Ecology Ottawa

News Clippings

West end of Queen Street closed as city adds bike lane to Bay Street

By CBC News Ottawa, November 4, 2019

This was the first day where there was genuine ice on my vehicle.

There are new road closures on Queen Street starting today until next Friday as the city works to build a new bike lane on the north end of Bay Street.

It will connect the western part of the Parliamentary Precinct to the Laurier Avenue bike lanes when it's done, expected to be next year.

The upgrade will be on a five block sector between Laurier Avenue and Wellington Street to raise the northbound cycle track on the east side of the road and add a raised southbound cycle track on the west side.

Should this tree have the same rights as you?

By Robert McFarlane, The Guardian, November 2, 2019

On 26 February 2019, a lake became human. For years, Lake Erie – the southernmost of the Great Lakes – has been in ecological crisis. Invasive species are rampant. Biodiversity is crashing. Each summer, blue-green algae blooms in volumes visible from space, creating toxic “dead zones”; the algae is nourished by fertiliser and slurry pollution from surrounding farms. In August 2014, phosphorus run-off so fouled Erie that the city of Toledo, at the lake’s western tip in Ohio, lost drinking water for three days in the hottest part of the year.

Appalled by the lake’s degradation, and exhausted by state and federal failures to improve Erie’s health, in December 2018 Toledo city councillors drew up an extraordinary document: an emergency “bill of rights” for Lake Erie. At the bill’s heart was a radical proposition: that the “Lake Erie ecosystem” should be granted legal personhood, and accorded the consequent rights in law – including the right “to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve”.

Confederation Line earns failing grade

By CBC News Ottawa, November 1, 2019

On Thursday, we asked you to grade your experience with Ottawa's new Confederation Line. You did not hold back.

We received more than 300 comments through our website, social media feeds and email, and they're still rolling in.

The most common grade so far? A big fat F, according to nearly half of you. Many of you didn't feel that was harsh enough, so you awarded the LRT an F minus.

D was the next most common mark.

It probably didn't help that the light rail line experienced three major glitches in the last 24 hours.

'Furious' mayor promising immediate LRT fix

By CBC News Ottawa, November 1, 2019

In the midst of yet another miserable morning for Ottawa commuters, Mayor Jim Watson took to Twitter to promise both short- and long-term fixes for the problem-plagued transit system.

Confederation Line service was disrupted from 5:30 a.m. until 8:40 a.m. Friday by separate problems east of the downtown tunnel, according to OC Transpo's timeline of events.

Fare gates were also stuck open at several LRT stations, but anyone who took advantage of the free ride faced a long wait for a train.

Denley: OC Transpo’s reaction to LRT issues – too slow, too vague, too defensive

By Randall Denley, Ottawa Citizen, October 29, 2019

There is no doubt that the city has badly fumbled the launch of its $2.1-billion light-rail system. The question now is: what are councillors going to do about it?

In the first six weeks of the bright new age of public transit that LRT was supposed to bring, performance has been markedly worse than even longtime OC Transpo skeptics would have expected. OK, the mechanical problems with the doors are not the transit agency’s fault, but what about the failure to allow enough time for people to get on and off the train before the doors closed? People weren’t grabbing doors for the fun of it. There must be industry standards for this kind of thing.

(...)A shiny new train service intended to attract people to public transit is doing everything it can to repel them instead. Who can forget the pictures of passengers climbing over fences to escape the clutches of OC Transpo?

Throughout all of this, Transpo’s communications have been too slow, too vague, too defensive. Again, not a surprise from a city agency whose indifference to bus-riding plebes would be the envy of the snootiest head waiter.

Charlebois: If you’re a meat lover, hug a vegan. Here’s why.

By Sylvain Charlebois, Ottawa Citizen, October 31, 2019

Friday, Nov. 1 is World Vegan Day. Canada is home to about 470,000 vegans, according to a recent Dalhousie University survey; the number has not increased significantly in recent years. Anyone who has lived a vegan lifestyle will tell you that it is amazingly hard: Beyond not eating animal proteins, a vegan will not purchase, wear or use leather, fur or any animal products.

Some people believe that the recent rise of plant-based dieting has prompted vegans to vocalize their lifestyle passion more. Some don’t like that; a few even claim to hate vegans. But vegans’ contribution to our public discourse about proteins should not be taken lightly.

By now, most know that Greta Thunberg is a vegan, but many other well-known personalities are too: world number-one male tennis player, Novak Djokovic, world champion Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, NFL star Tom Brady, former boxer Mike Tyson and tennis legend Venus Williams. Many other celebrities are self-described vegans as well.

Yee: Fix language problems alongside other issues, OC Transpo

By Amy Yee, Ottawa Citizen, November 1, 2019

Five years ago, the Kanata Chinese Seniors’ Support Centre initiated a consultation in Barrhaven and Kanata among its seniors. The majority of participants said OC Transpo was how they got around. But these participants also listed both language and transportation as significant barriers to daily life. Some described “fear of getting lost, from lack of sense of direction and not knowing how to take a bus” as limiting their outings. The report suggested an important factor in improving health and wellbeing was “making seniors comfortable using the bus by making them familiar with the routes and places they need” to go.

As OC Transpo moves to fix some of the recent problems with both light rail and bus routes, it also needs to think about better serving communities such as these seniors.

Kavanagh: Now let's fix Ottawa's bus service – quickly

By Theresa Kavanagh, Ottawa Citizen, November 1, 2019

A city of Ottawa Transit Commission meeting initially scheduled for Oct. 16 was cancelled despite many questions from commissioners such as myself. The timing was problematic.

We just launched a new light-rail system and we lost an opportunity to have a public discussion on how it was going. As we wait for the next meeting on Nov. 6, commissioners will have built up plenty to say regarding the implementation of the new Confederation Line while everyone adjusted to new trains with new doors and a multitude of bus route changes.

Back in the summer, when Ottawa Council finally got the date of the LRT launch, it was a moment of excitement that signalled a bright future. Of course there were many tough questions on the operation of the shiny new trains and the stations. As a change of pace, I asked senior management about the almost forgotten buses. Yes, this was the launch of the train and we were all happy that it was finally going forward, but what about the bus service?

Today's letters: Just how crowded is Ottawa's light rail?

By Jean Reddington, Ottawa Citizen Letter to the Editor, November 1, 2019

Just how crowded is that train?

Here’s a little levity many LTR riders might relate to:

The O-Train, the Oh-No-Train, the OMG Train, whatever you choose to call it, has been an “experience.”  I’ve never spent so much time staring down at people’s shoes, backs of legs, bottoms and backpacks while shuffling up crowded stairs, or crushed body-to-body on packed rush-hour trains. I’ve been looking down so much I fear I’ll be the poster child for a new injury tagged O-Train Strain.

The trains are full, places to look are limited and some poor individuals can’t even wiggle an arm up to stare at their phones. Instead, they’re reduced to squeezing their eyes shut or, if seated, staring at an overly close crotch or protruding belly. Oh, and one question: Who brought the egg sandwiches? The train literally reeks of sulphur and that’s when it doesn’t carry a strong whiff of cow manure or general sewer stench.

Slippery LRT tiles proof you get what you pay for: architect

CBC News Ottawa, October 28, 2019

Slippery tiles at some Ottawa LRT stations aren't just a poor architectural choice: they're also symbolic of a flawed process, according to one Ottawa architect.

Toon Dreessen of local firm Architects DCA says the tiles at Lyon and Parliament stations — which caused a number of slips and falls during a rainy day last week — shed light on a process that puts the profit of builders like Rideau Transit Group (RTG) ahead of the public interest.

"We might have asked for a specific tile. And maybe we asked for the wrong tile or we didn't ask for anything in particular. So the builder puts in something that meets whatever design brief is given — but it's not specific enough and we're stuck with it," said Dreessen.

Ottawa city councillors demanding emergency transit commission meeting

By Jeff Slack, 1310 News, October 29, 2019

City council representatives want to talk about delays and glitches that OC Transpo users continue to experience, about six weeks after the launch of the $2.1-billion light rail Confederation Line.

A group of councillors are demanding to have an emergency transit commission meeting.

"A number of us have been discussing this, we are worried about it," said Catherine McKenney, councillor and member of the City of Ottawa's Transit Commission. "We feel that the unreliability of both the buses and the trains are really rapidly eroding public trust in our system. I don't feel we should wait another week for the regular transit meeting."

City vows to get a grip on slippery sidewalks this winter

By Kimberly Molina, CBC News Ottawa, October 29, 2019

The city of Ottawa is vowing to go all out in the battle against slippery sidewalks this winter, introducing new ice-crushing equipment and adopting a 24/7 approach.

The city is adding another six ice breakers to the four it introduced in March, as well as eight new "hatch blades" to give traditional sidewalk plows that extra edge. The new machinery will also facilitate the spread of salt and sand to either melt the ice or provide better traction for pedestrians.