Volunteer researcher, Friends of the O-train.
Lori Gadzala

Green Party Candidate, Nepean-Carleton
www.ncgreens.ca
lgadzala@greenparty.ca
campaign office: 613-656-2021

What should the role of the federal government be in supporting transit expansion?

Answer: The federal government must take the lead in funding the “greening” of Canada’s cities. The role of the federal government is to provide fair, stable funding to municipalities for expanding efficient public transit that will serve its citizens well.

What role (if any) should local MPs and MPPs play in helping to define what kind of transit solutions should exist?

Answer: The role of an MP should be to facilitate, not obfuscate. As the Members of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton, I will facilitate discussions and work co-operatively with my municipal and provincial counterparts to advance transit plans in Ottawa as quickly as possible. We are dreadfully behind all other major cities in Canada on light rail. In the event transit impacts upon federal land, an MP can ensure the NCC helps support a financially viable solution that reduces pollution and serves the public well.

Should the federal government insist on value for money for projects that it is a party to? How should this be determined? Or should the federal government simply provide grants (in addition to the cut of the gas tax) to
municipalities, and let them sort it out?

Answer: The federal government must address the infrastructure deficit in our cities in a fair, non-partisan way. Recent Conservative transit spending announcements are designed to pick up votes in areas where they have no Conservative MPs elected (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal). Ottawa is getting shortchanged. Our plan transfers 1 percentage point of the GST (on an approximate per-capita basis) directly to municipalities for "Green Cities" initiatives.

We will demand accountability (through contractual agreements) to ensure that money spent on "Green Cities" initiatives actually gets spent on conserving resources, reducing pollution, and/or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "Green Cities" funding is for projects that reduce sprawl, conserve electricity and water, increase densification, expand convenient, safe, reliable and affordable public transit, and build cycling and walking paths. We propose this funding be transferred through Municipal Superfunds.

The Green Party advocates creating six Municipal Superfunds of $500 million/fund/year (an average of $100 for every citizen per year) to which municipalities can apply for grant funding to replace the less specific Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund (CSIF). The proposed funds are:

· Community Brownfield Remediation (CBR) Fund to provide assistance in cleaning up toxic and brownfield sites;

· Water and Waste Treatment Facilities (WWTF) Fund to upgrade water treatment, sewage treatment and recycling facilities to make them efficient, safe and sustainable;

· Sports, Cultural and Recreational Facilities (SCRF) Fund to support the development of green recreational and cultural facilities and refurbish existing facilities;

· Mass Transit Promotion (MTP) Fund to improve and expand urban mass transit infrastructure and inter-modal connections, as well as car-sharing initiatives;

· Cycling and Pedestrian Promotion (CAPP) Fund to support pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and smart-growth developments that transform urban areas and towns into walkable communities linked by transit to reduce the need for owning and using cars; and,

· Community Housing Options Promotion (CHOP) Fund supporting a national housing program to build energy efficient co-ops and affordable housing units where there is a shortage of such housing options.

If you feel that value for money is justified, should such a system result in transit improvements that increase ridership, while also simultaneously reducing the unit cost of transit services, particularly with respect to fuel consumption and pollution emissions? Or is it acceptable that value for money be expressed more simply in number of jobs created?

Certainly conserving resources and reducing pollution and greenhouse gases is a priority, as above. However, the Green party also has a plan to help maintain affordability of transit for students and low-income citizens. Transit passes must be tax-deductible to encourage workers and businesses to use public transport. We would also provide financial support to provinces that provide free public transit passes to people living below the poverty line.

Did you watch the video of Bob Chiarelli from 2003? How can you reconcile his words, "incremental expansion" with a replacement plan released in 2006?

No I did not.

If you are an incumbent, please comment on your involvement with the transit file between 1997 and 2008. N/A

Do you take transit to work, or to any activities?

Answer: I (and my husband) are fortunate enough to work from home. We are also fortunate enough to live in a rural village, within walking and cycling distance of many stores, services, and recreational activities.

Please describe which bus/LRT routes you used.

Answer: As above, we have designed our lives to need little or no public transit. Also, our rural village has excellent locally-owned shops and services, so we have little need to travel outside of it on a regular basis. The heart of this rural village (founded almost 150 years ago!) is exactly the kind of “smart growth” the Green Party supports.

Please tell us of an experience you have had on transit in 2008.

Answer: As above, my life at this time does not need much public transit. However, I have experienced O/C Transpo bus service to/from downtown to Fallowfield station in Barrhaven, and it is quick and convenient. I also travel by train to Toronto twice a year, and the VIA Fallowfield station is very convenient to my house. The high-speed wireless Internet access on the trains is a bonus!

Do you have, or did you have, school-age children while living in Ottawa/Gatineau? Yes

If so, how do they get to school?

Answer: We live in a rural village. My children used to walk to our local elementary school. Now they take a school bus to middle school in other communities.

Thank you for the opportunity to give you my thoughts on transit in Ottawa.

Lori Gadzala
Green Party Candidate
Nepean-Carleton
campaign office: 613-656-2021
email: lgadzala@greenparty.ca
web: http://www.ncgreens.ca

Hi,

As promised, here is your questionnaire with my responses. I would note that while support for transit is NDP policy, the Party does not have specific policies regarding the details of transit plans in specific cities. As a professional planner, I have taken a keen interest in planning issues in Ottawa, not least of which has been transit planning. I have a Master of Science in Planning from the University of Toronto where my course of study included transportation planning, and I have always had a particular interest in transit systems - and particularly rapid transit. I have lived and worked in many different communities, including Kingston, Toronto, Stratford and Sudbury, and have made myself familiar with their transit systems. Consequently, I have well-formulated opinions with respect to transit in Ottawa which I will be outlining below. I want to emphasize, however, that these are personal views and should not be construed as representing official NDP policy.

RIDING: Nepean-Carleton
NAME: Phil Brown
PARTY: NDP

What should the role of the federal government be in supporting transit expansion?

The NDP is committed to supporting rail transport and public transit, recognizing that this can play an important role in reducing energy consumption. Such support would include purchasing new hybrid buses for transit systems and investing in electric rail. The NDP sees this kind of strategy as a win-win situation. With every purchase of a new hybrid bus or new electric rail line, we achieve both reductions in carbon pollution and financial savings for our cities and transit authorities. In addition, by investing in transit, we also stimulate transit-related industry and help create jobs. More specifically, the NDP proposes stable, annual transit funding, combining an extra cent from the existing gas tax with revenue from making big polluters pay through our cap and trade program, investing more than $4 billion in transit over the first four years of our program.

What role (if any) should local MPs and MPPs play in helping to define what kind of transit solutions should exist?

The role of local MPs should primarily be two-fold. As advocates, they should be helping ensure that their communities are getting a fair share of Federal funding. However, there is also a responsibility to help ensure that funds are being wisely invested, particularly with a view to long-term efficacy.

Should the federal government insist on value for money for projects that it is a party to? How should this be determined? Or should the federal government simply provide grants (in addition to the cut of the gas tax) to municipalities, and let them sort it out?

There should always be some form of accountability when Federal funds are being expended. The Federal government has a particular responsibility to set overall goals and objectives, or the policy framework, within which the municipalities would prepare their detailed plans. Dialogue between levels of government and between municipalities and other relevant government agencies (like the NCC) should be encouraged and the checks and balances inherent in intergovernmental programs can help to ensure the best outcomes. One role of the local MP can be to help facilitate these dialogues.

If you feel that value for money is justified, should such a system result in transit improvements that increase ridership, while also simultaneously reducing the unit cost of transit services, particularly with respect to fuel consumption and pollution emissions? Or is it acceptable that value for money be expressed more simply in number of jobs created?

Transit investments should be made both with a view to dealing with present critical needs but also with a view to the long term. A long-term perspective should include realistic long term performance criteria and should be linked to broader long-term plans, particularly with respect to growth management. In addition, such a perspective should take into account life-cycle costing and the long-term effectiveness of the proposed solutions.

The existing Ottawa bus-based transitway was, in my opinion, penny-wise but pound-foolish. By opting for a busway and then determining a routing based on "least cost" options, Ottawa simply postponed the inevitable light-rail decision that is having to be addressed today. A lot of money was expended 30 years ago on infrastructure which will now have to be largely re-built to accommodate a true rail-based rapid transit system Moreover, routing decisions made at that time, most notably the "cheap" solution of running buses along the Ottawa River Parkway, mean that we do not have a reasonable right-of-way reserved for light-rail transit service to the west.

Did you watch the video of Bob Chiarelli from 2003? How can you reconcile his words, "incremental expansion" with a replacement plan released in 2006?

I did not watch this video and cannot comment without understanding the context of the quotation.

If you are an incumbent, please comment on your involvement with the transit file between 1997 and 2008.

I am not an incumbent, but I have been closely following transit issues, particularly within the context of the overall growth of the City.

For example, you might also be interested to read a letter I wrote to the Citizen in 2006 on a subject relating to the former light rail proposal. A copy of the letter is still available on-line at the following site:

http://saveourgreenspace.blogspot.com/2006/05/ottawa-loves-its-buses.htm...

I strongly opposed the previous proposal to build a light-rail line south and then west to Barrhaven. The route was convoluted and would not provide the kind of fast and convenient transit that is the hallmark of a well-planned rail system. It was designed with too many conflicting agendas in mind. The happenstance of a disused railway line from Bayview south was the nucleus for the present O-train. As a route, it's not too bad, except that it does not allow trains to come all the way into downtown. However, it became the focus of the light rail initiative for a couple of key reasons.

Firstly, Ottawa transit planners prior to the last municipal election were in love with the bus-based Transitway. There used to be regular articles coming from OCTranspo spokespeople about how much better their busway was than rail transit. When eventually they were forced, through popular and political pressure, to plan the start of a rail-based system, their first instinct was to try to ensure that it would never compete with their busway. Whereas the busway was originally conceived as a first step towards a rail-based system, the transit plan concocted under Mayor Bob Chiarelli's leadership was designed to maintain the busway and ensure that the rail system would not compete with it or supplant it. Hence the City had been moving towards a plan to eventually construct an east-west light rail line between Kanata and Orleans that would actually pass through the north-south axis of Ottawa near Hunt Club Road, and require people heading downtown to change to the north-south line at that point - a ludicrous concept that would have had minimal impact on traffic volumes on the existing transitway and would have been doomed to become a white elephant. Who could seriously imagine that commuters from Kanata would take a train to the south end of Ottawa and then take a further train north again, instead of taking the bus along the existing Transitway.

Moreover, the transitway proposal was caught up in the imperative to develop Riverside South into a subdivision with an ultimate population in the order of 50,000. Key drivers for this development are the developers who have been assembling land in this area and are anxious now to begin to realize returns on their investments. Even though this area contains good agricultural land, with selected areas of valuable wetlands, the economic motivation to develop the area is paramount and this has been included in the Official Plan, notwithstanding the general thrust of the Official Plan to try to address growth in great measure through intensification and the fact that most of Ottawa's growth and travel corridors run east-west, whereas the north-south corridor is relatively poorly served by transportation corridors and north-south transportation options are restricted by a combination of physical features, notably the Rideau Canal and River, and existing built-up areas.

The lack of a transportation corridor serving this area was and still is a severe impediment to the future development of Riverside South. Councillors of the wards through which new roads must pass or where existing roads would need to be widened have rightly defended their residents against the potential influx of new traffic coming from the new suburbs in the south. The most controversial routes are the on-again off-again Alta Vista Parkway connecting to Nicholas Street and the widening of the Airport Parkway south of Bronson. The problem with the latter is that traffic on Bronson is already a major problem and adding more from the south will only make it worse. Other problem routes include Albion Road and Bank Street itself.

Prioritizing a light rail route to the south was therefore pitched as a solution to this dilemma. It was sold to the Councillors of the affected wards as a solution to allow the new growth in Riverside South to proceed without expanding or augmenting the road system. The theory was that the rail-based transit service will be so good to this new subdivision that everyone will use it instead of their cars. To further build political support, a Barrhaven extension was tacked on, even though the route from Barrhaven to downtown would be convoluted, running south, then east, then north and then east again. (Given that this planning coincided with the extension of the Transitway to Fallowfield and Woodroffe, I could never quite figure out why the transit planners expected people would take the train when they could take a much faster Transitway bus travelling a more direct route. The optimum way to serve Barrhaven with a rail-based system would be to cut a deal with Via Rail permitting running a train like the present O-train along the VIA / CN line, with a new station at Hurdman offering facilitated connection to the existing Transitway for passengers to continue their trip downtown.)

The problem is that even a relatively superficial review of the numbers produced by the planners for this development demonstrate that this rationale does not hold water. I attended a Planning and Environment Committee meeting a few years ago where the Riverside South Plan was being presented and learned some interesting things from the planners' presentations. In particular, it was the opinion of the transportation planners that the new subdivision, targeted for an eventual population slightly in excess of 50,000 according to the plan, could not reasonably be allowed to grow beyond 15,000 without the introduction of additional north-south road capacity to serve the area. Moreover, the planners indicated that even with the proposed light rail system in place, they did not expect the modal split to exceed 30 transit / 70 auto. What these numbers point to is that the proposed light rail will not become the alternative to roads which Councillors are counting on, and that if the development is allowed to proceed as planned, eventually the pressure will build so that the roads will have to be built or widened. We are already seeing early signs of this with the push to widen the Airport Parkway.

All of which begs the question whether the full extent of the growth being contemplated in this area is reasonable or appropriate, or whether the whole approach needs to be re-thought.

And so we come to the present transit proposal. Once again, a north-south line has trumped good transit planning due to the Riverside South development imperative. Instead of biting the bullet and solving the problems associated with building a rail system connecting the major population and commercial centres in Ottawa in an east-west axis, we are once again looking to building a north-south line as the major element, even though the greatest need and demand is east-west.

For all these reasons, I joined my voice to those who opposed the Chiarelli transit "boondoggle" and supported Alex Munter when he called for the file to be reopened and other options explored. I also supported the alternative proposals being put forward by Transport 2000. The shame was that for so many backers of the Chiarelli scheme, support for that particular concept became synonymous with support for light rail, whereas to others like myself, the scheme gave light rail a bad name and risked bringing the entire concept into disrepute as a white elephant.

My preferred solution would be to focus on the east-west line, maintaining the existing O-train on its single track as a north-south line but extending the service to Leitrim and adding stations at Hunt Club and Blossom Park and some two-track sections to facilitate operations, and eventually connecting across the Ottawa River to Gatineau, preferably sooner rather than later since this transit link is sorely required. A park-and-ride at Leitrim would provide reasonable service to that area. Following the completion of the east-west line, and further growth in the south (assuming that such growth is inevitable), the upgrading of this line could take place to institute the same electric technology used for the east-west route. By that time, the population may have grown to the critical mass necessary to justify the additional investment necessary to upgrade the line.

As to routes for the east-west line, the Ottawa River Parkway is inappropriate not just because of the potential impact on this important part of Ottawa's Riverfront, but even more importantly because it does not go through any major residential and employment areas. Good transit planning always tries to connect nodes of higher density and run as near as possible as to the centre of major built-up areas, not along their periphery. Subject to more exhaustive analysis, I would consider Carling Avenue as likely the most suitable location for the east-west line. Technical challenges would exist, as they would for any solution, but they could be overcome with some innovative thinking. The greatest problem would be getting the line from Scott to Baseline, and it may be that the best location for this connection would along the present O-Train route, possibly with a spur of some kind being constructed in the Transitway trench to serve Tunney's Pasture and Westboro which are also high need and high demand areas and becoming more so with intensification.

Initially, such an east-west line should terminate within the Greenbelt at both ends, to avoid the inefficiency of running rail transit through such a distance of open space, but future phases could be extended to Kanata and Orleans as development densities increase to the point of being able to justify the additional cost. In the meantime, the subdivisions outside the Greenbelt would continue to be served by buses connecting to the light rail system, using the existing Transitway infrastructure, unless in the future it became feasible to contemplate commuter rail along the railway lines along the lines proposed by Mayor O'Brien's task force last year..

Do you take transit to work, or to any activities?

No. I live and work on Ridgefield Crescent in the Lynwood Village section of Bell's Corners, where my partner and I have a home office. This is one of the worst-served communities in Ottawa with respect to transit. Except during rush-hours when there is an express bus 10 minutes away on Richmond Road, it takes 45 or more minutes to get downtown by bus. Moreover, the distances to the nearest bus stops for much of Lynwood Village are considerably greater than the urban standard. This came about in part due to resistance from local ratepayers some 20 years ago or so, several years before I moved here with my family, to a proposal to run a bus along Ridgefield Crescent, which is a collector road in the subdivision. The decision to not provide bus service to this area has never been revisited.

Please describe which bus/LRT routes you used.

See above.

Please tell us of an experience you have had on transit in 2008.

Since I am not presently a transit user, I cannot give you an experience, but I can instead give you some personal opinions and some history.

Buses generally are not quiet, fast or pleasant. They are fine for relatively short trips but in larger cities you need some form of rail transit if you are really going to be able to significantly alter the modal split between transit and automobiles.

One of the great transit travesties of the mid-20th century was when the bus companies (GM in particular) ganged up on streetcars and effectively put them out of business in the immediate post-war years. Only a few cities, like Toronto, kept at least some routes which could serve as a nucleus for the streetcar and light rail growth now going ahead. I was a student at UofT during the 1970's and at one point interviewed the Commissioner of the TTC about streetcars in Toronto for a student radio documentary / class project. I recall what a near-run thing it had been for streetcars to survive the onslaught of buses. Too bad that in Ottawa they didn't.

I would like nothing better than to be able to head for a rail transit station serving Bell's Corners to go downtown, and then move about on a predictable streetcar system, but that will have to stay my private fantasy.

The reality in Ottawa is that we have a bus system designed almost exclusively to move people from the suburbs downtown in the morning and then back home at night. The routes are convoluted and nearly incomprehensible to anyone who is not a regular user of a specific route. Whereas most major cities have bus routes with some predictability, Ottawa buses seem to have none. How many bus routes in Ottawa show simply "Hurdman" as their destination? How useless is that? In Toronto, major roads all have their own bus route. If you get on a bus on Jane Street, you can reasonably predict that it will get you anywhere along Jane Street. Ottawa's main roads have no such service. In Ottawa, you can get on a bus on a major arterial only to have to change if you want to continue going along that arterial because the bus veers off in another direction or into a residential subdivision. The Baseline/Heron/Walkley corridor is a case in point. We should instead have major bus routes that follow all the major north-south and east-west roads for most or all their length, with predictable names. Augmenting these major bus routes would be local collector buses connecting subdivisions to rapid transit stations in the hub and spoke model. Buses that terminate at a Transitway station like Hurdman should have nameplates that indicate the name of the major road or roads along which they travel en route.

My daughter was once coming home from downtown by bus and took a bus showing "Nepean Centre" as its destination. At the time, the Nepean municipal offices had only recently moved from Bell's Corners so she wrongly assumed that would get her back to our area. No such luck. She ended up stuck at the edge of the Greenbelt somewhere along either Woordroffe or Greenbank - she couldn't remember which because of her panic. Fortunately she was able to get another bus and eventually find a pay phone to call us for a rescue (in the days before ubiquitous cell phones). I still don't have a clue where "Nepean Centre" was supposed to be. Nepean doesn't really have a "Centre" unless you consider Centrepointe or a geographic centre somewhere in the rural area. Years later, when my daughter was attending Carleton, she used her grandfather's car (since he could no longer drive) because the bus route from here to there was at best convoluted during the day, and downright impossible in the evening after rush hour had ended.

For these reasons, Ottawa buses are unfriendly for visitors and do not properly serve people who are not conventional commuters. Frankly, bus service in Ottawa pales by comparison to the service in other Cities where I have lived, including Toronto and even smaller Cities like Stratford where I was once the City Planner back in the late 1970's.

I have never been able to understand why Bell's Corners, a community of 9,000 people, has such poor transit service within the community. We have a residential area on the south side of the Richmond Road / Robertson Road axis and a thriving employment area to the north, but no practical way to get from one to the other by transit. Smaller communities like the City of Temiskaming Shores (formerly New Liskeard and Hailebury) have better bus service within their community that we do here in Bell's Corners, and with a smaller population. A small local bus would help children get to and from school, allow people to take transit to work or shop and give mobility to seniors in our population. My mother spent the last 12 years of her life here in Bell's Corners and could never understand why the local bus service within Bell's Corners was so inferior (i.e. practically non-existent) compared to that in Kingston, where she had lived for over 30 years.

Do you have, or did you have, school-age children while living in Ottawa/Gatineau? If so, how do they get to school?

My three children are now all either in University or are University graduates. However, prior to this they all went to the schools in our immediate neighbourhood - Bell's Corners Public School, D.A. Moodie Intermediate School and Bell High School. Our choice to locate in Bell's Corners was guided in large measure by the fact that all three schools were within walking distance so our children would not have to be bussed. The high school is furthest from our house, a 25 minute walk, so in inclement weather we would drive them to the end of Stinson Avenue, and they would take the bus back, but that was followed by a 10 minute walk from the bus stop so it was not a usual practice for them to bus home. Sometimes they would visit their grandmother who lived on Stinson Avenue close to Bell High and we would pick them up from there.

I trust that you will find these comments to be of interest. If you have any questions or wish to discuss any of these comments further, please feel free to call me.
Regards,

Phil Brown
NDP Candidate
Nepean-Carleton
phone: 613-601-0639
email: phil@jacksonbrown.on.ca
campaign website: www.philbrown.info
business website: www.jacksonbrown.on.ca