Quick facts
The issue of trucks in the downtown area
Currently approximately 3500 heavy trucks (6 wheels or more) cross the Ottawa river each day.
Of those approximately 2600 use the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge and King Edward / Rideau, and Waller streets and 900 use the Chaudières Bridge.
Approximately 62% of the trucks are 18-wheelers (i.e., tractor-trailers).
truck traffic peaks in mid mornings and mid afternoons (to avoid the commuter peaks). During these truck traffic peaks, the volumes exceed 200 trucks per hour which translates to one truck every 18 seconds.
Contrary to popular belief the majority of these trucks are not simply transiting through the National Capital Region from Quebec. The majority of the truck total either begins or ends (or both) their journeys within this region.
The City of Ottawa Official Plan calls for the removal of the truck route designation from King Edward Ave after a new bridge is built.
Officially, a truck route designation means trucks must stay on a truck route until they approach their destination. They may then leave the truck route and take another (non truck route) street if that street is the shortest path to their destination. It is quite unclear as to how many trucks would continue to find King Edward Ave as "the shortest path to their destination" even if King Edward was no longer designated as a truck route. If this is so, an outright ban of trucks from King Edward Ave would be required to significantly reduce the number of trucks using this corridor. It should be noted that the Ottawa Official Plan has not contemplated such a measure (truck ban).
The City of Gatineau, in response to the selection during Phase 1 of the 2007-2013 Interprovincial Crossings Study of the Kettle Island corridor as the preferred location for a new bridge crossing, passed a resolution calling for the City of Ottawa to continue to allow trucks on King Edward because it would be unacceptable for all the trucks to be forced onto the Gatineau side of the proposed Kettle Island bridge
Also during Phase 1, the NCC and their consultants recommended that King Edward Ave remain open to trucks should a new bridge be built.
The consultants then estimated based on computer modelling that at least 60% of trucks would continue (ie. prefer) to use King Edward if it remained open to trucks even if a new east end crossing were available.
If a bridge were to be built at Kettle Is. and after allowing for projected growth to 2031, the Phase 1 consultant estimated 2590 trucks per day would use the King Edward corridor, essentially the same number as today.
After the completion of Phase 1 (2010), the Board of Directors of the NCC passed a resolution directing the NCC to initiate a detailed study of the movement of commercial goods in the National Capital Region. In Dec 2022, the NCC announced they would conduct this study in 2023.
A more detailed analysis of the issues involved in diverting trucks from the downtown and the ability of any of the proposed bridge corridors to provide the needed solution can be found here.
The issue of the need to accommodate projected auto traffic
All of the NCC consultant's traffic projections were based on figures in the City of Ottawa 2008 Transportation Master Plan which is based on a 2005 Origin-Destination travel survey and population and employment projections updated in 2007
The peak direction of car traffic is from Gatineau to Ottawa in the AM peak and Ottawa to Gatineau in the PM peak with the peak in this direction more than double the peak traffic flows in the opposite direction.
The current peak traffic capacity of the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge is listed as 4,725 cars per hour and that of all interprovincial bridges combined was stated in the Phase 1 final report as 12,365 cars per hour.
In the Phase 1 final report of the 2007-2013 Interprovincial Crossings Study, the 2005 peak usage for all the bridges combined was listed as 95% of capacity. (For the Macdonald-Cartier bridge the figure was 86% utilization which equates to a spare peak carrying capacity of 661 cars per hour)
The City of Ottawa projection for 2031 was for an additional 1600 crossings of the Ottawa River in the peak hour by motorized vehicle with an average of 1.2 persons per vehicle. This represents a demand of 1,333 additional vehicles (across all the bridges) in the peak hour.
a subsequent region-wide travel survey undertaken in 2011 reported that the peak period number of trips from Gatineau to Ottawa (all trip types) had declined by 10% from the 2005 survey results. It was unclear how the study team would incorporate this contrarian trend into their previous extrapolations for significant growth in total peak trips by 2031.
The terms of reference for the 2007-2013 inter-provincial crossings project required that the project create enough additional capacity for cars crossing the Ottawa River to meet the 2031 demands and still have a surplus capacity of 15% of the total cross-river traffic.
The above projections also assume an aggressive increase in the number of people using transit across the river from 5,100 in the peak hour in 2005 to 11,800 in 2031, an increase of 6,700.
All of the above projections were based on City of Ottawa & Gatineau long term population and employment projections and a 2011 detailed origin-destination travel survey. This travel survey was to be carried out once every 5 years. However, for various reasons, the next travel survey was not conducted until 2022 and as of early 2023 results were not yet available.
The changes in commute patterns resulting from the Covid pandemic of 2020-2022 will likely show a significant change in transportation patterns compared to the projections made in the 2007-2013 Bridge Study
The projections used in the 2007-2013 Bridge Study assume the number of jobs in the region grows at a faster pace than the population and that the growth in peak hour trips across the Ottawa river is higher than both the overall regional population growth rate and employment growth.
A more detailed analysis of these projections and for another perspective on how to interpret them can be found here.
Other solutions that have been proposed
A downtown bypass tunnel option, During Phase 1 of the 2007-2013 Crossings Study some residents proposed a tunnel under downtown streets, connecting the 417 to the southern end of Macdonald-Cartier Bridge.
This option would have the potential to remove all through-traffic of heavy trucks from downtown streets and would accomplish this without re-routing any trucks to other neighbourhoods in the east end or requiring trucks to take a detour via an east end bridge.
This option would also have the potential to remove through-traffic moving directly between the existing Macdonald-Cartier bridge and the 417 of up to 20,000 cars per day from those same streets, and would bypass 11 traffic lights encountered by those 20,000 daily drivers.
This option was discounted from further analysis during Phase 1 because in the consultant’s opinion it did not address the need to accommodate the projected volumes of vehicle growth crossing the Ottawa river in the 20 to 50 year planning horizon
More details on these alternative can be found in the Alternatives section of this website.