Holding the urban boundary and other council debates

Yesterday (Feb 24) council voted not to revisit their earlier compromise decision to accommodate a 222 hectare change in the urban boundary rather than by the 842 hectares originally recommended by city staff. The vote was quite decisive 17 for and 3 against. Dissenting votes were registered by Mayor O’Brien and Councillors Hunter and Thompson.

Unfortunately I confused local residents in my community last evening when passing on details of the decision. During the CBC NEWS: OTTAWA 6:00 pm TV news broadcast Hannah Thibedeau reporting live from City Hall, identified councillor Peter Hume as one of the three dissenting votes. This was very disturbing as Hume had previously indicated to residents that he and other councillors were working not to revisit the decision. Also it was Councillor Hume’s motion to defend council’s orignal decision. There was considerable relief when the situation was clarified.

The Hold the Line rally outside city hall at noon was well attended, especially considering the weather. There were some excellent speakers. Special thanks to members of Our Ottawa and Ecology Ottawa for organizing this event. I noted a couple of councillors in the audience. It is disappointing that more members of city council did not take the time to hear the opinions of citizens of Ottawa on this issue. It will be a subject of much further discussion once OMB becomes involved.

During the morning session of council various motions to audit or review OC Transpo’s operations, organization and projects were debated. They eventually supported a motion by Councillor Eli El-Chantiry that the American Public Transit Association (APTA) conduct a peer review of OC Transpo's bus programs and strategies, including areas such as bus operations, customer service, staffing, training and recruitment. Auditor general Alain Lalonde will examine the review panel's work and assess its recommendations.

I was disappointed by Coucillor Alex Cullen’s comments on the OC Transpo issue. He went to some lengths detailing various individual audits of particular projects, services and operations that have taken place over the past few years. However, it is many years since a full audit of this operation has taken place and we are right to expect excellence in service and operations from them. I do not understand why as chair of Transit Committee he finds it necessary to defend OC Transpo.

Make Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC) a 2010 City Budget Issue

Yesterday the following message was posted to the Our-Ottawa discussion group, courtesy of Michael Richardson. Now is a good time for Ottawa city councillors to discuss the need for this road and to put any design/development work on hold pending a decision to have the road removed from the official plan at the earliest opportunity. The Ottawa Hospital, General Campus would be better served by simply providing improved bus services along existing corridors. Contact you ward councillor on this issue today. Have the AVTC removed from the 2010 city budget.

“The first phase is a $70+ million for a 1.2 km link from Riverside Drive to the General Hospital (on Smyth) -- $5 million is set aside in the 2010 budget for design work. The lead consultant is Delcan -- who also conducted the EA recommending that the road go ahead (while declining to include a transit-only option in the study) despite the Ottawa 2020 Plan that included a goal of trying to get people to use other means of transportation besides private vehicles. Ironically, as I understand it, the hospital that this link is supposed to service has never formally come out in favour of the road -- and in fact has made it clear that it does not want a transit corridor road to bisect the hospital grounds per se (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a dedicated transit link to the hospital).

“It's worse than that. There is $45M in the ‘LRT tunnel’ plan to build a second transit bridge across the Rideau River next to the current one so that buses can ‘temporarily’ use that bridge while the tracks are being laid. ‘Temporary’ is something like 10 years.

“That bridge aligns with Nicolas and the AV parkway. Delcan is also one of the leads on parts of the LRT tunnel work. It's important to understand that the current "LRT tunnel" plan isreally just an excuse to build a lot of really expensive roads.”