Corridor challenges
The purpose of this section is not to argue for or against the consideration of any particular bridge corridor. The intention is to demonstrate the level of challenge involved in turning any one of these into a major interprovincial freeway interconnect carrying up to 2000 cars per hour in peak times and thousands of daily heavy trucks. It is incumbent upon the Study partners to enter into a meaningful discussion regarding (a) other alternatives that have been previously dismissed without a full and fair assessment and (b) whether the current requirements (ie the terms_of_reference) envisioned for the requirements on a new bridge are the right ones.
Corridor 5: Aviation Parkway-Kettle Island-Montée Paiement
This corridor is the longest of the 3 at over 10 km. (Recall that today trucks traveling to Quebec experience a 3 km connection from the 417 to Hwy 5 via Nicolas-Waller-Rideau-King Edward). In addition, trucks travelling the length of this Corridor 5 will encounter 10-15 signalized intersections. That is more than they encounter today on the King Edward Corridor.
On the Ottawa side this route requires widening the Aviation Parkway to 4 lanes north of Montreal Road and adjacent to the Montfort Hospital. Ensuring safety at the edge of the Rockcliffe Airport runway will also be a challenge.
To construct this corridor on the Gatineau side, a new 1 km section of roadway will need to be built along the route of a current bicycle path, from the Ottawa riverbank north to Montée Paiement at Boul. Maloney. This route, in addition to being a bicycle path today will be alongside a golf course to the east and along the backyards of a sub-division of houses to the west. This is not the best of characteristics for a truck route designed for more than a thousand heavy trucks per day.
Once north of Boul Maloney along Montée Paiement, trucks will climb a steep hill, pass many signalized intersections at accesses to numerous shopping areas. In addition there are driveways for many homes along this section of Montée Paiement. It is hard to imagine thousands of heavy trucks per day crawling along this already busy corridor.
Corridor 6: Ottawa Greenbelt-Lower Duck Island-Boul Lorrain
This corridor also clocks in at ~7+ km long vs 3 km for today's route through downtown and it is located about 12 km east of downtown along the 417/174. At this distance from downtown, the detour for any trucks starting their journey near the center or west of the city is significant. This corridor requires a new Hwy 174 interchange to be built in the Greenbelt and a new 4-lane arterial road built to the shore of the Ottawa river across the Greenbelt. Once across the river and into Quebec it follows an existing 2 lane road through what once was a small rural Quebec community with houses having small setbacks from the road. Changing this into a 4-lane arterial carrying more than a thousand heavy trucks per day will devastate this community. Here's a glance at what Boul_Lorrain looks like today:
Corridor 7: Ottawa Greenbelt-Baie McLaurin-Gatineau Airport
This corridor is similar to Corridor 6 on the Ottawa side, 12 km east of downtown and about 6 km across the Ottawa River to the Hwy 50 in Quebec. Once a new interchange is built joining it to Hwy 50 near the Gatineau airport it will then be ~20km back to downtown Hull. This is hardly a useful route for commercial goods movement between the metropolitan areas. And although this corridor touches the least human development because it is the farthest outside of the built-up area, of all the areas it crosses the most sensitive wetlands (on the Quebec side).