By Liz MacKenzie
The grave loss of King Edward Avenue, Lowertown’s beautiful linear park, hit me again when I read of an American initiative to remove throughways that divide impoverished neighbourhoods–-a planning practice condemned as not just an “act of neglect, but also a conscious choice.”
It was impossible not to be reminded of the experience of Lowertown, where traffic engineers again and again changed traffic routes to keep traffic out of affluent communities and speed it up though Lowertown. That was a conscious choice.
No thought was ever given to neighbourhoods or to the people whose lives would be crushed by their decisions. And that was an act of neglect.
Why was Rideau Street sacrificed to truck traffic? To spare affluent and vocal residents of Sandy Hill. How did New Edinburgh stop the Vanier Parkway extension and divert traffic through Lowertown instead? High-powered lobbying by well connected residents, that’s how.
“If not us, then who?” was not part of their equation. Lowertown, their impoverished next-door neighbour, was left to absorb all the traffic that could have, and should have, been dispersed through other communities. St. Patrick and Murray streets were soon designated as arterial roads and repurposed as one way “traffic corridors.” Lowertown became a traffic trashcan. Conscious choice.
Along these corridors, family and neighbourhood life was disrupted as roads widened, green space was paved over, front yards and street life disappeared, and the intermittent intensity of traffic, with noise and fumes was not livable.
But think about it: the decision defied logic. Now each one-way street is bumper to bumper for a couple of hours a day. After rush hour, each just carries a trickle of traffic. Residential properties became rental properties with absentee landlords; social services proliferated, more or less unchecked. Property values declined and zoning for increased building height has followed.
Traffic planning was the canary in the coal mine, and we knew it. But the voices of the traffic engineers with their fixation of accommodating cars always won. We were supposed to be impressed that they had managed to shave four minutes off commuter trips.
Cumberland, St. Patrick, Murray and parts of King Edward are designated as arterial urban roads. Murray from Sussex to King Edward is a collector road.
So what? Well here is some language from the transportation planners
They propose that both arterial roads and collector roads will provide greenery. In some parts of the urban area and villages additional roadside features include street furniture, pedestrian-scale lighting and trees and other landscaping. This greenery provides visual appeal, summer shade and a defining sense of the linear nature of these travel corridors.
Reduced speed and volumes of traffic on collector roads, compared with arterial roads, are said to make collectors more accommodating for cyclists and pedestrians. Tree planting, bus stops, community mailboxes and other streetscape features create roadways that are integrated with their neighbourhood.
But but but, does that sound like our Murray, St. Patrick or King Edward? Where are the niceties of street furniture and tree plantings or greenery? A visit to more affluent neighbourhoods such as New Edinburgh, Westboro Village, Little Italy or Hintonburg will give an idea of what an arterial roadway can look like. A result of making conscious choices.
Roads eat up a lot of our taxes. The 2023 transportation budget includes $475.3 million in capital funding and an operating budget of $355.7 million. That’s $831 million dollars!
Will any of that be spent to provide Lowertown roads and sidewalks with “visual appeal and summer shade?” Or will Lowertown and Ottawa’s other poorer neighbourhoods be neglected and shortchanged — again.
Just asking.