By Jonathan Mark, Stittsville Central Letter, January 13, 2016
Carp Dump II has the passed the Environmental Compliance Application (ECA) and the so called “West Carleton Environmental Centre” is now all but certain.
Frankly, I am more than just a little surprised how little I’ve read about this inevitability.
By Emma Jackson, Ottawa Metro News, January 12, 2016
Pedestrians rushing to Bayview station may find themselves suddenly dodging a lot of traffic if the city doesn’t finish a pedestrian pathway by this weekend.
OC Transpo will shut down a 1.5-kilometre stretch of the Transitway in Hintonburg and Centretown this Sunday, detouring up to 2,600 buses a day onto Scott and Albert streets for light rail construction.
Several multi-use pathways are supposed to help pedestrians and cyclists get to the O-Train and temporary Bayview station without having to cross Scott Street.
By Alex Robinson, Ottawa Community News, January 12, 2016
A native of Quebec City, Sébastien LaRochelle-Côté has always felt at home in Manor Park.
The new president of the Manor Park Community Association was elected at the group’s AGM in late November.
By Joanne Shnurr, CTV News Ottawa, January 11, 2016
An 87-year-old Ottawa woman is in critical condition after being struck by an OC Transpo double-decker bus this morning on Carling Avenue. It happened around 10 a.m. just in front of the Carlingwood Shopping Centre. The road was closed for several hours.
The intersection at that spot can be busy, for both vehicles and pedestrians. Many of those walkers are elderly, like this woman, on her way to the shopping centre. The pylons marked the spot on this bitter cold morning where the elderly woman was struck. The double decker bus with many passengers on board was on its way out of the mall, heading east along Carling Avenue. Neither the 41-year-old driver nor any of the passengers were hurt.
For many pedestrians in the area, the accident is scary - but not surprising.
By Jon Willing, Ottawa Sun, January 12, 2016
Bargain-basement Uber fares in Ottawa might be great for customers, but some drivers are quietly griping about the price cuts ordered by headquarters.
The ride-sharing company has made it an annual tradition to cut prices at the beginning of the year. It was no different last week when Uber lowered rates in 100 North American cities, including Ottawa.
By Giacomo Panico, CBC News Ottawa, January 12, 2016
Ottawa's largest car-sharing service, Vrtucar, has been sold to a Montreal-based company.
Calling the sale a "natural evolution," Vrtucar's co-founder said the time was right to sell his company.
Wilson Wood said the sale is good news for Vrtucar subscribers in Ottawa, Gatineau and Kingston because the new parent company, Communauto, is better equipped to implement emerging technologies.
By David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen, January 13, 2016
Ontario’s new environment commissioner wants an end to cheap diesel for farmers and a rethink of sprawl-minded transportation and land-use policies, and that’s just for starters.
“We don’t have a true level playing field in transportation, in agriculture, we don’t have it in land development. We have a regulatory system that got us what we’ve got,” says Dianne Saxe, who’s been the province’s environment commissioner for a month. She comes to the job after a 40-year career as an environmental lawyer, the consensus choice of all three parties at Queen’s Park.
By Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen, January 12, 2016
Hydro One has taken a new approach to pesky smart meters that refuse to send a reliable signal about electricity consumption in rural Ontario.
Give up on them.
The utility, which was ordered by its provincial masters to install the devices, admits it has decided to manually read roughly 36,000 meters instead of counting on the wireless technology.
By Emma Jackson, Ottawa Metro News, January 11, 2016
Sustainable transportation activists are welcoming word that the Airport Parkway won’t be widened until at least 2020 – and possibly not until 2025.The $85-million widening project between Brookfield Road and the airport has been delayed because development charges fell short in 2015, according to a memo sent to councillors in November.
Instead of getting $43 to $45 million from developers each year, the city can now only count on about $26 million a year for roads, planning manager Michael Mizzi wrote.
By Josh Pringle, CFRA News, January 10, 2016
The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority is advising residents to be cautious near rivers, lakes and streams.The heavy rain in the forecast this weekend will melt snow on the ground, raising water levels on the Rideau River and other waterways across the region.
In a statement, the Conservation Authority says as conditions change throughout the thaw period, “levels will increase and ice on lakes, ditches, local streams and rivers that had just begun to form will become more unstable posing potential safety risks."
By CBC News Ottawa, January 11, 2016
Ride-hailing service Uber says it has cut prices in a handful of Canadian cities to offset the "winter slump" as people hunker down inside and the demand for rides drops.
The San Francisco-based company said on its website that it would cut prices in more than 100 cities in the U.S. and Canada starting this past weekend — the third year it has lowered winter prices.
By Adam Feibel, Ottawa Citizen, January 11, 2016
Though it looks as though the City of Ottawa is moving toward making significant improvements to public toilet access in the city, the thought has slipped right down the tube.
The city’s finance committee viewed a staff report last month that presented options for building and maintaining public washrooms for light rail transit users in the Confederation line’s Bayview and Hurdman stations. Mayor Jim Watson wasn’t pleased that the report didn’t include an option for pay toilets, as he had directed.