|
Commentary
Motivation
to build new bridge questionable
By
Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online How
many people out there thought the number one reason for to building an interprovincial
bridge in the east end was to remove the truck traffic from King Edward Street?
Show of hands. I thought so. I
too have been assuming that the new bridge would take a majority of the truck
traffic from downtown. But what if I told you that the NCC believes the new bridge
will only take a small portion of the truck traffic. A
much larger portion of the truck traffic and especially the inter-city truck traffic,
will end up moving over to the Chaudiere Bridge, assuming that they ban trucks
on the MacDonald-Cartier Bridge. That may come as a bit of a shock to people living
along Booth Street and Preston Street. At
the moment all the interprovincial truck traffic is using King Edward because
the Chaudiere Bridge is undergoing repairs. Once the repairs are completed and
the bridge is once again capable of carrying trucks, the situation will ease somewhat
on King Edward. So
now what about the proposed east end bridge. If the motivation behind building
the bridge is questionable in that it may only divert a small amount of truck
traffic from the downtown core and the exisiting interprovincial bridges, then
the reason for building a new bridge can be called into question. A
couple of weeks ago a man came to city council with a drawing depicting a tunnel
running from Nicholas and Laurier Street to the northern end of King Edward and
the MacDonald-Cartier Bridge. At first I thought that the guy was crazy, but after
giving it some more thought, perhaps the guy wasn't so crazy afterall. It
certainly makes just as much sense as building a bridge at Lower Duck Island and
having to pay for all the mitgation measures like widening Hwy. 174 and fixing
the split. And it definitely makes much more sense than building a diagonal bridge
at McLaurin Bay and paying for all the mitgation measures. It sure as heck can't
be any more expensive. The
unfortunate thing is that a tunnel was never inlcuded in the Roche-NCE study.
So we'll never know how much it might have cost and whether or not it would have
been the answer to the local truck woes. As
for the NCC's decision to go with three options in the next round of the study,
it appears obvious what happened. Ontario wanted Lower Duck Island included in
the study to take the pressure of Kettle Island and Quebec wanted Option 7 or
McLaurin Bay in the study because it lines up better with the Gatineau Airport.
The two provinces ended up compromising and both options ended up moving forward. In
the end, Kettle Island will once again reign supreme as the best sight from a
technical standpoint, but also the most explosive from from a politcal aspect.
If a bridge is going to get built, it's going to have to be at Lower Duck Island
because it has the least amount of impact on the local communities and it is the
safest politcally. As
for Phil McNeey's roll in all this, I'm sure he would have preferred it if McLaurin
Bay was left off the table, but that decision was totally out of his hands and
was more a demand put forward by Quebec than Ontario. Sure
he could have stood up and waved a flag screaming "not in my back yard",
but he was up against a formidable group in Madeleine Meilleur, Jim Watson and
Dalton McGuinty. If anyone thinks they could have done better in the situation
they're delusional. Short
of sitting on Meilleur until she yelled uncle, I seriously doubt there was any
way McNeely was going to convince them otherwise. To say that he could have at
least tried, is terribly naive and shows a lack of understanding of how part politics
at any level works. McNeely
is just another guy who used to rail against the provincial government when he
was a city councillor and then changed his tune after getting elected to the provincial
legislature. Ottawa
Mayor Larry O'Brien is fond of saying that he is only one voice on a council of
23. Well an MP or an MPP is only one voice in a sea of 50 or 60, or sometimes
even more. Trying to get heard and listened to is not always as easy as it sounds,
especially when you're competing against the likes of Madeleine Meilleur who also
happens to member of the Cabinet. (Updated
8:30 a.m., Feb. 14)
Return
to top Return
to Front Page | 
