Abstract Manager

The City of Ottawa is renewing aging infrastructure and revitalizing the right of ways (ROWs) for approximately 2.5km of streets in the northern section of the Old Ottawa East Community. The project area is generally bound by the historic Rideau Canal (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) to the west, King Edward Avenue to the north, Highway 417 to the east and Hawthorne Avenue to the south. The project provides the opportunity to implement complete street features for the betterment of all road users (pedestrians, cyclists, transit, and motorists), in addition to replacing aged sewer and watermain infrastructure within the community.

Novatech was retained by the City of Ottawa to prepare the preliminary and detailed designs for the project, known as the Greenfield, Main, Hawthorne et al. Reconstruction, building on earlier functional design work completed for the arterial road segments within the project limits. The project, now in its final season of construction, will see over 2km of dedicated cycling facilities added, to further expand the City’s urban cycling network.

Arterial road segments within the project limits include Greenfield Avenue, Main Street and Hawthorne Avenue. These roads support transit and are a part of the City’s urban truck network. Developing designs which balanced the needs of users and were supported by the community, all within narrow urban ROWs laid out more than a century ago, provided some key challenges that had to be overcome.

One key challenge included the incorporation of protected intersection design elements within spatially constrained intersections, while accommodating necessary design vehicle movements. Through traffic analysis it was determined that turn lanes could be removed in places to provide additional space. Another challenge was establishing the width and alignment of roadway cross-sectional elements, which respected the available space and presence of existing utilities, trees, and other features. For some arterial road segments, it was found that overhead utility lines had to be buried to accommodate the inclusion of cycle tracks. In another location the cycling facility type itself was impacted by the presence of a large diameter backbone watermain, which was not up for reconstruction.

This presentation will provide an overview of the project and touch on the unique challenges that had to be overcome throughout the design process to achieve the goal of transforming confined arterial road corridors and intersections from being “car centric” streets to multi-modal complete streets.