Airport Parkway Expansion Delay Likely

Post date: Jan 12, 2016 6:37:53 PM

A recent Ottawa Citizen article reports a Nov 2015 internal city memo that states that as a result of lower than expected collections of development charges that funding would not be available to start this project until at least 2020 or possibly even longer. That represents a delay of several years from the original plan.

Just a few more years of delay and it just may be possible to realize our preferred plan to have the Trillium Line extension to south of the Airport (planned for 2023) completed first and to evaluate the timing/need for the road expansion once the benefits of the transit expansion can be realized and evaluated. Later in January 2016 the mayor hinted that he would be supportive of re-prioritizing the Trillium line expansion ahead of the road expansion.

Both articles go on to provide the details that the City had expected 43m$ of development charges revenues annually but that going forward a more realistic projection was 26m$ annually. A city official is then quoted as saying "the new reality means that road projects will be introduced at a slower rate to match available funding". This 'new reality' is something that the CCC was already suspicious of starting back in 2012 as discussed in this post.