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 11: The Portage Bridge

Part 11: Portage Bridge

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• Options for crossing the Ottawa River
• Splitting Wellington again
• Finishing touches
• Bridge name, location decided
• Construction begins
• References

The Jane's Walks Ottawa walking tour festival takes place this weekend, with a launch event picnic dinner under the Booth Street bridge at Pimisi Station today from 6-8pm. This year's festival theme is Building Bridges, which fits in very well with the next section of my blog series on the many traces of Wellington Street: The Portage Bridge.

In the previous post, Part 10, we took a step back into the NCC's rearrangement of land and roads in LeBreton Flats in the 1960s. This resulted in the splitting of Wellington Street ending just west of Bay Street as it turns into the Ottawa River Parkway, and connecting to itself via offramps, as we can see here in this photo:¹

That arrangement would be relatively short-lived.

Wellington Street Part 10: Nepean Bay and the Ottawa River Parkway

Part 10: Nepean Bay and the Ottawa River Parkway

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• Nepean Bay Infill
• Ottawa River Parkway
• Closing Britannia Terrace and other streets
• References

In the previous post, we talked about the peripheral effects on Wellington street from the Garden of the Provinces construction, the LeBreton Flats expropriations, and the lowering of the C.P.R. Prescott Subdivision (all NCC projects).

Today's post will look at the Ottawa River Parkway, whose history is not well documented insofar as it affects Wellington Street. We're still in the 1960s, prior to the breakup of Wellington at the viaduct covered in part 8.

To get us situated, this colour photo from the early 1960s shows Wellington Street winding up from the bottom of the photo up across the viaduct, through LeBreton Flats, and into downtown:¹

Wellington Street Part 9: The NCC's distractions (early-mid 1960s)

Part 9: The NCC's distractions (early-mid 1960s)

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• Sparks disconnection and the Garden of the Provinces
• LeBreton Flats Expropriation
• The Queensway and the CPR trench
• References

In the previous part of this series about the renamings, connections, and disconnections of Wellington Street, we looked at the Ottawa Journal campaign leading up to the August 1969 viaduct transplant that broke Wellington Street apart over the tracks to connect with Scott. Today we'll skip back a few years now to look at what the NCC was up to around Wellington Street in the early 1960s.

Wellington Street Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

Part 8: Viaduct traffic, Journaled

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• 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

Wellington Street Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

Part 7: Dawn of "Modern" Transportation Planning in Ottawa

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• 1955 Traffic and Transportation Plan for Ottawa
• Wellington intersection recommendations
• Wellington-Sparks-Fleet-Commissioner
• Wellington-Broad-Albert-Rochester
• 1949-1953 Collision Statistics
• First Advanced Green signals in town
• What came of it?
• Also on Wellington
• References

If A.E.K. Bunnell's 1946 report covered in Part 5 recommended a few tweaks to the road network, and the 1949 Gréber report we looked at in Part 6 reimagined large swathes of the City's buildings and transportation network, a January 1955 report report on traffic and transportaion in Ottawa by consultants Wilbur Smith & Associates came in somewhere in the middle. No renamings or disconnections of Wellington Street in this installment, this time we're going on full traffic nerd mode.

This 245-page report¹ took a detailed snapshot of traffic in Ottawa, and made a number of specific recommendations, many of which involved Wellington Street. In today's part of the Wellington Street blog series, we'll dive into this report and see what it had to say about traffic in general, and Wellington in particular, in the mid-1950s.

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.

Wellington Street Part 5: Tinkering with traffic (1910s to 1940s)

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• Viaduct makes Wellington an artery for the 1910s
• Speeding and slowing traffic on Wellington in the '20s
• West End pedestrian woes in the '30s and '40s
• Toronto traffic consultant pays Ottawa a visit
• End of Part 5
• References

Let's continue with our journey exploring Wellington Street as the street was extended, renamed, and rerouted over its 200-year history. In today's post, we'll look at the many little clues that give us an idea of what traffic was like on Wellington Street from the 1910s to the mid 1940s.

During this time, Wellington street wasn't extended or curtailed, but traffic in the city got busier as more people drove automobiles and the City's response to this traffic problem had to mature to cope with it. To set the scene, here's LeBreton Flats from around 1930, with Wellington Street coming in from the left and winding up through to downtown:¹

Yellow dots are like loopy buttons for cyclists

(It's been a month since my last post; I'm slowly recovering from a long stint volunteering at RBC Royal Bank Bluesfest where I run the bike parking. This year we had record numbers again!)

A topic I'm eager to write about is the yellow dots on the pavement at intersections. You may recall my epic on pedestrian buttons, No Ifs, Ands or Buttons (and the follow-up supplementary post). Well cyclists have a way of activating the signals too, and what better place to describe it than the brand-new traffic control signal at Bronson and Arlington:

To recap the lowdown on ped buttons: when there is a traffic control signal with buttons, and there is a little yellow sign above the button, that means you must press the button if you want the walk signal to activate (though for some such intersections there might be some times of the day or week when the signal changes on a fixed timing whether or not the button is pressed).

Help @RescueBronson Avenue!

Everyone in the neighbourhood has been affected by the Bronson Avenue reconstruction project, which has been going on for just over a month now.

While most concerns go to the traffic department's project team, working on the Bronson file in the councillor's office (as well as being on the DCA and the CCCA and handling the @RescueBronson twitter account) means I get to hear from many people about the issues they're facing: shops along the street are suffering major drops in business, residents on and near Bronson have to put up with the very noisy construction work starting early in the morning, and people everywhere in the community have to deal with drivers treating their quiet side streets and school-zone main streets the same harsh way they treat Bronson: like a highway to be crammed tight at rush hour and sped through the rest of the day, all to get through the neighbourhood as quickly as possible with little regard to the people who live there. This is just a small sampling of the issues people are dealing with.

Luckily, it's not all bad news. The nighttime drilling, which was done on extremely short notice, is over for this year's construction. There has been lots of behind-the-scenes work to look at ways to address the speeding and other traffic issues on the side streets, including temporary and permanent measures (such as signs and speed humps, respectively). A digital speed board, which displays your speed as you approach it, has been installed on Booth Street next to the 40 km/h sign in front of St. Anthony's Church. The police have been doing lots of enforcement of persistent traffic problem areas. If all goes well, some new sharrows will be painted next week.

To connect all this to the above photo of workers installing a big sewer chamber at Bronson and McLeod, there has been a recurring theme: despite the other problems, people say that the construction crews on Bronson itself have been very accommodating.

If you get a chance, take a walk down Bronson Avenue at least once a week. It's easier now that there's no traffic. Discover the businesses on the street and visit them often. It's not the businesses' fault the road is under construction, and they need the support of their neighbourhood to make it through eight more months of construction.

(Also, don't forget to check out this weekend's Jane's Walks happening around town!)

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

Somerset Street Reconstruction Part 6: Poles and signals

Here's part 6 of the 15-part series on the reconstruction of Somerset Street West. In the previous part, we looked at the reconstruction of the roadway along Somerset between Booth and Preston. This time, we'll take a look at the traffic signals and hydro poles in the same stretch.

You'll note that the longer posts are now shortened on the summary pages. You can read more about that here.

Most of the photos in this post were taken in the winter, after Eric Darwin pointed out some concerns with the traffic signal pole design on his blog, West Side Action. I took this one, showing a carefully choreographed dance between two cherry pickers at Somerset and LeBreton, in mid-February.

Even though this is a couple of blocks east of the project limits at Booth Street, it looks like the opportunity was taken to replace some of the other streetposts that had been chipped away by years of snowplows edging past.

Snow Removal on Kent

One night back in January, I happened upon a snow removal crew on Kent Street. I had a few minutes to spare, so I stuck around to watch and take photos. It's quite a feat of choreography, which happens several times each winter on Centretown's main roads, and at least once or twice per winter on our narrow side streets, too. With a decent snowstorm forecast, today seems like a good time to post these photos.

A day or so prior to the snow removal, temporary signs are stuck into the snowbanks prohibiting parking between 7pm and 7am (or 7am and 7pm). Right before the crews come by, a truck will collect most of these signs for re-use.

The process documented here, which spans about 20 minutes, starts with a loader, which moves much the snow away from the larger surfaces along the curb. All of this happens while traffic continues to flow, although since it's generally done in the middle of the night, the traffic is light.

A smaller plow goes around after the loader to get snow out of the smaller corners on the sidewalks. In the foreground, a coating of ice on the hydro pole cast a neat reflection of the light.

Bronson Avenue Open House audio and transcript

Last Thursday was the City's public open house for the reconstruction of Bronson Avenue. Well over 100 people attended, but information is wanting for people who couldn't attend. The project website is supposed to have information up today (Edit Tuesday: RescueBronson.ca has posted the English slides), but even so, they say they want comments in by Thursday, so that they can issue an RFP in three weeks, and begin construction as early as February 2012. Clearly, there are little or no plans to change the scope of the project based on the "consultation".

So Rescue Bronson—again—is picking up the slack. We've published a collection of links to coverage of the Bronson open house, which includes some information on the project plans itself. Eric Darwin features in much of it, and his dedication is much appreciated.

I also recorded the entire staff presentation and Q&A session of the open house, and you can download the mp3 here (99 MB) (Edit: sorry, the upload wasn't working. It's an hour and 48 minutes long, and a very large file; hopefully someone can find a way to embed or stream it so you don't have to wait to download the whole thing.

I've also typed up a transcript that you can access as a Google Doc, or view it below. It isn't verbatim, and there is some interpretation, but gives a good idea of most of the discussion. There are timestamps so you can skip to the part of the mp3 that you want to hear.

Bronson reconstruction public open house Thurs Nov 24, 6:30pm at Centennial

After a handful of meetings of the Public Advisory Committee (PAC) for the imminent Bronson Avenue reconstruction, the city's project managers and engineers will be presenting their plans to the public next Thursday evening at Centennial public school, 6:30 pm. All are welcome to come and share their feedback. More details are here on the City's website.

Much has been done behind the scenes by community representatives on the PAC to squeeze out every last bit of improvement in the plans, and you can help increase the pressure by signing the Rescue Bronson Avenue petition.

As you will recall, community groups united under the banner of Rescue Bronson Avenue to fight back at the engineers' assumption that the road should go back exactly as it is, except with wider lanes.

Rescue Bronson is made up of representatives from the CCCA, DCA, CCOC and Diane Holmes (I'm formally involved with all but the CCOC), and was previously pushing for the more northerly parts of Bronson to be put on a "Road Diet". North of Gladstone Avenue, the traffic volumes drop considerably, and again at Somerset. By reclaiming some space for pedestrians on Bronson, there would be shorter crossing distances, a less hostile walking environment, slower (though not necessarily less) traffic, and shorter crossing distances--altogether a safer street. In the last week or so, Scott Street got such treatment:

O'Connor and Kent: Cross with care

It feels like I took this photo just a few weeks ago, but it was actually June 2010. The street we're looking down is Lewis (my favourite stretch along my now-famous shortcut), and the cross street is O'Connor.

Like Kent Street, the one-way traffic on O'Connor travels pretty darn fast when it gets the green light. Both O'Connor and Kent were widened decades ago to be very close to the buildings, leaving little room to see around the corner when you're at the stop sign on the cross street.

I didn't see the collision, but I suspect this is what happened to the unfortunate driver of this sedan: he looked as far as he could up O'Connor for a gap in traffic to cross at Lewis, and was slammed by the SUV coming down O'Connor far enough away but going fast enough (not necessarily speeding) to not be visible from the side street.

This was a common occurrence on Lyon Street before the speed humps were installed on it. The traffic engineers were up in arms at the thought of speed humps on an arterial road, but so many cars had crashed into the house at the south-west corner of Lyon and MacLaren that the community had had enough and political will overruled the engineers. Now Lyon still carries lots of traffic, but that traffic is calm enough for a bike lane to run alongside.

The Centretown Community Design Plan suggests looking at converting Metcalfe and O'Connor back to two-way traffic. The plan's consultants have suggested this (as well as the rest of the transportation aspects of the CDP) be investigated as part of the Downtown Ottawa Mobility Overlay, a.k.a. Downtown Moves. Now that the DOMO and its terms of reference are out, we see that Centretown isn't part of the core study area. We'll see how many resources, if any, go toward looking at the one-way streets.

In the meantime, when you're crossing Kent and O'Connor on a side street, either on a bike or in a car, be careful!

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

Metcalfe stop, park, don't pass

The Transitway stop at Metcalfe Street on Albert Street is under construction, so a temporary one was installed on the West side of Albert Street, outside the World Exchange Centre. A waiting platform was built out into the curb lane with asphalt and temporary curbs.

What really struck me in this picture, though, was the little sign on the far right. It's a "no passing" sign, necessary due to the lane restrictions (in fact, I'm surprised parking is still allowed in the left lane). This photo was taken during mid-day, but I can guess that that sign wouldn't be visible to its intended audience--presumably, people in the lane that's on the left of the bus lane. If there isn't a truck parked in front of the sign, the rush-hour bus convoy will certainly block it.

What's more, it looks like this sign was installed specifically for this temporary bus stop, as it doesn't show up on Google Street View (photo below links to the location on Google Street View) from when the lanes were in their regular configuration:

Weird, eh?

City of Ottawa steps forward

Car ads on buses are a bugaboo of mine, so back in May it was a nice surprise to be stuck behind a bus to see this ad for the iwalkibike.ca campaign by the City of Ottawa and Province of Ontario:

It reads "Reason #74 - a social time on the way to class". This ad at a bus stop on Gladstone has the same message:

It's a refreshing change from the days just a couple of years ago where the City allocated barely enough money for barebones staff for ped/bike initiatives, with no money to implement any of the initiatives to be carried out.

I first realized the absence of pro walking/biking ads in Ottawa when I was in London, Ontario a few years ago and saw this giant billboard ad paid for by the local government promoting carpooling.

This is no replacement for safety campaigns, but I nevertheless hope they keep up this program beyond the warm months.

Ottawa Earthquake anniversary. Where was I?

Special Thursday post: Today is the one-year anniversary of the magnitude 5 earthquake that rocked the Ottawa area on June 23, 2010. This morning I woke to many messages about where people were during an earthquake in my Twitter feed, and since Twitter reads reverse-chronologically, I'd thought I'd slept through an earthquake this morning until I saw the original question from the Ottawa Citizen's twitter account asking people where they were last year.

I was on a private tour of the former OBE Media Centre on Bronson just south of the 417(the "Bronson Shops"). During the earthquake, we were on the lower roof. Since the building is right next to the queensway, a couple of us thought there were just some big trucks driving by. Centretown's northern skyline (beyond the lowrise zones) is visible beyond the Queensway.

But Jack Corry, the OCDSB's area supervisor was with us on the tour and told us that it was in fact an earthquake. We got to hear the live updates from schools across the city over his radio, including schools closing in the western suburbs and pleas from the head office for schools to stop asking for how to proceed while they figure out a plan.

I'd organized the tour (which consisted of Jennifer McKenzie, OCDSB trustee for Somerset and Kitchissippi and now Chair of the school board, Jack, my friend Richard Guy Briggs and me) because of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation's plans to buy it and demolish it to straighten the 417 Bronson offramp (currently cars continuing straight must jog south at Bronson and wait to turn left, which backs up traffic all the way to Gladstone). When I was attending McNabb public school, every day I'd see the building as the school bus came off that ramp and turned north on Bronson, so I was always curious what was inside.

I took hundreds of photos of the inside and plan to post them in a series sometime, but I wanted to get something up for the quake anniversary. Richard posted some photos on his site, and URBSite has a post on the history of the building.

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

Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour and posters

Today's Jane's Walk for the Rescue Bronson Avenue initiative went really well. It was right on time and we had about 35-45 people on each of the two parts of the tour (breaking it up into two parts worked really well, and some people joined us at noon for the second part). See yesterday's post promoting this walk here

Here are the volunteers who led the walk, from left to right: Will and Josée, who helped keep order and time; and moi, who gave the tour. We're standing at what the NCC calls "Bronson Park" at the top of Bronson overlooking Lebreton Flats, and across the street from Roper House on the Christ Church site.

Here's a shot I took near the end of the tour of the attendees on the second part of the tour as we ducked in to Florence Street for a respite from all that heavy traffic along Bronson:

I made eight different location-specific posters to illustrate the walk at the following locations, copied below (click on them to see full-size ~1.5MB ea). I left them up so you should be able to still see some of them and compare with what's there in person until they're inevitably taken down.

Here are all eight. I'm just listing the names of the posters, which don't have current pictures of the sites because they're intended to be seen in situ. I could make this post insanely long with additional photos and text, but I need some sleep after a long and successful day at the Jane's Walk and the wrap party at the Lieutenant's Pump (which was recently renovated).

Sunday 11am and noon: Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour

This ain't your mother's Mother's Day Jane's Walk. Unless your mother lived on Bronson before they widened it in the '50s.

Sunday, May 8, 2011, at 11am, head on over to Bronson and Queen for a really exciting Jane's Walk on Bronson Avenue. If you're not the morning type, you can meet up with us at the Chinatown Arch/Raw Sugar where we'll get to the second half of the walk at noon.

This will be an illustrated walk. The photo below shows an historical photo of Bronson and Somerset. There are eight different location-specific posters of behind-the-scenes happenings along Bronson that you can't see while standing on location. I'll post copies of these posters on the blog on Monday, and hopefully the posters will stay up a while.

In honour of the occasion, the Mayor proclaimed Thursday May 7, 2011, Jane Jacobs Day in Ottawa: