DOTT plans affect west side residents (vii): Bayview Rapibus Station?

The City has been evaluating the structural soundness of the historic Prince of Wales Railway Bridge over the Ottawa River to Gatineau. The City bought it a number of years ago for transit.

Friends of the OTrain and  LRT transit proponents have long viewed the POW bridge as a great solution for taking transit across the River. The interprovincial transit study offered renewed hopes for extending LRT service from downtown Ottawa to Gatineau over the POW as the first phase of a loop system serving the two downtown employment centres and to alleviate bridge congestion. Alas, logic may be loosing out to other concerns.

I gather that a leading proposal for addressing interprovincial transit woes is to widen the POW bridge to a two lane transitway (not LRT or OTrain) to bring the Rapibus system (Quebec's new bus rapid transit system just like Ottawa's 25 year old transitway) over to the Ottawa shores. A transfer station and bus storage area would be constructed under the new Bayview Station, connected by elevators to our E-W LRT line. The Rapibus terminal would be in place until such time as LRT was extended across the River. Of course, building a new terminal and widening the bridge * will work to delay that day by at least a quarter century.

 I dislike the idea of building a bus parking lot on valuable LeBreton and Bayview Yards development lands. Extending the LRT across the river and having it service a transfer station on the Gatineau side and having a terminal station at Place de la Chaudiere makes more long-term sense to me. The interchange at Bayview would then be much smaller, more efficent, and technologically advanced. Has the interprovincial study really gone so far "off the tracks" and gotten stuck in bus mode?

* I hear rumors to the effect that the existing POW bridge is in really bad shape, and may only be worth the scrap value of its steel, and that to extend either bus transitway or LRT service from Gatineau will require a totally new bridge. In any case, double tracking it, converting/widening it to two way bus way, or building a new bridge altogether will be very expensive. Mind, a bike and pedestrian link along the bridge would make for a wonderful new link in the bike network.

Bayview re-landscaped

Looking east on Albert as it goes over the OTrain

Boulevard trees, west side of Bayview seen from Scott

Curious curb jogs, seen from Somerset looking north

Field of Trees, between TomBrown Arena and Albert

Sometimes the City makes me very happy. Like when I see the amount of generous landscaping going in along Bayview Avenue between Somerset and Albert/Scott.

For several years the City waterworks people have been burying high pressure water mains in the area. Approx.where the sidewalk is shown in picture 4 & 5 is the route of the pipeline. There was a bare grassy lawn running from Tom Brown arena's bright orange roof over to the intersection of Scott/Bayview/Bayview/Albert (that's right - all four streets at this intersection have different names, possibly a record for Ottawa). The area was used for staging construction supplies and got all chopped up. Now there is topsoil and a host of new trees. My only regret here is that once again the City cannot bear to actually pave the desire lines that pedestrians wear into the grass showing where they really want to go, but the city makes the sidewalk follow the street line as if pedestrians are just slow cars. By next year, the grass will be worn into a few popular walking lines, diagonally over to Albert Street.

At least the sidewalks here are not glued firmly to the curbline, but are set back generously from the curb, with trees planted in the boulevard, as shown in picture 2. I do hope all these trees survive.

It is always difficult to picture the final layout and appearance of the streetscape before it is all put in place. Certainly I have been fooled before by what something looks like in isolation, but makes more sense as more elements are put in place. But looking down the Bayview the curb line from Somerset the jogs do not make much sense. Bayview is wide at Somerset, to allow for three lanes of traffic and to align with Bayswater on the south side of the interesection. As Bayview goes downhill from Somerset, the street narrows to a two lane road. But notice in picture 3 that the road then becomes much wider again where the new pavement starts, and over the next 40m or so goes back to a narrower roadway. The widening cannot be used for parking, as it is a row of townhouse driveways (and the sidewalk in front of them stays depressed, it doesn't roller-coaster every driveway!). I'll keep an eye on this, but it looks bizarre now.

Picture 1 is looking uphill along Albert as it ascends to go over the OTrain tracks. There used to be a lengthy "merge" lane here. When the City help public meetings on these roadwords, they had kept the merge lane in place, and I had a lengthy debate with the engineers as to why they shouldn't have one (it isn't a Qway merge lane, after all!) and that City policy required they remove it. They insisted it stay. Now its gone, and that is good news. I hope some trees appear in the boulevard.

BTW, the sidewalk running up the hill is brand new concrete squares. The City actually took out and replaced all those squares just last year. Maybe second time lucky ...

This wouldn't be my blog if it didn't contain a beef about the City, and here it is. The high pressure water pipe project runs from Bronson to Bayview. The portion from Bronson to Empress is beautifully landscaped with path and trees and pedestrian lighting, even though the area along the path is subject to redevelopment in the near future and Albert Street is to be reconstructed. Then, there is no landscaping from Empress to Preston to City Centre Avenue, and the City refuses to plant trees because it would be only "temporary" until developments come along the street. But these new buildings are not scheduled to come for another 20-plus years! Then, once the pipeline crosses the OTrain, the lush landscaping resumes. Did our neighborhood do something wrong that we can't get trees from Empress to City Centre?

Bore Hole Drilling at City Centre Complex

The City Centre complex is a combo office tower and industrial bays located on City Centre Avenue just east of and south of Bayview Station. Built in 1960 as part of the federal-funded railway relocation project, it was a intermodal terminal for offloading rail cars onto delivery trucks. Now it is industrial bays, with a surprisingly large number of printers located there. The largest tennant in the whole complex is my old company, Cielo Print.

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All last week there were two drilling rigs working the parking lot, drilling bore holes around the perimeter of the parking lot along City Centre Avenue and up close to the building. Surely, after so many delays, the owner, Equity Management, isn't planning to resurrect the 2 million square foot office-residential already-approved plans for the site?

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Or maybe they are just drilling for other purposes. Whatever, the project is unlikely to appear soon since it depends on a decided transitway LRT alignment and Otrain right of way project, both of which the City seems unable to make its mind upon. In any case, the tennants do not have demolition clauses in their leases, so it could easily take a decade to vacate the bays.

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The plans made a 15 years ago had the first (smallest) tower being built in the parking lot east of the existing tower, so no demoliton was necessary. Tower 2 was to be at the south end of the parking lot along Somerset, and only it or tower 3 actually required demolishing the southmost bays in order to proceed. More problematic, is who would rent all this space with the industrial uses still scattered amongst the new towers.

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Note that Phoenix DCR bought the vacant triangle of land to the north, 801 Albert Street, and is pushing the city for approval to build two 30 storey condo towers. Most motorists and passersby do not realize how very close this site is to the Ottawa River (Nepean Bay, unfortunately a lot of it was filled in while implementing Greber's plans) which means great views from the condo.

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The whole beehive of interest in this area (recall earlier posts on Arnon's proposed developments at the 855 Carling end of the Otrain corridor) reminds of me of the City's dumb decision to postpone the Carling - Bayview CDP which was to implement a coherent zoning and development vision for this whole underutilized corridor. Rumours abound the CDP is getting back on track, but nothing is firm yet.

Urban Planning Nostalgia

Over at the blog The Ottawa Project is a story of visiting Lorne Ave and the not-unreasonable assumption that what is visible on Lorne represents that which was demolished on the Flats in the early 1960's.

I think that overview is overly sympathetic to the demolished areas. I do not wish to take the view that it was right to demolish whole neighborhoods/built up areas in favor of total rebuilding, which was the big government view of urban renewal then (note to today's amateur city rebuilders and commentators who too often wish for bigger govt action - be careful of what you wish for ... ).

The Flats was a mixed use neighborhood. There were grotty warehouses and rail tracks and SLUMS there as well as some nice houses. We dont do ourselves a favor by sugar coating or idealizing the old neighborhood. Granville Island or Old Montreal or old Halifax represent the effects of millions of dollars of disneyfication and not the normal evolution of old mixed use neighborhoods. Sometimes cheap housing is just that - it serves a purpose and then should be demolished and replaced by something better. As successful as Granville Island is, Vancouver is busy demolishing old stock in the adjcent neighborhoods for redevelopment from scratch. And who in Ottawa is clamoring to declare Hintonburg or Mechanicsville historic districts with every building preserved from demolition? If not Mechanicsville, then why LeBreton?

It is just plain wrong to assume that Lorne avenue represents what was built and demolished on the Flats. The NCC demolition targetted the polluted lands, the obsolete industrial uses and the structurally impaired housing. Their demolition continued south only as far as the worst structures went ... for eg they went half way up Booth and stopped at Primrose but left the houses backing onto these from Lorne because the Lorne houses were structurally sound (and when I moved here 30 plus years ago, certainly not nice nor trendy). Similarly, only some units were demolished on Rochester, Preston, Primrose ... leaving a gap-toothed landscape. But it was the bad-condition houses that were demolished and the good ones were left in place. Once a high percentage of the area is demolished, there were no doubt some structurally sound and maybe even attractive structures demolished simply because they were isolated in a non-functionable landscape.

Fortunately, the era of widespread urban demolition is past. Or is it? Will the Carling-Bayview CDP, which Councillor Holmes has agreed to try to resurrect, aim to preserve the old industrial buildings and every old house? Or will we view this area as a brownfields to be majorly redeveloped with townhouses and apartments and new park space?

Phase one of Lebreton flats in 1980 built new housing around some of the survivors and this makes a fortunate transition zone from new townhouses to old community. Note that it was the city/government that built the remarkably ugly and ill-suited townhouses at the Albert St end of Lorne Ave that blight that otherwise admirable streetscape.

In short, many of the houses on the Flats were demolished because they were substandard, slums, or structurally compromised. Certainly today, we MIGHT spend vast sums of public money to "save" and reposition such a neighborhood. Look at neighborhoods that were better than the Flats that were left alone - like Hintonburg, Mechanicsville, etc - which evolved to what they are today, with a lot of infill development of mixed quality and scale.

I dont think we should idealize the past and be nostalgic for a quality residential neighborhood that exists more in our imaginations than reality. Eddy McCabe wrote a lot about what it was like to grow up in that neighborhood, and it was anything but wonderful.

LRT - the 1950's version

This video of the former streetcar service in Ottawa is certainly interesting. At minute 4.19 there are shots of streetcars on Elm St running up to Preston (Elm street was the exit from the Champagne Streetcar Barn. The entrances were from Champagne [now City Centre Ave] In the background is a large structure the predates the City Centre complex, which is now nearing the end of its lifespan). Most of the houses filmed on Elm are 100% recognizable today.

My house abuts the Champagne Barn, I enjoy a great westward view over its rooftop. The roof used to be mostly glass, but was recently "improved" and is now a rather plain ashpalt roof.

At minute 6.10 there are more shots of the streetcar barn. And then at 7.39 are shots of a streetcar turning from Somerset to head north on Preston. Pubwells is perfectly visible, and other the east side of the street the housing is recognizable today, except there is a building at the corner of Somerset that burned down many years ago (it ended its life as a topless shoeshine parlor) and is now a vacant lot and will soon be the Vietnamese cultural centre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbqoBnhiak4

Somerset Viaduct (Bridge) over the OTrain Line

Somerset west of Preston rises up and over the OTrain Tracks, near the City Centre Building. At the height of the crest, the bridge itself is only about 20' long; the rest of the road is simply a fill between retaining walls. The road was designed long ago and the angle of the slope means that motorists cannot see what's on the road (for eg, a parked car) over the crest. This creates a stopping-in-time problem.

The solution selected by the City is to narrow the road to two lanes for vehicle traffic. The road is wide enough for a bike lane on each curbside, but whether it is implied or will be painted on I do not know. By narrowing the road, moving vehicles are out of the curbside parking lane.

This project is nearing completion. Decorative lampposts and bollards were installed this week.

The south side concrete sidewalks were laid late last winter and the cement did not set well, with the results the sidewalks are spalled and already look a decade old. More curiously, the bridge repairs -- like the ones at Carling and Prince of Wales -- kept the one-OTrain-track-wide size. [in the comments section, I correct this. This bridge is already two tracks wide] If the OTrain is not double tracked or replaced with a double-track LRT for the next 20 years or so (life span of the repairs) then it will have been a cost effective decision to repair the bridges at their current size. But if the OTrain service is expanded or LRT service to the south is resurrected, the newly repaired bridges will have to be torn out and replaced by longer spans to cross the double tracks.

I sincerely hope that at that point the bridges are made another 15' longer to cross a future bike lane that is supposed to run along the Carling-Bayview alignment, although with no Community Development Plan in place, we run the risk of the Chiarelli-era fiasco whereby the bridges were to be replaced but without provisions for bike and pedestrian lanes. That was a near tragedy averted only because the LRT project was cancelled. Will we do better if the project is reincarnated? Our chances are better if we had CDP in place, but as yet there is no sign of one.

City Centre Tower

The City Centre Tower, constructed about 1965, lost its red letters around the roof line last week. Nothing was left but the dirt on the brickwork. Yesterday and today workers on scaffolding were cleaning the brick. In the photo, the north wall to the right has already been cleaned; and work continues on the east wall.

Double click on the picture to see it up close.

For Lack of a CDP - Community Development Plan

There is a deliberately vague planning environment for the two 30-storey condo towers proposed by Phoenix DCR for 801 Albert Street (the vacant lot beside the City Centre tower and opposite Tom Brown Arena and the Bayview OTrain Station ). The City has signalled that it wants development to be significantly better than the industrial zoning common along the Bayview to Carling rail corridor. Yet it lacks a comprehensive plan for developing the area. A Community Development Plan (CDP) was begun several years ago, and considerable progress was made. The Phoenix development in a number of respects honours the incomplete CDP, but the city shelved the plan process in favour of other priorities.

Residents are left with the worst of situations. The current zoning cannot be relied on. The new zoning is hinted at in the incomplete CDP but there is nothing official. We can now only look with envy at the Escarpment CDP recently approved by the city (for the lands running from Ottawa Tech site down Albert to Booth) or the Lebreton development agreements. The existence of a CDP allows developers to propose projects that fit into a larger neighborhood wide plan, which will make their projects more marketable and a result in a better neighborhood over time. Meanwhile Dalhousie residents, and those in adjacent Hintonburg, are stuck with ill-defined underdeveloped lands that become prey for any developer or politicians’ bright idea – including three (!) outdoor stadium-and-concert-hall proposals just last month. LRT train yards? Highest condo in the city? Parole office? Anything goes!

We must, yet again, nag the councilors and city to get the neighborhood CDP reactivated: neighborhood plans are supposed to be in place before developments are proposed.

[The Escarpment Plan, passed by the City last year, calls for a number of neighborhood benefits, including a bike/pedestrian path along the north side of Albert, and burying the LRT track underground starting at Booth St so that the City-owned development sites won't be looking into an open cut. The multipurpose path appeared like magic in 2008 as part of the new watermain project along Albert; the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel plans all start with the buried section of track right at the edge of the City's development site. Would Bayview-Carling corridor residents be so lucky as to have an effective CDP in place to guide developments!]

City Centre Office Tower Loses Roof Sign

The City Centre office and warehouse complex, 250 City Centre Avenue, opposite the Bayview OTrain station and Tom Brown Arena, is often referred to as the ugliest in the city. While not pretty, its not so bad either. I should know, I look at it from my house, and until I sold my business a few years ago, was/is the largest tennant in the industrial bays.

The night time picture was taken at 2am a few weeks ago from a window on the third floor of my house, looking across the roof of the Just Rite Storage building, aka the former Champagne Streetcar Barn and aka the former Vimy House ateliers for the War Museum. The large red sign lettering above the eighth floor has not been illuminated for several years. Curiously, the Y in City was actually a V.

The daytime picture is taken from the Somerset Viaduct (bridge) today and shows that the sign letters facing east have been removed. Presumably the ones facing south, still visible, will go too.

Removing the letters doesn't really improve the view, as the very dirty brick spells out the name in absentia. I kinda liked the letters when they were illuminated: they reminded me that there is more to Ottawa than bland office towers full of cubicles, ie there are some industrial and manufacturing activities still here. The letters added a frisson of excitement to the skyline. Sniff.

801 Albert St Condo Towers - Bayview Station area

There is a vacant triangular plot of land at the corner of City Centre Avenue at Albert, just across from the Bayview OTrain Station and Tom Brown Arena, and beside the existing 8 storey City Centre office tower. The land has been owned by Phoenix development for some years. They have applied for rezoning for two 31-storey condo towers and a four storey office building. Each tower would be similar in height and size to the Metropole tower built further west on Scott near Westboro Station. The Metropole development, with townhouses clustered at its base, turned out well, despite its scary height. (I have an instictive distrust of developers bringing high towers).

How tall is enough? The City-owned lands to the northwest (now site of the snow dump) are planned for high rise apartments in the 23 storey range. The Escarpment plan, recently approved by the City for the lands along Albert between Booth and Bronson, calls for 23 storey (75 metre) heights. The site immediately south of the Phoenix property has been approved for similar heights for about 15 years. LeBreton Flats itself is zoned for 7 to 14 story buildings. This site should not be zoned any higher than 75m in my opinion.

The small office building component proposed at the City Centre Avenue/Albert St intersection does relate to the pedestrian on the street, but the set-back towers do not. We need to enhance the pedestrian environment, perhaps by structuring the towers more as a podium of town houses and having set backs as the tower goes upwards.

A wider multipurpose path, treed on both sides, should replace the current sidewalk along the curb. The development should also promote direct cycling and pedestrian access to the transit hub at Bayview and the NCC Ottawa River parklands, by integrating links along the O-train line under Albert and the transitway bridges. There is too much surface parking in the current proposal; putting all resident parking underground would improve the landscaping greenspace and promote walking and transit use.

(note: this post is based on my column for the March edition of the Centretown BUZZ community newspaper)