The old Prince of Wales railroad bridge is being transformed into a pedestrian and cycle crossing.
The abandoned Prince of Wales Bridge will be revamped into a pedestrian and cycle crossing within six years, the City of Ottawa says. The bridge is Centretown’s northwestern boundary and joins the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau.
The plan was unveiled in early October. It’s part of the municipality’s “Building A Liveable City” initiative, a long-term review of land use, infrastructure and transportation aimed to make Ottawa more sustainable.
The bridge was once a valuable piece of infrastructure in Ottawa. When it was built in 1881, it was one of the few crossings of the Ottawa River. Due to dwindling rail transit and more efficient routes becoming available, the bridge has been closed since 1997.
Michael Powell, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, likes the city’s plan for the bridge.
“Anything that improves pedestrian and cycling activity is a good thing,” Powell says, “It’s a good thing for commuters, it expands recreation activity and it’s good to see the city investing in these types of things.”
According to the city’s Transportation Master Plan, renovating the bridge will “make use of an existing asset to better connect pedestrians and cyclists from the Ottawa River pathway system on the Ottawa side to Gatineau, as well as to an existing informal dog park on Lemieux Island.”
Powell adds that having the bridge closed for more than 15 years did not make sense.
“You’d go to the O-Train path and see the bridge and it seems quite silly that you can’t move across it. It’s now much more valuable.”
The City of Ottawa gained control of the bridge when it bought the interprovincial rail line in the early 2000s, planning to use it in the O-Train project as a link to Quebec. Lack of interest from Gatineau continued to see the bridge go unused. Today, the bridge’s condition has deteriorated and it is covered in graffiti.
The new crossing will be put to good use, says Hans Moor, president of Citizens for Safe Cycling.
“It’s a great idea. It’s good to have safe connections between Ottawa and Quebec. Obviously a lot of people living near, especially in the downtown area, have to use bridges that aren’t always safe, like the Chaudière Bridge, which still needs work.”
However, Moor notes that while the plan for the bridge is good, it may not be so easy to accomplish.
“There’s a lot of political footwork involved. It still needs support from the Quebec side as well as the National Capital Commission.”
Zlatko Krstulic, a transportation planner, says Ottawa has “allocated three and a half million dollars in its budget for this project and cost-sharing arrangements with other potential partners will be pursued – specifically, the City of Gatineau and the National Capital Commission – in order to raise the preliminary budget target to approximately ten million dollars.”
Krstulic says work will not be started on the bridge until council approves the Transportation Master Plan and funding is in place.
This bridge will come in handy since the pathways nearby are used daily. Krstulic says bike traffic north-south of the O-Train path by the Prince of Wales Bridge is currently 500 trips per workday while bike traffic by the Ottawa River running east-west is 2,500 trips per workday.
The city is planning to build two other multi-use bridges; one over the Rideau River from Donald Street in Overbrook to Somerset Street in Sandy Hill and one over the Rideau Canal from Clegg Street to Fifth Street in the Glebe.