Report on Airport Parkway/Lester Rd widening open house and further thoughts

[John Verbaas]

I attended the 1st of 3 (to occur over the course of the next 18months) open houses for the Environmental Assessment for the widening of the airport parkway on Jan 27th. My estimate of the attendance was about 100 people.  In the Q&A session that followed there were plenty of people who did not seem to be in favour of the project and they were not limited to individuals who lived downtown but also included people who lived in the vicinity of the parkway.

 

As a refresher, here is a summary of the proposed project:

Stage 1: expand Airport parkway to 4 lanes divided hwy between Hunt Club and Brookfield

  - Completion is envisioned for 2019, Projected Cost: 31m$

Stage 2:  expand Lester Rd to 4 lanes between Bank St and the Airport Parkway

  - Completion envisioned for 2020-2025 timeframe, Projected Cost: 13m$

Stage 3: expand Airport parkway to 4 lanes divided hwy between the Airport and Hunt Club

  - Completion envisioned for 2026-2031 timeframe, projected cost 36m$

End-End project cost =  80m$ 

(These costs are rough estimates undertaken during the writing of the 2013 TMP where similar such estimates had to be done for 20 other proposed road expansions.  The current EA will provide more detailed costing which almost always turns out to be higher than these rough estimates).

 

Meanwhile an extension of the O-Train (now renamed Trillium Line) is also planned to run parallel to this from Greenboro to Bowesville Rd (which is south of the Airport and within a few kms of Riverside South) where a huge park and ride lot will be built.  We are told the earliest this could be completed is 2023 and the estimated cost is 99m$.

 

A copy of the display boards shown at the open house can be downloaded from the CCC website

 

http://www.ccc-ottawa.ca/Issues#TOC-Airport-Parkway-Lester-Rd-Widening

 

 

Returning to the Airport Parkway widening EA:

 

After following closely several such EA processes for significant (ie. 80-150m$) widenings of roadways intended to expand peak capacity directly towards the downtown core (Altavista Corridor, Prince of Wales, now Airport Parkway), I have come to the conclusion that there are 3 (main) things I don't like about them, and which I would like to advocate for being done differently in this case.  Reactions and thoughts from others are welcomed.

 

1. Projections: how easily the projections are made in these EA's to justify the need for road expansions and how often these turn out to be wildly overly optimistic in terms of  the projected increasing auto volumes.  

 

2. Alternative Solutions:  One doesn't get the feeling that the City and the consultants are trying very hard to find creative solutions that might be able to avoid requiring the road expansion or at leastto try to achieve the result of getting the extended Trillium line to Riverside South/Airport running first and then see where things stand.  Surely we have come to the place as a society that for environmental, urban planning, and cost reasons we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that widening a road, particular one such as this one which is a heading straight into the congested urban core should be the absolute last thing we resort to until we really really have to.  When I read their (City/consultant) studies and watch them at public meetings, I do not get the impression that this is their approach.

 

3. Cost/Benefit analysis: how little effort (in fact there is no effort that I am aware of) is put into evaluating the project as a societal investment.  There is virtually no effort put into trying to quantify the benefit and using measures to express that benefit in terms of the costs incurred to achieve it such as $/hour of time saved or $/extra commuter accomodated (that's without even trying to factor in the dis-benefits from an environmental point of view!).  The City needs to do a much better job of informing the public of what projects like this really are costing and what they really are likely to accomplish.

 

I don't think we should accept this 'status quo' in terms of inadequate analysis on this particular project.  I think we should try to make the case that 'this one is different'. (perhaps we have learned some things from the Altavista Corridor EA experience that we can apply in this case?)

 

Here are a few other general thoughts on the topic of this particular road project.

 

A. In for a penny, in for a pound.

This project makes very little sense UNLESS you do the whole thing, all 3 stages. If only the first phase was ever built, then most of its added capacity would never be capable of being used.  If this project is started, then it is a horrible investment unless all 3 phases are done.   The if the City is going to do the whole thing that should 'up the game' significantly in terms of the homework that ought to be done before we can call this a good idea.   (sounds a lot like the Altavista corridor  where 60m$+ is being spent on the 1st phase alone). That has got to be the single worst capital investment ever done in this city...unless they are going to follow through with another 100m$ for the next 2 phases (which now have been delayed in the master plan to 'sometime beyond 2031').

 

B. Shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic

It's pretty obvious to everyone that this project has a significant potential to solve one bottleneck on the Airport Parkway and then to create just as bad (or an even worse one) on Bronson north of the canal.  The feeble attempt offered to analyze this (actually I would call it more an attempt to dismiss it) that we saw at the open house is unacceptable.  Let's make the engineers (and I'm speaking as an engineer!!) do their homework on this one.

 

C. The elephant in the room

So we're going to double the road capacity just before we implement the transit solution?  (Kind of like boosting the capacity of the 417 east by 33% the day that the LRT goes into operation. Now that's a recipe for transit success!)Hmmm does this not make anyone with decision making authority sit up and have some sober 2nd thoughts?  How will we ever attract anyone to take transit when we are reducing the commute time by automobile?

 

D. Just how bad is it? aka. First world problems...

Maybe this is just a variant of item #3 above (Cost/Benefit analysis) but how bad is the problem actually?  I was caught in the airport parkway congestion the other day going to the airport at rush hour.  It took me a whole 8 minutes longer to get there than it otherwise would have under uncongested conditions.  Delays today east-west on the 417 are far worse than that.  So why then exactly is it unacceptable to have 5-10 minutes delays at rush hour on the Airport Parkway and thus warrant the spending of 80m$ to save this amount of time?

 

E. Mitigation issues:  if this project were to go ahead there would almost certainly be bigger rush hour traffic jams on Bronson north of the canal with a high probability of many more cars trying to divert around this long slow moving queue by dipping through the Glebe/Old Ottawa south. 

 

John