Good morning Chair, and members of the committee.
My name is Rob Attrell, and I’m a resident of Ottawa living in Orleans with my wife and three young kids. I’m a community advocate who really wants suburban transportation options. Between cycling and the incoming LRT extension, I never want to feel the need to shop for a second vehicle. I’m speaking to you today as a board member of Bike Ottawa.
First, I want to thank city staff for getting this report ready so quickly, and for asking to delay major decisions until the fallout from Bill 60 has played out.
The through line from Ontario Bill 212 to where we are today, and where we are headed with transportation policy in the province is very clear. This legislation threatens the ability of cities to choose to reallocate space currently under-used by vehicles. We only want to do this work in the first place because the city has extensively studied every road renewal and took years developing the TMP.
Now, I want to take a moment to illustrate just how naively written and prepared this legislation is with a hypothetical scenario.
Based only on the wording in the bill, it appears it would be perfectly legal for the City to tear up the outer traffic lanes on a four-lane road and replace them with grass. Grass is not a ‘prescribed purpose’ in the legislation, at least not yet. Call it a “road diet” or “beautification project.” Then, the morning after the construction crew leaves, we could call the crew right back in to tear up that grass and install a bike lane. That would also be perfectly legal, because we aren’t replacing a car lane anymore; we are replacing grass. Now, I’m not suggesting the city would ever do that, but it appears we certainly could.
So, under Bill 60, we could theoretically still build the infrastructure we need to achieve our Official Plan targets, but only if we do it in the most expensive, inefficient, and redundant ways possible. This vaguely-written legislation forces transportation planners to act like children playing a game of “20 Questions” with our infrastructure budget, or more realistically, it chills the mood on active transportation projects so these potential questions never get asked.
The city should be able to decide where it wants to make better use of space on our roadways by sharing the space with other modes of transportation.
Bike lanes are a wedge issue, especially as snow and colder weather approaches. It is politically very easy to attack bike infrastructure, and supporting it makes candidates an easy target.
With that in mind, I am asking you today to look past this specific bill and see the threat to your own authority. This relevant section of Bill 60 includes the phrase “any other prescribed purpose.” If you accept this without a fight, you are handing Queen’s Park a blank cheque to come back to veto any local decision you make, including dedicated bus lanes or even something as benign as parades or street festivals. I hope you can imagine yourself in my place, theoretically of course Mr Chair, if it was municipal ring roads that were being banned by similar provincial legislation.
I am here today to ask you to stand up for the residents of this city and the principles you have used to build our high-level planning documents. I’m glad to see the plan is to recommend maintaining the active transportation budget, and doing what you can while this works itself out. I’m sure City staff and engineers have plenty of great ideas to work through this, and cycling advocates do too wink, wink. Get creative.
In addition, as mentioned by the previous delegate, I feel like it should go without saying that it is almost certainly worth submitting our list of affected projects to the province and asking for exceptions.
Finally, Toronto City Council recently supported a motion 23 to 1 to oppose this legislation and request that the Province clarify that municipalities have the authority to determine road design within their borders. City Council passed a motion opposing Bill 60 on housing to support tenants, but has to my knowledge been formally silent on this provision so far. Are we okay with Ottawa’s transportation policy being dictated from Queen’s Park?
I am asking this committee and Council to show solidarity with Toronto’s City Council, to move a similar motion adapted for Ottawa. Defend our city’s autonomy. Protect our budget. And keep working toward a city with multiple viable transportation options.
Thank you.