Ottawa East Community Association Old Town Hall

  
Alta Vista Corridor Environmental Assessment

Press

Alta Vista Corridor specific:

Urban & traffic planning in general:

Colin Hine's letter to the Citizen

Stop the madness of Alta Vista road

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Re: Stop the madness of building roads, May 16.

A big "hear, hear" to columnist Ken Gray whose column is right on the mark. He suggests that "perhaps Ottawa has begun to realize the folly of roads." I'm not so confident.

He cites Councillor Peter Hume's standing up to federal and provincial governments as they tried to extend the freeway section of Highway 174 to Rockland. But Mr. Hume supported plans to approve the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor.

Arguments for and against this road were ongoing for many years. Citizens' groups made a strong challenge against the road, citing environmental, road capacity, social and economic concerns similar to those identified by Mr. Gray. All of these issues were negated by the consulting firm that performed the environmental assessment. Council accepted this view.

Design work has now commenced on a section of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, known as the Ottawa Hospital-Riverside Drive link, and construction is slated to start in 2010. This is also the year that council is slated to consider the future need for the rest of this road -- connections to Nicholas and the Queensway via a new bridge across the Rideau River as well as a link to Conroy at Walkley. This new road will compete with proposed north-south transit options currently being considered. It will turn Nicholas and the Queensway into even larger rush-hour parking lots than they are now.

Why is work proceeding on the hospital link in advance of a decision for completion of the transportation corridor? The link alone serves no practical purpose. Instead of a link to Riverside, the hospital would be better served by improved bus transit services and at much lower costs. The estimated cost for the link at $65 million and growing for a 1.8-kilometre, two-lane road, is ridiculous. Money set aside for this venture could be better spent on more pressing infrastructure priorities in the city. Land that the road might use could then be set aside for community-oriented urban intensification purposes.

Colin Hine, Ottawa

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Kris Nanda's letter to the Citizen

Cancel corridor

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

I am glad to see that Mayor Larry O'Brien and council are at least saying that Ottawa cares about the environment and climate change with their endorsement of Earth Hour.

But if our civic leaders are really serious about climate change, they need to move beyond symbolic events and take concrete action by scrapping unneeded and environmentally-unfriendly road projects that will only lead to an increase in vehicle emissions.

A good place to start is to remove the Alta Vista transportation corridor from the city's Official Plan. By not committing to spend more than $60 million for the project from its capital budget, the city can show it really does care about the environment and the well-being of future generations -- those funds could better re-allocated on another project that would respond to climate change. Time for council members to walk the walk -- not just talk the talk.

Kris Nanda, Ottawa

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Ottawa Citizen Editorial

On Tuesday April 5, 2005, an editorial by the Ottawa Citizen called for the removal of the Alta Vista corridor road from the official plan citing fiscal imprudence and inconsistency with north-south light rail plans. This expensive road would risk undermining north-south light rail and we don't have hundreds of millions of tax dollars to waste.

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Corridor of Smog article in the April/May issue of Ottawa City magazine

The April/May issue of Ottawa City magazine includes an article entitled Corridor of Smog, which chronicles the struggle to get smart growth alternatives considered in the Alta Vista corridor.

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Pierre Johnson's letter to the Citizen

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Planning error
Re: 'Inadvertent' loss of light rail right-of-way at Bayview

How could deputy city manager Ned Lathrop, who spends so much time boasting about Ottawa's Smart Growth plans and who is so vigilant to protect land that is earmarked for roadways, get caught looking the other way when the NCC sells land needed for the O-train expansion?

I wish I was surprised, but this is the same city that challenged an amendment to its Official Plan to include the Prince of Wales rail bridge as a transit corridor, even though inter-provincial transit is big problem. This is also the same planning department that refuses to allow vacant lands on Lees Avenue to be used as temporary soccer fields because they are in a section of their sacred Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, even though they claim they don't plan to build that part of their car-centric project for 8 to 10 years.

Pierre Johnson
President, Ottawa East Community Association

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Don Fugler 's letter to the Citizen

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Misleading studies
 
I read Randall Denley's column on Thursday entitled "Let's Smite the Commuter Cult", where he complains that light rail is being promoted by the City without adequate factual justification. Normally this would seem like a logical request; transportation solutions should be justified by solid demographic and engineering data.

However, let's look at how this is being handled for road promotion, specifically the Alta Vista Parkway. After years of study and hundreds of thousands spent, we have a proposed solution of a four lane highway through Alta Vista.

According to City staff and the consultant, compared to a transit alternative, a four lane highway creates fewer greenhouse gases, has a lower impact on surrounding communities, improves quality of life, improves air quality, encourages walking, and increases transit usage. Not only that, their calculations show that building a new four lane road will not encourage higher traffic volumes. So it seems that you can commission transportation studies but you will not necessarily be closer to the truth.
  
Don Fugler, Ottawa

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Pierre Johnson's letter to the Citizen

"Smart growth" is a sham

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Council voted today to keep the $5 million in the 2005 capital budget for a road in the Alta Vista Corridor. Implicitly we can expect the remaining $68 million which is now in the city's capital plan to be spent in the next few years unchallenged. What a fitting tribute to "smart growth" that such an ill-conceived cars-first project be approved on the fourth day of the year's first and earliest-ever major smog advisory.

Here we are four years into the 20-year plan to get us to "smart growth" by 2021 and we have less transit service than we had in 2001 and hundreds more kilometres of roadway to show for it. Let's stop the PR charade and be honest: Wake up and smell the pollution, this town puts cars first. "Smart growth" is a lie.

Pierre Johnson
President, Ottawa East Community Association

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Sherry McPhail's letter to the Citizen

More roads aren't the answer

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Re: Neighbourhood in jeopardy, Sept. 2.

Many residents in the bordering communities are against a four-lane parkway that is in the works for the Alta Vista transportation corridor. Building a big road through the corridor will bring more cars downtown and to city-centre neighbourhoods. The law of induced traffic will ensure that more cars are in circulation as a result of more road capacity.

What's surprising is that Alta Vista community associations, including my Riverview Park Community Association, haven't publicly represented the strong opposition to such a roadway. With the mayor and many councillors having run on "smart growth" platforms during the last election, I would expect that they would also publicly oppose this type of project.

This city needs smarter, forward-looking solutions. We need to move people, not cars. We need clean transit to support the growing suburbs. Instead of building new roads and widening old ones, give the people "world-class" transit (trains, not buses) to match our status as this country's capital city.

Sherry McPhail, Ottawa

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Where’s the transit?

[Media Release : Tuesday March 30 / 04 ]

No Expressway!
Citizens Reject Environmental Assessment Outcome for Alta Vista Corridor

On Tuesday, March 30, City of Ottawa and Delcan Corporation, will host an Open House at the RA Centre ( Clarke Room) on Riverside Drive. They will present findings from the Environmental Assessment on the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, which recommends building a four-lane road in the corridor linking Conroy Road to the Queensway at Nicholas Street. Unhappy both with the EA process and its outcome, Citizens for Healthy Communities (CHC), a coalition of community groups from the affected area, will hold a companion ( 'contra' ) session in the neighbouring Rideau Room, to provide information on their concerns and on the preferred alternatives.

Originally proposed in the 1990s, among the recommendations of the South East Sector Transportation Study, the Alta Vista expressway has met with consistent opposition from citizens both to the south and to the north of the Rideau River. As a result of that opposition—opposition based on concerns about the negative impact on adjacent communities, as well as the incompatibility of roadway expansion with the smart growth objectives of Ottawa’s Official Plan—the previous Council moved that the route be designated as a ‘transportation corridor’ and required that the environmental assessment include a transit-only option.

Furious that the consultants chose to interpret Council’s instructions ‘that a transit-only solution be evaluated as one of the options’, as ‘to evaluate whether transit should be an option’—an option they rejected—CHC demand that a transit-only option be evaluated, as per Council’s direction; that the analyses of options include the impact of induced traffic; or that the EA be shut down. CHC are asking also that a dedicated transit link to the Alta Vista hospitals be introduced at the earliest possible opportunity and that there be no further roadway development in the corridor until O-Train expansion plans have been implemented.

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Quentin Bristow 's Citizen Guest Column on Transportation

THE CASE FOR LIGHT-RAIL IN ALTA VISTA

The Alta Vista transportation corridor, beginning at the Walkley Road/Conroy Road intersection, carves a green swath (including allotment gardens) through the fairly densely populated residential area between there and Riverside Drive north of Smyth Road. It then crosses the old landfill site adjoining Riverside Drive and continues on the other side of the Rideau River before meeting the Queensway at Nicholas Street.

It is the subject of an environmental assessment to determine if this land should be the site of a new road, or some other transportation system. We should opt for light-rail rather than another road, or build nothing at all.

The projection now is for 400,000 more people inside the city boundary by 2021. If this turns out to be even remotely accurate, then inner-city greenspace will be snatched for development, little by little, until only the most heavily used and treasured park areas will remain exempt.

For almost every one of those extra people, there will also be an extra vehicle. We surely know by now that even if we were to widen every street in the city to six lanes, there would still be daily gridlock with between 300,000 and 400,000 extra vehicles. The air pollution levels would soar and we would have the same frequency of smog alerts as Toronto does now - and maybe more.

A two-lane parkway-type "road-only" solution would be the thin edge of an eventual gridlock wedge. No matter how modest the initial scale, experience shows that eventually there would be heavy pressure to remove any initial restrictions on truck traffic or those imposed by high-occupancy-vehicle lanes.

Ideally there would be no access points between Walkley Road and the Ottawa General Hospital complex, but even if that brave decision were to be taken at the outset, there would be continuing pressure as time went on to revisit that and add new access points. That in turn would mean more and more cut-through traffic in adjacent residential areas, as the road gradually morphed into a major transportation artery, comparable with Carling Avenue or St. Laurent Boulevard.

Critics of a light-rail solution argue that
- the population density is not high enough to make it viable, and
- the necessary funding will never be available, and even if it were, it would never be cost effective.

The first argument is like saying that residential streets cannot be built until there are enough houses without road access to justify them. The reality is that development only occurs where there are roads already, and that population and employment centres eventually coalesce along them. History shows that the same is true for mass transit. A geographical plot of the highest house prices in the United Kingdom turns out to be a map of the country's railways. This has also happened in Montreal, where the metro lines now have the heaviest population concentrations. It is also worth noting that the capital cost of putting down iron rails on a bed of gravel no more than about 15 metres wide pales in comparison to the outlay for building even a modest two-lane parkway, which with a median will eat up a swath of perhaps twice that width of greenspace for its entire length.

The light-rail solution is clearly the mobility mode of the future for Ottawa, as it has been for more than a century in France and England. There is no question that if the level of service is good enough, with heated waiting areas and park 'n' ride arrangements, then people will use it, rather than pay hefty parking fees downtown. It must, however, be the first piece of the puzzle, designed to accornmodate additional feeder lines; a Hunt Club Road line would be an obvious next step

A crucial proviso for the light-rail solution is that the technology must be based on electric traction. Diesel engines such as the O-Train are noisy and add significant pollution. Electric traction, which is inherently quieter, effectively pushes the pollution problem back to the electricity generating station, where it can be tackled with large scrubbers and related technology, which is not feasible for individual diesel locomotives.

As for the economics, the short answer is that no city in Canada, or anywhere else for that matter, will ever be able to raise the funds alone for a mass-transit system with a level of service good enough to entice people out of their cars. Mass-transit history in many countries shows it is also unlikely that it will break even for many years, if ever. We never question the huge subsidies that go to roads in this country, or the cost in terms of our quality of life as we count the number of gear changes of those huge cement trucks by counting the jet-black mushroom clouds of diesel fumes that accompany them. The other levels of government must come to the table with funding for mass transit - just as the taxes of the whole nation paid for Montreal's metro a generation ago.

Quentin Bristow is an Ottawa writer.

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Eric Lascelles and Ross Finnie's Citizen Guest Column on Transportation

BIG NEW ROADS FEED SPRAWL, POLLUTION

Ottawa has made tentative plans for a huge new road project, called the Alta Vista transportation corridor. The corridor will cut across the Rideau River south of the end of Nicholas Street and through to the south end of the city, with the stated intent of reducing traffic.

The only problem is, new roads don't reduce traffic. Just ask the drivers of Cincinnati. A revealing study published last year shows that up to 43 per cent of congestion in that city was caused merely by expanding the area's road network. In fact, congestion would have grown less rapidly if no new or wider highways had been built at all.

Similarly, economists looking at 12 British road projects meant to unclog highways found that total traffic volumes, including old and new roads together, greatly exceeded previous levels. Another study of 46 U.S. cities showed those that added the most new road capacity per person in the 1990s saw the annual time spent in traffic increase by significantly more than those cities that added the least new road capacity per person.

Does this all sound odd? It shouldn't. New roads do far more than merely rebalance existing traffic. They also encourage a number of very undesirable trends: an increase in car usage, a decrease in public transit use, suburban sprawl and significant environmental damage, not to mention a huge price tag.

Repeated studies show that building new roads does little to reduce traffic. The reason is best summarized by the Law of the Constant Travel-Time Budget: Individuals seek not to minimize their travel time, but rather to hold their travel time at a level they deem acceptable.

Simply put, building a new road that halves commute time will simply cause individuals to move twice as far away from their destination. The result is more sprawl, more cars, more trips and more travel at peak hours. All until the traffic problem the corridor was meant to fix becomes as bad as before. Meanwhile, we'll have another expensive road to pay for, more pollution and
more sprawl.

The perils of building new roads extend beyond this basic paradox. An increase in car Usage causes a proportional decrease in public transit ridership.

In Ottawa, the viability of commuter rail links and existing bus routes decreases with every road built, not only because of ridership lost directly to cars, but also because increased road access encourages suburban developments that render public transit impractical (not to mention further encouraging car use). Is this the sort of "smart" growth Ottawa wants?

Suburban developments come at the expense of downtown development. In Europe, cities thrive with four times the population density of the average North American city. This dense city structure permits Europeans to avoid car use, making 60 per cent of all trips by walking, biking or
public transit.

In contrast, only 13 per cent of trips in the United States do not involve the private vehicle. Canada cannot be much better.

Of course, the ultimate irony of the proposed road is that it flies in the very face of the recently released Ottawa 2020 plan. That document touts a "city of villages" focused on "high density, mixed use, pedestrian- and transit-oriented development."

Yet this mammoth road project is proposed simultaneously. In all fairness, a few less pernicious alternatives are on the table for consideration. One possibility is that public transit lanes may accompany the road. Another is that the corridor could be used for public transit only.

These two options are certainly superior to the road-only proposal, but according to public transit advocates, such spending could better be used in other parts of the city that do not currently
have adequate bus service.

The total cost of the proposed Alta Vista transportation corridor is expected to exceed $106 million, perhaps significantly. Over its lifetime, the road will also require significant maintenance and will result in damage projected at $20.6 million in road accidents and $6.6 million in air pollution. These Figures ignore the harm to the Rideau River ecosystem that a new bridge would cause.

Portland, Oregon, passed a law requiring that no more than 40 miles (64 kilometres) of highway be built in that city over 40 years. The money saved was shifted into light-rail projects. Today, Portland is widely hailed as a model for the world ? its rail initiative receives a 90-per-cent approval rating.

Ottawa needs to start making some very serious decisions about its future. Throwing money at a project that will simultaneously encourage car use, suburban sprawl and pollution seems like
a very silly way to begin.

Eric Lascelles, who grew up in Ottawa, is doing graduate studies at Queen's University. Ross Finnie lives in Old Ottawa South and commutes to Queen's, where he is a professor.

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Mike Lascelles article from the September 2002 issue of OSCAR (Ottawa South Community Association Report)

Cars or Public Transit vs. Parks and Garden Plots
The Alta Vista Transportation Corridor Choices
ECOS Update

The City of Ottawa and Delcan Corp., its consultants, are conducting an environmental assessment to determine whether a road or transitway should be built along the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC). Old Ottawa South has a representative, the writer, on the Public Advisory Committee looking at the options that were outlined in the August 2002 OSCAR. This article focuses on four basic issues, which will be addressed at the AVTC Open House on September 26, 2002.

Issue 1: Need

What is the need for a transportation solution in the AVTC? The main reason cited for a road or other solution is to meet the expected future demand for better access to the city centre, and the hospital area, by the thousands of suburban residents expected to live in Findlay Creek and the other major developments planned in the southern urban area. Apparently, part of the need for a roadway is also to let the thousands of hospital employees get to work faster and without cutting through the Alta Vista side streets.

There are four sets of facts that might well call into question the need for a major road or transitway in the South End. First: the existing south transitway that runs to South Keys has enough capacity to handle the expected demand generated by Findlay Creek and the other subdivisions coming on stream over the next five to fifteen years. Second, if a roadway is built, then the problem would be that the many additional cars arriving downtown might not have anywhere to go or to park. Third, roads definitely appear to create, not reduce, traffic congestion. Indeed, economists looking at twelve British road projects meant to unclog highways found that total traffic volumes, including both old and new roads together, greatly exceeded previous levels. Another study of 46 American cities showed that those who added the most new road capacity per person in the 1990s saw the annual time spent in traffic increase by significantly more than those who added the least new road capacity per person. Fourth, as Figure 1 below reveals, Statistics Canada census data show that many of the thousands of hospital workers live in the East End and very few of them live in the South End. These data cast doubt on the justification for a roadway from the south. And they accent the need for better transportation links from the East End to the Hospital. Such a solution would also let many residents of the East End reach the hospital more quickly – a real plus in the case of medical emergencies when every minute is vital.


Map showing where the General Hospital's workers come from

Issue 2: Serious Social and Environmental Impacts

There is clear evidence that more road traffic generated by a new urban highway will lead to increased air pollution that will make people sick, hospitalize some, and, in the extreme, even shorten the lives of vulnerable local residents – quite possibly the old or the young. In addition, right now almost 100 people are killed and thousands are injured in local road accidents each year. A new highway would likely increase this human toll. In addition, a highway would gobble up precious green space and divide communities. It could ruin important plant and bird habitat along the AVTC as well as damage fish habitat in the Rideau River. Furthermore, a roadway would wipe out the many garden plots on AVTC between Pleasant Park and Walkley Road. So, in light of these expected adverse social and environmental impacts, does it make sense to propose an urban highway in the AVTC?

Issue 3: Public’s Role in Identifying the Preferred AVTC Solution

Understandably, some city residents south of the Rideau River question why people in Centretown, or Old Ottawa South for that matter, should have a say in identifying the preferred AVTC transportation solution. This viewpoint accents the fact that, in their opinion, there is one basic problem to be solved: Alta Vista side streets are being swamped with cut-through traffic as waves of frustrated suburban drivers zigzag their way to the hospital or uptown. This outlook appears to discount the fears of many Centretown residents about the serious social and environmental problems that will be inflicted on them by thousands of additional cars pumped into the core by an AVTC highway. Similarly, this attitude seems to downplay the concerns of residents in our area about a sharp jump in the volume of cut-through traffic along Bank Street, Sunnyside, Cameron, Main, Riverdale, and even Avenue Road as commuters fight their way to or from Riverside and its link with the new AVTC highway. More generally, this view might overlook the fact that the general public, as taxpayers, have a direct stake in a transportation solution that could cost more than $100 million and thus might drive up our property taxes. Finally, this point of view ignores the reality that Old Ottawa South and the other fourteen community groups on the Public Advisory Committee collectively only have 1/3 of the say in weighing the evaluation criteria. A group of technical experts and the City’s consultants each has one-third of the votes in selecting the evaluation criteria. And only the City’s consultants will identify the preferred transportation solution for the AVTC. In sum, our community has a very modest role in the AVTC environmental assessment and so there is very little risk that our views will dictate what solution is selected.

Issue 4: Do you care?

You can ask questions, express your opinions, and delve into the issues identified above at the AVTC Open House at the RA, 2451Riverside Dr., on September 26, 2002 between 5 pm and 9 pm. The RA is only a twenty-minute walk from Old Ottawa South, so, why not mark the Open House on your calendar, take an evening stroll, join us, and make sure your voice is heard.

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Clive Doucet's Riverview article

Dear Riverview Readers:

The Environmental Assessment of the Alta Vista Corridor is now in full swing. We had a very noisy meeting at the Canterbury Community Association where the clear majority of the more than packed gym made it clear that they don’t want a roadway cutting through this green corridor. I share that opinion and have always made it clear that is where I stand.

City politicians have to be good listeners but, at the end of the day, they must make it clear where they stand on an issue. It is often a tough thing to do because it is rare that there is complete unanimity in a community over anything that the city is contemplating, be it the spreading of bio-solids on agricultural land, or the commitment to a new project like the O-train.

Fortunately, for me, on the Alta Vista Expressway project, there is as much unanimity in my ward as any city politician could ever expect. Old Ottawa South, Old Ottawa East, the Glebe, Heron Park and the City Centre Coalition all vigorously oppose another limited access highway cutting through Capital Ward and Alta Vista. Urban highways, whether you call them parkways, busways or a combination of both reduce the quality of life for all communities that they cut through by gobbling up valuable green space and reducing the quality of the air.

They also divide communities instead of connecting them. If you don’t believe that the Alta Vista Expressway won’t do this, just look at what the Queensway has done to Centretown and the Glebe, or what Heron Park Road has done to Heron Park. They immediately divided into two different community associations, Heron Park North and Heron Park South, because people don’t like to cross this six lane at intersections, arterial.

Centretown and the Glebe are adjacent along their entire East-West axis but have only four points at which you can traverse from the Glebe to Centretown. This distorts traffic patterns and has turned many streets, formerly entirely residential, into feeder lanes for the Queensway underpass connections and access ramps.

There is a strong feeling among the folks that I represent that the whole Environmental Assessment process is skewed in favour of roads. These are some of the reasons.

The Environmental Assessment Process that is presently underway is being conducted by Delcan Consultants with a subcontract to transitway experts McCormick-Rankin. These two companies have a long and distinguished history of doing environmental assessments for city roadways and busways. But they have never in more than 30 years of consulting in Ottawa recommended a light-rail line.

The O-train initiative was proposed by myself, Mayor Chiarelli, the City Centre Coalition and a national transportation group, Transport 2000. No representative from Transport 2000 was included on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Alta Vista Expressway although, I understand, this may be done now after a request from Madeleine Meilleur, the Chair of the Transportation Committee.

The 1994 South-East Sector study, which is used to justify the need for the Alta Vista Expressway, contained a basket of solutions to the need for new transportation being generated in the south east sector of the region. These solutions included initiatives to limit traffic demand as well as increasing road capacity. Since only one half of the transportation supply-demand equation has been being applied, i.e. increasing the supply of roadways. Nothing has been done on the demand side eg. park and rides to transit connections, people feel that the region and now the city doesn’t have much of a commitment to solutions other than more road capacity.

I don’t think these suspicions should carry the day. Times have changed and consultants change with them. Electric, light rail corridors have a cache, which they did not have even a few years ago. There are over 25 light rail systems presently under construction in the United States alone and Bombardier is selling the Talents, (the O train) around the world, - Norway, Germany, Asia and the United States.

Clearly, the environmental assessment process for the Alta Vista Corridor is a needed planning tool and I wish the consultants well with a very contentious and difficult task. But at the end of the day, more urban highways are just not part of the vision that I have for our city and it would be hypocritical of me to say or pretend otherwise to the consultants, to city staff or you.

I believe in both my head and heart that smart cities don’t become pleasanter places by constantly expanding their mall, parking lot and urban arterial capacity. I believe smart cities figure out ways to move people around that minimize automobile impact, maximize greenspace and build roads that serve residents as well as those passing through.

Unfortunately, limited access highways serve only those folks who are passing through. Nor do I think you have to go far to look at the barren effects of the traffic-sewer road solution. Take a look at Conroy Road, which is so desolate and noisy residents need berms to protect themselves from it and which has forever divided the two communities that it passes through.

So all of you who oppose the Alta Vista Expressway, don’t despair. Good community sense does triumph more often than you think. It has in my ward where we fought off the city’s plans to extend Carling Avenues’ six lanes down Glebe Avenue and where we fought off the Queensway collector lanes. And I think we will succeed here too.

Regards, Clive Doucet

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Gordon Ellis' Letter to the Citizen Editor

In response to Mr. Mackinnon's letter of Thurs. Nov. 29, 2001, "Alta Vista Parkway foes filibustering" I would suggest that any plan that has been on the City of Ottawa and Regional plans for "three decades" needs to be reviewed to meet changing conditions. Congratulations to the concerned citizens who have answered the call to become involved.

The city has changed a great deal since the 1970's and many of the citizens of Ottawa have become very aware of the environmental impact of the building of roads. The Alta Vista "Parkway" would have a major detrimental effect on the health of those who live near it and thus would add unnecessary costs to our already overburdened health care system. It would dump more cars in the core of the city which would necessitate the widening of the Queensway near Nicholas, the building of more parking garages downtown, and the leveling of more buildings to accommodate the car. At the end of each day these same cars would head home to the suburbs leaving the centre core deserted with a sea of empty pavement and concrete dotting the landscape. This is not what the citizens who live in the core want and surely is not in the best interests of citizens of the entire city. A vibrant city core is important to all both for the quality of life of people living in the area as well as for sustained future economic prosperity.

Anyone living in the neighbourhoods of Alta Vista, Smyth, and Main Street, who believes that this proposed parkway will relieve the congestion on their streets should review the numerous reports on traffic in some of the major cities such as Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, and others. Studies have clearly indicated that major road building does not alleviate traffic. As fast as roads are build they are filled with no appreciable reduction in traffic on the roads that they were to help.

For a number of years we have been told by city planners and some politicians that utilization of the Alta Vista Corridor was years away and not to worry. Last year I attended a meeting where a city planner told concerned citizens that it would not happen for ten years at least. Citizens are concerned and should be heard.

Many citizens hope that the Environmental Assessment of the various options that could be used for the development of the Alta Vista Corridor will clearly indicate that the building of a four lane road is not the answer to the transportation problems of those living in the southern part of the city nor is it a healthy alternative for those living in the core. Serious consideration must be given to the development if a transit infrastructure that will meet the needs of all. "Smart growth" should not be just a "woolly catch-phrase".

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Leo B Doyle's letter to the Citizen

The Ottawa Citizen Monday, October 08, 2001
Re: The O-Train's painful birth, Oct. 3.

The Citizen is correct. We shouldn't be experimenting with a light-rail pilot project. Instead, we should take advantage of the province's new appreciation for public transit and build a full-scale, dedicated light-rail system.

The Citizen is also correct to say that if experiments fail, "we need the political courage to say so." Today, we need the courage to say that transportation systems based on the privately owned automobile and the construction of bigger and wider publicly funded freeways and roads is a costly total failure.

And yet this experiment continues. Forty years ago, urbanist Jane Jacobs clearly described the damage that automobile dependency inflicts on the quality of life in urban neighbourhoods and our environment. At the Smart Growth Summit in June, nearly every expert agreed that the solution to urban transportation is not to build more and bigger roads.

Sadly, that's exactly what Ottawa is proposing for the Alta Vista transportation corridor. It's hard to understand why, after a hot summer of record-breaking air pollution in Ontario.

But on the Alta Vista corridor, the Citizen editorial board is once again correct. It says the corridor needs a clean, public transit solution that equitably serves the needs of all of our citizens. To achieve that, we need the political courage to act, not just the courage to say so.

Leo B. Doyle,
Ottawa

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Leo B Doyle's OSCAR article (& photos)

OSCA to Consider Supporting public Transit Option

The OSCA board will consider this fall formally supporting a campaign aimed at ensuring improved public transit -- not a four-lane highway primarily for cars -- connects the Ottawa General Hospital on Smythe Road to the northern and southern parts of Ottawa. The recommendation is being considered in light of the city's decision to study the possibility of moving ahead with an arterial road, referred to as the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC).

Brian Tansey, OSCA's representative on the City Centre Coalition (CCC), says, "Our community's support for a public transit option needs to be conveyed sooner rather than later." The CCC is advocating that the route be used to move people, not cars, downtown. Mr. Tansey adds that he is "concerned that the public transit option will not be given adequate consideration."

A consultant has been hired by Ottawa to conduct an $800,000 environmental assessment of the proposed AVTC. The AVTC is envisioned by some as a four-lane arterial highway that would link the hospital with the Queensway, Old Ottawa East, Sandy Hill and Lowertown to the north and Conroy Road to the south. But other options include the construction of a dedicated public transit route for bus or light rail, or making the connector route one that would be shared by cars, buses and high- occupancy vehicles. Another possibility is canning the AVTC all together.

Photo traffic on BronsonCapital Ward councillor Clive Doucet, who also favors a public transit solution, points out that traffic increased in the Glebe and Old Ottawa South areas when Bronson Avenue was widened. More than 1,000 cars a day now use the residential streets of Findlay, Broadway and Torrington to transfer from Bronson to the Queen Elizabeth Driveway, he says. He adds that the quality of life will likely diminish in Old Ottawa East and Sandy Hill if a four-lane AVTC is constructed. And it could mean even more cut through traffic on Riverdale and Sunnyside.

Councillor Doucet calls the proposed freeway "bad public policy and bad for the taxpayer", because it would cost the city at least $300 million. He notes that money would be better used to construct a comprehensive, citywide light rail transit system.

He told the OSCAR that the new highway would probably encourage sprawling developments in the southeast, which couldn't be supported by the taxes they would generate. He adds an average new home built outside of the greenbelt costs the city $700 more to service than it raises in taxes.

Photo of poster AVTC meetingAs part of its strategy to deal with the proposed AVTC, OSCA held an informational meeting July 18 at the Fire Hall. The meeting, organized by Mr. Tansey and chaired by OSCA president John Graham, was attended by over 25 community residents and OSCA board members. Urban planner and OSCA board member Larry Spencer, Ottawa South's Environmental Committee (ECOS) co-chairs Michael Lowen and Mike Lascelles and councillor Doucet presented their views on the AVTC. The city of Ottawa declined to send a participant.

Mr. Spencer says city plans from the 1960s called for the construction of a southeast freeway to connect to a King Edward highway that would have linked traffic to Quebec. Since the King Edward highway was never constructed, it is not clear where traffic from the Alta Vista corridor would go.

Instead of moving to expand its downtown highway link to Quebec, Ottawa allocated $12 million in April for a three-year plan designed to make King Edward Avenue more pedestrian friendly. Options include reducing it to four lanes from six and improving its landscape.

Mr. Spencer notes that the need for the AVTC stems mainly from morning commuter traffic coming from the city's southend. The most recent statistics indicate that over 35,000 individuals travel from communities in the southeast to the city core each day. The population in the southeast, beyond the greenbelt, is expected to grow significantly over the next 20 years. But the population within the greenbelt is still expected to comprise 60% of Ottawa's total population as late as 2021.

Given the relative size of southeast Ottawa and the high costs of constructing and maintaining roads, Mr. Spencer suggests that a park-and-ride public transit option be considered to move people into the downtown core. As well, he figures that technologies, such as broadband Internet access, could diminish the need for people to travel downtown and thus the need for arterial roads. He pointed out that even the most expensive broadband infrastructure costs only $35 thousand per kilometre compared to $500 thousand per kilometre for a new road.

Mr. Lascelles and Mr. Lowen, a water quality expert, say the community must also carefully consider the impact a new freeway bridge over the Rideau River would have on water quality, fish habitat and the environment in general.

Mr. Lascelles also questions whether a costly, new road would improve access to the public hospital for the poor and non-car owners.

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Clive Doucet's opinion from the Citizen:

OTTAWA AT THE CROSSROADS
WHAT’S IT GOING TO BE? HOUSTON OR PORTLAND?

Forty years ago, Ottawa City Council decided to abandon 400 kilometres of electrified streetcar line, about a third of which ran along fast, dedicated corridors that took Ottawa residents from Montreal Road to Britannia. After spending about $446 million on a dedicated busway system to replace the streetcars, forty years on, we have about 50 kilometers of diesel busways.

There are many of us who remain convinced that tearing the streetcars out of Ottawa was the most destructive decision ever to emerge from City Hall. If we had invested that $446 million in modernizing and expanding the old streetcar system, Ottawa would be an entirely different city today. Neighborhoods that evolve around streetcar lines are very different than ones based on shopping malls, parking lots and protected residential pods.

But for Ottawa, streetcars are old history. Let’s look at the present.

The Mayor and the new City Council has just sponsored the Smart City Summit to kick off planning for the city’s new Official Plan. At the Summit, we heard speakers from Chattanooga to Portland, London to Winnipeg, say no matter how much money you throw at the car, you can never build enough roads to satisfy the demand. In fact, in what seems both perverse and illogical, the more roads you build, the worse the traffic becomes.

Another thing we learned was that ‘all communities are not equal’. It is clear that cities like Portland have become such a desirable place to locate that Portland city council can afford to say to industry captains ‘thanks, but no thanks’. If you want to locate or expand in Portland, you’ve got to carry more of our community costs – school costs, transit costs and so on. Portland has discovered what we have in Ottawa, Winnipeg, Toronto and every other large Canadian city. Fast city growth builds large tax surpluses for federal and provincial governments but deficits for cities because our ability to tax does not keep up with the costs of growth. The difference between Portland and Canadian cities is, Portland isn’t waiting for a fair tax deal from the senior governments instead they’re striking their own tax deals with employers. It’s something only a city council with terrific confidence and a tremendous advantage in quality of life could pull off.

They got there by doing things differently. They have limited sprawl by tieing a growth line around their city, sticking with streetcars, and not building freeways.

It seems to me the choices before us are fairly clear. We can continue to invest in our road and busway infrastructure - another Queensway east-west (the ring road) and a Queensway South to Leitrim, (the Alta Vista Road and Busway).

The other choice is a regional light rail system from Kanata and Barrhaven to Orleans, from Leitrim past the Ottawa hospitals to downtown, and extending the present pilot rail to the airport with downtown Ottawa-Hull connections. Just as forty years ago, it was one or the other, it’s one or the other today. Nor is that decision on some distant horizon - it’s right here and now.

The Environmental Assessment for the Alta Vista Expressway and bus lanes has been approved. The consultants can also recommend a light rail line, but it will be your present City Council, which will have to make the final decision.

Upon that decision, the entire form of our new city depends. If we choose a Queensway South, the battle will begin over the details where the on and off ramps will go in Alta Vista and elsewhere. But the die will have been cast. A Queensway South will bring an unstoppable pressure for a multi-lane east-west connector from Kanata, Barrhaven and Orleans. Suburban residential pods and malls will mushroom from one end of the Ring Road to the other. A Petrie Island bridge will happen and so on. In short, Ottawa will follow the Houston model, where development spreads so fast that the only investments the city can afford is more sewer lines and roads, roads, roads.

What will we choose? Houston or Portland? It’s not an easy call. On one side of the coin, we’ve got a council that has already shown the courage to be different. August 1, Ottawa’s public spaces will be smoke free. And we’ve got a Mayor who has frequently said the ‘biggest environmental problem we’ve got is greenhouse gases’ and has been a tough promoter of light rail.

On the other side of the coin is forty years of choosing and building roads as the premier solution to growth and transit problems. While we talk, the city builds roads. Nothing enormous yet like the Alta Vista Expressway or another east-west Queensway, but it’s like a dripping faucet that never shuts off - Conroy Road, Hawthorne, Trim Road, Limebank, 417 expansions all the way to Arnprior, quiet, rural intersections expanded to six lanes, and parking lots, parking lots, parking lots. In Kanata, the topper was 12 car dealerships recently approved on one gigantic asphalt pad.

While on the transit side, we continue to fall behind. We don’t have enough buses to meet the demand and new stuff comes hard. It took three years of debate and two years of work to rehabilitate 8 kilometers of old CP line into our first ever return to the modern streetcar with three small trains. Can we turn the juggernaut around and move towards the Portland model? Stay tuned. The answer will come in about eight months when City Council decides what to do with the Alta Vista Corridor. If it’s more roads, ramps and shoulder lanes, it’s one way. If it’s a light rail line, it’s another.

Clive Doucet is Councillor for Capital Ward and Vice Chair of the City’s Transit and Transportation Committee.

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The Bell's letter to the Citizen:

Dear Editor

We have been following your series "Reinventing our wheels" with great interest - it is a timely topic. Gridlock is becoming a daily event on area roads, and many residential neighbourhoods are being invaded by commuter cars trying to avoid the crush. New housing developments are being put up at breakneck speed as our population races toward the million mark, and with the population increase comes ever more single-occupant vehicles parked on local roads at rush-hour. We have a transportation crisis brewing in this city, and we have to find some solutions.

When we were a small city, we looked at traffic on an intersection by intersection basis - too many cars? - well then, just build a new road, or add lanes to an existing road. We are not a small city any longer. If we follow the policy of building 6-lane thruways through residential neighbourhoods (proposed Alta Vista Parkway) or adding even more lanes to the Queensway, we will only end up with more pavement plugged with stationary cars spewing smog into the city air. Consider the last time you had the misfortune to drive through the Toronto area - have all the extra lanes and roadways alleviated the traffic congestion there?

The city of Ottawa (and by that we mean each and every resident) has to decide how it will change from a sleepy small city to a large bustling city in a smart way. The "Ottawa 20/20 Smart Growth Summit" (June 14-18) is a good start, and transportation is one of the important issues that will be considered. We would urge city politicians and residents to look at creative solutions that move many people in a few vehicles, rather than the other way around.

The information in Paul McKay's articles tells us that there are models out there that we can follow. "How the continent's best transit works" (May 31) talks about the vision of one inventive engineer, Bob Whitson, that has resulted in 60,000 of the 100,000 residents of Boulder Colorado having public transit passes. "Why Portlanders ride the rails" (June 1) describes the successful use of light-rail transit in a city that is very similar to ours. Let's ask city residents what sort of public transit would suit them, then tailor routes and schedules to meet commuter needs.

We have a choice to make, and our children and grandchildren will reap the benefits and hazards of our decision. If we go with cars and roads, we will hand our children a grim grey unhealthy city with a concrete floor and a smog cloud roof. If, on the other hand, we find clean public transit solutions, our children can enjoy the same green lovely city that drew many of us here in the first place. It's ours to choose - think hard.

John and Sheila Bell, 248 Knox Crescent, Ottawa , K1G 0K8

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Wendy McRae's letter to the Citizen

To the Editor:

Reading the comments by the Alta Vista groups and individuals who have written the Citizen regarding the Alta Vista Expressway, one might be left with the idea that people in Alta Vista will be the most affected by the building of this highway. Actually, while we sympathize with those who will live with it in their backyards, it is the people at the end of this road who are going to see, hear, smell and breath it the most, residents of Old Ottawa East and Sandy Hill. This is where the "sewer pipe" will disgorge its waste into already clogged streets. Keep in mind, of course, that the pipe will soon enough spring leaks at Kilborn, Pleasant Park, Smythe and Alta Vista Drive, in spite of statements to the contrary by proponents of the highway. Take a good look at the Airport Parkway. "Those light-rail trains looked awfully good on the news the other night." (Traffic Nightmare, May 18) And they look even better after reading "The Smog Monster" (May 19)!

Wendy McRae, 64 Lees Ave., Ottawa, Ont. K1S 0B9

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Jon Legg's letter to the Citizen

Dear Mr. Dare,

Congratulations for your wise editorial of April 12, "Alta Vista needs a transit cure".

Your thinking also applies to the expanding hospital complex on Smyth Road. If the two largest categories of people who go regularly to and from the three hospitals, namely the staff and visitors, are efficiently served by public transit, the roads will automatically become unburdened for the patients who must go by car.

Your forward-thinking is a valuable reminder that it's people who should be able to move quickly and comfortably around Ottawa, not cars.

Your newspaper recently reported (March 22) that Mr. Ned Lathrop, the General Manager who oversees the environment assessment of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor, has also spoken publicly in favour of a top quality transit system for our new city. We look forward to your and his views becoming a reality, for the common good of all Ottawa's residents.

Jon Legg, Board of Directors, Action Sandy Hill

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Don Fugler's letter to the Citizen:

The Alta Vista Parkway described in your article April 5 will not be successful in reducing traffic on other North/South roads in Ottawa. Research in various cities has shown that as you build more roads, more vehicles emerge to use them. Relief is only brief, if it happens at all. However, City staff and some councillors seem intent on getting a road down that green space, behind the hospitals, and across the Rideau River

You cannot take back a highway once it is built. If you realise after construction that having another four lanes of traffic running through established neighbourhoods is a bad idea, you cannot take it back. You will not take down the bridge scheduled to pass by the Lees Avenue apartments three stories up. You will not get back the $100-$200 million spent on the project. You will not take back the feeder roads and intersections that will inevitably be built through Alta Vista. Even if you do not like it, you are stuck with it.

Which is why you need a good environmental assessment, or EA. An EA will show the implications of road construction, and whether the alternatives, which include doing nothing, would be preferable. The decision last week to have the Alta Vista EA be a "Class EA", or basically a roads analysis, will not make it easy to examine alternatives.

In 1994 Regional staff assessed the transportation demands of the Southeast Sector and came out with a plan including some roads and aggressive traffic demand management. This would include increasing bus ridership, bicycle use, and vehicle occupancy to reduce the stress on existing roads. Curiously, since that 1994 decision, none of the non-road alternatives have been funded or seriously considered. We have City staff who are fixated on paving their way to transportation solutions.

It is too bad. If we could convince the City to authorize and support a legitimate EA, and support the findings, we might find there are different, but equally good, ways to get people to work. The chances of this happening in the current environment are slim, and we may soon find ourselves with another massive road project that really doesn't satisfy anybody.

Don Fugler, Ottawa

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Press Release: Call for Action on Environmental Commissioner's Report & Sun Article

City Centre Coalition,
City Councillors and MPPs
Call for Action on Environmental Commissioner's Report

"The Ministry of the Environment was not proactive in following up this project after initial findings of non-compliance, and it took EAAB two years to make a 'preliminary' determination of additional noncompliance after a local resident brought information Forward."

Annual Report, Gordon Miller, Environmental Commissioner of Ontario

(Ottawa, October 4, 2001) Every system needs checks and balances to keep it honest and accountable. We didn't get it in Walkerton and we're not getting it in Ottawa.

The Ministry of the Environment is supposed to have an environmental oversight function. It has abandoned this oversight function for the safety of public water by allowing test results from private labs to bypass the provincial ministry, and it is abandoning this oversight function in Ottawa. Here are some recent examples:

Airport Parkway Ramps at Hunt Club

The City Centre Coalition has been fighting these ramps for four years based on two concerns.

1) The Hunt Club ramps are an element in the conversion of the airport parkway into a north-south commuter corridor which channels unacceptable volumes of traffic through residential communities.

2) The ramps were originally costed at $3 million. When the City Centre Coalition asked for a full environmental assessment as required for a $3 million project, the cost was reduced to less than $1.5 million by the Region. Projects at $1.5 million or below do not require a full environmental assessment. After years of complicated correspondence with the Coalition and the Office of the Environmental Commissioner, the Ministry agreed it had cost more than $1.5 million but concluded it didn't matter because the costs were originally 'estimated' to be below $1.5 million by the Region. An 'estimate' is all that is required.

"The former Region of Ottawa-Carleton (now the City of Ottawa) has been piecemealing the Bronson Expressway and evading proper compliance with the environmental assessment requirements for that corridor. The Region did not have an environmental assessment done at all for the Lester Road Connection and the estimate of construction costs was reduced to ensure the communities most affected by the Hunt Club Ramps would not be studied. The provincial Ministry of the Environment, (see Environmental Commissioner's Annual Report) has failed to ensure compliance with its own legislation by delaying and by using estimates for construction instead of actual costs to avoid its own oversight function." -Cam Roberston representing the City Centre Coalition.

Environmental Protection Corridor of Jock and Tay Rivers

A million litres daily out-take permit has been approved for the small Tay River, a tributary of the Rideau by the Ministry of the Environment. It is being appealed by property owners as unsustainable, even more so in a dry summer.

The Jock River banks and flood plain have been designated an environmentally sensitive area and are supposed to be protected from development for natural greenspace and wild animals. The Nine Hole Richmond Golf Course has been given permission to expand managed lawn systems to the edge of the Jock River.

Before any take out permits of this size are approved, a water budgeting analysis should be undertaken. The health of the Rideau River system is vital to Ottawa and dozens of communities along its banks. - Mike Loewens, Environmental Committee of Ottawa South ( ECOS).

Drought Protection:

Private interests can pump up to 50,000 litres from river courses each day without any requests to public authorities. Given the drought conditions of last spring and summer and the low level of our waterways, this makes no sense.

The Province has no drought plan in place, no plan for protecting Ontario's water resources and we're seeing the result. From Sarnia to Ottawa, water volumes and quality are degrading, - Richard Patten, MPP for Ottawa Centre.

Smog Protection

The single largest draw on energy is now a summer day. Smog alerts and health advisories are doubling each year in Toronto and Ottawa between 1999 and 2001.

Province as North America's Premier Toxic Waste Dump

The entire province of Ontario is now one of North America's premier toxic waste dumps. The water quality of many small municipalities has been compromised both by imported toxic waste and domestic industrial waste. As with the Hunt Club Ramps, there is no indication that the Ministry is able or willing to protect its own due process required by law.

The City Centre Coalition is calling on the Minister of the Environment to conduct a review of the steps that have lead to her Ministry's failure to exercise proper oversight of Environmental Assessments in Ottawa. The Coalition calls for the Minister to take the necessary corrective action to ensure proper environmental assessments on ongoing and future issues.

Background papers will be available at the press conference to be held at City Hall, Billings Room, 11:30 am, October 4. City Centre Coalition Executive members will be present, as will environmental representatives and Richard Patten, MPP. The Press Conference will be chaired by Clive Doucet, Councillor for Capital Ward.


October 5, 2001 Ottawa Sun

ACTIVISTS TARGET TORY ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY

By ANN MARIE McQUEEN, Ottawa Sun

A group of Ottawa activists and two local politicians are calling for a non-partisan inquiry into the provincial environment ministry's actions over the past five years.

From deadly water problems in Walkerton to a province ill-prepared to deal with drought, "we are convinced that the Ministry of the Environment cannot protect Ontario," said Coun. Clive Doucet.

During a press conference yesterday, the group pointed to environment commissioner Gordon Miller's annual report, released Monday, which is critical of the way the ministry handled the project to add ramps from the Airport Parkway on to Hunt Club Rd.

City centre coalition representative Cam Robertson said the former region "piecemealed" the project and underestimated its value to avoid a full environmental assessment by the province.

LOW PRIORITY

Miller's report said the ministry didn't move fast enough after local residents raised concerns of noncompliance and didn't "address issues of traffic impacts in downtown Ottawa as a result of this road project."

The environment has never been a priority for the Harris government, said Ottawa-Centre Liberal MPP Richard Patten. "I believe the government of the day sees it as a barrier to business interests," he said. "It's not their thing."

The group wants the province to develop a plan to deal with drought, change policies which currently allow golf courses and other businesses to draw 50,000 litres of water a day from tributaries including the Jock River with no permit and develop an action plan to tackle worsening local smog.

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Press Release for Worldwatch Paper ("City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Urban Sprawl" by Molly O'Meara Sheehan):

Curbing Sprawl to Fight Climate Change

Strategies to combat climate change are likely to fail unless they include incentives for stopping urban sprawl, reports a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Sprawling urban areas are helping to making road transportation the fastest growing source of carbon emissions warming the Earth's atmosphere.

"Wind turbines, efficient cars, and other new technologies have received much attention in recent debates over energy policy, but changing the way we design cities may be even more important to stabilizing the climate," said Molly O'Meara Sheehan, author of City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl. "Local concerns like clogged roads, dirty air, and deteriorating neighborhoods are already fueling a backlash against car-based urban development - or 'sprawl'." Understanding the role of sprawl in climate change should only speed up the shift towards more parks and less parking lots. We can have healthier, more livable cities and protect the planet from climate change too."

A large body of research shows that sprawl already wreaks havoc on people's health. Each year, traffic accidents take up to a million lives worldwide. Among cities studied in industrial countries, per-capita traffic fatalities are highest in the places with the highest levels of car use. In some countries, the number of lives cut short by illness from air pollution exceeds those lost to accidents. And by making driving necessary and walking and cycling less practical, sprawling cities widen waistlines by depriving people of needed exercise. (One in three Americans are now overweight.)

Cities in the United States have been sprawling for decades, spreading out much faster than population growth. Chicago, for example, saw a 38 percent increase in population from 1950 to 1990, but the city's land area grew more than three times as fast, a 124 percent increase.

But U.S. citizens are increasingly dissatisfied with sprawl. A recent national poll found that sprawl topped the list of local concerns. And in the year 2000 election, US voters approved some 400 local and state ballot initiatives addressing sprawl-related problems. At least 38 US states have passed laws creating incentives for more compact development.

"The United States has the world's most car-reliant cities," said Sheehan. "US drivers consume roughly 43 percent of the world's gasoline to propel less than 5 percent of the world's population. The big question facing the United States today, and even more so facing cities in the developing world, is whether we can turn away from a car-centered model and develop better land-use practices and less destructive transportation systems."

By the end of the decade, the majority of the world's population will live in cities. The urban design decisions made today will have an enormous impact on global warming in the decades ahead, especially in cities in the developing world where car use is still low. Adoption of the U.S.-car-centered model in these places would have disastrous consequences.

By the year 2030, for example, China, excluding Hong Kong, is expected to have 752 million urban dwellers, excluding Hong Kong. If each were to copy the transportation habits of the average resident of the San Francisco area in 1990, the carbon emissions from transportation in urban China alone could exceed 1 billion tons, roughly as much carbon as released in 1998 from all road transportation worldwide. (Urban rail systems have been gaining favor in China, and carbon emissions have been falling, so this worst-case scenario is unlikely to unfold.)

"Some cities in developing countries have already proved that a strategy of de-emphasizing cars and providing public transit instead can work," said Sheehan. One outstanding example is the city of Curitiba, Brazil. Starting in 1972, Curitiba built a system of dedicated busways and zoned for higher-density development along those thoroughfares - and is now enjoying better air quality and more parks for its 2.5 million people.

Today, other Latin American cities are adapting elements of Curitiba's system. Bogotá, Colombia, has recently launched a similar bus system, the TransMilenio, expanded its bike paths, and tried a bold "car-free" day, where in the middle of the work week, the city of 6.8 million functioned as normal - but without cars. Bogotá 's example also illustrates the importance of higher population density to support buses and cycling: if Bogotá sprawled like a typical American city, it would cover more than 20 times as much land area.

Another indication of the reaction against sprawl is the growth of light-rail and other forms of public transit. A surge in light rail construction has brought the total number of systems in Western Europe to over 100 in 2000, the highest point since 1970. In the United States, public transportation use has increased for five straight years, following decades of decline. Planners in Portland, Oregon, estimate that a new light rail line there has saved the region from building eight new parking garages and two extra lanes on major highways.

For more information about this paper, and links to other online resources about sprawl, please go to: http://secure.worldwatch.org/cgi-bin/wwinst/WWP0156

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