Build The East-End Bridge Now: GRAY

We have a great divide in the national capital. It’s called the Ottawa River.

If you talk to the people in the tony near east end of the city, that divide should stay the way it is, unencumbered by anything that would bridge that divide … like say a bridge.

No … that could bring about change and nobody wants change when that could alter the neighbourhood around your $3-million house. And such a span could create a link to the French side of the river with its stinky cheese and poutine and fun. God forbid we have fun in the richest neighbourhoods in the city.

No the near east end must remain elitist and tranquil and not to be marred by an isolated road from Gatineau to Highway 417 that would have, god forbid, trucks and cars, and could provide a link between the two solitudes.

The bridge would cross Duck Island, not inappropriately, because east-end home barons have been ducking the bridge for decades.

It’s fascinating listening to the creative ways the locals find excuses for not having the bridge. Those are imaginative people in the near east end.

Why the bridge would ruin the pristine views of the mighty flowing divide. But the National Capital Commission with some amount of jurisdiction over the divide has promised an iconic bridge, the Golden Gate of eastern Ontario. It will find a noble national name for the majestic span, perchance culled from a critter, such as the duck, the groundhog, the carp, the guppy or the gerbil as a result of those magnificent beings’ contribution to the national consciousness. It will make you hum a Gordon Lightfoot song it will be so Canadian.

Yes, the public’s betters at the NCC will strive to instill a sense of awe in the bridge in the face of galloping and studied indifference from the local unwashed.

We have lots of sports in Ottawa, baseball, hockey, football, soccer, bowling, parcheesi, but none so fascinating as watching near east-enders (you know who you are) dodge or even duck the construction of a bridge at the end of the Aviation Parkway. God bless ’em.

Exhibit A for the prosecution is the ever-creative Councillor Tim Tierney, the lord of Beacon Hill-Cyrville. Tierney crafted his politics on bended knee at the foot of former mayor Jim ‘Showboat” Watson, the king of the media photo-op. Accordingly, Tierney has never found a snowplow that doesn’t need to be named nor a highway white line that couldn’t be whiter. The triumph of atmospherics over substance. What would we do without him?

Tierney, whose municipal realm includes the approaches to the evil bridge, says that our hard-earned tax money would be better served by building a ring-road around the city to expedite traffic through the core on Highway 417.

This reveals a basic misunderstanding of bridges, ring roads, congestion, highways, physics and common sense. Build a new road and people will use it and people who were leaving their cars at home suddenly discover you can drive someplace without a traffic jam … for a few weeks. New roads begat cars to fill them. That way you are able to have a traffic jam on the ring road to match the perpetual creep-and-crawl on Highway 417.

Tierney’s idea sounds convincing as in: Why build a bridge (in my jurisdiction) when we could solve the traffic jam on Highway 417 with a ring road. Of course, the bridge is a federal responsibility and the ring-road freeway is a provincial responsibility and the city, of which Tierney is a part, has no responsibility for the councillor’s suggestion. It’s Tierney’s idea and you other guys pay for it. Thanks.

Your agent would like a new car. Would Tierney pay for it? No? Oh come on. Just this time?

So Tierney’s idea goes nowhere but it does provide an excuse (not a very good one but it gets a headline from a desperate reporter) to not build a bridge near his ward. Beats the “I just don’t want it” excuse hands down.

Exhibit B for the prosecution is Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester MP Mona Fortier who says there’s no guarantee that a near east-end bridge would get dangerous trucks out of downtown, the primary purpose of the new bridge. Actually it’s very easy. Downtown would no longer be designated as a truck route (like the Champlain Bridge and its approaches) and make the east-end bridge a truck route. That would take easily a day or two.

It will be great sport watching, once again (and again and again), lame excuses not to build the Duck Island bridge. You could sell tickets to this game.

So a wee bit of advice for the NCC. Cut through all the political smoke-and-mirrors and fertilizer, get the trucks out of downtown (an accident waiting to happen), create $1-billion worth of construction jobs in a troubled time and build the damn bridge.

We’ve done enough talking. We’ve heard enough incomprehensible excuses. Let’s do some building. Now.

Make a decision and get on with it.

Ken Gray is an award-winning journalist who worked at five major Canadian newspapers. He is an educator, broadcaster and at present is the editor and founder of the 16-year-old pioneering internet publication, The Bulldog.

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