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Walk the Line, Part 2 follows Citizen reporter Matthew Pearson as he treks the length of the Confederation LRT line from east to west to get a closer look at all the places in Ottawa the train will soon touch. In this installment, Pearson’s journey takes him from a river’s edge to the heart of Rideau Street.
I’m standing at the rocky edge of the Rideau River in my bathing suit.
The bridge above me carried buses on the Transitway between Hurdman and Lees stations until last December, when it was closed for repairs.
Soon, it will carry trains.
I arrived here after several hours of walking along the route of the Confederation LRT line, now under construction. I’m tracing its path across the city, from east to west. I’d managed to stay within reach of the line for most of the way. River or not, I wasn’t about to give up now. So I ditched my walking duds — shorts, shirt and shoes — wrapped a quick-dry towel around my waist and shimmied into my red swimming trunks.
From its headwaters at Lower Rideau Lake, this waterway flows for about 100 kilometres into the Ottawa River, its larger and more famous sibling.
It splits with the Rideau Canal at Hogs Back. The force of the falls pushes the river through the heart of the city, past Carleton University and Brewer Park, around a gentle bend at Old Ottawa East, through a shallow stretch between Vanier and Sandy Hill, beneath the Àdawe crossing and the Cummings Bridge, around a final bend to the west, a fork at Green Island and over Rideau Falls.
As I stand in the shadow of the Transitway bridge, the area is crawling with construction workers trying to get this span into shape.
I don’t want to tip them off about what I’m about to do, so I’m not getting into the river until photographer Julie Oliver is in position on the other side.
She’s already been by to collect my backpack and leaves me there in my trunks and water shoes while she drives around to Lees Avenue.
I sit in the grass beside the pathway and have a snack. Cyclists, joggers and dog walkers pass by, some giving me the side eye. I’m sure I’d do the same if I came upon a shirtless man eating a banana by the river on an otherwise idle Thursday morning.
I’m paranoid the construction workers are going to pounce, preventing me from completing this short river crossing. I decide I should try to blend in and look like I’m out doing my morning exercise routine. I do some sit-ups and push-ups, and run sprints back and forth along the path, all the while willing Julie to just get there already.
After what feels like an eternity, I spot Julie. Thumbs up. Away I go.
I make my way under the bridge to the river’s edge, stepping from one mud-covered rock to another as the water quickly rises up my legs. Arms out, I dive in and head for the opposite shore.
The water is warm and without much current. When I open my eyes underwater, there is only darkness. Although much of the Rideau is composed of shallow areas of less than two metres in depth, it’s far deeper here, in amongst the bridge’s massive concrete pillars.
Courage! … all photos by Julie Oliver
More courage!
Wet …
… really wet.
Owning it …
Victory!
Respite.
I’m across in about two or three minutes. I’ve drawn the attention of some workers, but Julie shoos them off.
“He’s fine, he’s getting out now,” she says, a pair of cameras slung around her neck.
I scramble up the rocks and towel off. Julie promises the pictures and video won’t be too mortifying.
Having recently moved to Vanier, this river now plays a much larger role in my consciousness. I cross it several times a day. I bike and run along it. I watch as people wade out onto its rocky shelves to cool themselves.
It has a story to tell. It’s not mighty or historic like the Ottawa, but the Rideau provides habitat for dozens of rare species, including two vulnerable bird species, the black tern and least bittern. Up river, there are snapping turtles and water snakes.
Along this stretch, you might catch a rock bass or spot a king fisher, a blue heron or even Ottawa’s famed royal swans.
“If you got lucky, there’d be a green heron,” says Paul Hamilton. The Canadian Museum of Nature botanist and resident algae expert was instrumental in a landmark study of the Rideau that culminated in the 2001 State of the River report.
A decade later, a Rideau Valley Conservation Authority snapshot found water quality along this stretch of river ranges from good to poor, depending on the location and what happens on the land nearby.
The stretch I swam across was rated “fair,” but Hamilton warns me that bacteria levels climb as the river passes through Ottawa, sometimes to the level that would shut down a beach.
“Where you were swimming is really not a place you want to be swimming a lot,” he says.
From the river’s edge, I walk along a construction fence and across a parking lot to Lees Avenue. I cross the Queensway and follow the road until it meets King Edward Avenue.
The line, meanwhile, leaves the future Lees station, does a dipsy-doodle under the highway and rises over King Edward.
Future Lees Station under construction. Parliament Hill and the University of Ottawa buildings are visible behind.
It runs along the western edge of the University of Ottawa to the former Campus station, which has been torn down. In a branding coup for the school, the stop here will be renamed “uOttawa” when the LRT opens in 2018.
This is a school of commuters. Though the trains will be sleeker and hold more passengers, their arrival may not mean a huge behavioural shift at the university because so many students, faculty and staff already ride the bus.
“We’re very skewed in that direction,” says Daniel Spence, whose job at the university involves overseeing on-campus bike lanes and other sustainable transportation measures.
The high reliance on transit, as well as walking and cycling, allows the campus to get away with having far fewer parking spots than would normally be required for a facility of its size. There are roughly 50,000 people studying or working here, but only 3,200 parking spaces.
That inclination toward transit seems to embolden the people in charge. “Anytime they want to build something, they build it on a parking lot,” Spence says, as he turns to look over his shoulder.
There, outside the social sciences building, a sweeping new plaza at the centre of campus has usurped more than 150 parking spaces. At a school with poorer transit and higher demand for parking, such a move would be unthinkable.
The class of 2020 will arrive on campus soon, but they’ll have to wait until they’re in third year to see all those buses replaced by modern-looking trains.
“I’m imagining them speeding across campus, picking up people and dipping down (into the tunnel),” Vanessa Dorimain says.
Transit is one of Dorimain’s top priorities as a vice-president of the undergraduate students’ union.
While she remains concerned about the rising cost of monthly passes, particularly for part-time students who don’t qualify for the universal bus pass available to their full-time colleagues, Dorimain says she hopes the launch of LRT will cut the number of students who want to opt out of the pass because they don’t ride the bus.
There is, afterall, something about trains that captures the imagination.
An artist’s impression of an LRT train at the Mann Tunnel near the uOttawa campus.
Like it or not, there’s a stigma associated with riding the bus. Some think buses are the dirty and unreliable domain of the poor and unwashed. Those who hold this view must have limited experience because most Ottawa buses I’ve been on, particularly during rush hour, are full of lanyard-wearing office workers armed with Kindles and smartphones.
Still, a truly great system makes transit an option for those who don’t actually need it. At least it should. Where, previously, people would have never considered taking the bus to the movie theatres at Gloucester Centre or a baseball game at RCGT Park or Bluesfest, soon they’ll be able to take a train instead.
“For the LRT to work, it has to be a lifestyle choice. It has to have caché, a certain glamour to it,” says Ritchard Brisbin, the Ottawa architect whose firm is designing the above-ground stations.
“You’re not getting on the LRT because it’s the only way to get to work, you’re doing it because it’s the cool way to get to work or wherever you’re going.”
I pause my journey for a quick lunch and make my way across campus to the corner of Laurier Avenue and Waller Street. Below me lies the beginning of a 2.5-kilometre tunnel under downtown.
As I walk north along Waller, my eyes are drawn to another construction site — the future home of the new Ottawa Art Gallery and redeveloped Arts Court.
The gallery is scheduled to open several months before the LRT. In my mind, I picture weekend outings — families with young children, couples on first dates, seniors, all riding the train to the gallery to check out its famed Firestone Collection of Canadian art.
Somewhere around here, the tunnel below me curves to the west and arrives at Rideau Street.
It’s just after 1 p.m. People are coming and going in every direction. Those who live here and those who are visiting intersect at the William Street pedestrian mall.
Across the way, a soaring new Rideau Centre entrance acts as a gateway to the mall’s epic, $360-million expansion.
Large lines of people wait to get into H&M on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016.
Of the nearly 20 million people who visit the mall every year, many arrive on the bus via Rideau Street or the upper level Mackenzie King Bridge. That makes it the city’s busiest transit hub and one that surely stands to get busier once the LRT opens.
Meanwhile, what’s happened in the vicinity over recent years — from the opening of the Shaw Centre to the Arts Court redevelopment, to the new Ogilvy Square pedestrian mall to the complete reconstruction of the road itself — all speak to just how much the downtown has evolved.
“I really think we’re on the cusp of something fantastic,” says Cindy VanBuskirk, the Rideau Centre’s general manager.
An east-ender, she looks forward to the day when she’ll catch the train at Blair station and ride it to work. “Every grown-up city needs to have great transportation, it’s just part of where we are in our evolution as a city.”
There will be several ways to get from the mall to the LRT, including an escalator cascading down from the corner of Colonel By Drive and Rideau Street, and elevators where the Shoppers Drug Mart once was by the Rideau entrance.
Another entry point, near the spot I’m standing on William Street across, may finally give the ByWard Market the entrance it so richly deserves.
“The average person coming to Ottawa with GPS and a flashlight struggles to find the Market,” says Brisbin, from his board room overlooking Clarence Street. “If you live in the city, you go, ‘How is that possible?’ But it’s true. There’s no obvious entrance, there’s no threshold.”
For now, the future Rideau station is hidden behind construction hoarding and fences, like so much else I’ve seen.
A few steps away, though, beside a green steel door at 73 William, the curious can peer through the fence and down several storeys to the construction site below; to the city’s future unfolding.
—
Read: In the third part of Walk the Line, Matthew Pearson heads downtown, where underground workers are toiling away on the most deeply hidden part of the city’s LRT.
查看原文...
•
I’m standing at the rocky edge of the Rideau River in my bathing suit.
The bridge above me carried buses on the Transitway between Hurdman and Lees stations until last December, when it was closed for repairs.
Soon, it will carry trains.
I arrived here after several hours of walking along the route of the Confederation LRT line, now under construction. I’m tracing its path across the city, from east to west. I’d managed to stay within reach of the line for most of the way. River or not, I wasn’t about to give up now. So I ditched my walking duds — shorts, shirt and shoes — wrapped a quick-dry towel around my waist and shimmied into my red swimming trunks.
From its headwaters at Lower Rideau Lake, this waterway flows for about 100 kilometres into the Ottawa River, its larger and more famous sibling.
It splits with the Rideau Canal at Hogs Back. The force of the falls pushes the river through the heart of the city, past Carleton University and Brewer Park, around a gentle bend at Old Ottawa East, through a shallow stretch between Vanier and Sandy Hill, beneath the Àdawe crossing and the Cummings Bridge, around a final bend to the west, a fork at Green Island and over Rideau Falls.
As I stand in the shadow of the Transitway bridge, the area is crawling with construction workers trying to get this span into shape.
I don’t want to tip them off about what I’m about to do, so I’m not getting into the river until photographer Julie Oliver is in position on the other side.
She’s already been by to collect my backpack and leaves me there in my trunks and water shoes while she drives around to Lees Avenue.
I sit in the grass beside the pathway and have a snack. Cyclists, joggers and dog walkers pass by, some giving me the side eye. I’m sure I’d do the same if I came upon a shirtless man eating a banana by the river on an otherwise idle Thursday morning.
I’m paranoid the construction workers are going to pounce, preventing me from completing this short river crossing. I decide I should try to blend in and look like I’m out doing my morning exercise routine. I do some sit-ups and push-ups, and run sprints back and forth along the path, all the while willing Julie to just get there already.
After what feels like an eternity, I spot Julie. Thumbs up. Away I go.
I make my way under the bridge to the river’s edge, stepping from one mud-covered rock to another as the water quickly rises up my legs. Arms out, I dive in and head for the opposite shore.
The water is warm and without much current. When I open my eyes underwater, there is only darkness. Although much of the Rideau is composed of shallow areas of less than two metres in depth, it’s far deeper here, in amongst the bridge’s massive concrete pillars.
Courage! … all photos by Julie Oliver
More courage!
Wet …
… really wet.
Owning it …
Victory!
Respite.
I’m across in about two or three minutes. I’ve drawn the attention of some workers, but Julie shoos them off.
“He’s fine, he’s getting out now,” she says, a pair of cameras slung around her neck.
I scramble up the rocks and towel off. Julie promises the pictures and video won’t be too mortifying.
Having recently moved to Vanier, this river now plays a much larger role in my consciousness. I cross it several times a day. I bike and run along it. I watch as people wade out onto its rocky shelves to cool themselves.
It has a story to tell. It’s not mighty or historic like the Ottawa, but the Rideau provides habitat for dozens of rare species, including two vulnerable bird species, the black tern and least bittern. Up river, there are snapping turtles and water snakes.
Along this stretch, you might catch a rock bass or spot a king fisher, a blue heron or even Ottawa’s famed royal swans.
“If you got lucky, there’d be a green heron,” says Paul Hamilton. The Canadian Museum of Nature botanist and resident algae expert was instrumental in a landmark study of the Rideau that culminated in the 2001 State of the River report.
A decade later, a Rideau Valley Conservation Authority snapshot found water quality along this stretch of river ranges from good to poor, depending on the location and what happens on the land nearby.
The stretch I swam across was rated “fair,” but Hamilton warns me that bacteria levels climb as the river passes through Ottawa, sometimes to the level that would shut down a beach.
“Where you were swimming is really not a place you want to be swimming a lot,” he says.
•
Lees and uOttawa
Lees and uOttawa
From the river’s edge, I walk along a construction fence and across a parking lot to Lees Avenue. I cross the Queensway and follow the road until it meets King Edward Avenue.
The line, meanwhile, leaves the future Lees station, does a dipsy-doodle under the highway and rises over King Edward.
Future Lees Station under construction. Parliament Hill and the University of Ottawa buildings are visible behind.
It runs along the western edge of the University of Ottawa to the former Campus station, which has been torn down. In a branding coup for the school, the stop here will be renamed “uOttawa” when the LRT opens in 2018.
This is a school of commuters. Though the trains will be sleeker and hold more passengers, their arrival may not mean a huge behavioural shift at the university because so many students, faculty and staff already ride the bus.
“We’re very skewed in that direction,” says Daniel Spence, whose job at the university involves overseeing on-campus bike lanes and other sustainable transportation measures.
The high reliance on transit, as well as walking and cycling, allows the campus to get away with having far fewer parking spots than would normally be required for a facility of its size. There are roughly 50,000 people studying or working here, but only 3,200 parking spaces.
That inclination toward transit seems to embolden the people in charge. “Anytime they want to build something, they build it on a parking lot,” Spence says, as he turns to look over his shoulder.
There, outside the social sciences building, a sweeping new plaza at the centre of campus has usurped more than 150 parking spaces. At a school with poorer transit and higher demand for parking, such a move would be unthinkable.
The class of 2020 will arrive on campus soon, but they’ll have to wait until they’re in third year to see all those buses replaced by modern-looking trains.
“I’m imagining them speeding across campus, picking up people and dipping down (into the tunnel),” Vanessa Dorimain says.
Transit is one of Dorimain’s top priorities as a vice-president of the undergraduate students’ union.
While she remains concerned about the rising cost of monthly passes, particularly for part-time students who don’t qualify for the universal bus pass available to their full-time colleagues, Dorimain says she hopes the launch of LRT will cut the number of students who want to opt out of the pass because they don’t ride the bus.
There is, afterall, something about trains that captures the imagination.
An artist’s impression of an LRT train at the Mann Tunnel near the uOttawa campus.
Like it or not, there’s a stigma associated with riding the bus. Some think buses are the dirty and unreliable domain of the poor and unwashed. Those who hold this view must have limited experience because most Ottawa buses I’ve been on, particularly during rush hour, are full of lanyard-wearing office workers armed with Kindles and smartphones.
Still, a truly great system makes transit an option for those who don’t actually need it. At least it should. Where, previously, people would have never considered taking the bus to the movie theatres at Gloucester Centre or a baseball game at RCGT Park or Bluesfest, soon they’ll be able to take a train instead.
“For the LRT to work, it has to be a lifestyle choice. It has to have caché, a certain glamour to it,” says Ritchard Brisbin, the Ottawa architect whose firm is designing the above-ground stations.
“You’re not getting on the LRT because it’s the only way to get to work, you’re doing it because it’s the cool way to get to work or wherever you’re going.”
I pause my journey for a quick lunch and make my way across campus to the corner of Laurier Avenue and Waller Street. Below me lies the beginning of a 2.5-kilometre tunnel under downtown.
As I walk north along Waller, my eyes are drawn to another construction site — the future home of the new Ottawa Art Gallery and redeveloped Arts Court.
The gallery is scheduled to open several months before the LRT. In my mind, I picture weekend outings — families with young children, couples on first dates, seniors, all riding the train to the gallery to check out its famed Firestone Collection of Canadian art.
•
Rideau
Rideau
Somewhere around here, the tunnel below me curves to the west and arrives at Rideau Street.
It’s just after 1 p.m. People are coming and going in every direction. Those who live here and those who are visiting intersect at the William Street pedestrian mall.
Across the way, a soaring new Rideau Centre entrance acts as a gateway to the mall’s epic, $360-million expansion.
Large lines of people wait to get into H&M on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016.
Of the nearly 20 million people who visit the mall every year, many arrive on the bus via Rideau Street or the upper level Mackenzie King Bridge. That makes it the city’s busiest transit hub and one that surely stands to get busier once the LRT opens.
Meanwhile, what’s happened in the vicinity over recent years — from the opening of the Shaw Centre to the Arts Court redevelopment, to the new Ogilvy Square pedestrian mall to the complete reconstruction of the road itself — all speak to just how much the downtown has evolved.
“I really think we’re on the cusp of something fantastic,” says Cindy VanBuskirk, the Rideau Centre’s general manager.
An east-ender, she looks forward to the day when she’ll catch the train at Blair station and ride it to work. “Every grown-up city needs to have great transportation, it’s just part of where we are in our evolution as a city.”
There will be several ways to get from the mall to the LRT, including an escalator cascading down from the corner of Colonel By Drive and Rideau Street, and elevators where the Shoppers Drug Mart once was by the Rideau entrance.
Another entry point, near the spot I’m standing on William Street across, may finally give the ByWard Market the entrance it so richly deserves.
“The average person coming to Ottawa with GPS and a flashlight struggles to find the Market,” says Brisbin, from his board room overlooking Clarence Street. “If you live in the city, you go, ‘How is that possible?’ But it’s true. There’s no obvious entrance, there’s no threshold.”
For now, the future Rideau station is hidden behind construction hoarding and fences, like so much else I’ve seen.
A few steps away, though, beside a green steel door at 73 William, the curious can peer through the fence and down several storeys to the construction site below; to the city’s future unfolding.
—
Read: In the third part of Walk the Line, Matthew Pearson heads downtown, where underground workers are toiling away on the most deeply hidden part of the city’s LRT.
查看原文...
