Trucks on King Edward Avenue and Rideau Street

The recent re-emergence of the tunnel option to get trucks off King Edward Avenue and Rideau Street is a vindication of the wisdom that resides in communities which experts and decision makers ignore at their peril.

For one thing, the new popularity of the tunnel option is an implicit recognition that there is no serious capacity problem on the Macdonald-Cartier bridge. Community representatives on the Public Advisory Group for the latest $7 million study pointed out early on that the traffic projections were exaggerated and that the existing bridge would do for the foreseeable future. Their comments were ignored.

Further, while a tunnel was among the options initially considered, it was quickly discarded for "technical" reasons. Despite this, a community group continued to work hard to promote the tunnel option as the only one that would solve the truck problem. It got nowhere.

How long will it be now before the experts' and politicians' attention will finally turn to improving transit connection across the Ottawa River? It's another idea that has long been promoted by community groups. The NCC's recent study of interprovincial transit confirmed the feasibility of the various measures that could be taken.