Wellington Street can be improved without barricades
A local road with expanded public space and a bidirectional bikeway would be better than it is now, and better than it was before
The fate of Wellington Street is once again being debated in public. After the trucker convoy, the 450 meter stretch of roadway in front of Parliament was closed off at Bank and Elgin streets, with only pedestrians, cyclists, and authorized vehicles allowed in. Not much has changed in the year since. There may yet be big plans for Wellington Street with the potential addition of a surface tramway, but that’s many years away even if it gets the go-ahead. The City is studying the issue, and should have a report with recommendations next year. But for now, new Mayor Mark Sutcliffe wants to open Wellington back up to traffic, just as it was before. His federal counterpart, MP for Ottawa Centre Yasir Naqvi, wants to keep it closed. Who’s right?
In Sutcliffe’s favour, Wellington Street as it is now is simply not working. The barriers stop some drivers but not all—and those who do make it through can accelerate to high speeds, unimpeded by traffic or obstacles. Cyclists have a temporary one-way painted lane, but it’s not protected from traffic or connected to other cycling infrastructure. The pedestrians on this pedestrian mall are still clinging to the sidewalks, wisely leery of the mostly-empty road. From a human scale, the street feels isolated, uninviting, and unsafe. It’s a dead zone.
But does this mean we need five lanes of high-speed cars to liven things up? Even City staff acknowledged there’s not much of a transportation case to be made for bringing the old street configuration back: drivers have found other routes on Queen, Slater, and Albert—plus, downtown traffic has subsided in the ongoing pandemic era. Sutcliffe’s argument also ignores the genuine security concerns of an overloaded street that led to the closure in the first place.
Naqvi also has a point: Wellington isn’t a successful pedestrian mall as it is because we haven’t really tried to make it one. Why not give it a better chance of success by making the barriers tougher and adding a few Muskoka chairs, patio tables, and hockey nets? Yet Sparks Street—just one block over—is this very type of pedestrian mall, and it too is a wasteland. It’s not because of the street layout and furniture, but what’s around it: offices and scattered storefronts. Before the Rideau Centre and before the Federal government expropriated the buildings, Sparks Street was bustling. It would only be so again if people either lived there or had a compelling reason to visit. Wellington, a much wider street with precisely zero commercial or residential space, doesn’t have any reason to be better than Sparks even with the improvements Naqvi proposes.
If closing it all the way and opening it all the way aren’t the right solutions, then we should look somewhere in between. Wellington can be both a more active street for people and welcome automobile drivers again by taking the best from both the Sutcliffe and Naqvi models.
First, Wellington can allow cars, but it doesn’t need to be a five-lane arterial. One option would be to open it back up as a local route—in the city’s new terminology, an access street instead of a flow and capacity street. Through traffic will be possible, but discouraged by narrowing the access points at Elgin and Bank. Within the corridor itself, there would only need to be two lanes for traffic total, one in each direction. Along with traffic calming features, this would keep volumes and speeds low.
As for reallocating the remaining curbside lanes: what is currently the north lane can become a two-way protected bikeway. It would connect with Portage Bridge to the west and the bikeways on Mackenzie Avenue and Rideau Street to the east (as well as south to the future O’Connor bikeway extension). This cycling facility was first proposed a decade ago in the City’s Downtown Moves plan, and a functional design study to implement it had started before being paused in 2019 (the project page on the City’s website still says public consultation will start in… uh… “winter 2019/20”). What is now the south curb lane would become an expanded pedestrian and activity area (maybe not enough room for ball hockey, but enough room for tables, chairs, plants, and tourist photos). These spaces can be separated with more attractive temporary concrete blocks than we’re currently using, and decorated by artists, as demonstrated in Toronto.
Alternatively, the traffic closures could be moved inwards to Metcalfe and O’Connor, and made impermeable to vehicles. By allowing outbound traffic at Elgin and inbound at Bank, it would create two through traffic loops for drivers—still with reduced lanes—while allowing for a new public square on the block between Metcalfe and O’Connor. The idea for a new square here isn’t mine. Referred to as “Parliament Square,” it was envisioned as part of the winning design for the redevelopment of Block 2, the cluster of buildings between Metcalfe and O’Connor on the south side of Wellington. A square of this size would provide plenty of space for activities, while also being easier to program and manage than the entire length of the street.
The benefit to either option would be more circulation than there is now, as Sutcliffe desires, but much more room for public space and active transportation than there used to be, as Naqvi wants. By allowing local traffic while also creating new space for pedestrians and cyclists, the result will be a quieter, safer, and more beautiful Wellington Street—and one that can remain flexible for any future grand vision, whenever that comes.
The City’s memo updating Council on the closure will be up for discussion at this week’s Transportation Committee: Thursday, January 26, 2023 at 9:30 am. According to CBC News, Committee Chair Tim Tierney is expected to move a motion that will either keep the barricades, or remove them—and he’s leaning towards opening the street fully to traffic. Hopefully they can find a more nuanced interim solution.
Welcome back to Ottawa 3 Speed!
After an extended hiatus while working on Councillor’s Row, I’m once again working independently. That means I’ll be back to writing about cycling (and maybe even other city issues…) right here on this newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do! I plan on dropping a new post into your inbox twice a month—though I haven’t settled on a schedule yet.
Next time I’ll be taking a look at the City’s plan for the Glebe Avenue Integrated Renewal. With the City rebuilding the street next year, what can be done to make it better designed for cyclists—and why isn’t the City planning to build it that way?
Hope to see you then!
What exactly would a reopened Wellington be an access street for? There's nothing to access there except for Parliament (where the parking lot is on the far side), and a few big government/tourist buildings. It seems like in an effort to compromise, you are accepting Sutcliffe's flawed logic that more road space means less congestion. The principle of induced demand shows that that is not the case.
The problem with Sparks Street is not so much that it's a pedestrian mall, but that the landlord (the federal government) makes it really hard for good businesses to survive there. Wellington would not be depending as much on street-level retail, but would instead be a tourist space and a kind of national mall. The sidewalks around it are already quite crowded in the summer.