Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Free ride? Edmonton city council to discuss eliminating transit fares

By Anna McMillan, CBC News, October 9, 2018

A city councillor will bring forward a motion Tuesday to discuss the possibility of free transit in Edmonton.

The idea has gotten a lot of attention since Ward 4 Coun. Aaron Paquette made notice of the motion last week. But Paquette says the main objective was lost amid all the chatter.

He said at this point he's not asking the city to fully subsidize the bus and LRT systems, which cost about $325.5 million annually to operate. For now, the goal is to study the impact free transit could have.

Potential for record-breaking autumn temperatures in Ottawa

By Alex Black, 1310 News, October 10, 2018

It's another hot, sticky October day in the nation's capital.

For the second day in row, we have double digit temperatures and humidex values in the forecast.

1310 NEWS meteorologist Jill Taylor says Wednesday's temperatures could even be record-breaking.

The record temperature for October 10 was set in 1955 at 23.9 C and Jill is forecasting a high of 25 C.

Ottawa woman wants focus on distracted walking after being knocked to the ground

By Joanne Schnurr, CTV News Ottawa, October 9, 2018

We all know the focus on distracted driving. And if you've been caught texting behind the wheel, you know the penalty is pretty stiff.

Now some are wondering if we should shift that focus to include distracted walking.

How many times have you seen someone cross the street, their heads buried in their phones, too busy texting to look up?

For one Ottawa woman, a distracted walker took her right off her feet.

OC Transpo adjusting previously cut routes after LRT delayed

By Leah Hansen, CBC News Ottawa, October 9, 2018

OC Transpo is expected to announce changes to several bus routes this week in an attempt to cover service gaps that were introduced in anticipation of the LRT's since-delayed debut this fall.

Twenty four routes were altered in September to bring passengers to LRT stations rather than shopping or downtown destinations.

• OC Transpo's fall changes steer passengers to LRT

On many routes, this meant the final stop was located well short of previous endpoints like Bayshore station, the Rideau Centre, and Hurdman station.

CBC Ottawa explains: What would it take to improve rural transit?

By Laura Osman, CBC News Ottawa, October 9, 2018

There was a period in Ottawa's history when people seemed to accept that the farther you lived from the core, the less bus service you could expect.

For awhile, those living in the city's rural areas seemed relatively happy not to have to pay into the city's transit system.

But this election, that seems to be changing.

People in the suburbs are crying out for light rail, more reliable commuter service and improved local bus routes. Even residents on the city's rural fringes are demanding bus service to connect them to the rest of Ottawa.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Fewer cars, more transit options would invigorate Ottawa

By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, October 9, 2018

On Oct. 22, Ottawa residents elect a new city council. To help local candidates as they campaign, the Citizen features some ideas that would make the city a better place. Today, Brigitte Pellerin makes the pitch for fewer cars downtown – and hints at how that can be accomplished.

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Driving to my house near the Civic Hospital, I am confronted with a beast. 

Construction. They’re widening the Queensway again. I want to scream. 

I am no urban engineer. But I get around enough, in various cities across North American and the Unite Kingdom, to notice something important: Every time a road gets widened to ease congestion, more people use it. Resulting in … more congestion. Until the road looks like Highway 401 in Toronto or the Capital Beltway around Washington: a giant, smelly, incredibly frustrating parking lot. 

We need to stop widening roads and otherwise “improving” our road infrastructure, and pronto. By putting an immediate moratorium on it. We’d save ourselves a whole bunch of money that we could spend moving people around in much more efficient and environmentally friendly ways. 

Reevely: If Ontario won't try to stop climate change, we need to do a lot more to get ready for it

By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, October 9, 2018

Premier Doug Ford’s signal achievement in his first 100 days leading Ontario has been to kill the province’s climate-change policy and replace it with promises.

He flew back from his western tour, having appeared with Premier Scott Moe and Alberta conservative leader Jason Kenney to rail against the evils of carbon taxes, to take a short Thanksgiving break and then rally once again in his Etobicoke riding Tuesday night, celebrating his three months in office.

In the meantime, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published yet another of its grab-us-by-the-lapels-and-scream reports, and an economist won a Nobel for a lifetime of work on climate-change policy. By its actions, the Progressive Conservative government asserts that they’re ninnies.

Environment Canada says Dunrobin tornado was region's most powerful in 116 years

By The Ottawa Sun, October 5, 2018

The massive tornado that smashed into Dunrobin was the most powerful wind storm to strike Eastern Ontario in more than a century, according to an Environment Canada report.

In its September Ontario Review, the weather agency says the Dunrobin storm did not match the intensity of a twister that smashed into Chesterville in 1902. A slightly less powerful tornado hit Rockland a year later.

The report adds a caveat: The powerful 1978 Masson-Angers, Que., tornado crossed over briefly into rural Eastern Ontario between Cumberland and Rockland).

As number of pedestrians hit by cars rises, SAAQ launches awareness campaign

By CBC News, October 8, 2018

Quebec's automobile insurance board (SAAQ) is launching a new awareness campaign aimed at showing the public just how vulnerable the human body is to injury or death when hit by motor vehicles.

The campaign comes at a time when the number of pedestrians hit by motor vehicles continues to rise across the province.

Seven pedestrians are hit every day in the province, says the SAAQ. In 2017, nearly 2,700 pedestrians were hit — 69 fatally.

Hunters applaud province for addressing disease that could devastate deer

By Krystalle Ramlakhan, CBC News Ottawa, October 8, 2018

Ontario hunters concerned about a disease threatening the province's deer population say they're pleased to hear the government is taking steps to halt its spread.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a progressive, fatal disease of the nervous system of deer, elk, moose and caribou. One recent case was confirmed in Quebec, just 15 kilometres from the Ontario border, leading to a massive deer cull in that province.

So far, however, it hasn't been found in wild Ontario deer.

Andrew Coyne: The dirty little secret anti-carbon tax folks would prefer you did not know

By Andrew Coyne, Ottawa Citizen, October 5, 2018

The climate farce continues. To recap: Canada is nowhere near to achieving the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions it agreed to three years ago in Paris, having blown through a series of more ambitious earlier commitments — Kyoto, Copenhagen etc — without so much as taking its foot off the gas pedal.

Not only are we nowhere near to meeting our own declared targets — a 30 per cent reduction below 2005 levels by 2030 — we are nowhere near to being on track to do so. That would be true even if the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, including its signature $50 per tonne price (by 2022) on carbon dioxide emissions, were implemented in full. But now that, too, is in doubt.

OC Transpo rider frustrated with chronically late bus

By Krystalle Hamlakhan, CBC News Ottawa, October 7, 2018

An Ottawa man is disputing Mayor Jim Watson's claims about the reliability of one of the city's OC Transpo routes, saying it's become increasingly tardy over the past month or so.

Andrew Arsenault takes the 87 Greenboro/Uplands from Glabar Park near the Carlingwood Shopping Centre to the Mackenzie King Bridge between 8:30 and 9 a.m to get to work downtown.

He rides that route about three times a week, and said it's been late most days over the past month — and he has the screenshots from OC Transpo's app to prove it.