Government wants to destroy homes
7 05 2008I can’t imagine having spent your entire life saving up for a nice home on a relatively quiet street. Investing year after year into your home and creating memories there only to have local government want to tear it all up with you getting very little say in the whole process.
Dozens of home owners in Ottawa are facing that reality. The city wants to bulldoze about 25 homes along Roman Avenue to make way for a new section of bus transitway.
Now I’m all for public transit and getting more people on buses (or trains but that’s going to take years in Ottawa) but this plan does not sit well with me.
I hope to hear more opposition to this plan including my friends on the right who often argue that government meddles too much into our own lives. Isn’t this the worst sort of intrusion into anyone’s life!?
Looking at a map, you can see that the houses on Roman Ave are incredibly close to the highway already. As much as I feel for these people that will lose their homes, I believe that it is not rational to think that these houses will be safe forever. How long can you defer the widening of the highway? Five years? Ten years? I can guarantee that the highway will have to be widened many times in the next fifteen years to accomodate the increase in traffic as the city keeps expanding.
The city needs better transit; a dedicated bus lane on the highway is crucial to the development of this transit system. Where else will you put it? It needs to go somewhere.
Buldozing homes to widen highways happens all over the world. Look at the 401. How many homes were destroyed for this project?
I could see the people having a good argument if homes were being destroyed to make way for a shopping plaza (shrudder), but a dedicated bus lane is crucial to the functioning of this city. It is already late in coming and the Ottawa of tomorrow cannot survive without it.
My house is near the highway and it is not unreasonable to think that it may one day be cleared for a transit project. If that happens, I will move. A house is just a house; it is the people inside it who make it a home.
I think you are wrong. This isn’t the government intruding into anyone’s life.
CEO of the Corportation of the City of Ottawa, Larry O’brien, said he was going to run the city like it was a business. And now that’s what it is. If the city had a government, then people would have a say and I doubt this public transit issue would be happening.
All in all, this is in the best interests of the shareholders (O’brien supporters) and any other private investor into the Corp of the City of Ottawa, a pretty vacant and soulless corporation no less.
We’re not citizens anymore…we’re consumers!
Dan,
Many of the people who live on Roman Ave bought their homes just as the Queensway was built. I doubt that 38 years ago many people thought this highway was going to expand from four lanes to — needing to demolish their home.
Bronson Avenue needs to be seriously looked at when it comes to congestion. That shouldn’t mean that everyone who owns along this heavy traffic and mostly two lane street should expect a wrecking ball.
I did not mean to imply that the purchase of their house on Roman Ave was a lack of foresight; I think that it is inevitable that the highway will be widened. Will it be next year? In ten years? I cannot seriously believe that the highway will remain this narrow for much longer.
As for Bronson, nobody will ever succeed in destroying homes in the Glebe to enlarge a street. But the North-South congestion problem is an entirely different discussion that is not likely to be addressed in any serious manner by our city council any time soon.
As a resident of roman Ave, I must inform you of several facts:
1-there already was a plan that was accepted in 1994 (alignment C), the affected properties were already expropriated and have been rented for 14 years, this new proposition recycles an alignment first brought out in 1991, which we fought then.
2-the purpose of this alignment (alignment A) was to reduce costs of $46 million from the overall project, too bad this alignment, is not convertable to LRT, and will probably require relocation of a forgotten fibre-optic trunk line that was costed at $20 million in 1994, this of course excludes the fact the Connaught tunnel project has been redesigned to go deeper (more expensive), use rigid concrete paving (again more expensive), feature barrier-free access, and possible retail concessions (nice idea! but too bad it’s a tunnel with no station), therefore cost savings about 0.
3-there already is a bus lane here, this project is being done simply on the mind-set that the province will want the right of way back, too bad the province is currently pushing for dedicated HOV/Bus lanes in leu of widening highways which is what is being built towards Kanata.
4-the provinces long term plan up to 2030 is to bring the 417 up to 8 lanes with dedicated bus lanes, for which there is already room, in this section, and which is being accounted for in the project currently being done towards Kanata.
5-most roads connecting to the 417 are not capably of handling projected traffic growth that will be expected if the 417 is widened past 8 lanes.
6-the medium term projection for travel time improvement in this proposed project will be: from Kanata to downtown will be 30-45 seconds shorter, all for a cost of $112 million, short term: no change from existing, long term: no long term listed.
nobody on this street will ever question the “..for the greater good…” philosophy, unfortunately this project is not for the greater good and will not serve to improve transit whatsoever, all it will do is destroy my home, the street I grew up on and scatter 4 generations of my family that reside on Roman Ave to the winds.