Old Ottawa South

3 February 2010

Mr. Kent Kirkpatrick
City Manager
City of Ottawa
110 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa  ON   K1P 1J1

Re:  Comments on Terms of Reference for the Lansdowne Transportation Study

Dear Mr. Kirkpatrick:

We would like to thank you for inviting the Ottawa South Community Association to participate in the January 26, 2010 meeting held at City Hall regarding the terms of reference for the Lansdowne Transportation Study and to comment on them.  In addition to the oral comments made at the meeting by my college Mohammad al-Asad, Co-Chair of OSWATCH and myself, we would respectfully submit the following additional written comments.

We are fully in agreement with the remarks sent to you via e-mail regarding the terms of reference by the Glebe Community Association on 2 February 2010 and which were copied to us.  We also would like to reiterate our concern regarding a few points made by GCA.  The first is the proposal to sole source the conduct of the transportation study to Delcan, which participated in developing the terms of reference for the study and also developed the transportation strategy for OSEG when it made its first proposal to Council to develop Lansdowne Park.  Delcan is not in a sufficiently neutral position to carry out such a study, having first worked for the original proponent and having drafted a study which concluded that there are no significant problems in managing traffic flows resulting from a large scale development on the site.  We and other community groups, and other traffic experts, strongly criticized the original Delcan study's approach as deficient in many important aspects and we cannot understand why you would turn to this group again if the objective is an independent and professionally conducted study.  We strongly believe that a competitive bidding process should be adopted for selecting the firm that implements this crucial study.

We also are very concerned that the terms of reference clearly are aimed towards a study intended to show how transportation and traffic solutions will work out for the Lansdowne project rather than asking whether or not reasonable transportation and traffic solutions exist for it.  In our view it is essential that the proposals designed to address traffic and transit problems be fully analysed in terms of their capital and operating costs, and the costs or amenity losses they will impose on other users of Bank Street and other arterials in the study area and other local collector and side streets and on merchants and residents of the study area.

Regarding concerns that are specific to Ottawa South, we would like to emphasize the need for the following:

• Factoring in historical traffic data that the City has, which has shown a significant growth in traffic volumes on Bank, partly because of growing commuter traffic from the south of the city.

• Including Sunday traffic in any traffic counts, which is regularly increasing because of the confluence of factors including retail activity, hockey games, as well as Sunday church events.

• Incorporating Sunnyside and similar collectors in the City's traffic modeling studies.

• Taking into consideration in the traffic modeling Old Ottawa South's unique geography as a narrow strip bound by a canal from one side and a river from the other, which limits vehicular access in and out of it to three arteries (Bronson, Bank, and Main).  Accordingly, additional traffic pressures on Ottawa South, such as those to be created by the Lansdowne project, will have a greatly magnified effect on those arteries.

• Ensuring that proposed Traffic Demand Management strategies (e.g., eliminating on-street parking) not only be evaluated for the improvements they bring to traffic flow, but also be analyzed for the other impacts/costs they may have (e.g., in the case of on-street parking reductions / eliminations, the loss of business to local merchants who rely on out-of-community patrons for a significant part of their business).
• Also, the borders of the area surrounding Lansdowne Park for which the study will be carried out need to be expanded to include other zones and traffic nodes.  These include, but are not limited to, the following:

Billings Bridge Mall:  As a major retail destination, the mall attracts considerable  vehicular traffic from beyond its immediate vicinity, and is almost exclusively  accessed through Bank and through Riverside.  The traffic generated by the mall  definitely contributes in a significant way to existing congestion on Bank Street,  which we anticipate will reach unmanageable proportions if the currently- proposed Lansdowne project is implemented.

The Carleton University campus and the relevant stretch of Colonel By:  Since  the option of using the campus for satellite parking is being seriously considered,  traffic in and out of the Carleton campus for Lansdowne-related events will have  a significantly negative traffic impact on Old Ottawa South, particularly on  Sunnyside, which is the only street in Old Ottawa South that provides a direct link  between Bronson and Bank.

The Main - Riverside intersection.  Events at the Lansdowne project will divert  considerable traffic coming from Riverside (in both directions) and going to or  through Old Ottawa South from Bank to Main in order to avoid congestion on  Bank.  This diversion of traffic will considerably increase pressure on that  intersection.

There also was mention that the minutes of the January 26 meeting will be prepared by City staff and circulated to the participants.  We still have not received these minutes and would appreciate it if they would be made available to us.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Jenkin
President

c.c. Councillor Clive Doucet
OSCA Board
OSWATCH
Glebe Community Association