Wellington Street Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

   [Show/Hide Contents]

• History written by the whiners
• 'Battle of the Bridge'
• Bayview slip lane
• Westward city growth gets the wheel squeaking again
• Viaduct repairs 1920s to 1950s
• Wellington Bridge is Falling Down 1960s
• New Wellington Viaduct to be built
• Wellington Street Officially Severed
• 'Replacement' viaduct will disconnect Wellington
• Reaction to Wellington disconnection
• Demolition of the Wellington Street Viaduct
• References

Although I set out in October 2019 to write this Wellington Street blog series looking to learn about the street's various connections and disconnections, the last three parts, ending with a look at a 1950s traffic study were a bit of a sidetrack.

The last connection change was back in Part 4 when the Wellington Street Viaduct was built in 1909 (overtop an existing route). As it happens, the next major change to Wellington Street that we'll look at is when the viaduct was replaced.

The Viaduct gets an entire post thanks to the Ottawa Journal's obsession with its role as a bottleneck for afternoon rush-hour traffic.¹

That time I was on the Skate Patrol for ten years (Part 1)

The 40th edition of Ottawa's Winterlude festival has opened this weekend, and its crown jewel, the Rideau Canal Skateway, is enjoying a good season. This year has had the earliest start in four years, after a record short 18 skating days in 2016 and 25 skating days in 2017.

The official @NCC_Skateway Twitter account often posts tidbits about the skateway, for example, a tweet mentioning that there is a team of 60 skate patrollers on the canal.

As it happens, I served on the Rideau Canal Skate Patrol for ten years, and I've been meaning to write about it. Now that I've been off the patrol for a while, it's time for me to come out of the shadows...

8 Love Locks' Flat

Both the Ottawa Citizen and the Centretown Buzz did stories about the love locks on the Corktown Footbridge in advance of Valentine's Day. Come to think of it, so did I.

What I didn't post was this photo from the same day, showing a chain of "love locks" (I suspect this set is just regular locks...), with the canal-side pavilion "8 Locks' Flat" in the background:

I have a lot of photos of the canal and of the footbridge, as you can imagine considering the Pedbridge blog I used to document the bridge's construction in great detail, and considering I was on the naming committee for the bridge!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Flashy bike

Near the end of December as the Rideau Canal skateway was agonizingly close to opening, I went on a Bike Ride along the canal one night to take some photos of the canal. With my bike resting on one side of the Bank Street bridge, I took a picture of it. Realizing I'd accidentally got it when the flashing purple lights were off, I took another. At the suggestion of a friend, I made it into an animated gif, and it works pretty well!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

3D Thursday: Rideau Canal Skateway

On Twitter yesterday I asked if I today's 3D photos should be of the Rideau Canal or of the World Exchange Centre theatres, the only vote was from the Rideau Canal Skateway account. This is notable because in previous years there were only accounts for Winterlude (which is now run by the Department of Canadian Heritage) and for the Rideau Canal waterway (which is run in the non-skateway season by Parks Canada). Now both the Rideau Canal skateway and the NCC itself both are on Twitter, and the Skateway account actively engages with the public.

Given the warm temperatures on the weekend, today might be your last chance to skate on the canal for a while. So to entice you, I bring you photos of the canal, which opened on the relatively early date of December 31, 2013. Here it is that day at dusk at the Concord rest area at the far east end of Centretown:

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

The night before, I also took photos of the Canal. Here's a stunning 3D nighttime view of Bank Street bridge with Lansdowne Park's construction cranes in the background. Make sure to view it full screen and zoom in if you can:

Bad sectors in Centretown

Back in July, my hard disk drive crashed, losing two months' worth of photos (about 1600). At the end of October I got a surprise call from the guy I'd brought it to, who said he was able to recover over 90% of the data. I was able to push this to about 97% of the photos that I had taken since my previous backup.

Some of them, however, were damaged. The hard drive had bad sectors and in the recovery many of the photos were damaged (only a very small number were completely unreadable). The damage inflicted on them actually has a bit of an artistic tone to them. Here's a photo of 222 Queen Street (which is where the RMOC headquarters were before it moved to the building that's now City Hall):

I discovered that I actually had a more recent backup on an external drive, up to mid-June. From this, I was able to push the recovery rate to about 99% of my photos, since many of the damaged photos were taken before then. Here's the original of the photo above:

Jane's Walks this weekend!

In case you haven't heard, Jane's Walk Ottawa happens this weekend. I haven't given any since the Rescue Bronson Jane's Walk I gave two years ago. It was fun, but a lot of work. So instead I'll try to go out on a couple of other people's walks. Here are some I'm looking at that are within Somerset Ward, with the description on the Jane's Walk Ottawa website linked to the headings:

Apt613 Blog Walk of Somerset
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 2pm-3:30pm
Meet at Dundonald Park, Somerset and Bay

Staying on the Bronson theme of my 2011 walk, Apartment 613 is holding a walk in Chinatown, whose businesses are suffering from the closure of the Bronson/Somerset intersection. This one has a neat format, where they'll interview some of the business owners in the same way they do interviews for their blog entries, only it'll be live and you'll be there!

Local Confectionaries
Saturday, May 4, 2013, 4pm-5pm
Meet at Somerset and Preston

A great segue from the Apt613 walk, local cartoonist/illustrator Colin White is giving a tour of the corner stores which feature often in his drawings. I don't think I've met him in person, but I like his depictions of familiar hyperlocal landmarks.

Painting on the Mackenzie-King Bridge

You might have heard earlier this month about Patrick Mills painting every day in March on the Mackenzie-King Bridge. I made a point of going to visit him shortly after that story broke, chatted with him a bit, and of course took a photo:

He has a blog where he keeps track of his regular progress.

A couple days after reading about his work, I recognized one of them staring me in the face as I walked out of the office on the second floor of City Hall (between the elevator bank near the Laurier entrance and the rotunda):

This had just recently been installed, as part of the recent trend to spill out the City's art collection on the otherwise unused wall space.

Patrick is painting every day in March, of which there aren't too many left. So if you want to check him out in person, don't wait too long!

3D Thursday: 3D through the aqueduct, part 2 of 2

Today's 3D blog post continues our journey through LeBreton Flats' aqueduct, which began with part 1 last Thursday.

We left off last time on the outcropping over the bridges spanning Lloyd Street and Lett Street, just north of where the Transitway turns toward Albert Street. The Claridge condos are visible in the background for reference. In the foreground is the top of the second, newer aqueduct ("newer" being 1908) under what used to be Ottawa Street:

To further get our bearings, here's a winter shot from atop the cliff at the North end of Bronson Avenue, taken in March 2011 (I had a 3D photo of a similar angle at the top of Part 1). Here we can see the Lloyd-Lett bridge at the upper-left, the grassy area past the stone building. J.R. Booth's trains ran diagonally over this bridge, then through the 20' wide curved alignment along the aqueduct's far embankment, just behind the stone building. Beyond the bridge, we can see the aqueduct, following roughly along the Transitway, before the two split, with the aqueduct heading underground toward the river on the right, and the Transitway heading left toward Bayview. In the foreground we can see Pooley's Bridge, which was narrowed significantly during its restoration in 2001. More on that below.

3D Thursday: 3D through the aqueduct, part 1 of 2

Today's 3D Thursday blog post is one I've been working on for a while. It's a two-part series—with lots of 3D content—on the aqueduct that runs through LeBreton Flats. URBSite did a great (2D) post on the history of the Fleet Street pumping station, which is the subject of part 2, coming next Thursday. Reminder: 3D photos are best viewed full screen with a dark backdrop.

The first image that comes to my mind at the thought of the word "aqueduct" is a high stone-arch wall dating from the Roman empire. But really, it's just any conduit that carries water, usually by gravity. In fact, as this Discovery Channel special shows, most of the Roman aqueducts were on, or under, the ground level.

Ottawa's aqueduct is in a channel and partially buried under what are technically considered bridges. In the 3D photo above, taken from atop the escarpment, you can see the bottom end of the aqueduct, where it leads to the historic Fleet Street water pumping station and Pooley's Bridge in the foreground, and you can sort of follow it backwards along the line of trees through LeBreton Flats, curving back to the Ottawa River behind the condos of 250 Lett Street on the right. I don't expect you to see all that from the vantage point of the photo above, though if you zoom in close (zoom gradually if you can so your eyes can adjust along the way) you can make out the parkway bridge over the aqueduct inlet.

Here's where it comes off the Ottawa River, first passing under a prefabricated steel bridge that carries the Ottawa River Pathway. Nepean Bay in the Ottawa River is at the left, and the water headed to the aqueduct flows toward the right.

Prince of Wales rail bridge

I've been out of town working at a conference, and am even further behind in my blogging and photo-sorting than when I left. So here's a quick blog post to get me started again:

Here is the Prince of Wales railway bridge, silhouetted by a recent sunset with the Ottawa River rippling in the foreground. It connects Ottawa and Gatineau, Ontario and Québec, with Lemieux Island partway along.

As you probably know, this is at the north end of the O-Train line. There is a pathway currently under construction that will run along the O-Train line to connect the Ottawa River Parkway to Dow's Lake, effectively closing the pathway loop for pedestrians and cyclists. When complete, the pathway will have the Prince of Wales bridge on the north end, and Prince of Wales drive at the other end.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

3D Thursday: end of the Rideau Canal season

The end of boating season is rapidly approaching on the Rideau Canal, but back in August when we were having that beautiful summer weather, I took a few days off here and there, managing to take many photos around town, including many in 3D. I'm still working on the technique of taking photos with two cameras simultaneously, but the timing on this one was close enough to catch this yacht heading towards the Plaza Bridge at a pretty decent clip: (If you don't have standard red-cyan 3D glasses, I usually carry spares to give away if you see me, otherwise you can get them for $2.99 at the Comic Book Shoppe at Bank and Lisgar)

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

For many years the sculpture Balancing was on the last just to the right of the photo, between the National Arts Centre and Confederation Square. After four years away, John Hooper's 1981 artwork has been fully restored and was reinstalled ten days ago on the opposite side of the canal, just to the left of where the trees are on the left side of the photo. (Photos of the restoration are on the NCC's Flickr gallery on the linked page).

I took another couple of great 3D shots around the Plaza Bridge and elsewhere the same day I took this one, but I won't post them just yet. I'll save those for weeks like this one, where time pushes me to post a one-photo entry. I missed the last couple of 3D Thursday posts, but I'm working on a two-part blog post each with a number of 3D photos of a part of downtown you may not even know existed!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 14: Bridge railings

Just as the work is underway to put the finishing touches on the reconstruction of Somerset Street west from Booth to Preston to the O-Train bridge, this 15-part series documenting that reconstruction is nearing an end. After going over the roadway and sidewalk reconstruction and the O-Train pathway, we finished off Part 13 with a look at the temporary boardwalk cantilevered over the side of the Somerset bridge while the O-Train pathway was being built (covered in Part 12).

In this second-to-last post in the series, I'll tell you all about the railings on this bridge/viaduct, as shown here at Takaki Automotive, 47 Breezehill:

While I wouldn't go so far as to claim they deserve official heritage status, the railings do have some history to them. They formed the backdrop of a couple scenes in the Rolling Stone's music video for Streets of Love, filmed in Ottawa. The bridge is around 1:15 to 1:40. Interspersed in the video with scenes shot live at Zaphod's are other Centretown landmarks such as the former Stinson & Son at 435 Gladstone (1:45 and 2:11) and Domestic Foods, the corner store just down the block from me, at Gladstone and Percy (1:50 to 1:57):

Peds on Weds: No Pedetsrian Crossing... yet

It's the second Wednesday of the month, which means two things: a Walk Ottawa meeting (7pm at Jack Purcell Community Centre room 101, also noted on OttawaWalkingProblems.ca), and the weekly Peds on Weds post.

This week's post features a jogger trying to cross the car-dominated junction of Wellington Street, the Ottawa River Parkway, and the Portage Bridge. Facing our intrepid pedestrian is a sign that reads "NO PEDESTRIAN CROSSING". Pedestrians and cyclists are expected to navigate the labyrinth of pathways under the bridge to get to the side they want to be on.

Luckily all those pylons aren't there to make an obstacle course of the surface also; it's because the intersection is being reworked. Segregated bicycle lanes will be added to Wellington in both directions, and at-grade crosswalks will be added to allow pedestrians to cross in all directions.

Construction is expected to be finished by the end of June, following which it will be much easier to walk to the Mill Street Brewpub at the old mill.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 9: Bridge Sidewalks B

In this, part 9 of the 15-part series on last year's reconstruction of Somerset Street West, we continue along the sidewalks of the bridge over the O-Train tracks.

Unlike the precast paver sidewalks further east on Somerset described in part 3, on the bridge the sidewalks are poured concrete with a red band along the edge (as described in the previous post).

In 2009, some of the bridge's expansion joints were repaired and the sidewalk was expanded with the new red band on that section. Here's a closeup from June 2010 showing how that red band weathered the year.

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 8: Bridge sidewalks A

This 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West finished with the section east of Preston with Part 7, which talked about trees and bike racks. We now turn our attention to the sidewalks on the section between Preston and Breezehill, over the O-Train tracks. Since sidewalks are pedestrian-related, this'll count as my Peds on Weds post for this week.

The drawing shown below was from the very first meeting where this project was introduced to the community. In stark contrast to the Bronson avenue consultation, the project team for Somerset West came to us with a drawing of what it looks like now, and some markers. Since then, they have worked with the community design team to make Somerset into a much improved street.

The sidewalks on the bridge weren't re-done simultaneously, so this photo of the sidewalks on the south side being broken up was taken at the same time that the forms were being laid for the sidewalks on the north side, which had been broken up quite some time before.

Unlike most sidewalks in Ottawa, the ones going over the O-Train tracks are built with reinforced concrete. This meant that they couldn't simply be pulled up by a big digger, but had to be chipped away by jackhammers. Here a few spent jackhammer tips sit amid the rebar.

Rideau Canal Skateway now open for the 2012 season!

The Rideau Canal skateway opened at 10am on Sunday morning, with the NCC announcing it just an hour before. The rest area at Fifth Avenue/Holmwood is picture-perfect, with a fresh layer of snow on the evergreens. The ice is so glassy smooth that you can see the canal amenities reflected in it!

Of course, no NCC event would be complete without a hokey media event. Two of the official Winterlude mascots, the Ice Hogs, were out on the ice behind the speaker at the podium (as captured hugging adorably in a photo by CBC reporter Alistair Steele via Twitter). One of them climbed the stairs to raise the green flag, making the opening official. (Unfortunately my photo is from a bad angle to see the flag, again, but Steele got a good photo of that, too)

Ottawa pedestrian advocates, unite!

This evening, pedestrian advocates from across the city will meet at City Hall to get a group for Ottawa pedestrians on its feet. In recent years, frustrations about walkability have grown in the absence of a common venue for people across the city to come together to draw attention to pedestrian issues or push for the implementation of the Ottawa Pedestrian Plan.

Somerset Ward Councillor Diane Holmes (note: I work in her office) has decided it's time to bring these people together so they can organize themselves into a group that will speak out in unison about the barriers to walkability across the city.

There are big problems and little problems all across the city, and systemic problems that transcend individual communities. One problem is illustrated above at the Corktown Footbridge (my favourite bridge): even though it was built specifically for pedestrian use, the steps are blocked off to actively prevent pedestrian use in the winter. Both functionally and aesthetically, the barricades--which clearly weren't part of the original concept--detract from the award-winning design of the bridge.

Following on the recent successes of the cycling community (including Citizens for Safe Cycling and the Ottawa Biking Problems website), Ottawa walking advocates have started a twitter account, @OttWalk, and a website for Ottawa Walking Problems, where you can submit reports of problems spots around the city and pin them to a map.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Monument to Canadian Fallen in Korean War

It's quite easy to walk all around Centretown and not pass by this monument on the Mackenzie-King Bridge to Canada's fallen in the Korea between 1950 and 1957. On the front of the statue is written "We will never forget you brave sons of Canada," and inscribed around it are the names of the 516 Canadians who died in that conflict.

The monument was opened in September 2003 by then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Korean ambassador Chang Hi-Ko. It was designed by Vincent R. Courtenay, a Canadian Korean War veteran, and sculpted by Yoo Young Mun.

In front of the monument is a plaque describing the significance of the imagery (click to view full size). The children are carrying maple leaves (symbolizing Canada) and roses of Sharon, the national flower of Korea.

The edges of the plaque and the monument are connected by two rows of pavers that meet at a point. According to the plaque, the resulting angle points in the direction of Busan, South Korea, where an identical monument sits at the site of a United Nations memorial cemetary that contains the graves of 378 Canadians.

The names wrap around to the back of the monument, where additional relief repeats the English moto banded around the front, and an inscription on the stone indicates that the Korean Granite plinth was provided by the Government of the Republic of Korea.

Downstairs coupling

Seen back in April, under the Plaza Bridge, on the stairs connecting the canal level by the Union Station to the upper level by Major's Hill Park.

The channel running down the middle of the stairs is to make it easier for people to walk their bikes up and down stairs. Being in the middle of the stairs allows you to choose to push your bike from the right or left, acccording to your preference.

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]