Ottawa (November 10, 2008) - Carling Avenue is being recommended as the location of an east-west transit corridor to supplement the main Rapid Transit Network. Once constructed, the corridor will be the catalyst for redevelopment along Carling Avenue, which should result in an increase of employment growth of 100 per cent (67,900 jobs) and a boost in population growth of 140 per cent (to 66,650 persons) within 600 meters of the corridor by 2031.

In this proposal, light rail transit (LRT) will travel down Carling Avenue, operating in the median at-grade, and will connect the east-west LRT line at Lincoln Fields Station and the north-south LRT line at Carling Station.

LRT service on Carling Avenue will provide a local transit service linking communities and employment centres with easy to use on-off service. This route will complement the rapid transit service that is proposed in the Western corridor connecting Lincoln Fields Station to the Dominion Station.

During the public consultation period, comments were received as to the ability of Carling Avenue to serve as the primary east-west rapid transit corridor. Although this option had been previously reviewed prior to Council’s approval of the Rapid Transit Network on May 28, 2008, the decision was made to investigate this concept further to address feedback received through the public consultation process.

The results of this investigation confirmed that Carling Avenue should not be included in the primary Rapid Transit Network and would better serve the community if used as the location of an east- west transit corridor to supplement the main Rapid Transit Network. Specifically, the consultants’ study confirmed that Carling Avenue should not be included for the following reasons:

• To achieve the level of rapid service provided by the western Corridor, it would be necessary to either tunnel or elevate track along Carling to bypass over 30 intersections
• The cost of a tunnel on Carling Avenue from Lincoln Fields to Bayview is considerably more expensive, with an estimated cost of $635M, versus the cost of the Western corridor which is estimated to be $135M; the cost of an at grade solution along Carling would cost approximately $285M and would take approximately 3 years to construct
• If at-grade service was selected along Carling, it would take 13 minutes longer during the peak period along Carling Avenue versus the western corridor from Lincoln Fields Station to Bayview Station
• If Carling were selected as the primary Rapid Transit Network there would be a corresponding decrease in investment along the Transitway. In addition, there would be service impacts to a number of important destinations, including tourist destinations within Lebreton Flats and Tunney’s Pasture/Holland Cross, Ottawa’s second largest employment centre outside of the downtown
• The western corridor is considered to be the best means to achieve the goal of a 40 per cent transit modal split set out in the recently approved Richmond Road/Westboro Community Design Plan. As this community lies immediately adjacent to this corridor, the greatest uptake in transit ridership could be provided by the direct community access to rapid transit service that this corridor would provide

In addition, the International Peer Review Panel confirms these finding when they noted that: “Carling Avenue is appropriate for streetcar development”, operating at-grade in the median with signal priority at intersections, to “accelerate urban regeneration in the corridor...” (Source: International Peer Review Panel Final Report).

Finally, it has been suggested that Carling Avenue be used as an interim rapid transit corridor until such time as issues concerning the parkway are resolved. However, because an LRT line can only be built if connections to a rail yard exist, LRT service on Carling could only be introduced if:

• Carling LRT could be linked to a potential yard location in the east. This would require building the east LRT corridor, the tunnel, and an LRT section on the north-south corridor between Bayview and Carling. This scenario would also necessitate the shut down of the O-Train service to the south.
• Carling LRT could be linked to the approved rail yard at Bowesville: This would require that both the tunnel, and the north-south LRT corridor to Bowesville be built first.

In either of the above scenarios, an LRT corridor on Carling would not be built in the first wave of project implementation and the timing would likely be made after a decision has been made on the possible use of the parkway.

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