Abstract Manager

Learning Objectives:

1. Moving beyond “big ideas” to create streets that fulfil them.
2. Understanding the complexity & interrelationship among street elements – above and below grade
3. Listening to and learning from others; addressing their concerns and address their needs to reallocate space for “complete” and liveable streets.
4. Outlining one’s own process to engage technical stakeholders and community builders to create physical change.

Creating “Complete Streets” is a simple and evocative idea. Often the goal is to create quiet tree-lined streets with room for social spaces, accessible sidewalks, safe places to ride a bike, and that are traffic-calmed and environmentally responsive. It takes patient leadership to address the often under appreciated technical details, and reticent stakeholders that can hinder the successful creation of coordinated streets. The true challenge isn’t the big ideas, it’s building the streets.

This presentation will introduce Ottawa’s 'Designing Neighbourhood Collector Streets' document, and the recently approved Technical Design Details for New Local Streets. The presentation will not only illustrate the street design and components above grade, but also the need to coordinate with, and address, relationships among utilities competing for space below grade. It will reflect on the challenges and the successful process that engaged diverse stakeholders and confirmed their requirements in the reallocation of space within the right-of-way, and beyond, to create the streets that community planners envision in policy and plans.

These technical guidelines and designs illustrate the reallocation of space to contribute to Ottawa’s neighbourhood livability and improve safety and comfort for the most vulnerable street users – pedestrians and cyclists of all ages and abilities. These street designs integrate traffic calming measures, provide space for trees to flourish, accommodate bioswales to mitigate increasingly common major storm events and address often impeding challenges including below grade utilities, road maintenance, transit, and emergency response requirements.

The presentation will demonstrate how the City of Ottawa used project management processes to engage the many primary service providers and builders of new communities and to understand how their systems work and their concerns. Stakeholders included: land developers, transportation engineers, utility providers, emergency services and even the snowplough operator.

The presentation will reflect on the lessons learned and summarize how other municipalities can follow a process to engage technical stakeholders and develop their own guidance and details to create “complete” neighbourhood streets.

A similar presentation was given in Sept 2022 at the OPPI-OALA Joint Conference.