Queensway Bridges Replacement

By John Dance

Tired of detours due to the replacement of bridges along the Queensway? Well, get ready for the mother of all disruptions – detours that could close key parts of the Queen Elizabeth Driveway and Colonel By Drive for almost two years

The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) is barrelling ahead with its recommendation of 90-week detours along the two roads when it replaces the Highway 417 bridge over the Rideau Canal.

The project, expected to start within three years, is the next step in the MTO’s lengthy plan to replace all the 60-year-old bridges along the Queensway. The Canal bridge is the most complicated because of its length and its location over the heritage-protected Rideau Canal.

The Metcalfe and Elgin bridges must also be replaced, but they require only three-week detours in advance of the weekends when the fabricated bridges are quickly hoisted into place. The actual detours for users of the Queensway will only be for a couple of days.

Although the MTO planning for new downtown bridges has been underway for more than five years, it was only at a November online information session that residents learned of the proposed 90-week detours. In the two previous sessions, they only mentioned brief detours required for the actual “rapid replacement” of the assembled new structure.

The detours of QED will require all pedestrians, cyclists and motorists to detour around the construction site by way of Elgin and Argyle, so the very congested Elgin-Isabella-Pretoria Bridge intersection will become that much worse. MTO has been asked if they have done any traffic studies to determine the impact of the detours, but it has not replied. The City of Ottawa hasn’t done any studies either because it says it’s MTO’s responsibility.

The Old Ottawa East community is concerned about the detour around Colonel By Drive because all that traffic would end up on a Main-Hawthorne route, already highly congested at peak periods. A further complication is that the bridge replacement will follow the three-year reconstruction of Main and Hawthorne that’s now underway. The combined disruption of the two projects – which also involves replacing the Queensway bridge over Main Street – could total more than five years, which may overwhelm affected businesses and residents.

“The bike detours that the MTO put in place recently for the Percy Street closure pertaining to the 417 Percy bridge replacement were completely insufficient and, frankly, dangerous,” says Matthew Meagher, co-chair of the GCA’s Transportation Committee. “For a large part of the first Percy closure, the MTO detours were directing cyclists, and particularly Grade 7 and 8 students going to Glashan, out onto unprotected bike lanes in the fast traffic on Chamberlain, before expecting them to walk their bikes for several blocks.

“If they were to take a similar approach to bike detours on Main/Hawthorne, funneling cyclists into mixed traffic, it would be unsafe and unworkable,” says Meagher. “Our plan is to push hard to get them to give some real attention to cyclists and pedestrians, rather than just focusing on how they get cars through our neighbourhoods quickly. Whether that means staggering the closures or building a temporary structure out into the canal to get people around the construction, I’m not sure.”

At the previous online information session three years ago, MTO’s recommended plan for bridge reconstruction required the demolition of two buildings near the northeast corner of Colonel By Drive and Hawthorne Avenue. A number of residents objected to the demolition, not knowing that the alternative to demolition would be 90-week detours.

MTO says the new recommendation will save the two buildings, avoid endangering a major watermain to the south of the bridge and improve safety in the construction area. MTO noted in an email, “The new bridges must be constructed on temporary piers and abutments (ends of the bridge) that will be in place for the duration of the construction period (90 weeks) ... The temporary piers are directly within the travel lanes of the two parkways, and they cannot be relocated.”

Both recommended plans say the Rideau Skateway and Canal boat traffic will not be adversely affected.

In May, MPP Joel Harden and representatives of the Old Ottawa East Community Association met with MTO officials who noted that after the November online information session, they’d received only 12 comments expressing “concern for impacts to active transportation, tourism and traffic.” They also noted that the parkway closures were “formally accepted by NCC letter dated November 23, 2021,” a year before the recommendation was made public.

Capital Ward Councillor Shawn Menard and Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi have also criticized MTO’s consultation process and the plan for 90-week detours.

MTO will finalize its “transportation environmental study report” on the bridge-replacement project this spring, and there will be a 30-day public review in the summer.

John Dance is an Old Ottawa East resident, an occasional contributor to the Glebe Report, and a daily visitor to the Glebe. Parts of the article above originally appeared in The Mainstreeter.

By Marc St. Pierre

On April 21, in the lead-up to Earth Day, teams from the Ottawa Redblacks, OSEG, the city’s Waste Management, Glebe Neighbourhood Activities Group and Glebe BIA spent the morning cleaning up the community in and around the Glebe as part of Ottawa’s Cleaning the Capital campaign.

More than 40 participants included local community leaders, Ottawa Redblacks players, Waste Management staff and various other volunteers who were eager to ensure the community they live, work and play in was ready for the warmer weather. The teams were divided across six parks in the Glebe to collect litter left behind following the recent snow melt.

The Cleaning the Capital campaign is a city-wide cleanup that occurs in the spring and fall every year. Residents come together and combine efforts to make our city clean and green. This year marks the 30th year of the Cleaning the Capital program. Since 1994, more than 1.4 million volunteers have participated in nearly 30,000 cleanup projects.

As community-driven organizations, we want to keep our community clean and our city beautiful. Stay tuned for future events within the Glebe and check back with the Glebe BIA as they look to run another cleanup in the fall.

Marc St. Pierre is manager of community relations for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group.

Eco-cat booklet sales surge

Supporting St. Matthew’s Green Team

By Margret Brady Nankivell

An interview on CBC national radio of Miss Jessie, a feline member of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church, has boosted sales of her eco-cat advice booklet, A Guide for Cats Who Care.

The book sells for $10, and revenues help fund St. Matthew’s Green Team initiatives. Jessie has already raised enough money to buy and install a reverse-osmosis water treatment system for St. Thomas Anglican Church in Moose Factory, Ontario. The new system, ordered for the parish hall of St. Matthew’s partner church, will save on the use of plastic bottles there.

The 18-year-old calico and accomplished feline writer (yes, she does need help with a human keyboard) was nominated as a climate champion on the popular CBC radio show on environmental issues What on Earth with Laura Lynch. Jessie was interviewed by the show’s producer Rachel Sanders in a final segment of the one-hour program, and she meowed on cue nicely.

Jessie says she enjoyed the experience, especially because before the interview she was given a pinch of locally sourced catnip to steady her nerves.

Copies of the booklet are sold through St. Matthew’s online Treasures Boutique and were on display at the church’s recent Earth Day celebration and lunch. Sales so far total $600.

Jessie hopes the publication will inspire eco-cat activism across Canada and is pleased that she has several new “paw pals.” These include Callie in Courtenay, B.C. (who suggested the term paw pals), Haddie in Chateauguay, Quebec and Pickles in Kitchener, Ontario.

The booklet includes a dozen tips for ways cats can help conserve the environment, such as drinking from natural water sources like rain puddles, avoiding car travel and reducing food waste. Dogs can learn some lessons from the booklet too.

Her other publications include Cat Tips in Covid Times, A Cat’s Christmas in Covid Times and Jessie’s Favourite Recipes. Proceeds from all sales go to St. Matthew’s outreach projects.

The success of the eco-cat booklet, however, has been Jessie’s big breakthrough. As one reader emailed, it has been “a CATegorical success.”

Note: Jessie has been blessed several times at St. Matthew’s Blessing of the Animals service, including when she was just a little kitten.

Margret Brady Nankivell is a longtime member of the St. Matthew’s congregation.

(Part 1)

By Dan Vivian and Cecile Wilson [Atmospheric CO2 near Mauna Loa, Hawaii on May 19: 422.39]

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and lowering heating costs are two reasons why people are electrifying their homes. By combining a heat pump with solar power, you can have heating that is both cleaner and less expensive than using natural gas.

In this article, we provide the rationale for reducing the GHG output and compare the emissions produced by various home heating methods. In the August edition, we will show how using the combination of an electric heat pump and solar power can also save you money.

Why are we concerned about fossil fuels and GHGs?

Data collected by scientists around the world indicate that burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gases) has emitted so many GHGs that they are in the process of changing the makeup of the atmosphere. This change is enough to cause a significant rise in global temperatures around the earth.

There are all sorts of consequences to these rising temperatures. The delicate balance of the climate is disrupted, resulting in droughts in some parts of the world, floods in others, fires, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, melting polar ice caps, rising ocean levels, stress for plants and animals and even extinctions. We can expect a whole list of related issues for human beings and our social institutions as well.

Even if we (governments, corporations and financial institutions included) decide that we need to keep burning fossil fuels despite their destructive effects, there are limited fossil fuels available. As we use more, sources become depleted and harder to find and access, which makes them more expensive. We need to transition away from fossil fuels eventually – why not make the move to cleaner heating sources sooner, while we have more control over the transition?

How do fossil fuels compare to other heat sources?

The graph below compares the GHG emissions produced by the various means of heating space and water in Ontario. Natural gas burned at a high efficiency (92 per cent combustion, which is common for condensing furnaces and boilers) is used as the base rate for GHG emissions and is given a value of one. A value higher than one indicates that the heat source emits more GHGs than gas burned at 92 per cent efficiency; a value lower than one indicates that the heat source emits fewer GHGs.

In addition to a high-efficiency furnace, this graph shows the emissions produced by gas burned in a conventional efficiency heating appliance (about 82 per cent efficient). This is indicated as ‘Natural Gas Conv’ on the graph.

Note that fuel oil (78 per cent efficient, which is typical) emits about 75 per cent more GHGs than high efficiency gas, propane about 25 per cent more and conventional gas about 12 per cent more. In Ontario, conventional electric heat produces about 90 per cent fewer GHGs than high efficiency gas does, while an electric heat pump produces about 96 per cent fewer GHGs (or about 10 per cent and four per cent respectively of the GHGs emitted by high efficiency gas). The GHGs produced by solar power is so tiny (one divided by over 1 million) that it is effectively zero.

How significant is home heating?

The City of Ottawa tracks its GHG emissions from buildings, transportation, waste, agriculture and its own operations. Buildings are further subdivided into two subsectors: residential and industrial/commercial/institutional. In 2020, buildings were the largest source of GHGs in Ottawa at 46 per cent of total emissions, with the two building subsectors being about equal (see Results of the 2020 Community and Corporate Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories, September 2021, City of Ottawa publication for more information). On a more personal scale, a 2,000-square-foot house typically accounts for between 4.8 and six tonnes of GHG emissions per year.

In 2020, 83 per cent of building emissions came from natural gas. Even though natural gas is often touted as a ‘clean’ fuel, the chart below shows clearly that moving from any fossil fuel (including natural gas) to an electric heat pump would significantly lower GHGs.

In the August, we’ll demonstrate how combining a heat pump with net-metered solar panels can save you money as well.

Dan Vivian is a mechanical engineer and the principal for Building Science Trust Inc., as well as a Climate Reality Leader (2018). He helps people move their buildings to net zero energy consumption. Cecile Wilson is a resident of the Glebe and is interested in climate change, the actions we can take to mitigate it and the discourse surrounding this critical topic.