Tag: LRT Stage 2

LRT in Connaught Park: Updated landscape plan, opportunity for feedback

Landscape plan for Connaught park showing walls around the train and small berms

re: Noise and Visual Mitigation in Landscape Plans for Connaught Park

QTNca has continued its advocacy for improvements in the LRT plans through Connaught Park, including paths and measures to reduce noise and visual impacts. Residents have an opportunity to provide feedback on a revised landscape plan now and a revised plan for connectivity is coming later this year.

In spring 2020, the QTN community was engaged in the consideration of berms proposed by KEV as a way to reduce noise and visual impacts for QTN residents (Letter to KEV regarding berms). Then OC Transpo announced that a noise study would be done; later we learned that it would include the whole LRT Phase II project, which took more than a year to complete. For Connaught Park, Councillor Kavanaugh and OC Transpo, in cooperation with QTNca, formed a public advisory committee (PAC) to facilitate community discussion about the plans to mitigate noise and visual impacts for this section of the LRT line.

The PAC met for the first time on September 21st and OC Transpo presented the following key points (click to view presentation, PDF):

  • The noise study showed a need for additional noise mitigation in Connaught Park.
  • Large berms will not be pursued for noise mitigation. Reasons given include: NCC paths require openings that reduce effectiveness for noise mitigation; insufficient space for large berms; and conflicts with underground utilities.
  • For noise mitigation, OC Transpo proposes three engineering elements: Absorptive wall panels, a noise barrier wall, and rail dampers (slide 6):
  • Design and colour of materials for the noise wall can be chosen to blend with a park setting and OC Transpo invites community suggestions on that.
  • Tree planting and vines will be used to “green” the noise wall; community input is welcome.

Members of the PAC raised several important questions:

  • Access to the noise study to read the analysis of noise impacts, the rationale for the decisions made, and the effectiveness of the proposed solutions. The presentation at the meeting did not include any quantitative or detailed analysis
  • Noise impacts and mitigation for other areas such as the fly-over bridge and the curves on the southbound train to Baseline. Current plans include noise dampers on the track over the fly-over but not a noise wall. Concerns about the noise around the curves include impacts for Woodroofe High School and Whitehaven as well as QTN.
  • More information from the perspective of residents, such as cross-sectional views and data from various locations along the route, e.g., north of Elmhurst.
  • Visual mitigation requires more attention. The study only considered noise mitigation, while both have always been raised by residents as important matters to be addressed.

Next Steps:

  1. We will share additional information as soon as we receive it
    • Based on a follow-up enquiry, the noise study will be available by the end of October.
    • Detailed analysis of noise impacts around the curves will be sent separately.
    • Additional drawings to show noise and visual mitigation from the perspective of residents.
  1. Feedback from QTN residents
    • OC Transpo is requesting feedback and suggestions on the appearance and colour of the noise walls, desire for vines, tree species (e.g., conifers, deciduous, fruit bearing), and overall landscape plan (see Slides 7 to 21). PAC members will compile community feedback and submit it to OC Transpo so it can be considered in development of final plans. Please submit your feedback to qtncommunity@gmail.com.
    • QTN residents may wish to provide other feedback and questions through the committee.  The committee will try to obtain answers to your questions. Questions/comments can be submitted to the QTN community e-mail at qtncommunity@gmail.com.
  1. A public Zoom meeting will be held later in the process.

Lincoln Fields Plan Delayed Again

We all know that Lincoln Fields mall and the surrounding areas will undergo major changes, especially as we get closer to the opening of the new LRT station in 2025. Revitalization could be positive or negative, and the difference is good planning. An integrated plan has been one focus of QTNca advocacy for three years now.

City Planning promised to develop what is called a Secondary Plan to provide guidance for development in this area. It was supposed to follow soon after the Official Plan. This week we learned that it will be delayed until 2023, after the next civic election.

Meanwhile, the Official Plan, to be adopted this fall, will facilitate intensification around the LRT stations and along Carling Avenue, with more flexible permissions for developers, higher towers, and requirements for residential densities of 200 units per hectare near stations. Developers will be able to make proposals without a more detailed City plan or an integrated approach to planning. When we name community issues, we are told those will be addressed in the secondary plan – but that is now delayed and major redevelopment proposals will be approved in the meantime. That means we will see more piece-meal development without serious consideration of context.

Lincoln Fields is an important strategic area for QTN residents and for the west end of Ottawa. Its strategic importance is comparable to Le Breton Flats because of its location, access to basic services, and connections between neighborhoods and also to the river valley. The Lincoln Fields LRT station will be a major facility, given the new plans for connections to Barrhaven. And while intensification is pushed for every lot within QTN, in the name of needed housing, a large, vacant parking lot close to a station is allowed to stagnate as an urban wasteland. This is short-sighted.

The lack of vision for what Lincoln Fields area could be is disturbing. Intensification requires confidence in City Planning. It is difficult to have that confidence when such short-sighted and reactive approaches to development are allowed to continue. QTNca is now working with other neighborhood associations to find alternative ways to put forward a vision for what Lincoln Fields could be.

If you have questions or suggestions, please send a message to qtncommunity@gmail.com.

Kathy Vandergrift

QTN and the New Official Plan: Next Steps

What kind of intensification is good for QTN? The debate in Ottawa has shifted slightly from “how much intensification” to “what kind of intensification,” as the draft Official Plan is revised. More change is needed before final approval by City Council, scheduled for this fall.

Density Targets instead of Requirements

In response to strong push back, including the QTN submission, the proposed density of 80 units per hectare will be a target instead of a requirement. That means more flexibility in how change will happen in QTN and other neighborhoods in the Inner Urban Transect, a category that captures neighborhoods developed before 1950. QTN stayed in the Inner Urban Transect because of its location between two LRT stations, even though its character has many similarities to neighborhoods in the Outer Urban Transect.

Neighborhood Focus

So far City planners refuse to recognize the need for a stronger focus on neighborhood-level planning rather than uniform policies for the whole transect. At a high level City planners support healthy neighborhoods, e.g. the notion of 15-Minute Neighborhoods, but the specific policies run counter to a neighborhood focus and could undermine neighborhoods like QTN. While the negative impacts of previous approaches to in-fill housing are recognized, the new plan will continue the same cookie-cutter approach – only this time it will be the much-vaunted 613 apartments at a higher density than the earlier cookie-cutter approach to large 4-suite units, both of which require destroying the trees, green space, and interesting streets that make up the character of QTN.

City planners say they will take context more seriously, but the plan includes no means to do that. City planners say they recognize the need to integrate planning for streets, playgrounds, and services with intensification, but there is no means to do that at the neighborhood level, where it has to happen. Better integration of master plans at the city-wide level will not lead to healthy neighborhoods without a clear means to focus on the neighborhood level. Our experience shows the gaps that result from multiple layers of city-wide master plans that don’t connect on the street level.

The means is well-known; it is called neighborhood planning. It gives neighborhoods an effective voice to ensure that changes benefit the whole neighborhood instead of undermining what makes it work. Other cities do it; it can be as cost-effective as the existing cumbersome, overly bureaucratic development processes that all neighborhood associations find ineffective.

Next Steps

The QTN Planning Committee continues to advocate for a number of policy changes in the various master plans that will come together to City Council this fall. The common theme is a stronger focus on the neighborhood level in order to accommodate population growth without destroying what makes QTN and other neighborhoods good places to live.

More specific information will come in additional posts, such as our recent post on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. If you would like more specific information or have suggestions for QTN, please contact Kathy Vandergrift, chair of the planning committee, by e-mail at qtncommunity@gmail.com.