Ottawa (November 10, 2008) - Public consultation has been a key component in the development of the City’s transportation plans. Throughout the process, the City has engaged a broad range of citizens through a combination of public meetings and online forums to create a meaningful dialogue around Ottawa’s transportation priorities.

The final round of public consultations for the Transportation Master Plan update was launched on September 11, 2008. The City sought input on four different transit implementation scenarios and supplementary corridors to support and guide the development of the Council-approved rapid transit network. Plans for priority road, cycling and pathway projects were also identified.

A summary of public consultation results will be presented during a joint meeting of the Transit and Transportation committees on November 10.

A number of activities were developed to provide flexible and convenient opportunities for citizens to provide input to the City, including: citywide open houses, discussion and focus group sessions, the OttawaTALKS online discussion forum, as well as mail, fax and e-mail correspondence. The findings of these consultations are not methodologically representative of the population at large as participants in these consultations were self-selected (in person and online). For this reason, the findings should be viewed as a snapshot of self- selected participants.

A breakdown of the entire consultation participation includes approximately:

• 1,300 unique visitors to OttawaTALKS
• 2,400 unique visits to ottawa.ca/tmp
• 400 people at five citywide open houses
• 900 written submissions

The City also consulted with a number of key stakeholders, including federal and provincial government partners, the National Capital Commission, Société de transport de l'Outaouais (STO), VIA Rail, the Ottawa International Airport Authority, Downtown Business Coalition ( BIAs) and various educational institutions.

Key themes and issues

Overall, consultations show that participants generally supported:

• The construction of a transit tunnel to address congestion in the downtown core
• That the City needs to begin construction on its new transit network as soon as possible
• Transit implementation in the east and west as a priority
• Minimizing road spending to channel funds into transit growth
• Ability to grow transit ridership, providing benefits to customers and supporting the environment as important evaluation criteria for deciding which component of the transit plan to build first
• Agreement with the recommended supplementary transit network
• Support for Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge

Participants had many questions on different aspects of the plan including:

• The use of the Ottawa River Parkway versus the role of alternate options in the overall network
• Other options that would avoid constructing the Browning Avenue corridor
• The capacity and location of the downtown transit tunnel
• The potential expansion of the O-Train using VIA Rail corridors
• The prioritization and need for several of the road projects

For more information:
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