them in tunnels beneath reimagined landscapes. The citizens of Antwerp have gone even further by voting to solve their traffic problems with multiple tunnels that include dedicated underground passages for cyclists.

Transportation infrastructure that avoids repeating mistakes while remediating their consequences is not an impossible dream. While no doubt expensive, such long-term investments are essential to building prosperity in a world where competition for qualified workers and employment opportunities is increasingly based on quality-of-life considerations. It is not too late for the federal government and NCC to change course. But the moment is fleeting and, if missed, risks leaving the Ottawa-gatineau region “bound in shallows and miseries” and its residents watching an alternate version of their future unfold elsewhere.