I was at the Mayor’s Breakfast this morning (Monday, December 8th) with Prime Minister Mark Carney, and I left with mixed feelings.
It’s great that PM Carney the time to speak about the federal work underway in our nation’s capital: The bid to bring the Sommet de la Francophonie to Ottawa is a huge opportunity for our city, and the housing announcement will make a real difference. All good news.
But with all this talk about expanding interprovincial trade, we need to be honest about a basic question: where are all those trucks supposed to go?
The answer is the 6th crossing, the new bridge announced by the federal government that will connect the Aviation Parkway and Montée Paiement across Kettle Island. Yet the project barely gets mentioned, even though it’s clearly inching forward in the background. It’s the Keyser Söze of infrastructure projects: everyone knows it exists, everyone swears they’ve seen signs of it, but , no one ever wants to talk about it.
I want to restate my support for the new eastern crossing because it will strengthen internal trade, reduce our dependence on the U.S. corridor, and give truck drivers the infrastructure they need to do their jobs safely and efficiently, and it will lighten the load for residents of downtown.
That being said, the 6th crossing won’t eliminate every truck from downtown. This morning alone I saw a Sysco truck near uOttawa and others servicing the Rideau Centre. Deliveries are a fact of life in a dense urban core. What the new interprovincial bridge can do is relieve the constant pressure on King Edward which is at max capacity
Housing, trade, transportation: these files all intersect. Today’s announcements were welcome, but we can’t keep tiptoeing around the infrastructure that ties so much of this together.
You can sign the petition here: Petition · Fast Track the New Ottawa-Gatineau Interprovincial Crossing – Ottawa, Canada · Change.org
Interview with CFRA Bill Carroll: ♫ The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll – Sound Bites | All the best audio from The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll
This post is also available in French.
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