March Road

With the warm weather upon us, I am reminded hat the most favourite season of the year is upon us, no, not summer, I am referring to Road Construction season.  Any of you who have driven along March road into the ‘city’ you could have noticed the construction happening to widen the road. The ‘current’ project is to expand the road from 2 lanes to 4 lanes to just past the Klondike road area.   I drive this section of road daily, as do any of you who go into or out of North Kanata or points east and south from Constance Bay, Fitzroy Harbour, Dunrobin, and Carp to name just a few impacted communities.  If you drive the section of road from Morgan’s Grant to the Dunrobin Road turnoff, you know that it is virtually gridlocked during rush hour.  Add in school buses and the mixture becomes even slower.

As I sat, unmoving on March Road in front of Jack and Mary Dekok’s farm, Last week during the morning rush hour, the ‘obvious’ question came to mind.   This was “When will the expansion to four lanes up to the obvious convergence/divergence point at Dunrobin Road be completed?”  The current phase of the expansion, according to the City of Ottawa web site, will be done in 2011 and will result in the ‘choke point’ moving from Klondike Road to approximately 350 meters beyond Old Carp Road.  As the Ward division is at Old Carp Road, congratulations to the few of you in the ward who will benefit from it soon.

The answer to my question was to say the least, surprising.  I used the City of Ottawa website to get some information.  The current project is well documented, lots of drawings, schedule information and even the City of Ottawa point of contact.  As for the next phase, nothing obvious was found other than in the 2003-2008 Ottawa 20/20 Transportation Plan which was issued in April of 2003.  This states that the Environmental Assessment for the Morgan’s Grant to Dunrobin Road was completed.  This was good as the EA process can delay things if it has not yet been completed.

I knew a later Transportation Plan was issued.  The 2008 Transportation Master Plan [2008 TMP] is online in PDF format, and does cover the current plans for the city, including LRT.  It, like a number of other City of Ottawa documents which are stored in Adobe PDF format,  appear not to be searched by the City of Ottawa web sites search function, but that is another issue to be resolved.

The 2008 TMP identifies that there  are 2 planned construction activities for this stretch of road.  The first is “Bicycle lanes or paved shoulders between Terry Fox Road and Dunrobin Road” and the second is” Widen [March Road] from two to four lanes from Old Carp Road to Dunrobin Road”. I fully support the first construction plan as this section of road is actively used by cyclists. Before you make any plans, you should know that the first stage of construction, according to page 75 is between 2009 and 2015.   I can not find any reference to this being an awarded contract so the safe assumption is post 2011 for this to happen.  The expansion to 4 lanes, according to page 80 of the plan is to occur sometime between 2023 and 2031.  That means, for anywhere between the next 13 and 21 years, the Old Carp Road to Dunrobin Road stretch will be gridlocked.  Are YOU happy with this?   I certainly am not.

I believe the entire project could be executed in a better fashion.  It is not the actual construction I have an issue with, but rather how long it will take to be useful.  I often have stated that we need to change the way we think at city hall. This road construction should be extended to Dunrobin Road if not in parallel with, certainly directly subsequent to the current construction.  There are volumes of discussions about bridges that go to no where but, it would make sense for the road to be extended to a logical junction point.   Yes, I am looking at this with hindsight, but clearly common sense did not seem to have been a factor in the decision making either.  If we are going through this effort to extend the road, then it should just as well have been planed for and implemented properly the first time around.

The way that thinking needs to change is that the city should do it right the first time, even if it costs more money in the short term for a long term gain. In this situation, unless something happens,  those of us who commute along March Road, will still be grumbling under our breath a bit further up/down the road from where we presently do 15 years from now!  In a similar vein. the same could be said about the potential ward specific tax in Kanata. The potential additional tax is not what I am talking about right now, but rather the burying of power lines that it would fund. The question should not be should the residents pay extra for the benefits of buried power lines. It should be rather a question of whether or not we just make buried power lines the normal procedure. To successfully build a sound infrastructure foundation for the future things need to be done logically, consistently and efficiently NOW.

I know that we can do this. We the people are able to make this change happen. The question should always be asked how does it affect the people, and then how can we do it better. The change you want to see starts with projects like this.  If I was to simply be Alexander the candidate, I would let this issue rest until the new City Council is in place in December.  I am not that type of person.  If you are as annoyed as I am about this, contact the current city council and let them know your feelings.

I firmly believe this to be a situation of “You snooze, you lose” in getting this construction moved up schedule wise.

While I have been out knocking on doors, I clearly have not as of yet been able to talk with everyone in the ward.  To give YOU a chance to get your ideas to me, I have created a Survey on my web site.  Feel free to visit and complete it.  Last, if you do not have access to a computer, feel free to contact me via telephone or Canada Post.

 

The picture above is one of me at a Planning Meeting for the Kanata North development where I pushed for widening march road to the Dunrobin Road intersection. {West Carleton Review]