Pellerin: Healthy Ottawa – Let's make it safer to move around the city

By Brigitte Pellerin, Ottawa Citizen, September 8, 2019

The trick to help a city’s population become healthier isn’t to make everyone do jumping jacks. It’s to design our public spaces in ways that naturally nudge us into moving around more without having to think about it.

The City of Ottawa has ambitious goals to increase active transportation (that is, walking, biking, using public transit). Additionally, the new official plan will focus on creating complete “15-minute neighbourhoods” where everything you need on a daily basis is within a short walk, decreasing our dependence on cars.

(...)We’re not starting from scratch in Ottawa, where we already have a healthy cycling community and a good number of paths. Érinn Cunningham, a board member of Bike Ottawa, says the Laurier bike lanes, multi-use pathways along the O-Train and some sections of the Transitway are “a good start at building some important active transportation links.”

Seemingly lethargic and 'drunk' raccoons spotted in Ottawa suburb, residents say

By Jacob Dubé, Ottawa Citizen, September 9, 2019

Residents of an Ottawa suburb have been reporting sightings of raccoons acting as though they’d had one too many.

First reported by the CBC, neighbours in Stittsville are sharing images and videos of raccoons lying around and acting very lethargic — and some believe they’re getting drunk off of fermented berries.

Emily Rodgers told the National Post she was about to let her one-year-old son play in the backyard when she came across one of these raccoons after coming back from a weekend trip.

(...)Ryan Rainville, general manager of Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control, said his company had received a few calls in the region regarding raccoons acting strangely — one apparently fell into a fence.

But while Rainville said the tale of raccoons getting intoxicated from fermented berries might be more interesting, they might have been suffering from a contagious disease.

Distemper can cause them to appear sleepy and lethargic, appearing “drunk” and losing balance, and approaching people with a lack of aggression.

Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is coming to Montreal

By CBC News, September 8, 2019

Young activist Greta Thunberg says she is coming to Montreal.

The Swedish 16-year-old is set to attend a scheduled climate protest on Sept. 27 to call on governments to take concrete action to combat climate change.

Thunberg is currently in New York to spread her message of the importance of fighting against the climate crisis.

Doug Ford government held talks with PC donor on removing Greenbelt land

By Mike Crawley, CBC News Ottawa, September 9, 2019

The Ontario government spent nearly a year in talks with a developer about a pitch to build housing in the province's Greenbelt, despite Premier Doug Ford's promise not to touch the protected area, CBC News has learned.

The discussions involved a 60-hectare property in the northeastern corner of Vaughan. The land is owned by a family whose members have donated more than $100,000 to the Progressive Conservative party in recent years, including to Ford's 2018 leadership bid.

The land is currently covered by the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, legislation that protects a zone across the northern fringes of the Greater Toronto Area, forming part of the province's Greenbelt.

Editorial: Transparency's the ticket to regaining public trust on LRT

By the Editor, Ottawa Citizen, September 7, 2019

Let’s start by giving John Manconi a little credit. On Thursday, the general manager of transportation for the City of Ottawa called a press conference to answer questions about why the western part of the new LRT shut down for 10 hours earlier in the week.

In a refreshing – and rare – example of city transparency, Manconi told reporters that three data transmitters had cut out early Wednesday. The reason was unknown. But because these communications devices – which tell the main computer system where trains are across the 12.5-kilometre line – weren’t functioning, three trains stopped in the LRT tunnel. It took several hours for staff to figure out why they weren’t moving between Tunney’s Pasture and Hurdman stations.

City dumping Waste Management in west suburbs over 'performance issues'

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2019

The City of Ottawa won’t extend the collection contract of a major garbage company that continues to struggle to meet pickup schedules for communities in the west suburbs.

Waste Management has been in the city’s bad books because the company hasn’t always collected residential garbage on time. The company has the city collection contract in Kanata, Stittsville and the surrounding communities in west Ottawa.

City council learned from staff on Friday that Waste Management would no longer be collecting residential trash in the west zone starting next June. The city is extending all of its garbage collection contracts to May 31, 2023, but couldn’t reach a deal with Waste Management, so that contract will end May 31, 2020.

Here's what happens if the LRT goes down when it's open to the public

By Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen, September 6, 2019

There will be times when the $2.1-billion LRT system isn’t working and transit customers will just have to deal with it.

They might be shocked to hear that, but, if there’s one thing city transportation boss John Manconi has tried to prepare city council members and the public for, it’s the (hopefully very low) prospect of arriving at an LRT station during the hours of operation and the trains aren’t running.

The roughly 10-hour stoppage of the Confederation Line between Tunney’s Pasture and Hurdman stations on Wednesday, chalked up to a data transmission glitch in the tunnel that started at the same time a storm rolled through downtown, might make passengers wonder what would happen if trains suddenly stopped running when the LRT system is open to the public.

(...)If LRT is down, there will be some resources available for a replacement bus service, whose route will be marked as R1, but nothing that will come close to duplicating the capacity of the LRT line.

Egan: Trucks are the new family ride. What's happened to us?

By Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen, September 7, 2019

Why is everyone driving a truck?

The stats don’t lie. Trucks have been outselling cars in Canada by about three to one for a number of years. According to our Driving pages in this newspaper, the Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in Canada for 10 years in a row. And what was second in 2018? The Ram 1500.

In fact, in the top five best-sellers, there is only one car. I don’t get it.

(...)And fuel economy? An illuminating analysis by the University of Calgary’s Blake Shaffer shows an impressive downward trend in consumption until 2013, after which it has flat-lined or gone up. Not hard to imagine it has something to do with engines powerful enough to tow aircraft carriers up a mountain. Engines are more efficient, sure, but a Hemi’s still a Hemi.

Green team: Maker House, Ecology Ottawa partner on urban forest program

By Charlie Senack, Kitchessippi Times, September 4, 2019

An Ottawa organization dedicated to protecting the environment has teamed up with a Hintonburg merchant to cultivate “urban forests” in an effort to fight climate change and ensure people have access to healthy local food.

Ecology Ottawa has a bold goal of planting tens of thousands of trees in the next few years, and the group is now one step closer to making that happen thanks to its recent three-month partnership with Maker House, a Kitchissippi furniture business.

(...)Ecology Ottawa has given away almost a million trees to be planted around the city, including 10,000 already this year. The organization set a goal of providing 12,000 trees this year, a target it expects to reach sometime this fall.

The group decided to launch the new urban food forests program after discovering residents are becoming more interested in growing plants they can actually eat, says Robb Barnes, the executive director of Ecology Ottawa. He says the workshop will encourage people to do their part to make their community a little greener.

“I think there is a lot of interest in the city about food security and what that looks like,” says Barnes. ”People want to learn more about how to do that in their own backyard, and they want to learn more about how to make this city resilient to climate impacts and foster food security.”

Jeff Leiper: ‘I’m nervous about how thoughtful we’re going to be about intensification’

By Kitchessippi Times, September 4, 2019

As the city prepares to update its official plan, Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper sat down with KT to talk about the issues that must be addressed in producing Ottawa’s next major planning blueprint. Here is an edited transcript of the conversation:

KT: Let’s start with the hottest topic of the day: the Confederation Line is set to start running on Sept. 14. What are your thoughts as light rail is set to arrive?

JL: The key will be to make sure that we don’t put it into service until we’re absolutely confident that it’s going to be reliable. It’s really critical to me that once we launch the train that it be reliable. I want to make sure that I’m clear: I have absolutely no doubt that the train is going to be safe. The city and the mayor are not going to rush a train into service if there is any risk to public safety. We’re going to have bus service running in parallel for … a few months. But once you start getting people used to getting off the bus at Tunney’s Pasture and getting on the train to go downtown, we don’t want to interrupt that on any kind of unpredictable basis. Once we put the train in service, it’s got to be reliable.

City wrestles with 3% tax cap as budget pressure builds

By Kate Porter, CBC News Ottawa, September 4, 2019

City staff are preparing a 2020 budget that will again cap the property tax increase at three per cent, but to achieve that some departments will have to cinch their belts tighter than others

(...)An extra $19 million in federal gas tax money in each of the next three years is expected to soften the blow for Ottawa.

City staff are now proposing spending that money on roads, bridges and cycling infrastructure, while money previously set aside for those projects will now go toward transit, replacing the lost provincial gas tax revenue.

"You're taking money from one fund to another. It's perfectly legitimate to do that," Mayor Jim Watson said Tuesday.

"It allows us to make up the gap that we need for Phase 2 [of light rail construction], and at the same time keep up the aggressive paving work on some streets that are in really, really rough shape."

 

Back-to-pool for coddled baby turtles

By CBC News Ottawa, September 4, 2019

After more than two months away inside incubators, nearly six hundred tiny turtles are heading back to the waters of Ottawa's Mud Lake.

The eggs of snapping turtles and Blanding's turtles, each considered species at risk in Ontario, were collected in June from the area around the lake west of downtown by the Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF) to help protect them from predators and vehicles.

The eggs spent their summer vacation in an incubator at a constant warm temperature of 28 C.

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