NCC wanted 'positive message' for parkway lane closure option
Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: July 24, 2016 | Last Updated: July 24, 2016 11:02 PM EDT
Two weeks before the National Capital Commission unveiled a concept plan for a proposed linear park that could eliminate two of the four lanes on a western section of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, NCC officials huddled to try to come up with a positive spin to present to the public.
Emails released to Postmedia under access to information reveal that NCC chief executive Mark Kristmanson — evidently concerned about the public response to the two-lane option — urged senior officials to think of a “more positive message” during a meeting in early March.
To that point, material prepared for a March 23 public workshop on the planned Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway Linear Park had used the phrase “parkway lane reduction” to describe the option of eliminating two lanes from Carling Avenue to Island Park Drive.
NCC officials kicked around some rebranding ideas in a series of emails March 8 and March 9 with the subject line, “Parkway Lane Reduction — Positive Messaging.”
In a March 8 email, Arto Keklikian, the NCC’s principal transportation planner, initially suggested calling the lane reduction a parkway conversion, parkway redesignation or parkway revitalization.
Minutes later, he emailed a fourth suggestion to Sylvie Lalonde, the NCC’s principal regional planner. “Here’s another option — parkway reconfiguration,” he wrote.
Lalonde liked that idea, as did Lucie Bureau, the NCC’s chief of planning and transportation, who endorsed it in an email to Stephen Willis, then the NCC’s executive director of capital planning. “Do you agree?” she asked Willis. “If so, we will make the change on all panel and written material.”
Willis must have given a thumbs up, because at the March 23 workshop, “parkway reconfiguration” was the term presented to the public.
The nomenclature change shows that the NCC’s anticipated lane closure option would be controversial, especially among the thousands of motorists who use the parkway as a commuter route.
Traffic data emailed to Kristmanson by Willis last December shows that, in 2005, a total of 24,000 vehicles a day were using the parkway from Woodroffe to Island Park Drive as well as 16,000 a day on the segment from Woodroffe to Carling. Given population growth, those numbers have likely increased since then.
The NCC has hired an outside firm, Morrison Hershfield, to assess the impact the closure would have on parkway traffic. In a memo dated Feb. 1, the company reported its preliminary finding that the lane reduction could divert as many as 550 vehicles an hour onto other roads during peak hours.
To gauge public response to the lane options, the NCC also commissioned a survey of regular parkway users earlier this year.
NCC spokesman Nicholas Galletti declined to release the survey results, saying they will be made public this fall in a report summarizing all public feedback on the linear park.
But a draft of the survey questions, released under access to information, includes questions about whether the parkway should be converted from four lanes to two “in feasible sections and over appropriate time,” whether car access should be made easier to accommodate more commuters and whether more land should be dedicated for parkland “as opposed to traffic lanes.”
The idea of eliminating the lanes first emerged from participants in two public workshops on the linear park in 2014 and 2015. Because it came from public consultations, said Galletti, “We felt it was important for us to put forward that concept and test it with the public.”
But Galletti, who described the lane closure option as “still very conceptual,” stressed that the NCC is years away from endorsing the idea.
A decision won’t be made until after the Western LRT and a planned widening of Highway 417 are completed, Galletti said. That suggests the issue won’t be resolved until after 2023.
A transportation working paper, dated March 29, 2016 and written by Greg Kehoe, the NCC’s chief engineer, indicates the lane reduction is still a matter of internal debate.
While removing two lanes would add room for other activities, Kehoe writes, the current lanes are “well used” during morning and evening rush hours. “A reduction of the lanes would increase the commuting time on the parkway and vehicle traffic on other city roads.
“My observation is that we can accomplish our principle without reducing the number of lanes,” adds Kehoe, who recommends maintaining the current four-lane configuration.
One way or another, the NCC would like to slow down traffic on the parkway. According to Kehoe’s working paper, 85 per cent of the motorists on the section between Woodroffe and Westboro Station travel faster than 80 km/h, despite a posted speed limit of 60.
But to accomplish that, Galletti said, “there’s a lot of things that can be done without changing the lanes.”
Kehoe’s paper notes that the entire parkway, which was built in the 1960s, “is or will shortly require reconstruction, as it has reached its useful life.”
The NCC would like to reconstruct the 2.2-kilometre section from Woodroffe to Westboro, Kehoe’s paper says, including the realigned segment that will run on top of the future LRT.
Kehoe suggests that the segments between Woodroffe and Cleary station and between Dominion and Westboro stations should be reconstructed at the same time, adding: “The section from Cleary to Woodroffe would benefit by moving the parkway south and opening up the area of land.”
Despite the need to rebuild or realign those parts of the parkway, Galletti said there are no plans to reduce the number of lanes as part of that work.
dbutler@postmedia.com
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