Commissioner Street might disappear from Centretown if a city proposal is adopted.
A proposed redesign of the north end of Bronson Avenue could see the elimination of Commissioner Street between Albert and Slater streets and the creation of a new greenspace link in Centretown, says a city project manager.
A proposed redesign of the north end of Bronson Avenue could see the elimination of Commissioner Street between Albert and Slater streets and the creation of a new greenspace link in Centretown, says a city project manager.
The idea to remove a 50-metre stretch of Commissioner Street, a short connector road in the escarpment area near LeBreton Flats, was put forward by Rock Fortier, the municipal official overseeing the planned Bronson Avenue reconstruction project.
“It is a concept plan only and hasn’t been reviewed by other city officials,” Fortier says, adding that the idea is being passed on to others for further assessment.
If part of Commissioner Street is removed it could be converted to parkland that would join green space that is currently divided, Fortier says.
“This allows us to have a parkland spine that goes all the way from the Ottawa Tech fields through the intersection to join the LeBreton Flats parkland,” Fortier says.
That’s one of the goals of the city’s recently released Escarpment Area Plan – to connect the former Ottawa Technical High School’s fields to the sprawling green space on the Flats to the west.
The city’s overall strategy is to create more green space and a pedestrian friendly neighborhood in Centretown. The escarpment vision notes that intersection treatments are required at the Commissioner Street junctions with Albert Street, Slater Street and Bronson Avenueto allow pedestrians and cyclists to cross . . . into the upper park area.
Commissioner Street is part of a complicated intersection. Between Albert and Slater streets along Bronson Avenue, Commissioner connects on an angle, creating confusion. “The intersection has higher accident frequencies than standard intersections because of the odd configuration,” Fortier says.
For many drivers, the intersection offers access to the downtown core. Removing a part of the street would end the street before it hits Bronson Avenue, creating a standard four-way intersection.
Eric Darwin, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, says the group is pleased with the idea.
“We met with them two weeks ago, they showed us the concept and we were pleased with it and said it’s worth investigating further,” Darwin says.
He notes that the delay of the reconstruction of Bronson Avenue – which now won’t proceed – allows for more time to investigate the idea to see if it works.
Darwin says the idea was put forward a couple of years ago.
“When the city did a plan of the area,” he recalls, “they said that we should look at the option of removing Commissioner Street. We criticized the city’s consultants who were planning the reconstruction of Bronson Avenue for not taking that one step further.”
Fortier says factors that still need to be considered include swapping some land with the National Capital Commission and traffic concerns.
Both Fortier and Darwin say the elimination of the street is far from being implemented.
“You have to run it by the sewer people, the water people, the traffic people, the official plan people, it involves NCC land, federal land,” says Darwin. “You still have to run it through the whole bureaucracy.”