City Hall Operates For City Hall: BENN

Who are the people at the city serving?

Are they thinking about themselves, or about the residents, employers and visitors?

Sprung structures are a hundred plus million dollar project to provide temporary accommodations to asylum seekers. Sprung structures are just large, somewhat insulated tents. Feedback from someone who has actually lived in one, notably Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill, is that they are less than ideal for housing large groups let alone large culturally disparate groups. Noises, odours, lack of privacy, spreading of respiratory diseases are just a short list of the problems identified with large groups of people living in sprung structures.

Did city staff learn nothing from the corona virus induced deaths for those living in congregant settings?

Yet city staff continues to pursue this solution to the exclusion of all else to the point where staffers won’t provide answers to Barrhaven East Councillor Wilson Lo, a councillor with the statutory duty of oversight of city administration. These are questions directed at getting a better understanding of the decision-making process including why staff has focused solely on the sprung structures. Why? Is it because staff favours one-size-fits-all solutions? Is it because staff prefers administrative ease over effectiveness? Is it because staff is thinking about themselves, not the users?

Next up, OC Transpo. Rather than try to fully understand why the residents of Ottawa choose not to use public transit, staff focuses on cutting costs and therefore services. Reductions in route frequency. Route changes. Cuts that led to reductions in the timeliness of routine maintenance of the buses to the point where a significant number of buses were not available for service recently.

Rather than focus on identifying how OC Transpo needs to change its services to meet the needs of potential users, staff is focusing on the more easily implemented solution. Cutting costs. Service levels are just collateral damage.

There is a direct correlation between traffic congestion and road-centric impediments due to construction.

The province figured that out more than a decade ago. It understood that a few days of inconvenience by closing Highway 417 for overpass replacement was better than two-plus years of congestion when using the former technique involving closing a lane at a time as the underlying bridge structure was repaired or replaced.

As well, highway repairs in the Toronto area are carried out by multiple shifts, to minimize the period of time that traffic is congested. Very simply put, the provincial government placed a value on the time and inconvenience of the users.

The City of Ottawa? It closed the west end of the LRT for two weeks of “routine” maintenance while also performing major surgery on the road that the replacement buses had to use at the same time that the nearby 417 was closed for an overpass replacement. City staff permits extended lane closures while no physical work is underway for weeks at a time. Why? Is it because it doesn’t consider the time and exhaust fumes of the users to have a value? Is it because staff is  looking for a solution that is simple to implement, rather than a solution that takes into account the impact on the users?

On to the recent unwelcome intrusion into matters municipal by the provincial government. Bike lanes. The reason for this measure is relatively straightforward. Converting a lane of traffic for the exclusive use of cyclists results in congestion for motor vehicles, including buses, deliver vehicles based on the theory that if you create congestion, eventually people will leave their cars in the driveway. That willfully ignores the science of flow dynamics, where if you restrict the size of the tube, the flow of the fluids through the tube backs up and becomes more turbulent. Very simply put, city staff and councillors should be sent to the principal’s office because they were failing to do their homework. They were not thinking about the impact on all of the users, just on the benefits to the less than one per cent of the population that uses their bicycles to get to and from somewhere on a daily basis throughout the year.

This is not meant to be an attack on city staff though it certainly sounds like one. It is a condemnation of a culture that is structured to serve city hall’s own needs, not those of the residents, employers and visitors. And it is a culture that is enabled every day, in every way, by city councillors.

Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.

For You:

OC Transpo: An Abundance Of Bafflegab: MULVIHILL

Sprung Structures Don’t Work: QUOTABLE

Sprung Structures Are ‘Inappropriate’: LO

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