NCC Rests This Weekend After Decades Of Botched Planning

So the Alexandra Bridge will closed to be strengthened so that it can successfully “deconstructed”.

A curious concept that, but perhaps that tells you just how bad the iconic bridge has become.

Wonder how that happened?

It will be closed as soon as the very late Chaudiere Bridge is reopened by the end of September but then it was supposed to open in the spring, then Sept. 1 and now … well we will see.

So where are the plans to replace the Alexandra? Perhaps National Capital Commission chairman Tobi Nussbaum can enlighten us on that.

Nussbaum Backs His Old Ward On East-End Bridge

Meanwhile the NCC has been touting the truthy fact that the Champlain Bridge has reopened three months early. However, the word ‘reopened’ takes on a plexing definition when you’re a Crown corporation desperate for good news. The NCC rewriting of the meaning of the English language says it is open except at night now and other times past Sept. 25. Safe to say, the NCC definition of open flies in the face of most every English-speaker on the planet, but what does public relations have to do with the truth?

And while we’re on the topic of plans, what happened to the ‘plans’ for an “iconic” (the NCC’s term, not The Bulldog’s) bridge at the foot of the Aviation Parkway? The NCC is one of the best planners in the world but its follow-through is among the world’s worst.

Furthermore where are the plans for a west-end bridge near Kanata? When will we see that? Before the redevelopment of LeBreton Flats?

This year the flats is celebrating its 61st year of nothing since it was flattened for redevelopment. That’s a long time even by NCC standards. Or worse, when will the NCC finally finish its brownfields experiment at LeBreton. The pollution there is from the ashes of the great Ottawa Fire of 1900. The NCC tried to get high-tech companies to locate there during the later years of the 20th century using the flawed equation of logic that whatever or whomever will purchase the land at a huge downtown price will also be happy to pay the cost of pollution remediation, too.

Strangely, not one company bit on that generous offer. But countless firms chose to locate on the clean land of Kanata where tech firms like to cluster.

So Chairman Nussbaum, when will we see the plans for an Alexandra Bridge replacement, a west-end bridge, and an east-end bridge? No time soon, perchance?

Or when a gasoline truck flips and burns making an impossible turn downtown in a mad-hatter of a traffic problem leading to … wait for it … the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge? What could go wrong?

The next NCC plan is to convince the recently minted owners of the NHL Senators to locate a new arena on polluted land at LeBreton where there’s very little parking, that’s not really downtown, a light-rail line that doesn’t work nearby and a location that NHL czar Gary Bettman says is too small.

Champlain Bridge Open Except When It’s Not

Fill your boots on that one. Sixty-one years of nothing to be extended into the next century.

So NCC, enjoy your Labour Day weekend. You must be exhausted creating plans that never reach fruition. Take a few days off by a lake in Gatineau Park and chill.

But do be home long before 10 p.m. because that’s when the reopened Champlain Bridge is closed.

Ken Gray

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