Councillor Doucet’s office has just issued a media advisory about a press conference he is holding tomorrow as part of the ongoing saga of Ottawa’s transit planning. I’ve pasted it below.
Press Release
Deputy City Manager confirms no tunnel for a least 7 to 11 years – and special tax levy required. City’s matching funds are no longer on table for any rail project.
At 11 am. on Thursday, July 24, in the Richmond Room at Ottawa City Hall, Councillor Clive Doucet will share responses he received from city staff confirming timing and cost implications of Transit Option 4.
Concerned that the current transit plan will do nothing for the next decade but invest heavily in more buses, Doucet put a number of questions to city staff.
What some of the responses mean for Ottawa:
The old plan had no special levy for transit and built rail first. The new plan will require as special levy to implement and will be buses first. The city’s matching funds that were available under the old plan are no longer on the table. They have been re-appropriated to busways and other projects.
“The new plan will invest approximately $900 million for about 65 kilometres of exclusive busways and $600 kilometres for buses…”
This means more congestion in the city core, more diesel pollution, and no relief from rising fuel costs.
With the city poised to spend hundreds of millions on more buses and busways, our priorities have become reversed. Clive will point out that “people are right to want light rail first, it’s the smart choice but that’s not what is going to happen. The train Ottawa is expecting is a bus”.
Questions and answers, and backgrounders will be available at the press conference.
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Fellow Travellers 
July 23rd, 2008 
5095 Comment from
12:50 pm 
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This makes complete sense, we already have oodles of Transitway, and we have a pretty good bus infrastructure. Trains are infrastructure heavy even without boring a hole through downtown. Expecting trains to immediately go thundering around town is unrealistic.
Our city has a strong bus infrastructure and a poorly designed city. Regardless of transit option, Ottawa’s layout means that we’re going to have to spend a lot of money, for few riders.
The correct route to follow is to spend the next 20 years working on residential infill in the suburbs, and decentralize office and shopping districts. In the meantime plan transit routes, but serve them with buses. When we get enough people taking transit, start work on a train system.
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