Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

Transpo management cautious about ridership uptick

Ottawa Citizen

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, September 21, 2016

OC Transpo is experiencing a small increase in ridership this year, signalling to management the transit service is back on stable ground.

“I wouldn’t focus on up or down,” general manager John Manconi said Wednesday after a transit commission meeting.

“I would focus on the downward trend (being) over. It appears to be over and I think that’s good for everybody in the city and it’s good for our transit plans. There’s a month that it’s zero (increase) – that’s better than where we were. We were sliding downwards. That’s what’s positive in the numbers we have seen so far.”

Hydro Ottawa installs more solar panels on city buildings

Ottawa Citizen

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, September 21, 2016

Hydro Ottawa’s green-energy division is installing solar panels on eight more major city buildings.

The capital cost for the solar project is $6 million.

Energy Ottawa announced the installations Wednesday at the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre, one of the buildings included in the program.

Time for Ottawa to get serious about water: Maude Barlow

Metro News

By Evelyn Harford, Ottawa Metro News, September 20, 2016

Canadian activist and writer Maude Barlow says Ottawa – as a symbol for the rest of the country – ought to get serious about protecting its water.

Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians, was in Ottawa on Tuesday to speak about her latest book, which urges Canadians to act to stop what she sees as the country’s water crisis.

Pathway still possible, Prince of Wales bridge advocate says

Metro News

By Emma Jackson, Ottawa Metro News, September 20, 2016

The Prince of Wales bridge may yet be saved, if a group of advocates has its way.

Aileen Duncan said she hopes the city will still actively consider redevelopment options for the interprovincial rail bridge over the Ottawa River, which was closed off with chain-link gates on Tuesday.

“Now that the city doesn’t have to worry about liability, we can start planning for the future,” said Duncan, who created the Ottawa Rail Bridge Project this summer after the city announced it would be cracking down on trespassers.

Brace for frigid, snowy winter: Old Farmer's Almanac

CTV News

By CTV News Ottawa, September 20, 2016

Dust off your parka and unpack your boots: according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Canada is in for a cold, snowy winter.

“The winter is looking pretty crazy,” Almanac spokesperson Jack Burnett told CTV News Channel on Tuesday. “It looks as though it’s going to be colder and snowier from coast to coast to coast.

”The Old Farmer’s Almanac, North America’s oldest continuously published periodical, is celebrating its 225th birthday this year and its 35th anniversary in Canada.

Officials from Washington's version of the NCC on trying to build a great capita

By Don Butler, Ottawa Sun, September 19, 2016

The National Capital Planning Commission is Washington, D.C.’s equivalent of the National Capital Commission. Its executive director, Marcel Acosta, and one of its 12 commissioners, Beth White, are in Ottawa to speak Tuesday night as part of the NCC’s Capital Urbanism Lab lecture series. They sat down with Postmedia's Don Butler Monday to talk about the challenges of capital building.

'Take advantage of the timing': Hull-Aylmer MP wants Gatineau to jump on Ottawa tramway idea - Ottawa - CBC News

By Amanda Pfeffer, CBC News Ottawa, September 20, 2016

The timing has never been better to invest in a tramway running between Ottawa and Gatineau, according to Hull-Aylmer MP Greg Fergus, who also wants to see that tramway connect to Ottawa's new light rail system.

Fergus spoke Monday evening at a public transit forum he helped organize to kick off a week focused on sustainable transportation in Gatineau.

He wants the tramway to connect the fast-growing Aylmer neighbourhood to downtown Gatineau at the Canadian Museum of History, with possible connections to fast-growing neighbourhoods in the Plateau as well as a route over the Prince of Wales Bridge to Ottawa.

Save the environment and put the new Civic hospital campus on LRT line

Ottawa Citizen

By Barry Padolsky, Ottawa Citizen, September 20, 2016

In November 2014, the former Stephen Harper government allocated 60 acres of the Central Experimental Farm, a National Historic Site, for a new Civic hospital campus.

On May 20, 2016, Mélanie Joly, minister of Canadian Heritage responsible for the National Capital Commission, halted the former government’s decision. She directed the NCC to take a fresh look at prospective sites in the core of the National Capital.

Cycling debate shouldn’t be so bitter: We all want to get home safe

Ottawa Citizen

By Ron Barr, Ottawa Citizen, September 20, 2016

It all started with a call from CFRA on the day a truck driver was charged in the tragic death of a cyclist in downtown Ottawa. I suggested I would look forward to working with the cycling community to help make Ottawa streets fatality-free for drivers, bikers and pedestrians alike. I also mentioned that I did not think trucks and cyclists mixed well together on our roadways. At that point, hell broke loose.

Since then, I have become the focus of both the “for cyclists” and “against cyclists” debate, including the enormous infrastructure our tax dollars have paid for. I have been bombarded with calls from as far away as New Brunswick, and from cyclists and citizens in this city. I do not think bike lanes work on certain roads in Ottawa, and further, I believe that we, the ones who pay for these expensive infrastructure projects, have been lulled into accepting a system that is dangerous.

City begins fencing off Prince of Wales rail bridge

Ottawa Citizen

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, September 20, 2016

The city is spending $46,000 on new fencing to block the ends of the Prince of Wales Bridge.

Workers were at the city-owned railway bridge Tuesday installing posts and rolling out the fences to keep pedestrians off the deck.

Carina Duclos, the city’s manager of municipal design and construction, said the city has installed “private property” signs and repaired existing fencing. The new fencing will block the Ottawa and Gatineau ends of the bridge, as well as the section at Lemieux Island.

Be warned: Tricky insurance for ride-share drivers

Metro News

By Evelyn Harford, Ottawa Metro News, September 19, 2016

Uber will be legal in Ottawa at the end of the month, but personal injury lawyers warn that some insurance available for the ride-sharing drivers is tricky.

Ottawa city councillors voted to legalize Uber under a new licensing category in April. The new category will require drivers, among other things, to have minimum insurance coverage – a minimum of $5 million commercial liability and $2 million general liability insurance.

Trudeau's challenge is to lead on pricing carbon and building pipelines - Politics - CBC News

By Adam Wherry, CBC News Ottawa, September 19, 2016

Canada's first commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was made by Brian Mulroney in 1988, at an international conference on the "changing atmosphere" in Toronto.

It was pledged then that Canada would seek a 20-per-cent reduction in its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2005. Two years later, that target was adjusted to merely stabilizing GHGs at 1990 levels by 2005. Still, that would have kept emissions to 613 megatonnes per year.