Updated July 4 2005

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News & status: Barry Wellar's Citizen Editorial

Ottawa doesn't need more roads

Barry Wellar
Ottawa Citizen, June 23, 2005

The campaign to expand the Queensway across Ottawa points to a bizarre obsession with road building in the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and the City of Ottawa.

During the past 10 years, segments and intersections of numerous arterial roads, as well as the Queensway itself, were expanded to solve the efficiency and congestion objectives listed in the Queensway "study" notices circulated by the ministry in partnership with the city. Incredibly, those expansions followed similar expansions extending back at least 30 years, and additional network expansions are already under consideration for the next 10 years!

Some critics call urban road expansion projects in 2005 exercises in futility, signs of incompetence and admissions of ignorance about alternative transportation options. Others are more cynical, saying they are a way of rewarding major contributors to election campaigns.

Communications with the ministry of transportation indicate that, while those perceptions may be valid, they only scratch the surface when it comes to diagnosing the "pave-it behaviour" of the ministry and the city. These are letters sent over the past year to Transportation Minister Harinder Takhar and Ottawa West-Nepean MPP Jim Watson, and copied to municipal politicians. The ministry was asked to produce two specific bodies of empirical evidence to demonstrate how its road network expansion projects would actually contribute to the sustainable development promises contained in provincial policies, plans and programs, and the campaign pledges in the Liberals' "Building Strong Communities."

Specifically, the MTO was asked to "... identify 35 or so metropolitan regions in North America for which it has been conclusively proven that the promises contained in the MTO ad have been achieved by road widenings." It was also asked to "... produce documentation to prove that the widenings of major roads in those 35 or so metropolitan regions had none of the negative consequences -- increased sprawl, increased pollution, increased fossil fuel consumption, increased infrastructure costs, etc. -- that many researchers argue are causally related to major road expansion programs in metropolitan areas in Canada and the U.S."

If that comparative evidence were produced, there would be no need for more studies and the ministry could proceed with the expansion.

The ministry replied that it had no evidence of any project -- not even one -- that satisfied the two conditions. It also acknowledged that it was not aware of the outcomes of any of the thousands of road-widening projects undertaken in metropolitan regions outside Ontario.

Questions were also raised about whether the Ontario government applies a sustainable transportation test to its projects. Inquiries sent to Mr. Takhar, Mr. Watson, MTO staff, and Environment Commissioner Gord Miller, as well as numerous searches of Ontario government websites, failed to yield any evidence that such a test is used by the ministry of transportation.
Analysis of the replies from government officials indicated that no one had any idea how to design such a test, much less apply it in evaluating a proposed road expansion project.

Accepting, therefore, that the ministry has no sustainability test -- and no idea how to design or use one -- it is hard to see any purpose in holding public meetings which, of necessity, must deal with sustainability issues. These meetings are held to satisfy a legal requirement, and let people feel they are being heard, but from a substantive point of view, they are a sham.
Two defining features of the transportation ministry -- a total unwillingness to take into account what has happened elsewhere, and the absence of a sustainability test to evaluate proposed widenings -- point to an inescapable diagnosis: The only reason the ministry expands roads is because that's the only thing it can think of.

As for the City of Ottawa, it seems to be mesmerized by the transportation ministry and rarely has an independent thought when road widenings are proposed.

The MOT has long been known for its bizarre behaviour and should have been reformed years ago. Premier Dalton McGuinty can kick-start the process by requiring the agency to apply a rigorous sustainable transportation test to all projects. But he needs to act before the Queensway widening is approved and Ottawa's transportation problems reach an entirely new level of difficulty, cost, and consequence.

Barry Wellar is a professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa.