Jesse Winter, Centretown News
Pedestrians and vehicles are having a more difficult time navigating the intersection of O’Connor and Queen streets, where light rail construction has disrupted traffc and business.Businesses are bracing for short-term pain but hoping for long-term gain as work on the O-Train LRT continues in the downtown core.
Station construction has begun at the intersection of O’Connor and Queen streets, the designated location for the east entrance of the planned Parliament station of the downtown LRT tunnel.
It’s a key stop on the new Confederation Line, which will run east-west from Tunney’s Pasture to Blair Road and include a transfer for the north-south Trillium line at Bayview station. The lines will provide a marked improvement to Ottawa’s public transportation infrastructure and should be a boon to downtown storeowners once they are both operating.
In the meantime, the disruption is having an impact, annoying some store owners around O’Connor,who say it is hurting business.
“It affects the business because there’s no more parking on the street and people aren’t walking around as much because of the noise,” says Lucien Cousineau of Elle Vision, an optician. “We’ve been here five years, and this is the worst time we’ve had in five years.”
Others are taking a longer view, seeing benefits down the road.
“As far as affecting business, that’s only going to bring us business. Once the O-Train opens, we’re going to have thousands of people getting off the train on the corner here,” says Buck Chenier, manager at Nate’s Deli.
Nate’s Deli is on O’Connor, a block north of the proposed station entrance. Though it also has to contend with another construction project – one that is relaying some of the bricks all across Sparks Street – Chenier has noticed little change.
“It’s only making things difficult for us in the sense that our suppliers are having a hard time getting to us,” he says.
“I’ve found that in terms of flow of customers, it hasn’t really affected us. The only way it’s affected us is the noise,” Chenier added.
He attributes this to the fact that most of Nate’s customers are pedestrians.
O’Connor Street is expected to see some slowdowns between Wellington and Queen streets. The road will remain open in some capacity for the duration of the construction. The city has promised that at least “one lane on O’Connor Street will remain open to motorists and cyclists at all times.”
Meanwhile, pedestrians can expect to have a sidewalk available, but they may have to walk up one side of the street one day and the other the next.
OC Transpo and its partner, the Rideau Transit Group, are eyeing a 2018 completion date for the Trillium Line, which OC Transpo is trumpeting as “Ottawa’s largest transportation infrastructure project since the building of the Rideau Canal.”
Construction is already under way on an underground portion of the line between Lyon and Rideau and between Hurdman and Blair Road.
All the stations should be finished by late 2017. The planned transformation of O’Connor into a complete street – meaning one with a bike lane – will be unaffected by the construction. That project is scheduled to start in 2016.
The construction on O’Connor should be complete by late December this year.