September 25, 2008

Roche NCE study recommends site for proposed Ottawa-Gatineau bridge

KORKY KOROLUK

correspondent

OTTAWA

A preferred site has been chosen for a new bridge over the Ottawa River connecting the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau.

It’s a bridge that is badly needed to relieve the traffic mess on the Ottawa side of the river by taking an estimated 2,500 trucks a day off the streets of the city’s Lowertown district.

But just because a location has been designated as the best one possible, doesn’t mean the bridge will be built there — or built at all.

The site announcement was made in early September, at the end of the first phase of a study being conducted by consultants Roche NCE on behalf of the National Capital Commission, the governments of Quebec and Ontario, and the municipalities of Ottawa and Gatineau. Still ahead is up to two more years of public consultations and drawing a detailed sketch of what the bridge and its approaches is likely to look like.

Still missing are firm funding commitments from all three senior governments and the municipal governments on both sides of the river.

In other words, the bridge is still a long way from being a construction project.

The present study follows two others that reported in 1994 and 1999, neither of which resulted in a bridge being built despite the widely perceived need for one or two more river crossings.

Those two studies proposed a crossing in the city’s east end, another in the west end, and a public transit crossing using an existing railway bridge.

In each case, though, well-placed people at various levels of government found ways to block the project.

The present study suggests the best river crossing is much closer to the centre of town, along part of the National Capital Commission’s parkway system to a bridge near the Aviation Museum, in Ottawa’s near east end.

That represents a victory of sorts for federal member John Baird, and provincial member Jim Watson, both representing west-end constituencies and both influential in their governments. Both had resolutely opposed any west-end site for a new bridge.

But the route passes close by Rockcliffe Park, a small enclave where much of Ottawa’s old money lives, with a number of embassies and diplomatic residences as neighbours. It is a community that understands political processes and how to use them to advantage.

The southern approaches to the proposed site would run, in part, near the eastern edge of Rockcliffe Park, and the bridge itself would become part of the view from some of the more attractive properties that look out over the river.

With even sketches not yet available, no accurate price forecast is available. But the site would require extensive street widening on the Ottawa side of the river, along with extensive interchange modifications on Highway 417, which, besides being a provincial road, is an east-west expressway across Ottawa.

The city of Gatineau is pleased with the site, since it has already completed widening of some arterial roads in anticipation of the bridge. But on the Ottawa side, the bridge represents a whole new transportation route that some say could cost up to $500 million and take four years to build.

But the next round of public consultation is barely under way. And it is only when they are completed that detailed sketches will be done. Then, if all the levels of government come on board, funding might be available.

Only then will the new Ottawa bridge become a real construction project. Until then, no one in the industry is holding his breath.

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