2012-06-27 Minutes

Jun 27th 2012, 7pm

Dalhousie Community Ct

room 6, ground floor (RHS at the back)

Present: Ida Henderson (DCA), Cam Robertson (Dows Lake Residents Association, Jordan Charbonneau (CCCA), John Verbaas (ASH), Julia, Wayne, Onno (Lorne Ave residents)

Regrets: Leslie, George

Draft Minutes:

1) Administrative

- Agenda review, Meeting Secretary

- Approval of Minutes: May 30th, 2012

2) W-LRT Corridor Selection (west of Tunney's Pasture) - Cam Robertson

• • high priority assigned to serving Tunney's Pasture conveniently

  • Carling route would require xtra transfer for Tunney's passengers

  • Carling route would require termination of N-S LRT at Carling

  • Note: was unclear why E-W and N-S LRT could not both run in O-Train trench, also unclear if in the future N-S LRT was planned to terminate at Bayview or inter-line through the downtown

  • Much higher transit use occurs to Tunney's than to Riverside Hospital which is also on the transitway, so consultants conclude that even if LRT was on Carling, not as many people would use it to reach the Civic Campus

  • project team indicated they would still provide more detailed info re. their quantitative comparisons of the 15 options

  • CCC consensus was that we were surprised the City politicians had agreed to the report, (which basically discounts Carling from further analysis), when there was so little detail included describing how the scores of the different options were attained.

  • This is all the more the case considering there appears to be fairly wide consensus support among many groups for Carling and considerable opposition to the corridors that were carried forward from many groups. We would expect that the study team would have to provide very good explanations for discounting Carling and we didn't feel that what was provided in the report met that standard

    • - many other details are not clear

    • - how did the team translate cost differentials into the points system in the evaluation?

    • - no detail outlining how it could be that Carling was > 2x more costly

    • - how did the team translate travel time differences into the points system in the evaluation?

    • - how did the study team translate extra all day ridership and transit oriented development advantages of Carling into the evaluation

  • these are all details that are not visible to the PCG or in the report on which the transportation committee and council based their descision

  • we agreed a letter to Transportation committee would be a good idea

3) East-End Ottawa River Inter-provincial Crossing

• • public opposition to a bridge continues, includinng a 400 person rally at the public open house in Orleans in June

  • a change from the past is the groups are increasingly bringing forward a message of 'no bridge anywhere' as opposed to 'no bridge in my area'

  • for the 1st time the Citizen has acknowledged in their editorializing re. the bridge that it will not be a solution to the downtown truck problem (ie. acknowledging that by 2031 we would have about as many trucks downtown as we have today)

  • the mayor has now come out publically against any bridge at all either, with a msg that it will not be a solution to the truck problem downtown

  • it is unclear what is the mayor's strategy as he provided no opinion re. any other solution to the truck problem downtown

  • the consultant's transportation report outlines several scenarios for distribution of trucks in 2031 assuming a new bridge existed. In all cases the number of trucks at Chaudiere's increases from today, on Macdonald-Cartier is about the same as today. Ie. the new bridge absorbs new growth of trucks but does not reduce the problem from today's level

  • in all cases there will be more trucks downtown than on the new bridge

  • no scenario was analyzed which involved the shifting of all non-local trucks from downtown (Chaudiere and Macdonald-Cartier) to the new bridge and it is unclear why such a scenario has not been contemplated in the study report.

  • DCA will be communicating their point of view that "any bridge project must lead to the removal of through trucks from downtown (including the Chaudiere's bridge)

  • Action Sandy Hill is working on a similar statement

3) AltaVista Transportation Corridor (AVTC)

- David Chernushenko's office to hire traffic engineer/planner to crtitique the justification used for the AVTC

4) Transporation Master Plan 2013 Update

• • work schedule has been tabled with Transportation Committee

  • public consultation events will happen in the fall 2012 and winter 2013 and CCC will contribute on topics such as:

o overall policies and goals

o prioritization and phasing of projects (particularly the AVTC)

o affordability and role of Development charges in funding new roads

Adjourned: 8:30

Next mtg: Wed Sep 26