I know that many of you are interested in the future of the Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC) and the threat it poses to “the People’s Park”, the much-loved green space beside Springhurst Park, between the Rideau River and Lees Avenue in Old Ottawa East. We have renewed our efforts to prevent the AVTC’s path through our greenspace by removing it from the new TMP. This summer, we went door-to-door in Old Ottawa East to talk about the AVTC and ask people to sign our petition to keep the AVTC out of the People’s Park.
If you haven’t signed our new petition yet, please do so now.
We will also be hosting a public consultation on the AVTC on Wednesday January 29, 2025. Mark your calendars!
For those unfamiliar, the AVTC is a proposed four-lane freeway first contemplated over half a century ago that would cut through Old Ottawa East and the People’s Park. It’s an outdated plan that would rob this part of the neighbourhood of much-needed and well-used greenspace.
Paving the park for an urban freeway no longer aligns with the city’s transportation or climate change goals. The upcoming TMP consultations are the exact right time to call on the city to remove the section of the AVTC planned to go over the river and through Old Ottawa East. TMPs are a once in a generation document, and so it’s important for us to take action at this time.
This past June, the city kicked off the next phase of public consultations on Part 2 of the Transportation Master Plan (TMP). TMP Part 2 will identify the transit and road projects that are needed to accommodate growth in our city. With the launch of this phase of consultations, the city released its long-awaited Origin-Destination Study, providing a snapshot of residents’ daily travel, including trip origins and destinations, modes of travel, and trip purposes. You can download the Transportation Trends Report with Origin-Destination survey results, as well as a “Highlights” (summary) report.
To learn more about opportunities for public consultation, you can visit https://engage.ottawa.ca/transportation-master-plan.
You can also email the TMP team at [email protected] and Mayor Sutcliffe at [email protected] to provide your feedback. It's important they hear your concerns about the AVTC.
