By Vanessa Wen
The City of Ottawa is facing criticism and has committed to reviewing its traffic policies after a fatal crash closed the Queensway for almost nine hours earlier this month.
“The Queensway has been shut down before. There are going to be crashes. This is not news. How many do you have to have before you hear a wake-up call?” says Barry Wellar, an expert in urban planning at the University of Ottawa. He blames the city’s policies for plugging the downtown core.
Both directions were closed to morning rush hour traffic Sept. 8 after an eastbound tractor-trailer crashed into the concrete median near the Parkdale on-ramp. The driver was killed and the passenger sent to hospital and released. Close to 30,000 drivers had to find alternate routes, clogging side streets and Ottawa’s urban core.
The city did all it could to reroute drivers, says John Buck, manager of safety and traffic services at the City of Ottawa.
“We worked with police to set up detours and figure out which intersections were critical. We adjusted about 900 traffic signals to try and permit traffic to flow as smoothly as it could. I don’t think we could have done anything else,” says Buck.
The city also set up two electronic traffic signs, one at each end, to alert drivers the highway was closed, he says.
City workers followed procedures but it’s hard to prepare for every situation, adds Buck. “Every incident is unique. The location is unique, it can happen in one direction or another, and the duration is unique.”
He says city council has asked his department to conduct a post-mortem to make sure all areas were handled properly.
But Wellar says it’s not good enough.
The city is growing and needs to proactively deal with traffic, he says. “The city of Ottawa has changed, traffic patterns have changed.”
With the city’s population estimated to grow from about 800,000 to close to 1.2 million by 2021, Wellar says it’s time to realize crashes happen and Ottawa needs to be prepared to deal with them.
He recommends an electronic sign system to warn drivers of stalls or closures long before they hit the problem area. The city should also invest in a radio station broadcasting information about delays, he says.
City Coun. Rob Jellett defended the city’s response to the crash but says changes to the Queensway are already being considered.
“It’s a matter of options,” he says.“This has been in the works now for a couple of years. There are environmental assessments underway.”
A Queensway expansion study by the province is expected to conclude this winter and includes the possibility of overhead electronic signs, says David Lindensmith, senior project engineer for the study.
“We would also add cameras and loops in the pavement to sense the flow of traffic,” he says.
While the study has already made recommendations, approval and funding for any new construction are still pending.