Towers Are Coming to Bank Street - Transit Must Go Underground

 Now that Ottawa’s Stage 2 O-Train extensions to both the east and west are nearing completion, should we begin planning for a Bank Street O-Train Subway connecting Billings Bridge to Place du Portage and Terrasses de la Chaudière in Gatineau?

 Back in 2024, the CBC published a story on Ottawa’s six worst transportation headaches according to residents. It highlighted that Bank Street's bus service is 'borderline unusable,' underscoring just how badly this key transit artery is failing the city. This single corridor serves over 250,000 core residents whose daily lives depend on it. On top of that, tens of thousands more flood into the area every day, transferring from Confederation Line 1 and Trillium Line 2 onto this narrow street. Simply put, our downtown is ill-equipped to handle this volume without a Bank Street O-Train subway serving as the system's backbone.

 The area is only going to get denser. Sun Life has major plans for the corridor, proposing a multi-phased development featuring four towers between 25 and 40 storeys that would add at least 1,500 new housing units. Meanwhile, the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC) is planning a new nine-storey mid-rise, and Minto Group is seeking to build a 19-storey apartment tower on Isabella Street. To top it off, Brigil has ambitious plans for 265 Catherine Street - the former Greyhound bus terminal - which is slated to become a multi-tower community.

 On top of all this, the Ottawa-Gatineau metropolitan population has surpassed 1.66 million people. Combine that rapid growth with these planned high-density developments along Bank Street and worsening traffic congestion, and we have a compounding crisis - one that makes a Bank Street O-Train Subway not just an option, but an absolute necessity.

 Best of all, a key infrastructure foundation is already in place: the nearby Walkley Rail Yard offers an ideal facility for vehicle maintenance and storage, giving the project practical operational logic rather than being pie in the sky.

 Ultimately, suburban commuters won't trade their cars for Confederation Line 1 or Trillium Line 2 if their final destination requires battling urban gridlock on a crawling bus. A Bank Street subway is the missing piece that makes taking transit from the suburbs actually faster than driving. Without it, gridlock will simply continue to shift from our highways straight onto downtown streets.

 More towers are coming to Bank Street - Canada's G7 capital needs to learn from Montreal and Toronto: transit must go underground.