A four-lane road-widening project through the Greenbelt near Bells Corners, costing tens of millions of tax dollars, is pretty much a done deal.
There’s lots of car-centric sprawl planned for Stittsville and Kanata by our developer-financed politicians, so roads need to be widened at public expense to accommodate all the new commuters.
Making it three lanes instead of four would have eaten up less Greenbelt, but it was judged to be less safe for the high-speed traffic that this project will encourage.
The configuration below for Old Richmond/Hunt Club was rejected in favour of a roundabout.
So we’ll get a roundabout instead – even the “standard” ones aren’t cheap.
Not counting the environmental damage, which is considered “free,” here’s what the taxpayer will be paying for:
Is encouraging sprawl the best use of our tax dollars?
Looking to buy? Why be a sprawl commuter – move to the exciting rural/suburban/urban hybrid community of Bells Corners where we have it all! For example – the Camerons.
Big news for our Bells Corners boys – they get a new name from the crown.
Here are some of the younger Camerons marching through Lynwood Village.
the youngest Cameron
Older Camerons sometimes travel by bike-taxi.
bellscorners 
I swear if there’s a patch of land or an empty field out there, there are developers rubbing their hands together with glee. It’s pathetic how Ottawa is really turning into a suburban wasteland.
Check out Richmond and Carleton Place these days, too.
And, of course, it just means more slack-jawed suburbanites jumping into their cars in the morning and funneling into the streets, sipping their little coffees from their travel mugs, shaking their fists and yelling, “damn this traffic!”
I don’t see any light rail plans going out to Carleton Place either, which is so obviously needed.
(wake up, you useless city hall!!)
The future of Ottawa? More sprawl, more traffic and more fist-shaking.
It’s grand, I tell ya.
I don’t so much blame council – many in the core that don’t want any more condos in their neighbourhoods, or if they do, it has to be limited.
We can solve all of this by allowing 40-floor condos downtown, but oh no! Too many in that area don’t support building up – they want to build out.
I know many in the core who claim that Kanata and Barrhaven can afford to expand, some say there is tons of space. When you tell them that there are thousands of units under construction in Kanata alone they say “good.”
Construction has started on Fernbank – I think phase one will have 200 homes. Then we have Blackstone which is also under construction – phase one will have around 180 homes. The kicker is that both these new massive projects are being built in more or less the same area, almost creating a new city.
Other projects in Kanata: Trail West, which will have around 1200 homes when it’s all done, and just down the road Richardson Ridge, around 280 homes. Then there’s Fairwinds, my guess is around 300 units, and to top things off Acadia – from what I can tell between 250-400 homes.
Why was the three-lane option rejected?
Hubley said in the Sun that “one of the main reasons the reversible lane option is being dismissed is due to light pollution in sensitive ecological lands.”
The environmental assessment nixed the three-lane option this way: “less familiar design; long length of reversible lane (no existing facilities in NA); greater safety risk for vehicles, peds & cyclists; construction management issues” – light pollution wasn’t mentioned.
