Draft
Plan (May 2001)
Final Plan (Nov. 2001)
Glebe
Traffic Plan
Responses to The Ottawa Citizen Article
of Dec.28, 2001
City
Centre Coalition Response to Ottawa Citizen article Dec. 28, 2001
Clive's
Response to the Citizen
TO:
Colleagues in City Centre Coalition
FROM: Cam Robertson
Several days ago, Citizen columnist Randall Denley wrote what seemed to me an artificially controversial piece not only saying how he disagrees with the proposed Glebe Traffic Plan but also insulting Glebe residents in general and those who worked on the plan. Among other things, his column showed an inaccurate understanding of the Plan.
Pat Steenberg wrote an op-ed piece in response but the Citizen refused to publish it.
City
Centre Coalition response to Ottawa Citizen
article Dec. 28, 2001
I am often frustrated and saddened by the use of misinformation or incomplete information to reinforce a particular prejudice or stereotype. As was the case in Mr. Denley’s recent review of the Glebe Traffic Plan. It saddens me particularly because I have always believed Mr. Denley to be essentially fair-minded and a responsible journalist. His comments betray either a lack of familiarity with the contents of the Plan or, more lamentably, a deliberate attempt to misrepresent them. Most distressing for those of us who have worked with our community over the past five years to develop the Plan, are the cheap accusations of unfettered self-interest. The Glebe Traffic Plan was, from its inception, a principled endeavour. Its objective was not to preserve or inflate property values but to safeguard the integrity of a residential neighbourhood while recognizing the need to sustain, both in the short and the long term, the welfare of the city as a whole. Every proposal was considered and reconsidered to assess its collateral impacts, our goal always being not to shift the problem elsewhere, either to our neighbours’ streets, or to neighbours in other communities. Perhaps the language of principle and ethics appears naïve or improbable in the context of traffic planning; but for me, building community is among the finest expressions of human association.
The Glebe Traffic Plan was never envisaged as thumbing a collective nose at citizens in other areas of the city, nor indeed to keep Mr. Denley off our streets. More than anyone, inner city residents recognize that dividing a population benefits only those who want to manipulate conflict for personal gain. For that reason, we have supported solutions to traffic growth that benefited everyone, such as implementing a comprehensive, convenient, city-wide rapid transit system. Where trade-offs among interests were inevitable, we felt it reasonable to privilege human health and safety over convenience.
With respect to Mr. Denley’s ‘facts’ I submit the following.
Firstly, the Plan’s proposal to reduce ‘arterial’ speed to 30 kph affects only Bank Street between Ottawa South and the Queensway. As this is one of the most densely used pedestrian strips in the city, errors or accidents carry a significantly greater risk of serious injury. In the past couple of years, a woman lost her leg when a car, passing on the inside lane during rush hour, slid, jumped the curb and struck her while seated on a sidewalk bench. Not long afterwards, at the same intersection, a passing car veered out of control and plowed into Von’s restaurant demolishing a wall and the table behind it. The impact would likely have killed or seriously maimed the man and woman seated at the table had they not left their seats just moments before the accident. Slowing down cars for the dozen or so affected blocks merely attenuates the risk.
Rather than seeking to safeguard expensive overcoats, the proposal to restore parking on Bank Street during peak periods was also made to protect people using the sidewalks. Cars not only provide a physical barrier between other cars and pedestrians, they also provide a psychological one. Apparently, drivers are more sensitized to the possibility of damaging their cars than of injuring those on foot.
Speculating that narrowing Carling Avenue west of Bronson will increase the ‘set back’ of Glebe houses is puzzling. The stretch of road in question lies between Preston and Bronson and is bounded by Dow’s Lake to the south and Natural Resources Canada, to the north. The lanes in question were built twenty-five years ago in anticipation of Carling continuing, as an arterial, eastward through the Glebe to Pretoria Bridge and from there to downtown and the Queensway. When that plan was abandoned, the extra lanes remained. For most of the day, at least one of the three lanes is empty, inducing vehicles travelling in the other two to accelerate. Reducing the number of lanes will not significantly compromise the usability of the road but may lower the speed with which it is used.
Cut-through commuter traffic from Bronson is most problematic during the morning rush hour. This is why access restrictions are advocated at that time. The restrictions apply to all east bound streets intersecting with Bronson. To do otherwise would simply shift the traffic on one street to a neighbouring street. Current levels of eastbound, cut-through traffic do not warrant similar access restrictions in the evening. The Plan does not close the Glebe to traffic, it merely points commuters to the appropriate arterials.
Nowhere does the Glebe Traffic Plan suggest that people should not own or drive cars. Nor would we prevent people in the south end of the city from passing through our neighbourhood en route to the Queensway and downtown. We only ask that this be done and be required to be done in a manner that respects the safety and well being of the children, adults and seniors who live, walk and ride here. Not an unreasonable expectation, nor one that would be challenged in any other community.
Finally, a short response to Councillor Stewart’s remarks that ‘some of the traffic cutting through the community to access the Driveway is really just using ‘ramps’ that have been there for some time and that the Plan is simply a wish list of an affluent community trying to solve its problems at the expense of others.’ Ms. Stewart’s comments are doubly noteworthy. To begin with, when the planning process was launched, the median income in the Glebe was the same as that in Ms. Stewart’s ward.
Secondly, the ramp of which Ms. Stewart speaks is the top end of Broadway Avenue which now accommodates some one thousand cars during the morning rush hour, many of which choose to ignore the stop signs. Ironically, it was Ms. Stewart who argued successfully for the construction of the Hunt Club ramps on the grounds that they would dissuade commuters from cutting through communities in her ward via McCarthy, Flannery and Springland. Today, Bronson carries three to four times as many cars as McCarthy in peak periods (substantially more in the off hours) and the ramps added eight cars to Bronson for every one they removed from Springland. Incidentally, even before the ramps were built, the volume of Bronson traffic was more than twice McCarthy’s (also an arterial) and roughly five times that on the other two streets.
We have a Glebe Traffic Plan because the increase in traffic on our neighbourhood streets and the associated driver behaviour have become intolerable. Nearly four thousand cars travel through our community along Bronson Avenue during peak periods, approximately three thousand more than only ten years ago. This represents a volume increase of some three hundred per cent in less than a decade. Moreover, northbound Bronson traffic often enters the Glebe at speeds exceeding 70 kph, totally inappropriate for a residential stretch of road (and Bronson between the Canal and the Queensway, as noted in our plan, is largely a residential road). Small children cross that road everyday on their way to school. So do elderly people and blind people. When cars run red lights at Fifth Avenue, as they frequently do because they are going too fast to stop, it is our residents, not the drivers, who are at risk. I suspect people living in Nepean, Kanata or Barrhaven would be similarly concerned.
As for my overcoat, it is fifteen years old.
Clive's Response to the Citizen
Dear Randall:
You are welcome to use Glebe Streets anytime that you wish, just as thousands of others do every day, every week of the year. The Glebe and the Byward Market are the two most popular places to visit in the new city. The Glebe hosts the 67s, Winterlude, the Tulip Festival, shopping and coffee shop hopping, even local activities like the Great Glebe Garage sale attracts visitors from all over the city. A big part of the reason the Glebe is so popular is not because it's rich. The median income is exactly the same as it for Councillor Stewart's ward. (News Flash. Not everyone lives on Clemow Avenue.) What the Glebe Traffic Plan is about is trying to preserve what people like about the Glebe. It's friendliness. It's family and neigbourhood feel even in the midst of what is now the fourth largest city in the country.
But no neigbourhood can survive the onslaught of commuter cut through traffic. The Glebe has 36 different points of access. Fortunately, for years the traffic has been stable in the Glebe with only slight increases from year to year, but the construction of the Hunt Club Ramps changed all this. They were the inspiration for the Glebe Traffic Plan, not someone waking up one morning and saying 'hey, today, I think we'll close off the Glebe.
For every cut through commuter that the Hunt Club Ramps took out of Councillor Stewart's ward, they dumped eight into my ward. Hence, I take vigorous exception to Councillor Stewart's claim the Glebe Traffic Plan is about protecting an affluent neigbourhood. This is a destructive and false comparison. Furthermore, the Hunt Club Ramps which have benefited the area she represents, have done the opposite to the one I represent. They have jammed access to the airport by increasing the volume of cars on Bronson by 300 cars an hour, a thousand cars, an hour (at peak) on Broadway and cross streets like Glebe have seen a 68 per cent increase in traffic. The Hunt Club Ramps were bad news for the airport, bad news for all of the communities north of the ramps and they continue to aggravate the lives and safety of thousands of the residents of not just the Glebe, but Old Ottawa South and the communities of Centretown. So I say bravo! to the folks who have worked so hard on the Glebe Traffic Plan. May it soon come to pass.
Clive Doucet,
Councillor, Capital Ward
City Centre Coalition Response to Ottawa Citizen article Dec. 28, 2001