Comment 2872

By Amagamated (anonymous) | Posted January 10, 2007 at 12:54:43

Councillor Doucet should brush up on his history, and check his facts.

Any comparison of the Ottawa Electric Tramway with the construction of the Rideau Canal is ridiculous. The "O-Train" LRT was a municipally-driven initiative intended to support continued heavy suburban development on the south edge of Ottawa.

By contrast, the Rideau Canal was primarily a military project built by the British Empire to provide a secure supply route between Kingston and Montreal after the war of 1812.

Additionally, the claim that the Ottawa LRT was the "largest greenest project ever undertaken" here is specious at best.

The proposed LRT alignment ran through undisturbed greenspace, threatened a protected species, and transected lands currently subject to at least one native land claim. The planners also declined to reuse an existing brownfield rail maintenance facility in favour of building a completely new yard on more greenspace.

This project died because it was poorly thought out and oversold as a panacea to all things wrong with the city. It was brought forward in an atmosphere of political duplicity and the legal, financial and technical details of the project were subject to a contractual secrecy worthy of a National Security project.

The people of Eastern Ontario are fortunate to have avoided a municipal boondoggle unprecedented in the history of Ontario.

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