Ottawa council approves new transit plan

The City of Ottawa will complete its east-west rapid bus transitway, build light rail to the south and study how to build a downtown transit tunnel, the municipal council decided Wednesday.

Those components, along with a plan to build rapid transitalong the proposed Cumberland transitway, were part of a new transit plan that replaces the north-south light rail project cancelled almost a year ago.

Councillors hope it will win the approval of the federal and provincial governments so they will provide $400 million in funding to complete the $450-million transitway.

Coun. Alex Cullen, who chairs the city's transit committee, said the details of the tunnel and the light rail components still need to be worked out.

"Once we know what the downtown tunnel is going to be, what it's going to cost, how to get down to Riverside South, what it's going to cost, then we can go to our funding partners and get their funding contributions for those projects," he said.

The environmental assessment study for the tunnel is expected to take two years to finish, and preliminary estimates suggest the tunnel itself will cost $500 million to $1 billion, Cullen said.

The price tag for the previous, cancelled north-south light rail plan was close to $1 billion, but Cullen said it's impossible to say whether the new plan will have a comparable cost "because we've got a long way to go."

That means the entire plan, crafted by a group of city councillors and staff and recommended by the joint transportation and transit committee within the past month,will likely cost more than $2 billion.

Councillors estimate it could take 10 to 12 years to complete.

Plan gets mixed reviews

Lyon Sachs, president of the development company Urbandale Corp., said the plan is good for residents of south-end neighbourhoods such as Riverside South and the city itself.

"If they had not provided some form of rapid transit, they have no choice but to build many new roads and have that many more cars on the road," he said. "So I think this is a win for everybody."

Urbandale has been building a subdivision in Riverside South in anticipation of rapid transit to the area.

But David Jeanes, head of the transportation advocacy group Transport 2000, said the plan takes too long, relies too much on buses and is too short-term.

"We're basically stuck with doing a major rework of our transportation master plan and doing a two-year study on a tunnel before we have any idea where we go next," he said.