Decommissioned streetcar rail ties dug up from Bank Street.
Before buses ruled the road, Ottawa’s streets were laid with tracks to carry streetcars that zipped through the downtown core and beyond.
Though it’s been 50 years since the cars were decommissioned, long-buried rails dug up recently during construction on Centretown streets are recalling the reign of the streetcar at a time when the Sparks Street BIA is urging its comeback alongside Ottawa’s future billion-dollar transit makeover.
Holly Layte, along with members of the heritage committee, which she chairs for the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area, will be presenting a business plan to the BIA management board this December to reintroduce streetcars to Sparks Street.
Though modeled after the traditional streetcar, the proposed system will have an update on technology. The eyesore of overhead wires is a thing of the past, Layte says.
As one option, cars are able to run on circuits that pass from the track underneath them – something the project may consider, Layte says.
The initial plan is for the new system to run from LeBreton Flats to the new convention centre at Colonel By Drive. Phase two includes a loop through Gatineau and the ByWard Market.
Layte says she believes Ottawa needs to revive the streetcar as part of the city’s heritage, but it would still be a viable form of transportation and garner tourist attention.
“The renewal of the streetcar throughout North America is actually quite astonishing,” she says. “Streetcars to Ottawa are like coffee and cream.”
Though the project is only in the planning stage, she says they hope OC Transpo would adopt the system as a supplementary transit service.
With the push for rail elsewhere in the city, the project has added potential.
“The city should have never taken up the rail,” says Somerset Ward Coun. Diane Holmes. “It’s clear the citizens of Ottawa like rail.”
The city itself has been pushing for a light-rail option following the success of the O-Train, she says, which has been running since 2001.
At the centre of that debate is what type of system best suits the needs of OC Transpo’s almost 350,000 average weekday ridership.
The options range from automated light-metros like Vancouver’s SkyTrain to streetcars the likes of Toronto’s.
Colin Churcher, an Ottawa-based rail historian, says when the city decided to scrap the old rail system, the cars and rails were decrepit and in dire need of repair, which would have cost the city a lot of money.
But OC Transpo’s website records that at its peak in 1929, the railway had a 30 million yearly ridership over more than 90 kilometres of track.
Considering the city’s renewed interest in rail, Churcher says: “I guess we were caught in the times. If we’d known then what we know now, maybe we would have thought twice before we got rid of them [the streetcars].”
He said with new technology there are ways for rail to be sustainable and functional. “It doesn’t have to be ugly,” he says.
While the future of the Sparks streetcar project is uncertain, Centretown residents are backing the return of rail to the city, whether it is the renewal of the streetcar or light-rail transit.
“We need a downtown rail system,” says Shawn Menard, Centretown Citizens’ Community Association president. “I think it will only benefit Centretown citizens.”
Menard says the CCCA has endorsed a streetcar-type system. A modernized version of what existed 50 years ago, Menard says, could fit the city once more.