Hybrid downtown transit

Even if you’ve been doing nothing but glimpse at the headlines of Ottawa’s major dailies, you doubtless know about the “rising” costs of the City’s light rail plans. With the first phase projected to top $2 billion, the province is starting to get cold feet over helping to fund the project, and it seems like many people are getting antsy over exactly how much the City will have to shell out to get things done.

Others have already done an excellent job of deconstructing the numbers that are floating around, showing that things may not be as bad as they seem, but the fact remains: the plan is now percieved as being too expensive. Regardless of the plan’s actual value and cost-effectiveness, it’s possible that it will need to be scaled down in order to secure funding from higher levels of government. So my thought is, why not a combined surface and underground system in the downtown core? Here’s a map I threw together:

Blue is surface rail, red is tunneled. Train symbols represent potential stations. Map created using Google Maps.

In this proposal, rail would follow the Transitway to Lebreton, where it would divert north along the current alignment of Wellington Street—currently used for tour bus parking, I believe—before diving underground for a short tunneled section at Commissioner Street. A slight curve under Bronson Park would line the rail up with Sparks Street, where it would come aboveground just after Bay. From there, it would run along Sparks with stops at Lyon, Bank, and Metcalfe, before diving back underground to curve around to Mackenzie King and Campus stations.

Before I go on, I should say that this is entirely conjecture. I’m not certain if any of these curves or climbs would actually work for LRT vehicles, it just seemed like the most logical way to do things at the time.

I think there would be a number of advantages to this idea. Most notably, it would remove nearly a kilometre of tunnel, which, at a guess, would probably shave $60–70 million off the bill, along with allowing for surface stations instead of underground stops, also representing a significant savings. Furthermore, I chose Sparks Street for the surface section for a reason: having trains running along that corridor would do a lot to improve the liveliness of that half-abandoned pedestrian mall, giving people a reason to be there outside of office workers on their lunch breaks.

Of course, there would be obstacles. The National Capital Commission would of course be reluctant to allow trains on Sparks, something that would need to be heavily negotiated. And it still wouldn’t be cheap, just somewhat less-expensive, so it would hopefully be more palatable to the McGuinty government.

Sparks is not the only option for surface rail, either. Albert and Slater could theoretically be used, as they are now, however I think it would be difficult to remove the need for tunneled sections entirely. If the current Transitway lanes were used, leading to the Mackenzie King Bridge, then an extremely tight turn would be required to align trains up for the run to Campus station. Either a tunnel would be needed to make a more gradual turn, or a serious reconstruction of the area around the east end of the bridge would be necessary.

In all, while it would require a lot of work and a lot of inter-agency co-operation, I think Sparks Street is the most logical place to build a section of surface rail, if we decide it’s neccessary to reduce the plans cost. At this point, I think it would be premature to scrap the current tunnel plan entirely, but it is at least worth considering our alternatives.

Book review: Wrestling with Moses

Hello again, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here, other obligations (namely a certain other publication that I write and edit for)  having taken up a fair amount of my time lately. However, I recently finished reading Anthony Flint‘s Wrestling with Moses, and felt I needed to share my thoughts, as it’s a fascinating read on the roles of both citizen activism and top-down development schemes in North American cities.

Wrestling with Moses, by Anthony Flint. Cover image copywrite Random House, Inc.

As you can probably tell from the cover, the book has nothing to do with Ottawa in any direct sense, but it’s an interesting read nevertheless. It tells the story of famed urbanist Jane Jacobs‘ battles with urban development czar Robert Moses during the 1950s and 60s in New York City. Jacobs and Moses squared off several times, notably over the redevelopment of Washington Square Park and Greenwich Village, and over the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Flint recounts the history of these conflicts by interweaving biographical details about the lives of both Jacobs and Moses with the details of each of the fights.

The contrast between the two figures is incredible, with Moses epitomizing the auto-centric, developer-friendly attitude that reached its height during the period following the Second World War, and Jacobs the grassroots, community-first urbanist theories which many people—myself included—subscribe to today. Flint is able to tease out how both of these figures came to their influential positions (Moses through careful political maneuvering, Jacobs  through cultivating the support of her fellow city-dwellers) and how their came to their respective beliefs. We’ve seen both these forces act upon the history of Ottawa, as well, with the National Capital Commission taking on a Moses-esque role—witness the destruction of LeBreton Flats, and the vast network of “parkways” that criss-crosses the capital region—and Jacobsian community forces leading to the rise of neighborhoods like the Glebe and Westboro.

What I find truly interesting and refreshing about Flint’s approach to this somewhat-familiar urban conflict is that he does not vilify Moses to any great extreme, nor does he deify Jacobs, both of which are far too easy to do. Instead, he presents them as people—neither was perfect, and neither was entirely right nor wrong. In the case of Moses, Flint makes the interesting point that while it’s easy to focus on his large-scale failures, like the aforementioned battles with Jacobs and the Cross-Bronx Expressway, he also did a lot of good for New York City, opening hundreds of public parks and swimming pools, and it’s impossible to deny that even amidst the backdrop of the Great Depression, he was able to get infrastructure built. Of course, he did so while railroading it past communities and with little regard for things like public transportation, but Flint is still able to elevate the man beyond a two-dimensional cartoonish urban villain.

On the Jacobs side of the equation, while it is impossible to deny her far-ranging influence on urban planning and urbanist thought, Flint still acknowledges some of the weaknesses in her ideas, like the fact that she was never able to truly deal with the problem of gentrification. In addition, he also makes the case that Jacobs-style community activism can sometimes go too far, blocking projects that would otherwise be good for cities and neighborhoods, or neutering them so that their impact is thoroughly mediocre, and neither positive nor negative. Ultimately, Flint argues that the best way to plan cities may be by reconciling the two viewpoints—those in charge of developments need to work with communities, but communities must also work with those in charge to ensure that projects meet and adapt to their own needs.

Overall, Wrestling with Moses is an engaging read, and an excellent history of how Jane Jacobs was able to change the face of urban planning through her work in New York City. Flint’s own viewpoints are mostly unobtrusive until the final chapter, where, his history complete, he allows himself to ruminate on the impact of Jacobs and Moses. If you’re at all interested in the history of urban planning in North America, and are curious how these now 40-year-old ideas apply to the modern city, then I highly recommend picking this one up—you won’t regret it.