The City of Ottawa with a jampacked East-West traffic thoroughfare has chosen to blow almost a billion dollars of Federal money on a North-South light rapid transit that is, in effect, a streetcar. The route will be fully electric meaning overhead wires, and despite the belief it will be a train system, it will, in effect, be a streetcar style which will:
A) put enormous stress on the already burdened power grid,
B) open up the possibility to a power failure stranding thousands of people, including the possibility of being stuck under Dow’s Lake.
C) take more power which comes from coal fired and nuclear produced electricity costing $20M per km of track when the diesel electric option would have cost $4M per km.
The city forged ahead with this plan despite the countless calls to radio shows and to councillor offices which did change the mind of a few councillors. But not enough to have the system reassessed after this falls municipal election.
The booming and growing East-West regions of Kanata and Orleans which are outpacing any other areas in the city when it comes to growth, are left in the cold at this time. So why is the transit way moving North-South? Many are wondering but I can tell you that the Mayor of Ottawa is a staunch Liberal and has made his opinion very clear when helping campaign for provincial and federal Liberals who include the McGuinty Brothers. And guess where the McGuinty brothers got elected?
Ottawa South.
Guess which directions of traffic are voting Conservative these days? Yup. East-West. Guess what part of Ottawa has jumped from 35,000 people to close to 100,000 in less than ten years? The west end of Kanata-Stittsville.
To give you an idea I have included a small map of the city. The thick red line indicates the route of the streetcar (and that’s all it really is, a glorified streetcar). The white area represents the provincial and federal ridings of Ottawa South.
(click to enlarge)
Something is REALLY fishy on this one. REALLY fishy. For those who may think that that extension across the south end of the city should discount this argument, I must point out that the majority of that extension was an afterthought when they realized how many people live in the Barrhaven area of southwest Ottawa.
Ironically, for most Barrhaven residents the bus that runs downtown will, more than likely, be eliminated and the streetcar LRT will take 15 extra minutes to reach the downtown core. When you take into account most residents of Barrhaven will need to head south via bus or car to the LRT station, the trip that used to take many 30 minutes will now take an hour. How many will just drive and save the time?
This North-South route, according to the Mayor’s own admission, is to prevent the need for a huge highway running East-West as the 401 does in Toronto,which implies that his move is to FORCE the city to grow southward and buck the trend of almost every major urban area in the world. The typical growth path for almost every city in North America is westward. This is a fact. Yet the Mayor has chosen to piss off every resident in Kanata and Stittsville by FORCING them to move east or South to avoid the long drives downtown in the jammed 417. Simple stupidity.
The legacy he thinks he is building will go down in infamy as the hated Chiarelli Streetcar. Mark my words.
OfficiallyScrewed … again.
