By Jennifer O’Meara
The plans for a pedestrian bridge over the Rideau Canal at Somerset Street survived amid deep cuts in the 2004 City draft budget released last week. The draft, which recommended cuts in everything from emergency services to public health, allocated $200,000 for the design of the bridge.
Sue Lott, a director of the Centretown Citizens’ Community Association, says the bridge is needed.
“We tended to build the city as if the Canal represented a wall, rather than a bridge,” she says.
The community group is backing the plans for the bridge because it will increase the number of people walking into the downtown core from Sandy Hill. Lott says she’s glad to see planning for the bridge is still going ahead.
The funding in the draft budget for the pedestrian bridge is not currently enough to begin construction. The money is going to pay for the final design of the bridge. Construction of the bridge may have to be postponed.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes championed the plan for the bridge and is hoping to get more money so that construction can begin this year.
“I’m going to try to get it through but we may have to postpone construction until 2005,” says Holmes, for whom the bridge is a priority.
The bridge is going to cross the canal connecting Centretown and Sandy Hill for pedestrians and cyclists. The plan is to build the bridge about 400 metres south of Laurier Avenue. This should encourage more people to use the Transitway by the University of Ottawa.
The total cost for the bridge is expected to be $4.8 million.
Ottawa mayor Bob Chiarelli supports further funding for the bridge.
“I agree with the capital budget and the principles that would leave (the bridge) in,” says Chiarelli. “I support it.”
But some say that, with all the cuts needed in city spending, the bridge should not be getting any funding.
“We should put it on hold,” says Innes Ward Coun. Rainer Bloess.
The city will have to borrow money to finance the pedestrian bridge. Bloess says one of Ottawa’s biggest costs is debt repayment. He says hethinks that the bridge should be put on hold until there is enough money to pay for it without going further into debt.
Ronald Fournier, head of urban and environment planning for Delcan, the company designing the bridge, says the detailed design is almost completed.
The next step would be to offer the building contract to different construction companies and award the job to the company with the best offer.
“It would soon be ready to be tenured out, but that is pending the budget,” says Fournier.
The bridge was first proposed in 1980 but has never moved beyond planning stages. Money has been approved several times, only to see it vanish during belt-tightening exercises
Holmes says more money is going to be needed if the bridge is ever going to be built.
“I think since it’s a $5-million bridge, that’s what we need for capital.”