St. Laurent Blvd Transit Priority Corridor [Innes Rd to Hemlock Rd]

[Richard Eade]

Kitchissippi, your bias for cycling is showing through – just as mine for transit is clear.

I am not suggesting that this St. Laurent plan is all about protecting the cars’ supposed right to the road. Certainly, St. Laurent is still predominantly a roadway for moving traffic. I could argue about your “80%” number, since, for example, at St. Laurent and Camil, the cross section gives traffic 17.5m and active transportation (cycle tracks, sidewalks, and buffers) about 16m of width. But, yes, this is still a major north-south roadway and it still needs to move a lot of vehicles. Throttling traffic is not good for a city, as it reduces economic opportunities.

This plan is being ‘billed’ as a TRANSIT PRIORITY PROJECT. The amount of transit benefit is small, compared to the amount of cycling benefit. This is not a project that primarily improves transit through the corridor – it primarily improves cycling. City staff has learned, however, that advertising an expensive project as a CYCLING project gets a lot of push-back from tax-payers who think that cycling is impractical in Ottawa. Staff has found that labeling something as an improvement to transit gets a much better reception. Thus, despite the limited amount of transit improvement, and the greater amount of cycling improvement, this has been tagged as a TRANSIT project. This is what is disingenuous.

This plan is one of CYCLING improves, first; then a few transit improvements (with some downgrades, as well); and lastly, a denigration for general traffic.

And, I agree that TOD needs to make it convenient for people to minimize car use. This generally means that the project should be designed to favour active transportation within and immediately around it. However, the main element is in the name, TRANSIT Oriented Development. If TRANSIT is lousy, then there will not be TOD. No developer is going to try to sell a project that is oriented to abysmal transit. TOD happens when it is developed around transit that takes people easily and efficiently to where they want to go. Excellent TRANSIT should be prioritized over cycling. Otherwise, it would have been called Cycling Oriented Development.

Superior transit and cycling infrastructure are certainly not mutually exclusive. As you point out, if people want to live ‘car-light’, they pick places that provides them usable transit for longer trips, cycling for medium trips, and walking for local trips. A 15-minute neighbourhood is quite limited if walking is the only option. Cycling opens up the possibilities to a wider area. However, if transit is so poor that 15 minutes doesn’t even get you as far as walking, then the limitation remains and people will need to drive.