Bronson Avenue’s cracked and potholed asphalt is due to be torn up next Spring and city staff and community activists are at a crossroad of how it should be replaced.
The city’s plan would keep the roadway at four lanes, widening it in some places. But the Dalhousie Community Association and a citizens’ advisory committee say they would like to see the road reduced to three lanes to accomodate wider sidewalks, slower speed limits, the installation of street furniture and more trees.
DCA president Eric Darwin says it comes down to the question of who the street is for.
“Is the city’s priority suburban commuters from Pointe Gatineau and Ottawa South who rush in and out of the city twice a day? Or is it the people who live in the community?” he said. “The city’s plan is totally car-oriented — it’s mind boggling.”
The standoff began in April when the city presented its redevelopment plan to the community. Darwin says the first plan was geared solely toward commuters, and that the city was focused on repaving and standardizing lane widths — which would have required widening the street by more than a half-metre to maintain the four lanes.
The audience shouted the plan down at the initial public consultation and the city went back to the drawing board for two months.
City planners presented the revised plan last week without consulting community groups about their concerns, Darwin contends.
When the planners returned to present their improved plan, residents were still unimpressed.
While the new proposal does narrow the “throats” of side-streets, making it easier for pedestrians to cross, it did nothing to address Bronson’s narrow sidewalks — except to suggest extending them onto residents’ property, Darwin says.
The revised plan does include new light posts intened to create a barrier from traffic and new glass and plastic shade features to be attached to posts to compensate for the absence of trees.
Darwin, however, said residents are generally not impressed by the changes.
“This is clearly a diversionary tactic. They’re thinking, ‘Let’s throw candy at the children and maybe they’ll ignore the road recommendations,’ ” says Darwin.
Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes says she agrees that the plan contradicts the city’s master transportation plan, which places priority on pedestrians, then cyclists, then transit, and lastly personal vehicles.
“The reality is that the second suggestion is still a four-lane highway mainly for commuters. We still have a long way to go to redesign Bronson,” says Holmes.
She says that many of the engineers have a suburban mindset and have probably never read the city’s transportation plan.
“We need urban engineers who understand the texture of city and that people have to be able to walk,” says Holmes.
Darwin argues that Bronson can accommodate its current traffic levels with two through lanes and a two-way central left-turning lane. He says he’s spoken with professionals in the industry who can back up that idea but that city officials told him — without elaborating — it wouldn’t work.
Darwin suggests the city should repaint the roads using the three-lane model and see how it works over the next several months.
“Paint is free. If it doesn’t work then repaint it. But if it does, our community will have a safer, more beautiful street,” says Darwin.
The project’s senior engineer, Rock Fortier, could not be reached for comment.
Bronson Avenue is widely viewed as having become hostile to pedestrians in the 1960s when almost all of Centretown’s streets were widened — in some cases right up to residents’ front steps.