Minutes 2012-02-29

1) Administrative

- Agenda review, Meeting Secretary

- Approval of Minutes: Jan 25th 2012

2) Rideau St. Renewal

- last minute veto of recommended plan to remove dedicated

left turn lane at Nelson by Traffic Operations/OC Transpo

- means sidewalk along this bock becomes 1-2ft narrower

- lost opportunity to widen sidewalk by 50% on both sides

of Rideau for 130m

- Discussion: how to escalate issue

- On the Bronson Ave project, Diane Holmes along with lots of pressure from many goups (CAs, businesses, etc) contributed to a reversal of the plan to widen the road

- Not sure if issue really was actually about the cost of moving the poles are whether that was used as excuse to respond to public pressure

- staff was reluctant to add ped crossing, but under pressure were forced to redo study/ped counts and it just so happened that this time around, the counts did support the warrant for a crossing

- ped counts on the Nelson section of Rideau about double that of Bronson

3) AltaVista Corridor

- report on Feb 21 meeting with Transportation Planning staff

- request for special study in this case, including looking at actual trends in backward looking data to corroborate whether the future extrapolated trends (their usual methods for establishing need for new road capacity) are accurate

- staff too busy for that kind of backward dated analysis

- normal TMP update process is as follows: use Origin-Destination study to measure 'desire-lines' then extrapolate based on population/employment forecasts to create a demand model and feed that into the TRANS computer simulation model of the region's road network and from that comes projected need for new capacity

- 417 expansion will add significant new demand to Nicholas

- need to wait to see impact of that before adding to that demand via AVTC connection to Nicholas.

4) 417 East Widening Project

- report on Dev 13th public open house

- linkage to LRT project, ie. new lanes will be used by buses while transitway is shut-down for construction of the LRT project

- work begins summer 2012 on widening bridge over Rideau R.

- carries on over 3 yrs

- Lees Ave ramp to EB 417 will be closed for that 3 yr duration

- also Lees ave overpass will be closed for 3 months at some point in the project timeline

- cycling path on west side of Rideau R, under 417 will be closed fall 2012 to spring 2013

- overall project cost ~130m$

5) Lansdowne Re-development - Transportation Plan

- going before Transportation Committee in March

- no comprehensive report ever compiled describing cumulative impact of both day-day traffic, trucks, special event traffic + special bus shuttles to the existing neighborhood

6)W-LRT extension west of Tunneys

- updates?

7) Report on Feb 21/22 NCC Horizon 2067 Consultations

- cycling, inter-provinical transit, better use of river waterfront were all highlighted by various members of the public and acknowledged by the NCC

8) Any other business/upcoming events:

Active Files waiting for next steps:

- Downtown Moves (Opportunities to improve walking/cycling coincident

with LRT implementation)

- Interprovincial Transit Study: Report was due by end-2011

- Ottawa River Crossings Phase 2B (new bridge) Study - next PCG in Feb

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

- Footbridges:

- Rideau R. footbridge (Somerset to Donald streets)

- Rideau Canal footbridge (5th Ave to Clegg)