Wellington Street Part 12: 50 Years of Rapid Transit in Ottawa

Part 12: 50 Years of Rapid Transit in Ottawa

   [Show/Hide Contents]

• NCC Boost and Interprovincial Bus Loop
• Regional studies lead to first bus lanes
• Preston Street Extension
• What of the Albert-Wellington spaghetti?
• Context for rapid transit
• References

I wanted to pick up the narrative of Wellington Street to line up with an important milestone in Ottawa transit history: the 50th anniversary of bus lanes in Ottawa. It doesn't involve much in the way of the theme of this blog series—the connections, disconnections, and renamings of Wellington Street—but there is a dash of that. Alas, I missed the 50th anniversary for this blog post (by over a year!) but I did get a September 2023 article on the topic published in the Centretown BUZZ newspaper.

In the previous post in the series, we left off with the 1974 opening of the Portage Bridge, connecting the west end of Wellington Street, at the Ottawa River Parkway, to Hull, and severing Wellington Street from itself in LeBreton Flats. Today, we'll rewind a couple of years to look at how rapid transit in Ottawa began to reshape traffic patterns on the various Wellington Streets, such as here on the Ottawa River Parkway:¹

Wellington Street Part 6: Postwar traffic on Wellington

Part 6: Postwar traffic on Wellington

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• Jacques Gréber's Downtown plan, 1939
• Gréber's 1949 Plan for Canada's Capital
• The main connection to the west end
• The public weighs in on Wellington
• End of Part 6
• References

Back in January 2020, we left off with Part 5, in which we watched traffic get heavier on Wellington Street from the 1910s to the 1940s. After a hiatus to do more research and life getting in the way, we're now back to look at government interventions in and around Wellington Street in the ten years following the end of World War II.

The biggest change for the City of Ottawa was on January 1, 1950,¹ when Ottawa annexed nearly all nearby developed area, including Westboro, Ottawa West, Hampton Park, Highland Park, Woodroffe, Laurentian View, McKellar, Britannia, etc. Thich comprised 7,420 acres (3,000 hectares or 30 square kilometres) of Nepean and Gloucester Townships,² as seen in the two large sections on the map below.³ Much of this was burgeoning suburban development which fed a daily stream of workers into downtown Ottawa.

Although Richmond Road was thus brought into the City limits, it retained its name west of Western Avenue, where Wellington ends.⁴ Since there were no major physical changes to Wellington Street specifically in this period, today's post will look at traffic in general on Ottawa's Wellington Street.

Tulips & tower cranes sprouting up

In the first weekend of May, the tower crane for Broccolini's hotel/condo at 199 Slater went up. This is right across the street from the BMO building at 280 Laurier, at the Slater Street "Bank" Transitway station. The BMO building had some nice flowers by its windows to go along with the view.

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

Peds on Weds: Sidewalk parking fit for Queen?

Finding room for all road users in the constrained area of an existing road allowance is tough. Especially on streets in the downtown core, north of Laurier. When Light Rail is built, the station entrances will dump thousands of passengers onto Queen Street's sidewalks, where presently these cohorts are distributed among Albert and Slater. So how do you fit all those people onto Queen Street's "meets the minimum width for City standards so they're fine" sidewalks?

One of the things that struck me as a bit odd in the City's Downtown Moves planning exercise was the prospect of reorganizing the downtown core streets (Queen Street in particular) such that the lanes which are used for parking outside of rush hour become sidewalk during rush hour. Imagine the parking lanes on the reconstructed portion of Somerset, except in the same brick as the sidewalk and with no curb, or at most a token separation of an inch or so.

Aside from skepticism that this will ever happen (no source of funding was identified for implementing DOMO's recommendations, meaning that post-LRT changes to the streetscape beyond road paint and signage are unlikely), I'm also skeptical to the practicality of this particular recommendation.

Exhibit A: O'Connor Street, east side, just south of Albert, next to the Sheraton:

I'd never noticed it before because I don't go that way often, and when I do there are usually cars parked over it. But in the space (which is signed as a "Hotel zone") you have a parking lane built in concrete like a sidewalk at the roadway surface level. Right where I was standing when I took the picture is a pinch point, and if you're walking southbound (toward the camera) there is a building that blocks your view of pedestrians coming in the other direction. I'd be interested to learn from people who walk this sidewalk regularly if this is indeed the case.

It's signed as a hotel zone, so parking is allowed there during rush hour too. This means that it isn't currently used as an 'overflow sidewalk', but the designs in DOMO for the part-time sidewalks looked pretty close to this. However, the curb made for a big difference: even though the space was empty, I instinctively hugged the sidewalk and avoided the step down the curb (though I might have been pushing my bike at the time...). I can imagine the psychological barriers to such a facility being practical, not to mention the fit the traffic engineers would have to put cars and pedestrians in the same place at different times!

If you eliminate the curb, would it be better? I'm not so sure. For walking on, perhaps, but have a look at Exhibit B: I was in Brockville to check out a park named for an ancestor of mine. Brockville's main street has a cobbled parking lane between the road and the sidewalk which swoops up to meet both of them at their respective grades:

This bears some similarity to 'naked streets', which is a philosophy I agree with in theory: you get cars, bikes, and peds all in the same space and everyone slows down and pays attention to what's going on. Eric happened to mention it in his latest.

In practice, however, I found this very unsettling—both as a motorist and as a pedestrian. I'm fine with parallel parking (though many aren't), but you're also doing it on an angle, which throws off some of your reference points, and there's no bump when you hit the curb to back you up if you went too far; you hit some piece of sidewalk furniture and potentially damage both it and your vehicle. (This is actually the point of naked streets, to some extent)

But as a pedestrian, I was surprised at how unsettling it felt to walk along a sidewalk with cars manoeuvering, essentially, in 'my' space. Because the sidewalk was flush with the slopey parking lane, it felt like people were parking their cars on the sidewalk. And it was equally discomforting to know that the motorist has no curb to bump into to let them know they went too far. Not only could the motorist hit a piece of sidewalk furniture (of which Brockville's main street sidewalks were voluminously supplied), but they could hit me!

Sometimes these things just take some getting used to, like how I've learned to relax when people walk in the Laurier segregated bicycle lane (making it a de facto overflow pedestrian lane when the sidewalk is crowded). But curbs are there to keep people from driving on the sidewalk, and if you take them out to let people walk in the 'car space', then it's hard to keep the cars from driving in the 'pedestrian space'.

[Tune in on Wednesdays at noon for a new pedestrian-themed blog post. View the Pedestrians label for previous Peds on Weds posts]

Around 150 Slater

I haven't written much about the Export Development Canada building at 150 Slater since the three-part series on the demolition and excavation. I doubt there's much interest in construction photos, but here are a few shots of the building itself.

Here is the building at nighttime, from Slater and O'Connor. Notice the spotlights on the underside of the podium canopy:

The finishes make for some interesting surfaces. You can see the exposed concrete pillar inside the building, next to the shell that surrounds the podium.

Within the podium enclosure is a two-storey marble projection above the ground floor. The counterpart is a set back ground floor with retail (the Slater Street frontage seen below is still vacant in 2013).

Along O'Connor, a Bridgehead and a Marcello's have opened up. Like the other small downtown locations, this Bridgehead closes at 6pm. If I recall correctly, the Albert and Bank location is the only one north of Somerset to open late, and even then it still closes earlier than the ones in residential areas.

In contrast to the Slater and O'Connor frontages, the Laurier Avenue frontage on the south side of the lot (separated from the corner by a smaller office building) is very unflattering and hostile to the streetfront. Not one, but two sets of garage doors and a bleak surrounding.

The massing of this side is similar to the Laurier Computer building that was torn down for 150 Slater (I assume this is merely a coincidence). Although that building used to be larger, as covered in a history of the Rideau Winter Club and other curling rinks in the city over at URBSite.

Happy Holidays

I've got a lot of good series that I'll be working on over the holidays. Look for them to come out in the new year. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying a break from a hectic month of community association meetings.

Here's a photo of workers adding the crowning star to the Christmas tree at 150 Slater, which is nearing completion. See the live webcam for the site here

I previously posted a series on the demolition of the former buildings there and the excavation of the site. You can see those and other posts on the site at the 150 Slater label.

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

Slater forest gateway

Albert and Slater streets, which carry Ottawa's Transitway buses through the downtown core, are narrowed by a lane so that the City can overhaul the bus stops. The weaving of the lanes around the closed stops has required the installation of many temporary bollards like these to artificially reduce the number of lanes, so that it is consistent along the street. The work is scheduled to end September 20, according to OC Transpo's website.

This particular stretch, coming up Nanny Goat Hill on Slater from Albert to Bronson, is equally friendly to pretty much all modes of transportation: there are no sidewalks for pedestrians, cyclists must switch from riding on the right to riding on the left, some buses have to turn off their air conditioning to have enough power to get up the hill, and motorists... well, they have the joy of driving in downtown Ottawa to look forward to.

Still, there are times--like on this Monday evening in early July--when the light shining through the trees can make this entrance to Centretown look almost bearable.

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

Imminent Snake Bite

Taken on the sunny Sunday last weekend at the 150 Slater construction site.

Make sure to keep your tires inflated, otherwise you'll get a "pinch flat," caused by your rim pinching holes into your tire when you hit a bump or sidewalk. This leaves your innertube with a telltale pair of holes, called a "snake bite."

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

Snider Plaza: Standard-Life Phase III

[Edit November 2010: I hear that this project will not be going forward.]

Tomorrow, Tuesday 23 February 2010, the City of Ottawa's Planning & Environment Committee (agenda) will be considering an application to alter the zoning at Laurier, Bank and Slater, to accommodate the third phase of the Standard-Life buildings in addition to the ones at 280 Slater Street and 333 Laurier.

Here's an overhead shot from Bing Live Maps. The tall red-ish building at the top is 333 Laurier, and its fraternal twin to the North (below it in the photo) is 280 Slater.

The parking lot between it and the buildings along Bank are to be part of the proposed new 18-storey building, and the facades of the heritage buildings are to be incorporated into the new development. More on that later. The block at the corner of Bank and Laurier, once a furniture store and now owned (or at least occupied) by a forestry workers union, is not part of the development.

Here's an aerial shot from 1926 that includes the site. At the centre of the shot is the Jackson building, and the block south of it (to the lower-right) is the subject block. It's certainly changed a lot since 1926.

A History of the Jackson Building

At the corner of downtown Ottawa's Bank and Slater streets is a large but relatively unspectacular looking nine-storey office tower.

The Jackson Building, at 122 Bank Street, may not look like much, but its understated exterior belies its rich history. Fame, chaos, and controversy are all quietly tucked into the brick walls of these government offices.

The story begins, indirectly, in the mid 19th Century. Being newly chosen as capital of the United Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, Ottawa received many migrants, many of whom were Presbyterians. Ottawa's two Presbyterian churches lent a handful of members to found a new congregation, culminating in the opening of the Bank Street Presbyterian Church in 1868 at the corner of Bank and Slater streets. Here's a map of the area from 1878, with the Church grounds at centre-right:

Coming soon... can you guess it?

I've got a very big post coming up on another building with a rich history. I did most of the preliminary research a couple months ago, and I'm finally getting around to preparing the post.

As a teaser, here's a photo from the early 1950's. The building we want is the one in the background. It's still around (the building in the foreground isn't). Can you guess which building it is? (The answer is revealed in the comments)

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

Bank Street Phase III, Part 3: Trees

[This post is part of a series on Bank Street's new look. See the introduction and part I here. Due to a typo, this post didn't go up yesterday as scheduled.]

Note: Bank Street will reopen to vehicular traffic this evening, two weeks ahead of schedule!

Last time, I talked about the new decorative light standards along the reconstructed parts of Bank Street.

As with the street lamps, the new trees (of which there are many more than were before) have different cages on the sections North and South of Gloucester Street, and the infrastructure beneath them vary as well.

Here's a photo courtesy of the Midcentury Modernist of the tree vaults in the Nortnern end of Bank Street. This shot is in front of the new Telus building at Bank and Slater, under construction in May 2007. In the foreground, you can see the trees planted in rather large plots.

The pits were then covered with precast concrete blocks that do double duty to cover the tree vaults and to provide underfoot support as sidewalks. A tall, narrow cage protects the trees from various elements, and was specifically designed to be secure enough to lock your bike to. This one is between Slater and Albert, across from Snider Plaza.

In the foreground, they've made a gravel pathway across the construction zone for pedestrians to cross Bank. But the thing to look at in this photo is the set of trees at Bank and Gilmour in late May, partway through reconstruction. The five trees along this stretch are in front of the CCOC building, and are owned and maintained (i.e. watered) by the CCOC. Prior to the reconstruction, these were about the only trees along Bank Street.

This one at the end of the row (shown in late April) didn't survive the reconstruction. You can also see the old tree guards that were on them. (As of early November the old tree guards have been removed, but new ones haven't been added yet).

In late July, that tree was removed, but I believe the others were undisturbed. One of the problems with the trees in this location is that they don't get much sun.

Here's the uprooted tree, again in late July:

In early October, the trees for this stretch were delivered in front of the Bridgehead on Bank and Gilmour, across from Herb & Spice. As you can see, the sidewalks have already been poured in this section, unlike in the first section of Bank, where the trees were installed before the sidewalk was poured. Incidentally, I hear through the grapevine that the two angel murals above Wilde's (visible in the background of this shot) will be replaced sometime soon.

Here are some of those tree vaults in Phase II, looking North from Lisgar to Nepean, with the Grace Ottawa food store at right. As you can see, the tree vaults are much smaller than in the first phase, but are bigger than the band of sidewalk that goes along the street:

Here's a closeup of a tree partially planted in one of the vaults. It looks like the sidewalk on the far side hasn't been poured yet. While I usually stick my camera through the fence, this can give a false impression that the views of the construction are unobstructed, so every now and then I take a shot with the fence in the foreground as a reminder. This is on the North-East side of Bank and Nepean, looking South-West, in late October 2008.

Here are some of the new precast concrete pieces for the tree vaults, awaiting installation just South of Bank and Gloucester. One is already installed around the tree behind them. (November 2008)

Unfortunately, the guards weren't installed before the winter (which did hit early last year, in fairness) and many of the vault covers were cracked and damaged by the snowplows, including this one near Bank and Lisgar (Wallack's in the background):

This past August, the new guards were installed around the Phase II trees, which had been planted the previous fall. They're a shorter, more stylistic variant. They're sturdier, and wrap around the concrete base of the tree vault covers, to keep the pieces tight. This should help to avoid the type of damage caused over the past winter. (Note: Colour has been "warmified" on this photo)

Note the detail on these tree guards. They have little round balls at the tips of the fins, no doubt to minimize eye-poking, but they also add a decorative touch.

When the trees are in full leaf, they really add colour to the street. This gingko tree (described in this PDF as "extremely hardy but slow growing") on Bank and Cooper in Phase III looks nice in the early September's sun:

Oh, and fear not, a new tree was planted at Bank and Gilmour to replace the one removed.

The tree guards on Phase II and III's trees are noticeably shorter than the tall, slim ones on Phase I. Here are two along the vacant lot at Florence (photo taken last week):

Which makes a great segue for the next post: Benches. Tune in on Saturday for that post.

Lorne Building, past, present and future

Sitting quietly at 90 Elgin Street, between Albert and Slater, is the Lorne building. Built half a century ago to house the National Gallery of Canada on a "temporary" basis, the federal government wants to replace it with a new, larger building.

The building's history starts in 1880, when the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, initiated the National Gallery of Canada movement (source). The Gallery opened to the public on 27 May 1882 (source). It was not on this site, but shared a building with the Supreme Court on Bank North of Wellington (that's the West Block tower in the background - see the same angle in Google Street View).

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun III

In the previous post on 150 Slater's progress, I documented the construction of retaining walls around the former Rideau Winter Club building.

I also briefly mentioned a negative space becoming a positive one. Such a transition is even more pronounced on another part of the 150 Slater site, which will be the topic of today's post.

The Premier building, whose history and final days I documented in Down, Down, Down, Update 1, was separated from the building at 235 Laurier by a small alley. Looking at the building, you barely noticed it. Being a negative space, it was defined by the absence of anything between two very definable structures.

Let's get our bearings for a moment. In the image below, we see O'Connor Street in the foreground, with 235 Laurier squarely framed. You can see how some of the original siding was not replaced when the blue and glass cladding was added earlier this decade. In the foreground are some patches in the asphalt where holes had been dug to cut off services to the now-demolished buildings on the 150 Slater site.

Here's a closeup of the former siding. It's made from that ugly reinforced institutional glass with a grid of metal wires inside. The glass is filthy with years of dirt and grime. If this part of the wall is too far out of sight to re-clad, evidently it isn't worth cleaning, either. But having them here gives insight on how the new cladding relates to the old exterior: The new cladding essentially enshrouds these concrete fins, as it comes out further and has a lip below them. though I'm sure there was much work behind the glass as well.

At the back of the building, right below the old wall, are a pair of emergency exits, a gas connection and some ventilation panels. Since the building is still in use, the emergency exits must remain usable during the construction at 150 Slater. So a little structure was built to protect the accessway during the demolition of the Premier.

When the Premier's remains were extracted in mid-May and its site became an empty hole, the former alley became an enclosed passageway. In effect, negative and positive switched places.

By mid-June, the Premier's foundation walls had been demolished and the hole was filled in. Evidently, the demolition was very thorough, as a makeshift wooden walkway needed to be built to preserve access from the fire exit.

Under the boardwalk is revealed a gaping hole leftover from the foundation wall's demolition.

And in early July, piles had been driven and a retaining wall was built (as documented in the previous two posts on 150 Slater).

The gap under the walkway is still there, but the walkway is better supported now on the piles. You can also see a yellow hose--the gas line that comes from under the street to the back of the building. A worker is measuring the distance for the final segment of four-by-eights.

The machine used to install the tiebacks set me on a bent to learn more about construction of retaining walls. It's a very curious looking machine, which looks to me like the Predator alien from various films I haven't seen. It's rather photogenic, too, since its 'head' is suspended in the air at an angle.

Zooming in on the photo, I see the brand name Interoc, which suggests it may be an Interoc AN 140 Multi-purpose hydraulic drill rig. I believe this is the manufacturer's writeup. It's used to intall tiebacks, which is one fo the three primary ways of supporting retaining walls in construction sites, as illustrated in this diagram.

This particular rig, which is identified as unit number 05-28 in large black lettering on the back, is now being used at the construction site for 120 University, just over the Rideau Canal. A photo I have of the rig there has www.mse.ca clearly written in the back, identifying the owner as Forages M.S.E. Drilling, Inc. of Ste-Martine, Quebec.

The previously-linked California PDF manual on foundations (28MB) has a good writeup on tiebacks beginning on page 11-1 (page 193 of the PDF), and a useful cross-section diagram on the following page.

In short, a cavity is drilled at the end of an angled hole behind the wall, and a steel wire is anchored into the cavity with concrete (the weight and firmness of the soil keeps it in place). A stretch of wire between the anchor and the wall, surrounded loosely by a shroud, can be tensioned to put pressure on the wall, holding it in place. Once tightened, a cap is placed on the wire to hold its position, and your wall is retained.

And that's it for the progress updates on 150 Slater. Let me show you the exit:

For all photos of 150 Slater's development, see previous posts marked with the "150 Slater" label.

150 Slater progress: Piles of fun II

It was sheer coincidence that I got this photo at the time I did. The angle of the crane's arm perfectly matches the angle of the shadow on the side wall of 235 Laurier at O'Connor. I had been tipped off that mid-June morning that they were removing the floor of the Rideau Winter Club.

The crane was supporting a green rig, which is a vibratory driver/extractor, according to this California PDF manual on foundations (28MB), specifically pages 7-21 to 7-23.

After piles were installed and the dirt removed from between the piles and the neighbouring building's garage structure, excavation could begin on the site. In this shot, taken the same day as the tip I mentioned in the first photo, they're about halfway through extracting the soil under the former Rideau Winter Club. You can see the former cooling tubes that are still present, nearly a century after first installed, and decades after they were last used.

In this photo sent to me earlier the same morning, you can get a better idea of the layering. Above the pipes was concrete, wood, reinforced concrete and/or fill, then the asphalt of the parking surface we'd known for many years. Beneath the pipes is soil infill, likely added when the rear of the building was decommissioned. Also note the hefty foundation walls on the far side.

Here's another one of those giant concrete foundation blocks, reminiscent almost of Stonehenge. It's hard to get scale, but judging by those stacks of what I suspect are four-by-eights, it's at least a couple feet thick.

By the end of June, digging out was mostly finished. these large white blocks have been installed along the top edge of the neigbouring building's underground garage, behind the piles for 150 Slater's retaining wall.

In early July, they were removing the soil from the lower level. Presumably they had run out of room to dig away from above. Behind this digger, you can see the retaining wall had been built up more. There's also a hole in the neighbouring parking garage. Maybe that was an "oops".

Here's a similar shot showing just the wall. I really like the layers in this shot. The white blocks are acting as the footing for a wooden barrier wall. Little triangles have been installed on the piles for the installation of tiebacks (incidentally, that's the page where I found the link to the Foundation manual. A good illustration of tiebacks is on page 194 of the PDF). I guess the neighbouring garage only goes down a storey or two, otherwise there wouldn't be any space for the tiebacks.

As I was going through my old photos, I found this one I took during this year's St. Patrick's Day parade. I had never before noticed that space between the two buildings, looking all the way to the World Exchange Centre, with its rooftop ball clock. Instinctively I took this photo. At the time, I had been oblivious that the Laurier Computer building (partial view on the left) was to be demolished. I guess my instincts were correct.

Lastly, here's a more square shot of the area from July 23rd. They've added a black tarp over the white blocks. They've also filled in behind the retaining wall (whose tiebacks have now been installed), and it has become a little catwalk, the negative space becoming a positive one. The spray-painted "EXIT" sign and the ladder gives it a Donkey Kong feel.



For all photos of 150 Slater's development, see previous posts marked with the "150 Slater" label.