When Gerry Dust wants to get from his home in Orl\u00e9ans to his cottage west of Ottawa, the journey often begins with a gamble.<\/p>\n
Will Highway 417<\/a> co-operate?<\/p>\n For the retired lawyer, the answer increasingly seems to be no.<\/p>\n What was once a drive of about 90 minutes can now stretch far longer as traffic snarls across the city.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pain in the butt, quite frankly,\u201d Dust said. \u201cI\u2019m astonished at how blocked up it usually is.\u201d<\/p>\n Dust believes Ottawa should finally build what generations of politicians and planners have discussed but never delivered: a ring road around the city.<\/p>\n Dust isn\u2019t new to the debate<\/a>. He served on a committee examining a ring road in the 1970s alongside former Cumberland mayor Brian Coburn and other local leaders.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first came to Ottawa in the early \u201970s, this was being talked about,\u201d Dust said. \u201cFifty years later, we\u2019re still having the same conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Breakfast event, Sarkaria said there is \u201ca good case\u201d for the concept and that the province would look at its feasibility.<\/p>\n Former mayor Larry O\u2019Brien campaigned on the concept in 2010, describing a future \u201cHighway 418\u201d that would eventually connect to Ontario\u2019s 400-series highway network. At the time, O\u2019Brien 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n One of the project\u2019s strongest political advocates today is Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney<\/a>. Last year, he even dressed up as a ring road for Halloween to draw attention to the issue.<\/p>\n Tierney argues the city\u2019s transportation system has reached a breaking point.<\/p>\n \u201cWe only have one way to get through the city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Whenever a collision shuts down part of the Queensway, he said, traffic spills onto local streets and neighbourhood roads.<\/p>\n \u201cIt literally creates gridlock and paralysis.\u201d<\/p>\n A ring road, he argues, would give transport trucks and motorists an alternative route around the city.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the vehicles frankly don\u2019t need to go through downtown, but they\u2019re being forced to,\u201d Tierney said.<\/p>\n The councillor said worsening congestion has become more noticeable as government workers return to the office and traffic volumes increase throughout the week.<\/p>\n Tierney also disputes concerns about the cost.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Park and not the city.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not talking about something that would show up on your property tax bill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For William van Geest, executive director of Ecology Ottawa, the proposal doesn\u2019t have quite the same ring to it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pretext for a ring road is that it would ease congestion,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019ll increase congestion. It won\u2019t solve the very problem that we\u2019re setting out to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n His criticism centres on a transportation planning concept known as induced demand \u2014 the idea that increasing road capacity encourages more people to drive, eventually filling any newly created space.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you make it easier for a certain activity, in this case driving, you get more of that activity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not solving the problem that we set out to solve and we\u2019re introducing new problems.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s outskirts.<\/p>\n He also points to environmental impacts that often receive less attention.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are all the microplastics from brakes and tires that are going into our streams,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s salt runoff. We know salt runoff is a major issue in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Beyond the environmental concerns, van Geest questioned whether a massive highway project should be a priority for the city and province.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The province has not identified a route, released a timeline or committed funding to any specific project.<\/p>\n Still, supporters believe momentum is building.<\/p>\n Tierney said there is greater appetite for the idea at city hall than there was when council rejected adding ring-road language to Ottawa\u2019s Transportation Master Plan last year that critics argued was brought up at the \u201c11th hour.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n He said he has spoken to councillors who previously voted against the idea and said many are now open to it.<\/p>\n He believes worsening congestion has changed the conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cI know people are tired of sitting in traffic and wasting time away from their families,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With a municipal election approaching this fall, he hopes the issue becomes part of the campaign debate.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t start now,\u201d Tierney said, \u201cwe\u2019ll be having the exact same conversation six or seven years from now, except the traffic will be even worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage<\/a>\u00a0and sign up for our newsletters<\/a>\u00a0so we can keep you informed.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Gerry Dust wants to get from his home in Orl\u00e9ans to his cottage west of Ottawa, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[36514,36516,61,36517,36515],"class_list":["post-100261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-gerry-dust","tag-larry-obrien","tag-ottawa","tag-ring","tag-tim-tierney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}