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Watson to Baird: Forgo the Media on LRT and NCC
By Nicole Rutherford
Jim Watson waits for a response. (Photo © Kelly Hobson)
Despite sparking a recent flurry of online publicity, Mayor Jim Watson seems to be drawing the curtains a bit in his fight with the National Capital Commission over his light rail transit plan.
Earlier this week Watson caused a stir publicly, taking aim at the commission for not approving a key part of the light rail transit expansion and vowing to take his frustration to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who is also responsible for the National Capital Commission.
The two have been firing contentious tweets and statements about their respective mandates, but today Watson’s special assistant, Brook Simpson, said that in the upcoming days the two politicians are trying to find a middle ground.
“The Mayor has made his opinion pretty clear,” Simpson said in regards to recent media spurs, “but now what they want is to talk face-to-face rather than through the media.”
John Baird’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Watson hopes to meet with Baird about the commission’s recent decision to reject the design for a partially buried part of the light rail transit line along the Sir John A. MacDonald Parkway.
According to the commission’s website, this does not meet two of the board’s conditions:
“1) Unimpeded continuous access to the corridor lands and Ottawa River shorelines, and 2) minimal visual impact on the corridor landscape quality and the user experience of this corridor.”
As a counter-offer, the commission proposed a fully buried tunnel along the same route, which the city says would be far more expensive.
When the City of Ottawa responded with an offer to dig a 500-meter-long trench instead, commission spokesman Jean Wolff said this “wasn’t advisable because it wouldn’t protect the river front.”
The commission also offered to either reroute through the Rochester Field lands or to bury a deeper tunnel along its current route. None of this was well-received by the City of Ottawa as it was presented in what Watson described to the CBC as a “secret” and “disappointing” meeting where no city officials were invited.
Nonetheless, according to Wolff, the City of Ottawa is now conducting an Environmental Assessment of the Sir John A. MacDonald Parkway to see what can be done.
The city’s budget for the transit project, is estimated to be somewhere between $980 million to $1.2 billion dollars. It consists of an initial line set to be complete in 2018 that will connect Tunney’s Pasture and Blair Station. There will then be an additional extension connecting the Baseline Station to Algonquin College.