Lower Duck best for city, truck traffic woes, politicians suggest

Last month, the National Capital Commission announced its decision to examine two Lower Duck Island corridors and the Kettle Island site during the interprovincial crossing study's second phase, drawing to a temporary close months of heated debate over the future bridge.

Building interprovincial links at either Kettle Island or Lower Duck would be an unacceptable decision on the part of the NCC and federal and provincial governments, says Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Michel Bellemare, indicating the need for a more long-term solution to the downtown truck traffic problem. "We want to bypass the suburban communities and bypass the rural villages," says Bellemare, who has pushed for a bridge at the Cumberland corridor and an eventual ring road around the National Capital Region. "(A bridge at Lower Duck) is going to have major impacts on east-west traffic networks … on all our neighbourhoods."

But other elected officials for the area are continuing to support the Lower Duck sites, pointing to the presence of the Canotek Business Park, proximity to the highway and setback from residential communities as key factors.

With the priority of solving truck traffic woes, no future bridge should cut through a residential neighbourhood, suggests Ottawa-Vanier MP Mauril Bélanger, with Lower Duck the only proposed site in the Greenbelt that fits the bill. "It's a little more than a kilometre away from any established community," he explains, adding that while he realizes some in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood don’t want a bridge in their backyard, he's "representing the majority view of the riding of Ottawa-Vanier."

Fixing the Highway 417/174 split and widening Highway 174 will help ease in new infrastructure like a bridge at Lower Duck, Bélanger says, especially with the nearby roadway already providing quick access to a potential crossing.

Like Bélanger and Bellemare, Ottawa-Vanier MPP Madeleine Meilleur also says the focus remains on finding a solution to downtown truck traffic – not transporting the issue elsewhere. "We need to move it away from built communities," she explains. "(With growth towards Rockland) we need a bridge in the east end. My position has always been the same … I want to solve the King Edward (truck traffic) problem."

A modified take on either corridor at Lower Duck Island would both shift trucks from the downtown core and ensure other neighbourhoods don't face the same concerns, Meilleur suggests, as well as bypassing community structures like Montfort Hospital.

With both Beacon Hill and Convent Glen residents expressing concerns about the proposed Lower Duck locations, some are feeling a sense of frustration the project will now be set back by wider study parameters, continues Tim Tierney, president of the Beacon Hill North Community Association. "It's essentially a shovel-ready project that could have gone ahead," he explains.

Though Tierney expects the association's bridge standing committee will continue its support of the Kettle Island corridor, "they're going to do their due diligence" as the study moves to its next step, he says. "There are just a lot of questions with the new corridors."