The skinny on sidewalk design in Ottawa

Thanks to the Ottawa Lookout, I learned that today at the City's Transportation Committee meeting, Councillor Shawn Menard has a motion in relation to an ongoing review of sidewalk designs.

Since I currently have a cold, I can't present in person, so instead I wrote out a presentation to Transportation Committee. I'm reformatting it here, as a more concise rewrite of my 2014 blog series about Ramp style sidewalks (or "Toronto-style sidewalks", as they were called then).

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

What to expect when you go Next Door in Ottawa

We interrupt the blog series about the history of Wellington Street to bring you this informational item.

In late January or early February, I got a letter in the mail (since discarded), addressed to "Dalhousie neighbour" (red flag #1), inviting me to something called "NextDoor Dalhousie", which claimed to be a social media site to "connect with neighbours". Sounds nice enough, but obviously somebody's making enough money off of of this "free" app to afford to mail out physical invitations. I've since discarded my letter, but here's a similar one received by a neighbour on Eccles Street in March, 2022:

The top level takeaway—in case the reference to red flags wasn't clear enough—is don't bother signing up, but for the sake of others who, like me, wanted to know more about it before signing up, here's what I've observed after having been signed into the site for a month.

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