Former mayor Bob Chiarelli is seen riding the O-Train on its launch day in October 2001. He led plans to expand the north-south light rail system, but it was hotly contested in the 2006 election. Chiarelli came third in that mayoral race.
As opening day approaches for the O-Train's southern extension, we take a look at Ottawa's long journey toward north-south light rail.For more than 20 years, a north-south rail line has been a dream of Ottawa politicians and citizens alike. Now that the extended Trillium Line is nearly ready to open to the public, the CBC’s Kate Porter looked back at the long and winding process of how we got here.
The inaugural ride this month, which is bound to see smiles and speeches, will take place almost exactly 18 years after a charged council meeting on Dec. 14, 2006, that changed the trajectory of transit in Ottawa.on the north-south light rail project championed by his predecessor, Bob Chiarelli, who had finished a distant third in that fall's mayoral race behind O'Brien and Alex Munter.
In the mid-2000s, the original plan was for an electric train to travel from Barrhaven down Chapman Mills Drive, over a much-needed bridge to Riverside South, then on to Bayview and downtown. Trains would have travelled above ground on Albert and Slater streets like streetcars — animations showed trains mingling with traffic and cyclists — before reaching the final station at the University of Ottawa.
Downtown businesses opposed the idea of adding light rail trains to compete with cars and buses on congested streets. Many argued a north-south train wouldn't fix the traffic problems, and an east-west train was needed. As the city's newly elected mayor, O'Brien presided over more drama in the first weeks of the council term that December. Council approved athat would have stopped the line at LeBreton Flats and removed the contentious downtown portion, only to pull the plug completely the following week as the contract was about to expire.
The light rail cancellation "stunted" how Riverside South grew so that it wasn't built around transit, says Desroches. The line that now jogs over to an extra Limebank Station closer to thousands of homes was only added in 2018, when theand developers Urbandale and Richcraft agreed to an unusual special levy on the tax bills for new homes to raise another $30 million.The airport might not have had an LRT station either.agreed in 2016By 2019, three terms of council had gone by and elected officials approved a new north-south contract with the company then known as SNC-Lavalin.
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