By Brian Jackson
Critics are worried the city’s plan to extend the light rail line through downtown will fail to solve congestion problems and be obsolete without an underground tunnel.
City council passed a transportation committee report Nov. 9, detailing many bus route changes to make room for the light rail trains downtown. The changes are scheduled to begin next year and will be fully implemented by 2009, when the first train will roll through the heart of the downtown core. Businesses on Albert and Slater streets say they feel shortchanged, despite heavy consultation from the committee.
“We are building a system that will be obsolete when it opens,” says Hume Rogers general manager of Capitol Hill and Suites and a coordinator of the Albert-Slater coalition that represents businesses on the street. The system will be running at full ridership capacity when it opens, Rogers says.
The system is a temporary one, says Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes. The level of congestion faced by businesses on the streets now will only be worsened as the city continues to grow, she adds, and consideration of an underground tunnel will be revisited in a few years.
Businesses feel the plan falls short of its aim to reduce buses on Albert and Slater streets by one-third to ease congestion. Longer articulated buses, equal to one and a half standard buses, will be used more often.
While there will be fewer buses on the street, the amount of space they take up will be increased in some cases since these buses are longer. For example, buses will use 13 per cent more space on Slater Street in the morning peak hours and three per cent more space on Albert Street in the afternoon peak hours. During other times, buses will take up about 18 per cent less room on the streets. The plan does not take into account the space used by light rail trains.
Businesses say this falls short of the reduction in bus traffic they had hoped for. They are worried that business will be affected if clogged streets block pedestrians from store fronts.
“It is accepted the street has a traffic limit,” says Rogers. “This isn’t just a bunch of crazies on the street making it up.”
City staff say longer buses will solve congestion woes because there will be fewer of them.
“We can operate the current number of buses as well as the light rail without any degradation in traffic movement throughout the downtown,” says Peter Steacy, program manager for the plan.
Vehicles will have a wider “safety envelope” because there will be fewer buses, says Pat Scrimgeour, program manager of service planning for OC Transpo.
Rogers is skeptical the reduction of buses will come to light, saying he is worried the public will not favour bus reductions in public consultations. Though council approved the plan, consultations must be made before specifics are put into place.
“We’ll do the normal consultation process over the next four years,” says Scrimgeour. “None of these changes will be made without consultation with our customers.”
Businesses on Albert Street and Slater Street had asked that an underground tunnel be considered as an option to get buses off the streets. A tunnel has been delayed until after 2009 when the system will be reviewed to see if a tunnel is needed, according to the report.
Some doubt the tunnel will ever be constructed.
“I don’t want to sound cynical, but I’ve been in this position now for 24 years,” says Rogers, who has long been campaigning for an underground tunnel for bus use.
Holmes says she voted to pass the motion, even though it lacked the suggestion of a tunnel, because the provincial and federal government will not give the city the money needed for public transportation.
“The money is not there, so what is the point?” says Holmes. “We’ve got to find a permanent solution, but that means more money.”
The federal and provincial government should contribute to public transportation in cities on a steady annual basis, says Holmes.