Monthly Archives: March 2012

From Parking to Parks

Miracles do happen at City Hall.

Not often. But one is unfolding right now. Pay attention.

Instead of paving over more of our scarce parkland for vehicle parking, instead of just whining forever about the lack of City park space in our downtown neighborhoods … our parks dept has actually agreed to expand a park onto the road allowance. And removing some vehicle parking too! Yes, this miraculous green space expansion is happening right here in little ole’ Ottawa.

Chaudiere Park is a small pocket park on Elm Street in West Side Ottawa. The proposed expansion replaces on-street parking with a more livable expansion of the adjacent park. The reclaimed strip of land is about 8′ x 140′.

But it is more useful than the small dimensions might indicate. The main part of the park is for little kids — a tot lot, a wading pool, gazebo — with another third for teens in form of a resurfaced basketball court.

The strip of land along the front curb will be useful for passive functions, like sitting and conversing, resting whilst taking the dog for its walkies, people watching, etc. The new wiggley fence of the main park will actually “push” some more landscaped space out toward the passive sitting area. Right now, there are decorative boulders and perennials in this strip. Hopefully, it can be restored as an even better garden for the enjoyment of perambulators and procastinators.

I’m not sure how “fixed” the plan is. For example, the benches along the street are rather rigidly set parallel to the curb and spaced far apart. Not very sociable at all. I’d rather see them clustered in a U shape, maybe with a few two-seater benches and a single seater, sort of like a conversational grouping in your living room. Might as well talk to the neighbours if we gonna sit on our asses. And put a garbage can by sidewalk to collect those popsicle wrappers.

The benches need to be set on permeable paved surfaces if our feet aren’t to get all muddy. And why not put some plants along the curb for some greenery, plants that die down flat to the ground come winter for the convenience of snow plows? Tall decorative grasses come to mind, but surely there are others. Yes, this is pushing the greenery right out to the maximum extent. And along that curvy fence, I hope there are some real flowery shrubs of the type people like to stop and look at (eg azalea) and not just those minimally flowery ones beloved by landscape architects deemed suitable for “mass plantings” seen at 60 kmh.

Here, for those who are sceptical, is a planted bulb out on Argyle Street. Worthwhile? You betcha.

(Above: Ottawa parking spaces restored to livable street people space)

The City didn’t seem too enthused with the expand-a-park idea when I first brought it up last fall, but I’ve got to give them credit for running it up the flagpole and seeing who salutes and who boos. Thus far, the fans are far out numbering any opponents. So kudos to the parks people for stepping out of the easy confines of the official parkland box. And to Councillor Holmes for pushing the idea. If you support the park expansion, email Diane.Holmes@ottawa.ca.

Little real-world improvements like this park expansion, or the trees soon to come all along the Somerset Street viaduct (first trees in Ottawa to be planted on a bridge) are practical manifestations of the good community associations and community involvement can accomplish.

Residents of Dalhousie are invited to come out to the annual community association AGM on April 10th at 7pm at the Dal Centre to hear our guest speaker Dr Bruce Firestone talk about Intensification: Boon or Bane. There are free cookies too.

On a Clear Day, (Dead) Councillors can see forever …

Back a few months ago when there was snow on the ground, I typically played around with it a bit when sent out to conduct my onerous shovelling obligations. For the first pass, I would make my six-foot-short sidewalk have perfectly vertical snowbanks on each side. Nice straight sides, looking like the whole bank was sculpted at once. A mini Corinthian Canal:

Corinth Canal, photo from Bing. The Ottawa one was frozen.

Later, when the crisp edges started to blur, I would convert the sliced-through snowbanks into a gentle glaciated valley, with the sidewalk at the bottom and then the parabolic sides.

This is a useful metaphor for Ottawa’s sight lines and view cones.

There are a number of view planes that the official plan identifies as being protected. Contrary to what many people seem to think, no one else “owns” the view they have today, and some future development might obstruct it. There goes that argument for opposing anything above the height of your favorite window.

The view planes of the downtown (shown above) show what is in the foreground of the viewplane, and what is beyond the viewed object, in which height is also controlled so that some new building isn’t lurking just beyond the picturesque. Note for example view 16 from the Ottawa River Commuter Expressway where it crosses the O-Train. The motorists have a nifty view of Parliament Hill,  and chunk of the Market beyond it can’t have anything tall enough to be seen. Views 17 and 18 along Colonel By Drive are also of Parliament, and help explain why the Corktown ped bridge over the Canal doesn’t also cross over Colonel By (which would have been so practical and safer, but which would have interrupted the commuter’s glimpse of Parliament).

Of course, the NCC  isn’t protecting the view for commuters. It’s for the occasional visit of the Queen or Mr Obama, should they glance out the window of their limo. Which also explains why there are no view planes for transit users, since heads of state aren’t likely to arrive by OC Transpo. Some earlier versions of the Bayview Station for the east-west LRT consciously manipulated the passenger view of the downtown and Parliament to maximize the WOW factor (ascending the escalator, Billy Commuter sees unveiled the distant downtown framed by the high arched ceiling of the station, etc etc). Nice design aesthetics for the transit stations aren’t talked about much anymore. Jim thinks Chevy users can make do with side views of the road shoulder.

Here’s a  list of the protected views as given in Ottawa’s OP. Mostly they are for motorists.  http://www.ottawa.ca/en/city_hall/planningprojectsreports/ottawa2020/official_plan/vol_1/07_annexes/index.html

The LeBreton Flats viewplane is readily seen by West Siders. As the ORP climbs uphill from Sliddel intersection, the road curves and carefully-planted trees mask the view. Then, at the highest point, cresting the hill, the panorama unfolds. (Pause to suck in breath here).

This view is preserved as the road user transitions onto Wellington at the intersection of Vimy (this T intersection will someday become a + intersection when Preston is extended out to it; the turn lanes have already been installed). Notice how the Claridge buildings at the far right corner of the sight triangle on the Flats are pushed south to preserve the sight line. The plan for the Flats has a sharp edge all along the south side of the view plane, like one bank of the Corinth Canal, except made out of condo buildings six or seven stories high with the occasional tower punching higher. The north side, of course, is the flat park in front of the War Museum.

So, LeBreton is a clean example of a sight line with sharp vertical edges.

The proposed Domicile development in the Vanier area is bringing forth the issue of view cones again. Here is the Beechwood cemetary view cone:

Having drawn the view cones on a map, one would think that’s it, the rest of the city is fair game. But no, in the Beechwood Avenue case, Domicile’s opponents are arguing that buildings shouldn’t be allowed near the view cone. They want a view cone with parabolic sides.

Just how wide do they think this view cone has to be, and why didn’t they argue for a wider one when the views were being preserved? Or are people supposed to buy the land, do the planning and building plans, and then hope that they are not within whatever extra-width view plane the most-vocal group can demand? 

 And don’t forget that there is a background area too. The Beachwood protected sight line runs from Beechwood (the narrow end) to encompass Parliament Hill (at the wider end). But one cannot build further behind the Parliament target, because that would break the silhouette of the protected view against the skyline. So that no-building-zone extends beyond Parliament for some considerable distance. And the sightline cone continues to get wider and wider as it extends beyond. Once the terrain drops down to LeBreton Flats, the height line of the tallest planned building is below that of the existing buildings on Confederation Boulevard, so the sight line in effect continues over LeBreton Flats. Is that background behind Parliament Hill enough, or will Mechanicsville residents be able to oppose high rises in their area because if you extend the view cone far enough they are in the background too?

This isn’t just an argument of interest to developers. It affects all our home prices. And our children’s ability to ever afford a home. A larger cone  removes more land from redevelopment, restricting the developable land in the city, increasing scarcity, which increases land prices, which increases house prices everywhere, which makes housing less affordable, which increases the demand for high taxes to subsidize more housing for someone. Which means housing gets less affordable for more people because more of our money goes to taxes.

Sight lines are not trivial things. With vertical edges, everyone knows the rules. With (presently undefined shallow) parabolas extending the sight lines outward no one knows where the sight lines really are.

Will council open up the definition of sight lines? Whichever definition, they’d better define it precisely and firmly.

Planning in Ottawa, the Clint Eastwood Version

Last week the packed Urban Forum lecture heard and saw Dr David Gordon from Queens expound on planning and urban design in Canada’s Capital, 1800-2000. Note the cut-off year: amalgamation; also removing the necessity to venture views on current plans such as the LRT.

He reviewed planning over the century using professorial wit and hectoring. His theme was drawn from spaghetti westerns, particularly The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. You’ll see the various planning efforts allocated to these categories in the picture below. Indeed, reviewing the outline below will give you a very complete summary of the plot.

Like any short-ish commentary on a complex issue, it was incomplete, selective, and provocative. More than once I winced at his interpretation of things, such as describing the LeBreton project of 1980 (which I once lived, now live beside, and transept daily) as a great success. Maybe I am too close to it and see only the flaws. I must try to be more positive and conciliatory in life.

I was surprised — an I must confess pleased — that he favoured connecting the Vanier Arterial (later remonikered as a Parkway) to the MacdonaldCartier Bridge. While he favoured a bridge over the Rideau River between Porter and Green Islands, I always thought a tunnel made more sense. I regret to say that I was a witness at the OMB hearing that shot down that connection. No doubt I shall be wrong many more times.

He gave kind mention to the mostly forgotten railway relocation programs of the 1948-1970 period, which caused me to dig out my old papers on that subject and these I will inflict on readers in upcoming posts so that we may all be equally edified.

Here is his story line for Clint Does Ottawa:

 

Traffic calming at a very large scale

Councillor Hobbs from Kitchissippi is putting forward a long-verdue motion to transportation committee for the city to have a 40kmh speed limit. While this is referred to as a residential speed limit, I’m not sure if it would apply to local busy streets like Bronson or Scott which have 50kmh limits.

I must say I am quite opposed to this universal 40kmh speed limit.

Yup, opposed.

Note, this is sarcasm.

Not because it is too slow, but because it is still wa-a-a-a-y too fast.

There is a world-wide movement to stop the total domination of public space by motorists. One group is called Twenty is Plenty (20 refers to mph, so the equivalent is 30kmh but without the catchy phrase). People can survive 30kmh collisons with cars. High speeds kill. They alienate motorists from their environment, which leads to higher speeds and more detachment and more reckless driving.

The traditional traffic engineering solutions – more lighting, wider roads, more lanes, more signs — simply don’t work because they encourage motorists to go faster. Driving while frustrated is not a recipe for successful livable cities.

So, I’m OK with 40 on the Scott Streets, Richmond Road west of Roosevelt, maybe even Bronson or Carling, for now. These exceptional streets would be the privileged ones for motorists. But every traditional mainstreet and residential street should be 30kmh.

And it needs to be enforced, by policing, peer pressure, and better road design that encourages slower traffic with motorists engaged in driving. This story explains how the 30kmh zones elsewhere are expanding from select small areas to become city wide:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/03/22/how-london-is-saving-lives-with-20-mph-zones/

The internet abounds with similar stories.

And, as a side benefit, slower car traffic means we won’t need special cycling facilities like the Laurier separated bike lanes (SBL) all over the place, because motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists will co-exist. And the experience in The Netherlands is that once the speed advantage is removed from cars, more and more people are happy to walk or bike. Amazing.

________________________________

Here is the substance of Hobb’s motion to Transportation Committee. You might want to email your councillor with a note of support. It is good first step, but only a first step:

1)       The City of Gatineau has done it [as have many other cities worldwide, lowering speed limits is almost a trend -ed]

2)      Kitchissippi Community Associations are asking – if Gatineau can do it, why not Ottawa?   I had a recent ward council community association meeting and on all 10 of my community association lists -  traffic  and traffic speeds were the number one issues in their catchment area.

3)      At a community AGM last week there are 6 streets planning petitions on individual residential streets in their neighbourhoods in order to reduce speeds to 40km.   This is only one neighbourhood.  I already have a number of other streets that have implemented 40km or that are planning to do so.   This gives the perception that the community is starting to drive the initiative to protect their streets rather than the City being pro-active in dealing with traffic complaints and pedestrian concerns.  Neighbourhood groups that extend beyond ward boundaries are setting up pedestrian summits and forming into activist groups.  We need to get out in front of this with a big solution.

4)      Implementing 40km residential street by residential street  may result in increased costs in administering petitions and placing speed signs, where no signs would be necessary if a citywide 40km was in place.

5)      I have purchased one radar board and data collection device, and it is employed full time on residential roads to monitor speeds and volume.  This is expensive – setting up brackets and having staff constantly deployed to deal with issues in Kitchissippi neighbourhoods.  It has been in full time use since I bought it last year.

6)      There are inconsistencies in speed limits on residential roads throughout the city.  For example Meadowlands is 40km, and it is actually a collector.  This was in place prior to amalgamation, but remains today and causes citizens in Kitchissippi to ask “why not us?”.  So it would be a move towards a more consistent policy on all residential roads (except school zones and special cases where lower speeds of 30km are used) throughout Ottawa.

7)      As we build a more compact, dense City, we need to move towards policies that increase livability.  We need to encourage more pedestrian friendly and people oriented streets.

8)      The cost of implementing ATM measures is a concern.  We have $2.5M citywide for the next three years.  I have just been through an intensive exercise with City Staff to cut out more than $2M of outstanding requests from Kitchissippi Ward so we can focus on the most needed solutions with the limited dollars available.  But even with removing this $2 million worth of speed bumps, intersection narrowings, etc. I am still at almost $1 million with required and recommended speed measures left to do.  The requests for speed bumps, intersection narrowings, etc. to deal with speed is not expected to dwindle as intensification continues.

9)      I think we need to be more proactive and innovative as a City.  To look to our neighbourhood sustainability program to pick up the slack with innovation if we cannot afford to implement the physical measures to slow traffic and/or make our streets more pedestrian friendly.  Many communities don’t even want the signs or the speed bumps, yet they are frustrated with the speeds and volumes of traffic.  I am looking to implement a few pilot projects in Kitchissippi with the future goal of having a complete toolkit in Ottawa that provides layers of solutions for the community available by permit application that they can do themselves.  These initiatives would be community driven, (providing automatic buy-in as a result) and should be much less costly for the City.  For example I am pursuing a pilot project to paint a pedestrian segregated lane on a street that wants their sidewalk continued from where it stops today, but it won’t be on the City’s radar in the next 10 years and maybe longer to build one. Kids have to walk on the road anyway, so why not paint them and other pedestrians a lane?  I am also looking for a pilot to have intersection painting permits within the residential area of McKellar Heights, to give the visual clue that this isn’t a freeway, but rather a residential road.

My goal is to write this motion for staff to explore the feasibility of 40km on all Ottawa residential roads to be introduced at Transportation Committee.  I would be very pleased to have your support.

Thanks,

Katherine

Katherine Hobbs

Councillor/Conseillère – Kitchissippi

What to do with a highrise (proposed)

Right on the boundary of Hintonburg and Dalhousie, which is to say in the heart of the west side turf this blog purports to cover, at the intersection of Breezehill and Somerset, Claridge is proposing a 28 storey highrise.

The adjacent mainstreet is lively; the views of the downtown superb. No doubt the 28 floor request is an opening gambit. If he actually gets it, bonus for him. But I suspect he will be quite happy to get 18.

Why 18? Because that’s the height of the 30+ year old apartment a block west at Bayswater. Funnily enough, opponents of high rises often cite “inappropriate context” when opposing high rises, but no one brought up context at a recent meeting held by the Hintonburg Community Assoc (HCA), perhaps because of the existing 18 storey building a half block away, nor the 10 storey building, also about 30 years old a half block south of Claridge, nor the 10 storey OCISCO building a few blocks west.

First, the meeting: the turnout was typically large, and had the usual mix of calm and emotional attendees. Nothing like a proposed high-rise to bring out the crowds. The HCA was busy selling memberships.

The HCA leadership handled the meeting very well. Much better than some other anti-development public meetings that remind me more of lynch-mobs than anything else, with the chair persons leading the chorus, developers filling in the role of the local [insert name of minority group here]. In this case, the leaders reviewed the appropriate neighborhood plan (well, one of them … more on this in a minute), and the proposed development, and actually devoted the first half hour to extracting from the audience a list of those things that were good about the development. And the audience, somewhat timidly given the sceptical (not quite hostile) environment, came up with a number of reasons why the Claridge proposal deserved a hearing.

Then came the deluge of complaints. They ranged from

  • traffic: people who live there will come and go, sometimes by car
  • danger to schoolchildren in the adjacent schoolyard who would be playing too close to a high-rise condo (unspecified risk, apparently it is self-evident that this is of great imminent danger to play near a high-rise, although another faction of the community wants the children even closer, by co-locating a daycare in the base of said highrise)
  • children walking to school will face busier streets
  • it will be ugly
  • residents will be too rich; there isn’t enough “affordable” units; high rises are socially alienating and crime will go up, the building will fill with undesirables;  there won’t be family units (except for those who complained all the kids in the new building will fill up Devonshire school and keep other deserving local children out of Devonshire and forcing them to attend other schools without adjacent dangerous highrises),  etc
  • the additional residents will fill up all the restaurants and locals won’t get reservations
  • it violates the spirit and nature of the local CDP

Other than the usual anti-highrise NIMBY arguments, two arguments stood out as key: traffic, and the CDP. Let’s look at each.

Traffic: all the vehicular traffic for the building (condos and storefronts and offices) is currently proposed to enter and exit from a widened laneway that runs between Breezehill and Bayswater. The builder is apparently not opposed to southbound traffic being restricted, so that all users would exit northwards to a mid-block entrance on Somerset. This puts a lot of traffic crossing the sidewalk (undesirable) and the sight line to the east is short due to the bad hump in the road as Somerset goes over the O-Train. Alternatively, traffic could be (partially?) permitted to use Breezehill, which really exercises the Devonshire parents. (Other traffic handling measures have not been explored).

No one mentioned if the existing 216 or so apartments already existing at Bayswater and Somerset are a major traffic hazard to kids, other pedestrians, or overload the neighborhood with traffic. There is apparently no traffic study yet.

But IF the proposed Claridge building is too much traffic, then what does that mean for all the other intensification developments proposed in the Bayview-Carling CDP, also accessed via Breezehill? Will any form of intensification be traffic free? Obviously not, so when the lands along the east side of Breezehill and further south (which includes several whole blocks of land) are redeveloped as high rises or townhouses, or even the fabled six storey magic height that is harmonious-with-all-good-things, won’t there be a lot more traffic on Breezehill anyway? Why oppose just the first one in?

One speaker had the HCA meeting had the solution: they complained Devonshire lacked a drop-off car lane for parents to drive their kids to school. Let’s leave aside for a minute why parents don’t simply boot the kids who are 8 and older out the door and tell them to take a hike, or let them ride the school bus, do we really want to take an urban area school with limited schoolyard and convert more of it to a drop off lane? Don’t go there.

The condo will debouch about one car a minute at rush hour if there is one exit; and about one car every two minutes if there are two exits. Multiply this by the dozen or so so intensification developments that will appear over the next two decades, and Breezehill will be seeing a lot of traffic. Telling developers to build their high rises elsewhere won’t reduce traffic in Hintonburg either. We’ve got to face up to fact: there won’t be enough room on the streets for everyone to drive, whether they be existing or new residents. Existing residents don’t have a monopoly on the streets. Opposing the Claridge condo because it will generate traffic is merely the first round of a whack-a-mole game that no one will win.

The CDP:  The Hintonburg area has just completed a main-street CDP that imposes a six storey height limit. They are justifiably proud of their plan. But even many HCA members doubt how faithfully the city and developers will honour it.

And it is the focus on the CDP at the recent public meeting that bothered me. I noticed two major flaws in the CDP arguments.

To hear the people at the meeting, or to read complaints like this one  http://www.offhand.ca/ , one would think that the CDP was the ultimate planning document. But it isn’t. It is a fairly low-level one. At the top is the provincial direction, to intensify. Followed by the Official Plan, which calls for intensification. And the Transit-oriented-development mandate that draws a radius around each transit station and directs that these areas be intensified, in part because the development charges of these high rises will be paying for the LRT. (The Claridge proposal falls within not just one, but two of these radii.) So the Claridge proposal just happens to fit nicely with these higher-level plans and directives, and their hired planners will be arguing that to Planning Committee, and then Council, and then the OMB. It is insufficient to compare the Claridge proposal only to the Hintonburg CDP, it needs to be seen in the larger context. To focus only on one CDP when evaluating the condo plan is insufficient, bordering on misleading.

The second flaw in the CDP argument comes from the claim it “violates the spirit and intent of the CDP”. Now the catch is that the Claridge highrise technically and legally isn’t in the CDP zone, it starts an inch south of it. But it is also equally close to the Bayview-Carling CDP that calls for a corridor of high rises along the O-train corridor. So if one is to honour the spirit and intent of the adjacent CDP, why should it be only the Hintonburg CDP and not the Bayview CDP? This of course is dangerous ground. As much as people argue the proposed Claridge building is out of context when looking west, it is in context when looking east. No one mentioned at the HCA meeting that the Equity site a hundred meters east is already zoned for 25 residential stories and has been for about 20 years. Oh oh.

And no one mentioned the Hintonburg Hub proposal, one long block north of Claridge. We don’t yet know what height it will come in at. Social housing providers aren’t immune to economic reality, and they don’t find six floors attractive economically either. I wonder if those who are so exercised about Claridge going above six will be so vocal when social housing goes higher. (The adjacent OCISCO social housing building is already 10).

The arguments pro and con the development could go on forever, drawing from the standard list of NIMBY and pro-high rise rationales. To some extent, the HCA meeting was like a ritual dance, where the “little people” are heard, preserving social order, until their delegates at City Hall make the Big Decision. Personally, I wouldn’t give good odds for Claridge getting 28. He will get 18. If Planning Committee insists on lower, he’ll be off to the OMB which is almost certain to give him at least 18, maybe even the full 28. The manoeuvering over this project will be interesting to watch.

 

 

 

Spagetti dinner on the No 2 Bus

 

It was a hot and sunny four o’clock as I left Loblaws in Westboro.

My two cloth bags didn’t seem to have much in the line of groceries – yogurt (on sale!), cheese blocks (on sale!), oranges (on sale!) and a few other things already forgotten —  but still set me back seventy two dollars and change. Heading out the door I heard, then saw, the bus just taking off. That’s fine, I thought, the next one will have fewer people on it. Number two’s come constantly.

Ahead of me, just short of the bus shelter, was a young woman who also missed the bus. Her plastic bags strewn on the pavement,  she bent over gathering spilled groceries into the flimsy carriers. I can hear the clink of bottles. Wince.

I got to the bus stop. I stood waiting in the warm sunshine.  She was inside the glass shelter. Grocery bags plopped down unceremoniously on the wet and dirty concrete floor. I mentally reviewed my inventory: nope, I hadn’t an extra cloth bag to “loan” her, just the two I had already filled. The woman, a girl really, looked like a typical student. Early twenties, zipped-up college fleece, even though the day is hot. One-person-sized grocery order.

Clink of the bottles again. Along with the pale green plastic bags Galen Weston supplied, I notice she had a four pack of green coolers. Not the good Woody Mexican Lime that the LCBO stopped carrying before Christmas, but the anemic Hard Lemonade ones. She also had a Loblaw’s wine store bag with two bottles. Grocery priorities. Typical student?

A moment later I heard a glugging sound, and noticed she was still sitting on the bench, but with bottle bottom to the sky, wine gurgling out of the bottle at a high rate straight down her throat. About a fifth of the bottle gone in one gulp, she screwed the cap back on and struggled to get it back into the bag. I studied the street. Then stared west, willing a bus to appear.

The No 2 arrived, and the small crowd of travellers got on. She struggled to gather up her bags, the sound of glass bottles dragging over the concrete. She stumbled into the bus, falling to her knees,  groceries spilling onto the floor. Bottle of tomato sauce. Bottle of something else. A PC block of cheddar.  A baguette – a store-brand one, not the expensive ACE ones – folded in half to fit into the bag. The driver giggled. The girl gathered up the goods and lurched into the sideways seat behind the driver.  Girl leans back, closes eyes. Sleeping?

Another stop, another woman gets on, with an oversize jogging stroller and a fragrant box of French fries in hand. There is a major struggle to get the stroller into the bus. The driver giggles. She asks the girl to move, who drags her bottles across the aisle to the first regular seat. Clink, clunk. She misses two of the handles, so the bags sit on the floor in the middle of aisle, contents spewed on the floor. One of the coolers slips out of the cardboard carrying case.  It rolls on the floor.

The woman with the stroller tries to engage the girl in conversation, in thanks for having vacated the seat near the door. She waves her child’s hand. She doesn’t seem to recognize that the girl is drunk. So young, so well dressed, so typical student.

Next stop. Another guy gets on the bus. He has obviously had a hard life. He is clean and yet scruffy. Greets another woman in seat in front of me. They haven’t seen each other in some time. They catch up on news.

She’s been clean for a while now. Out of rehab and got a job at _____. She’s broken up with her boyfriend, who is back in jail for two years. She avoids answering where she lives now, the police don’t know where she is so they don’t hassle her. She doesn’t seem to connect the lack of hassles with going clean. He is still living at Saint _____’s. I make a mental note of that, I didn’t know they had a sheltered residence.  Neighborhood trivia.  Their conversation continues: The police – haven’t caught me yet, he says matter-of-factly.

At Parkdale, the woman with the big stroller decides to get off. Her’s was a pretty short ride. With that big wheeled stroller, why didn’t she just walk it? She struggles to get off, dragging the stroller backwards out the front door while holding her still-steaming fries and trying to pass three Asians who just got on and are trying to make themselves skinnier so she can get by. Eventually they get off, she gets off, they back on.  The driver giggles.

The girl in the meantime has awoken. She starts up, gathering up her bags from centre aisle and lurching for the back door. Bottles drag and clank. I await the pungent smell of red wine. Surely a bottle must break. She sounds like 5am on a blue box Monday morning.  Another passenger presses the yellow strip to activate the doors. She stumbles out, the bottles dropping onto the concrete sidewalk as they are being dragged rather than carried. None break.   She  lurches into the shelter and sits down, eyes shut. The corners of her mouth turn down so severely they must be weighted by bricks on strings. The unhappiness is so expressive, so exaggerated, it is unbelievable except that she lies there in the sun tidy and well dressed with her college-branded fleece zipped up tight on a hot spring day.

Baguette, tomato sauce, brick of cheese, red wine. Was there perhaps a packet of spaghetti in there too? Will there be wine left to go with that comfort food, or will she wake up hours later with the spaghetti gone cold and soggy? Does she even connect wine with food, or does it have another purpose?

The bus moves on. I scan the streets for a police car, a para-medic. What will I do if I see one? After Bayswater  there is a long gap before the next stop at Preston. The bus speeds up. Making up for lost time. I get out there. Thank you for the ride, I say to the driver. He giggles. I stand up right, my cloth bags firmly in my hands. Before the light can change for me to cross, another No 2 pulls up. Much emptier. The driver looks bored.

By time I get home, my resolution to do something has fled. She becomes, like the other passengers, an anecdote about My Trip to Loblaws. I sit on the back porch and we laugh about the matter of fact description of the boyfriend in jail and the police haven’t got me yet.

The girl with the makings of the spaghetti dinner and bottles of wine wakes me up around 1am and keeps me awake for an hour. Then I forget about her, until she wakes me up at 5am this morning.

Will telling the story get her out of my life?

Not inspiring confidence

The City held an open house last night on the OLRT. There wasn’t anything new there that you wouldn’t know about if you read the papers and this blog.

I did feel a sense of  insincerity about it though. Quickly announced, not much content, a quick visit from Hiz Honnor: I got the feeling the event was held so that some lawyer could point to it later on, at a hearing, saying “See, we had lots of public consultation, blah blah blah”.

Rather more disturbing was the number of minor errors on the display boards. Many of them I have seen before, and pointed out at consultation sessions. But they don’t get fixed.

And I must say I don’t mind if ordinary citizens get mixed up which is Scott Street and which is Albert. But it does bug me when city planners mislabel Albert as Scott. Accuracy and good knowledge starts at the top.

 

At Tunneys Pasture, the City planted a dense grove of trees along the north edge of the transitway cut. After 30 years or so, these have grown to a nice mature size. They are to be cut down, replaced by a bus stop, on the other side of which the city proposes to plant a new double row of trees. Why not simply move the bus stop a few meters north and keep the mature trees and don’t plant the new ones? But trees seem to be just decorations, accessories, the throw-pillows of transit decor.

And why is Ottawa’s largest (or maybe it’s the second largest) office building, the 29 storey Place de Ville, home of Transport Canada no less, labelled as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Building, when they are mere tenants in another multipurpose building? And the Bank of Nova Scotia, located next door, left years ago; and ditto the Marriott Hotel is not Scotiabank either. Nor is there a BofM at Kent/Albert anymore; try SlatOr. I’ll forgive the old Delta not being The National, as that is new, but the new Delta replaced the Crowne Plaza about a year ago.

It doesn’t inspire confidence.

It also gets tiresome at public consultation sessions when suggestions are batted away. The Lees Avenue station, for example, delivers all its users out onto the street above, where they can make an at-grade crossing to the Ottawa U satellite campus there. Now students are disproportionate users of transit, and if I may so observe, somewhat prone to feeling immortal and above the law. I therefore predict there will be widespread crossing of this street against the light. And the City enthuses about putting lots more traffic at that intersection, where peds are just so much collatoral delay to motorists.

 So why not simply connect the platform to the University property after going under Lees? Ah, the answer is that “such details are to be considered later”, perhaps when the adjacent property owners “offer to pay for the connection”. My answer to that, based on decades and decades of hearing the same cock and bull story from the city, is that when the final plans are being shown such suggestions will be deemed ”too late to make any changes because they would delay the whole project and you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”

The ritual of public consultation grows wearying.