When Gerry Dust wants to get from his home in Orléans to his cottage west of Ottawa, the journey often begins with a gamble.
Will Highway 417 co-operate?
For the retired lawyer, the answer increasingly seems to be no.
What was once a drive of about 90 minutes can now stretch far longer as traffic snarls across the city.
“It’s a pain in the butt, quite frankly,” Dust said. “I’m astonished at how blocked up it usually is.”
Dust believes Ottawa should finally build what generations of politicians and planners have discussed but never delivered: a ring road around the city.
Dust isn’t new to the debate. He served on a committee examining a ring road in the 1970s alongside former Cumberland mayor Brian Coburn and other local leaders.
“When I first came to Ottawa in the early ’70s, this was being talked about,” Dust said. “Fifty years later, we’re still having the same conversation.”
The idea has resurfaced after Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said in April that the province is exploring a southern ring road around Ottawa. Speaking at a Mayor’s Breakfast event, Sarkaria said there is “a good case” for the concept and that the province would look at its feasibility.
Former mayor Larry O’Brien campaigned on the concept in 2010, describing a future “Highway 418” that would eventually connect to Ontario’s 400-series highway network. At the time, O’Brien argued Ottawa needed to begin long-term planning for a bypass route around the city, while then-mayoral challenger Jim Watson criticized the idea as environmentally damaging and a recipe for urban sprawl.
Over the years, supporters have argued Ottawa has outgrown a transportation network that funnels nearly all east-west vehicle traffic through Highway 417. They point to cities such as Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg, all of which have ring roads or perimeter highways designed to move traffic around cities rather than through them.
Critics have pushed back by arguing that building more roads rarely solves congestion and that this proposal would pave over green space while encouraging even more driving.
One of the project’s strongest political advocates today is Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney. Last year, he even dressed up as a ring road for Halloween to draw attention to the issue.
Tierney argues the city’s transportation system has reached a breaking point.
“We only have one way to get through the city,” he said.
Whenever a collision shuts down part of the Queensway, he said, traffic spills onto local streets and neighbourhood roads.
“It literally creates gridlock and paralysis.”
A ring road, he argues, would give transport trucks and motorists an alternative route around the city.
“A lot of the vehicles frankly don’t need to go through downtown, but they’re being forced to,” Tierney said.
The councillor said worsening congestion has become more noticeable as government workers return to the office and traffic volumes increase throughout the week.
Tierney also disputes concerns about the cost.
His understanding is that any future ring road would be built as a provincially owned 400-series highway, meaning construction and maintenance costs would be paid for by Queen’s Park and not the city.
“We’re not talking about something that would show up on your property tax bill,” he said.
For William van Geest, executive director of Ecology Ottawa, the proposal doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
“The pretext for a ring road is that it would ease congestion,” he said. “In fact, it’ll increase congestion. It won’t solve the very problem that we’re setting out to solve.”
His criticism centres on a transportation planning concept known as induced demand — the idea that increasing road capacity encourages more people to drive, eventually filling any newly created space.
“When you make it easier for a certain activity, in this case driving, you get more of that activity,” he said.
The result, he argues, is a cycle familiar to many North American cities: build more roads to reduce traffic, attract more drivers onto those roads, then face congestion once again.
“We’re not solving the problem that we set out to solve and we’re introducing new problems.”
Van Geest said a ring road would likely encourage more suburban expansion and create additional air pollution while consuming farmland and green space on Ottawa’s outskirts.
He also points to environmental impacts that often receive less attention.
“There are all the microplastics from brakes and tires that are going into our streams,” he said. “There’s salt runoff. We know salt runoff is a major issue in the city.”
Ecology Ottawa has also conducted citizen-led air quality monitoring near major transportation corridors and says the findings demonstrate the health impacts associated with heavy vehicle traffic.
Beyond the environmental concerns, van Geest questioned whether a massive highway project should be a priority for the city and province.
“We can’t just throw large sums of money around willy-nilly when we do have affordability issues in the city and infrastructure that is already in rough shape,” he said.
The province has not identified a route, released a timeline or committed funding to any specific project.
Still, supporters believe momentum is building.
Tierney said there is greater appetite for the idea at city hall than there was when council rejected adding ring-road language to Ottawa’s Transportation Master Plan last year that critics argued was brought up at the “11th hour.”
He said he has spoken to councillors who previously voted against the idea and said many are now open to it.
He believes worsening congestion has changed the conversation.
“I know people are tired of sitting in traffic and wasting time away from their families,” he said.
With a municipal election approaching this fall, he hopes the issue becomes part of the campaign debate.
“If we don’t start now,” Tierney said, “we’ll be having the exact same conversation six or seven years from now, except the traffic will be even worse.”
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