This month, hundreds of OC Transpo buses were abruptly cancelled. Two of the most affected routes? The 6 and 7, with 5,000 average daily riders between them. The 7 route takes thousands of Carleton students to and from campus every day, on top of accommodating commuters heading in and out of the downtown core. Both of these routes are vital means of transportation along one of Ottawa’s major arteries: Bank Street.
The City of Ottawa is undertaking an active transportation and transit study for the Bank Street corridor from Highway 417 to the Rideau Canal. This corridor goes through the Glebe neighborhood, many local businesses and major entertainment venues like Lansdowne Park.
Myself and other Carleton students recently participated in the 2nd Annual Case Competition, with this year focusing on the transit study.
Despite having four traffic lanes, Bank Street is frequently limited to just two lanes during peak hours when drivers ignore “no-stopping” rules. Traffic along Bank Street will likely worsen in the short and medium-term as Ottawa’s population continues to grow rapidly, municipal and federal return-to-office mandates come into effect and Lansdowne 2.0 proceeds.
In trying to prioritize all road users, Bank Street has failed to prioritize any of them.
My group’s recommendations, which we presented to the City’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on March 30th, are as follows:
Removal of on-street parking
There are several forms of parking along the Bank Street corridor. These include the 574 Bank St. parking lot at the intersection of Bank and Isabella streets, the Second Avenue and Lansdowne parking garages and on-street parking and off-street parking. Of these, on-street parking is the most disruptive and least beneficial.
Despite accounting for only 143 of 2,000 local parking spaces, on-street parking cuts available road space in half by taking up an entire lane.
This is especially frustrating because on-street parking is rarely ever used in full. In fact, the only time all available parking is fully used is during major events at Lansdowne. However — as anyone who’s been to the Panda Game or any other event there will tell you — this is precisely when on-street parking is most disruptive, pushing traffic into a bottleneck and causing buses to move at a crawl.
The rest of the time, even during peak demand over weekends, the average usage of parking does not average more than 80 per cent. The logical conclusion? Existing parking infrastructure is more than sufficient to meet demand.
The vast majority of people who come to Bank Street already do so by means other than a car. Of those that come by car, most are willing to walk up to 500 metres to their destination. Existing parking fills this need, without even mentioning off-street parking.
Focusing parking into Bank Street’s existing multi-story parking garages and side streets will de-clutter traffic, improving public transit access to local businesses while still allowing customers to park within reasonable walking distance.
Bus lanes instead
Bus lanes make life easier for people on public transportation and in cars.
Currently, both these groups are poorly served by on-street parking and would benefit from bus lanes.
Bus lanes obviously make buses faster — they can move five times as many people as private vehicles every hour when they have a dedicated lane. No more waiting in traffic, or for someone to turn into or out of a parking spot, or for someone to turn left (you get the point). Studies confirm this, too.
The city’s proposal for a far more limited bus lane along Bank Street estimates that the removal of 16 on-street parking locations at strategic intersections would reduce bus travel time during peak hours by up to 25 per cent. Dedicated bus lanes in comparable cities resulted in time savings of up to 20 per cent.
Improving infamously slow bus service with dedicated bus lanes helps attract ridership, and higher ridership means more revenue for the cash-strapped OC Transpo. More revenue helps improve service, which attracts ridership. See what I’m getting at?
Better public transportation also saves people money, is better for their health and better for the environment.
Private transit’s inefficient space usage will be increasingly disruptive as it congests roads in a growing Ottawa. Buses present a space-effective and sustainable alternative. Bus lanes will encourage future transit use, so congestion does not become an issue again due to induced demand.
Finalize parallel cycling infrastructure
Though new bike lanes are sort of illegal in Ontario (pending a court decision) and the city has eliminated bike lanes, Ottawa can still finalize and improve existing bike infrastructure.
Bike lanes are simply not feasible on Bank Street due to its constrained space and would require removing a lane of traffic. It is not worth getting rid of on-street parking but still being constrained to one lane.
Existing bike infrastructure along the Rideau Canal will effectively get cyclists to locations on Bank Street. Improving other cycling infrastructure on streets like O’Connor will further help.
So, why does any of this matter?
These recommendations represent feasible and low-cost fixes to trade 7.1 per cent of parking on Bank Street for a drastic increase in traffic flow.
This means faster and more reliable transit, improved access to local businesses and a more accessible and much safer Bank Street that aligns with existing City of Ottawa priorities.
These ideas are also popular.
“Of the 6 options surveyed, 66 per cent of people chose on-street parking or car lanes as the least important features for the Bank Street redesign,” according to the Bank Street Active Transportation and Transit Priority Feasibility Study.
I hope they are just as popular with you, dear reader, but also with people who live along the corridor.
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Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that Bank Street is often limited to just two lanes during peak hours due to all-day on-street parking. In fact, on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., Bank Street northbound is a “no stopping zone,” and from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Bank Street southbound is a “no stopping zone.” The Charlatan regrets the error.
