Today at City Council, we finalized the new Transportation Master Plan, the blueprint of Ottawa’s road, transit, sidewalk, and bike lane projects for the next 20 years. It’s an important document that establishes our priorities and how we hope to move people and goods around the city.
I moved a motion today to correct what I considered to be a misstep made during the final minutes of the last public meeting about the plan, which was an eleventh-hour motion to offer specific support to a ring road for Ottawa.
The Transportation Master Plan, and the Transportation Committee, for me, has always been the most important one for this term. For a city as large as ours, we have many competing priorities and pre-amalgamation imbalances. Staff and Councillors have been working for 6 years to come to this point. We have had surveys, public meetings, consultations with stakeholder groups. Meeting after meeting with our City staff, who are diligent professionals. Millions of tax dollars spent on consultant studies, origin-destination studies, and public engagement.
Yet through all of that, at no time did we hear about the concept of a ring road. Although it’s not a new idea, it is an old idea being made new again, but councils then and since have rejected it. A ring road is excruciatingly expensive: you need to expropriate agricultural land, impacting farmers, disrupting existing rural communities. Even if another level of government pays to build it, the City would pay to maintain it, and of course, it further unlocks development, meaning sprawl and more costs for services borne by taxpayers. And for what? What is the improved transportation service we would get? Well, one could argue that it’s negligible, since at no time did staff give the decision-makers around this table their advice on the matter. It didn’t appear in the modelling as a solution. It didn’t rise as a project because it was a project that was unworthy of this Council’s attention. Despite that, it came as a surprise, last minute motion that was raised and voted on without any opportunity for public consultation, for study, for serious discussion.
And let’s please keep in mind, the question of a ring road, and any other solutions for intercity travel congestion, are the responsibility of the provincial government. I feel that we have enough problems to solve with other levels of government: food insecurity, public health, mental health, child care deficits, housing, supportive housing, and without a doubt, most relevant to this Transportation Master plan conversation, effective and affordable public transit.
I can’t get a pothole fixed on a highway on or off ramp, so let’s not confuse the issue by suggesting that City time and resources need to reconsider a project that needs to be borne by the appropriate level of government. My motion refocuses the TMP on the principles, values, evidence-base criteria and careful prioritization set out and approved by committee and council year after year.
My motion does not prevent the province from taking whatever direction they like to address holistic transportation issues. In fact, my replacement motion urges exactly that action.
Ultimately, in adopting my motion City Council has returned the burden of long-term highway planning to other levels of government.
I am pleased to say that my motion, which was seconded by Councillor Cathy Curry and supported by Mayor Sutcliffe, was adopted by Council on a vote of 16-8. Support for this motion restores the integrity of the Transportation Master Plan as we all worked on it with our residents, and I am grateful to my colleagues for putting it back on track to serve Ottawa for the future.