Monday, March 10, 2008

Downtown tunnel gets more business support

The city's four transit plans--all of which include a tunnel downtown for transit--have received yet another seal of approval from Ottawa businesses, this time from three Business Improvement Initiatives (BIAs). The Bank Street Promenade BIA, ByWard Market BIA, and Downtown Rideau BIA have all expressed support for the underground tunnel plans. A story in the Ottawa Business Journal wrote about the BIAs and their support:
"What's important to the BIAs is that a tunnel will move most of the traffic caused by public transit traffic out of sight."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure why people care so much whether or not businesses buy into the new rapid transit plans. I think that the planners should be looking into what is best (and cheapest) for the city and its citizens rather than trying to please business owners and lesser stakeholders.
As far as I can tell, the cities of Toronto and Montreal have been built up around their transit systems, rather than the other way around, with businesses flocking to areas servicing the most users. This seems like a much better system. If Ottawa had planned better, maybe this could have happened years ago. But it appears that the planners are content to do everything ass-backward.