City needs new ticket to ride
by Julie Hawrishok
OTTAWA - With Ottawa expected to grow by more than 400,000 residents and 200,000 vehicles in the next 20 years, after clean water and clean air, public transportation is vital to the city's future.
"Our neighborhoods, our air, and our city budget can't afford to keep on building roads to respond to congestion problems," says Clive Doucet, concillor for the city's Capital ward.
"I believe that the only way to respond to growth is a transit-first approach - it's the cheapest, most effective, community-sensitive, and equitable choice."
The city is projected to become more densely populated, with up to an estimated 15 per cent increase in downtown residents. That means public transportation is important for commuting and can even save the city money while moving more people.
One bus lane can carry the same number of people as in eight lanes of traffic and two rail lines can take sixteen lanes of expressway traffic. That is important as it costs $8,000 per kilometer to maintain Ottawa's road system. For instance, Ottawa is paying $47 million to widen 7.7 kilometers of Innes Road by two lanes.
Public transportation is already popular in Ottawa. The latest numbers available, for 2001, show that OC Transpo's fleet of 900 buses ran a total of 2.2 million hours to provide 85 million trips for the city's over one million residents, with bus service reaching most of those in Ottawa-Gatineau.
Modal split system
Rosemarie Leclair, General Manager of Transportation Utilities and Public Works for the City of Ottawa, says another important consideration used in transportation planning is how people travel around the city. An analysis of the system breaks down all trips made on a daily basis within a city by transportation modes: pedestrian, cycling, cars and public transit and it calculates a percentage of all people movements for each.
Currently, roughly 18 percent of all trips made by Ottawa residents are on public transit, compared to 15 per cent in the mid-90s. The city's population is growing concurrently, but so is public transportation ridership. "By comparison," says Doucet, "Los Angeles has modal split of around 2 to 3 per cent while Helsinki, Finland is up at around 70 per cent."
"The city's objective is to increase transit's share of the daily trips to at least 20 per cent of all modes of travel by the year 2021. We are making progress in making transit a more attractive choice - our growth in ridership is growing at a greater rate then our population," says Leclair.
Future considerations
The future of public transportation in Ottawa is changing as well. Doucet says the city staff will soon unveil a long-term strategy for substantially expanding rapid transit in Ottawa.
"The City's blueprint for sustainable growth calls for an integrated system of light rail, street cars, and busways that together would deliver fast and comfortable commuting choices to Ottawa residents from east to west to south," he says.
This plan comes with added costs.
"The plan represents some $2.5 billion of investment over a 20-year period and depends on significant transit infrastructure investment from the federal government," Doucet says.
The latest federal budget released in February could help Doucet's plan, delivering $3 billion over 10 years for infrastructure support.
Transitways
While OC Transpo has not announced any long-range plans, the company is in the midst of making buses more user-friendly.
As part of its TransPlan, service will be extended and improved in suburban growth areas. It will also build a new Transitway station for Kanata residents in the city's west-end, located centrally between the Kanata Centrum and Highway 417. The new station will have a park and ride lot - the fifth in the city - with space for 500 cars.
The station will serve as a second transit hub for the community, offering improved and enclosed bus shelters for customers, timed transfers and a transit information center. OC Transpo hopes this new station will encourage many residents to leave their cars at home and take public transit instead.
From an economic and environmental standpoint, Ottawa would thrive if more people took public transportation to get around, but vehicles will never be eliminated in the city says Doucet.
"Of course some people, because of personal choice or the type of work they do, will always need or want to drive to work. Our goal is giving residents a real option between efficient, comfortable public transit or taking their cars."