Introduction
The City's new Transportation Master Plan (TMP) for transit and roads came out on the first of April after a last-minute delay from the day before. That the TMP was hastily pushed for a release on April Fool's is a level of symbolism that says everything essential about this bungled plan.
Before we start, I think it should be clear that I strongly dislike the new TMP. I will oppose it as much as I can, and I encourage you to do so as well.
This is the first part of a three-part series on the new Transportation Master Plan. While the plan, as its name implies, covers all aspects of transportation in the City of Ottawa, I will only be writing about the aspects that are relevant to public transportation. Thus, I will not investigate the disappointment of an active transportation plan, with a ten-year budget of less than one Robert Grant Extension, nor the questionable choices made in the roads budget.
I encourage everyone to flick through the documents at the city's Master Plan Update "consultation" website, and to draw their own conclusions about the process at City Hall.
Why a TMP?
The Transportation Master Plan is
the City’s blueprint for planning, developing, and operating its walking, cycling, transit and road networks over the next several decades.
Reading the TMP will tell you what city staff think about certain projects, where they are going, and can reveal glimpses (or in this case, knock down the walls) into the lairs of their thought. This plan will guide the city's transit planning to 2046 (15 years later than the last plan, released in 2013), though there will be more TMPs to come.
Some history.
In the 2000s, the city produced two TMPs as it grappled with the conceiving and cancellation of the 2006 North-South LRT plan. The second, developed in 2008, retained the light rail technology but changed the plans to an East-West LRT between Baseline and Blair instead. This closely resembles a hybrid of the Stage 1/Stage 2 West product currently under construction.
The 2008 plan became, with changes, the 2013 plan that the City is following.
As you can see, this includes a recognizable form of the current Stage 1/2 projects, as well as the Baseline BRT, March Road BRT, South Cumberland Transitway, and Greenbank Transitway, the most "active" of our transit projects.
The 2013 plan actually came with three maps, for the eagle-eyed. The "affordable" network was what the city thought it could pay for, through to 2031 (notice that we're not quite there yet). With Stage 2, we have arguably exceeded (excepting the Baseline and March Road BRTs) the level of ambition contained in the fairly ambitious Affordable Network.
The 2031 Network Concept was what the city hoped to build by 2031. This was on the way to the Ultimate Network, which is the map I posted.
Many of the ultimate projects are already under construction (some with changes), while more are in active planning. Jim Watson's ambition - crazy! a comprehensive rail network, impossible! - is coming true faster than we could have dared to hope in 2013.
New Decade, New TMP
The current TMP is ... a disappointment, to say the least. The Affordable, Network Concept, and Ultimate networks have been superseded. There are two concepts this time: the "Needs-Based" Network, which is not actually needs-based at all based on my own analysis of transit ridership, and the "Priority" Network, which only prioritizes the wrong projects.
Let's start with the Needs-Based analysis. Staff identified two rail projects (the Stage 3 projects; more on this in a later article), six BRT corridors, and a smattering of bus priority lanes to be installed on a "needs" basis.
These projects are: the Barrhaven and Kanata portions of Stage 3, a full Baseline Transitway between St. Laurent and Bayshore, Carling Transitway, the renamed Cumberland Transitway, the Kanata North Transitway, a new Transitway utilizing the existing Chapman Mills segment between Limebank and Borrisokane, and extending the Southwest Transitway to Barnsdale. There are also three corridors slated for "dedicated transit corridors"; infill stations at Jasmine Crescent, in Orleans, and Mosquito Creek; and a smattering of transit priority measures that is not much more ambitious than the 2013 Affordable Network, and certainly a downgrade from the Ultimate Concept.
The cost of this network is $13.2 billion - $8.3 billion for Stage 3 and $4.9 billion for everything else.
The results can be seen below.
An analogue of the "Affordable" Network from the 2013 plan, a "Priority Transit Network" was developed to find priorities for funding.
Scoring was done, apparently, using a 100-points system. 35 points were assigned to ridership, 25 to travel time (as if travel time isn't the number one driver of mode share), 20 points to "city-building", and 20 points to cost.
The projects that survived the cuts are a full Stage 3 buildout (sigh), a scaled back Baseline Transitway, a scaled back Cumberland Transitway, a scaled back Limebank-Barrhaven Centre Transitway, and a scaled back (I seem to be typing that a lot) Greenbank Transitway; some continuous bus lanes on Carling, Merivale, Walkley, Conroy, St. Laurent, Montreal, and Blair (not the full lengths, don't get too optimistic); no infill stations; and no transit priority measures whatsoever.
So much for affordable priorities.
The results can be seen below. I have included the 2013 Affordable Network for comparison.
The total cost of the Priority projects is $10.5 billion - $8.3 billion for Stage 3 and $2.2 billion for the remaining projects. I will have more to say about that.
The mode share model describes two scenarios: the Business As Planned (BAP) scenario, implying that the planned state is nothing (just what I expect from this council), and the Priority Network scenario.
Under the BAP scenario, we would only build Stage 2 and the Greenbank/Baseline improvements. Gatineau - Gatineau - would build more than us. Under this scenario, the driving modal share would be 69.0%, while transit would be 11.4%.
The priority network is somewhat rosier. Under this plan, the driving mode share would be 66.0%. Much better than 69.0%.
Transit would grow from 11.4% to 13.0%.
Of course, the urban areas, which get the least investment, are expected to take subpar transit service in favour of suburban drivers, who live in areas with high transit investment.
And as a post-note, here is the history of mode share in Ottawa. The "Priority Network" planned transit mode share will be below the rate of transit tripmaking in 2005, with barely any change in driving as well. This is a real damn shame, and the city deserves the shamed for coming with this embarrassment of a transport plan when federal dollars are flowing freely for infrastructure, and when the city has allegedly declared a climate emergency, not that you could tell by their actions.
Conclusion
Feeling worried about the incredible lack of ambition? First, I encourage everyone to submit their feedback to the city. The map link is here, the survey is here. Non-English languages are available through the Update page at the top of this piece.
Email your councilor, City staff, and the mayor's office. Express to them, loudly and clearly, your displeasure with the TMP. If your councilor is an urban councilor, you can, as I have, ask them to take a stand for better transit and against this depressingly scaled-back master planning. Ask them to vote against the plan, and send it back to staff for a rewrite.
If the TMP, as planned, passes City Council this spring, I fear we will be stuck with this mediocre, expensive, and unambitious slate of projects until the 2030s. We need advocates to stand up, and we need to do it now.
Until next time.
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