The city is studying ways to redesign Centretown streets once Ottawa’s light rail system begins operation and removes 2,000 buses daily from the downtown core.
Light rail transit in the proposed transit tunnel would remove the need for certain routes on Slater Street, which the tunnel would run under. Buses would be reduced from 2,600 to 600 daily.
“With three LRT stations and a reduction in the number of buses, the opportunities for improving the downtown street environment are unprecedented,” a report to the transportation committee says. However, the plan has not received universal approval.
“When the LRT starts running, you’re going to need a heck of a lot less buses,” says Richard Kilstrom, manager of policy development and urban design.
This leaves the possibility of looking at turning some one-way streets downtown into two-way streets, he says, which would spread out general traffic.
The city is also looking at introducing segregated bike lanes once the LRT is running, Kilstrom says. This means that bike lanes with curbs would be provided for cyclists to help separate them from cars.
The city has three goals concerning transit in the downtown core, says Pat Scrimgeour, manager of transit service design.
“We want to make transit service as fast as possible, reduce the number of buses as much as possible, and to configure the bus routes in a way that configures a healthy downtown,” Scrimgeour says. “We have a plan to balance those out.”
But the Centretown Citizens’ Community Association has some concerns with a transit plan.
The CCCA says it does not approve of the lack of stops provided in the transit tunnel.
“Between LeBreton and Rideau, there are eight to 10 bus stops. The tunnel reduces that to three,” says Rick Devereux, membership secretary for the CCCA. “It will increase commuting time because of the additional distance added on to getting to the station entrance and underground, into the tunnel.”
Other CCCA concerns are that the city plans to re-route buses onto residential streets, and that they are not looking into other surface options before the downtown transit plan is complete, like expanding O-Train service north to Prince of Wales and south to Leitrim Road and adding extra train cars to increase capacity.