On June 9, 2010, Ottawa City Council received the reports on traffic and retail that Council had required that City staff and OSEG produce before Council considers whether to approve the Lansdowne redevelopment project on June 28. Their results are not surprising: both reports support their sponsors' assertions that retail and traffic can sustain the increase in traffic and retail competition that the project will cause.
Most distressing for many Old Ottawa South residents, and Sunnyside residents in particular, was the traffic report, which states that the Lansdowne project is doable if there is increased frequency of buses on routes 1 and 7, and shuttle buses from Carleton University and other locations during weekends when events will take place.
Sunnyside Avenue residents were not consulted in any way for this report.
In fact, a group of Sunnyside residents has been in consultation with the City over just such issues in recent years, and City staff and Councillor Doucet are well aware of this. Citizens successfully stopped a move to put No. 7 buses running both ways on their street in 2003, and convinced the City to stop running large articulated buses on Sunnyside, because it is a residential street, around the same time.
How can the City suddenly reverse its respect and attention to this neighbourhood in favour of the privatization of a public space that may, in the end, destroy this central Ottawa community for a football franchise that could yet fail for a 4th time?
Sunnyside residents urge the greater community to email their councillor Clive Doucet, all City councillors, the Mayor, City staff, and the Lansdowne Partnership Plan that this increase in bus traffic is not acceptable for this community.
The report does say: "Supplementary transit services on Route 1/7 are recommended between the downtown and Billings Bridge to provide the necessary capacity. Assuming the use of standard buses for Route 1/7, about 15 extra southbound bus trips per hour would be required and six extra bus trips northbound. The round-trip time for this supplementary service would be about an hour. That means 15 additional buses would have to be in service for this route."
What it does not say, however, is that No. 7 doesn't go south for long--it turns at Sunnyside. So if they are proposing 15 more trips south per hour, even divided between No. 1 and 7, that's a lot of buses down Sunnyside (and presumably on Grove going back.)
Given that increased local bus routes will be for the many more smaller events, Sunnyside and other streets will suffer perhaps more than if there were shuttle buses at beginnings and ends of games.