1145 Hunt Club Road, #300 Ottawa, Ontario, K1V 0Y3 Tel: (613) 736-7200 Fax: (613) 736-8710 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.mrc.ca
MEMO
TO:
David Lindensmith
FROM:
Tim Dickinson
DATE:
February 13, 2012
COPIES:
-
OUR FILE:
3411003
SUBJECT:
Highway 417 Expansion – Final Public Information Centre
Speech
Good evening and welcome to the Public Information Centre for the Highway 417 Expansion project from Nicholas to OR174. We are pleased to have you all here tonight. The purpose of this presentation is to share a summary of the project and outline how this evening’s meeting will unfold. For your information, this brief presentation will be repeated in French.
My name is David Lindensmith, and I am the Ministry of Transportation’s project manager for the Highway 417 Expansion project. I’d also like to introduce to you Manny Goetz, who is the Consultant Project Manager from McCormick Rankin. In addition to Manny and myself, we are joined here tonight by other members of our project team who are available to discuss the project and answer any questions that you may have:
Kevin Ogilvie, who is a Senior Environmental Planner with the Ministry of Transportation Phil Pawliuk, Area Engineer with MTO
Chris Blaney, Senior Environmental Planner for Acoustics, also with the Ministry Steve Regel and Michel Bisson, the consultant’s Highway Design Engineers Tim Dickinson, the consultant’s Senior Environmental Planner
We ask that you please hold your questions until after this brief presentation and after you have had the chance to review the display materials. At that time, if you have questions, please feel free to approach any of the study team members stationed around the room and we’ll do our best to answer them. We also ask that you please take the time to sign the attendance sheet and fill out a comment sheet before you leave.
In general, the Highway 417 project involves widening the Queensway by 1 lane in each direction from Nicholas Street to Ottawa Road 174, more commonly known as ‘the Split’, along with other safety and operational measures. This will bring the mainline Highway from 3 lanes to 4 lanes, plus ramp lanes.
As you may be aware the Premier of Ontario, the Honourable Dalton McGuinty announced this project in June 2011. Our project includes the detailed design and preparation of contract drawings, so that construction can begin in summer to fall of 2012.
Some of the key features of this project include:
Widening and rehabilitating the Southeast Transitway, Central Transitway and St. Laurent Boulevard bridges;
Transit Priority Measures on behalf of the City of Ottawa between Nicholas Street and Blair Road.
Our work follows-up on the larger Environmental Assessment and Preliminary Design Study for Highway 417, which the Ministry completed between 2002 and 2008. That study looked at the entire corridor from Highway 416 easterly to Anderson Road, and developed a recommended plan to guide the evolution of the Queensway over the next 20 years. This EA was approved in 2008.
We believe that the expansion and rehabilitation of the Queensway from Nicholas to the Split will improve mobility in Ottawa, for drivers and goods movement, will enhance safety, and will reduce congestion. It will help meet growing travel demand in Ottawa, and will help address some operational issues associated with the current configuration. The project also provides the opportunity to address aging infrastructure within the project limits.
In addition, this project includes enhancements to the Freeway traffic management system including upgrades to traffic monitoring cameras and changeable message signs.
Because Highway 417 is an important east-west link in Ottawa and Eastern Ontario, we are committed to keeping highway lanes and ramps open during construction as best we can. We will achieve this by completing construction works in two stages. Stage 1 will involve widening the outside of the Highway from 2012 to 2014. In Stage 2, from 2014 to 2015, traffic will be shifted to the newly constructed section, to allow for completion of the widening towards the highway median.
Like most transportation construction projects, in order to realize the long-term benefits of added capacity on Highway 417, we are expecting some disruptions to travellers. Despite our best efforts to minimize these disruptions, such as using rapid replacement technology for the Lees, Belfast, and Vanier Parkway bridges, some alternating lane closures will be required on the Highway and crossing roads over the course of theproject.
Specifically, the South to East on-ramp at Lees Avenue will be closed for about 3 years, as there is insufficient space to provide this on-ramp in a safe manner during construction. In addition, Lees Avenue itself will be closed between the Ottawa U Entrance and Chapel Crescent for 10-12 weeks in the latter part of 2014, in order to construct the new underpass structure. To mitigate effects on the community, we have carefully considered alternative design and construction solutions for every portion of the project – from staging to construction timing to material selection. All anticipated closures are listed on the display panels, which we encourage you to review in order to ensure you are aware of how and when these closures might affect your normal travel patterns. We have also identified mitigation measures, such as advanced notification and detour signage, to minimize the impact of the construction works. Also,I’d like to point out that as part of the widening project, there will be permanent changes to westbound Highway 417 access to St. Laurent Boulevard. As determined during the 2008 EA study, the multi-lane change movement from the 417 westbound to St. Laurent off-ramp causes disruptions to the smooth flow of traffic and is also a safety concern. A number of alternatives were examined to improve operations at this location, but the approved EA study concluded that the movement from Highway 417 westbound to St. Laurent Boulevard should be eliminated.
Travellers from Ottawa Road 174 westbound will still have access to the off-ramp, and westbound travellers from the 417 can use Aviation Parkway to Ogilive, or Innes Road to get to St. Laurent. The future configuration will resemble Hwy 417 westbound in the vicinity of Highway 416 and Moodie Drive, where access to Moodie Drive is precluded from Hwy 416 but access continues to be provided from Highway 417.
I would also like to draw your attention to another permanent closure, which was approved in 2008 as part of the EA. The south to east on-ramp at St. Laurent Boulevard will be closed to general traffic as of 2013. Again, this closure is required as there is insufficient distance for people to safely get across all lanes of 417 to get to OR 174 eastbound.