Ottawa cancels planned freeway expansion into People’s Park

The City of Ottawa has canned a planned freeway development into People’s Park, a move celebrated by urban planners and advocates.

The Alta Vista Transportation Corridor (AVTC) is a proposed four-lane freeway that would run northwest from Walkley Avenue near Conroy Avenue to the Nicholas Street on-ramp near Old Ottawa East and Sandy Hill. The freeway would run through the communities of Riverview, Altavista and Old Ottawa East, if approved. It would also connect with an already-built hospital link road from Ottawa Hospital to Riverside Drive.

According to city documents, there was a plan to build a portion of the freeway over the Rideau River and through an interchange to Highway 417, which would cut through People’s Park. The plan — which was conceived in 2005 — was to provide road capacity to accommodate travel between communities in southeast Ottawa to downtown.

However, an updated travel demand modelling in the new 2025 Transportation Master Plan (TMP) suggests that a road connection in this segment of the AVTC wouldn’t provide effective congestion relief. This is primarily due to downstream capacity constraints, city staff said.

“Both Nicholas Street and Highway 417 at Nicholas are already over capacity, and these facilities are not expected to be widened. The travel demand modelling also shows that the northern section would attract about 600 additional vehicles to the area during the AM peak period and would, if built, become congested by 2046,” city administration wrote in a Road Network Development report published on March 31, 2025.

“Travel demand from southeast Ottawa will continue to be accommodated on existing corridors including Highway 417, St Laurent Boulevard / Russell Road, Riverside Drive, Bank Street, Main Street, Airport Parkway, O-Train Line 2, the Southeast Transitway, and new frequent transit service connecting southeast Ottawa into the urban transit network.”

The move comes after Capital Ward Coun. Shawn Menard started a petition against the development last year. At the time, Menard said the planned freeway development would go against the city’s climate emergency declaration in 2019. The development would also remove valuable green space from residents in the area, he said.

In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Menard said he gathered thousands of signatures to date.

“There are thousands of people (in the neighbourhood) that have this as a destination and use this green space on a yearly basis … That open, usable space is enjoyed by many, many people for from all walks of life,” he said.

“I think that the legacy we want to leave as a council is really about greenspace protection, environmental enhancement, the promotion of transit, 15-minute communities and cleaner air.”

Menard added that the section that has been axed from the 2025 TMP would have been expensive for taxpayers. The city estimated that it would have cost $150 million for the portion over the river.

“There’s still a segment that is being proposed by staff from that Walkley/Conroy area through to Riverside, which then directly connects up with the (downtown core),” he said.

“We’ve eliminated the most expensive portion that wouldn’t have done much in terms of an actual commute for people … Expanding roads and widening roads, they don’t do much for congestion. We have a lot of induced demand when we do that, meaning that more people will choose to drive or take an extensive mode of transportation for the city if we build a whole bunch of new roads and expand them and widen them.”

The decision is being celebrated by urbanists and climate advocates, who have long opposed the AVTC development in the area.

Jennifer Barrett is a managing director of policy programs and planning for the Canadian Urban Institute, a national coalition that advocates for better urban planning. In an interview with the Citizen, Barrett said the city’s decision was a good example of how the principles of urban planning had evolved over time.

The City of Ottawa is now re-considering older plans with these new principles in mind, she said.

“In the 1960s, that was a time in planning when was about moving people more expediently. There was a sense that, you know, the car was going to be the mobility choice of the future,” she said.

“I think what this decision shows is that planning has evolved, and we’ve learned a lot over the last 60 plus years, and we now understand the great impacts of highway projects that carved through existing neighborhoods and how that split neighborhoods and created noise and air pollution for these neighbourhoods.”

Barrett says that, while she can empathize with people who live in southeastern neighbourhoods and their desire for a direct corridor to the Ottawa’s downtown core, the city doesn’t have the infrastructure to accommodate all the cars in the city.

“We simply don’t have the infrastructure and can’t continue to build roadways as a major form of transportation because it causes all sorts of other negative impacts, both to neighbourhoods and individuals who solely have to rely on automobiles. It’s expensive,” she said.

“We’ve seen congestion increase in the capital region and certainly cities in North America. The real intent now is to rethink our transportation models. Not to take away the car, but to really ensure that there are multiple modes of transportation and ways of moving around the cities that accommodate a variety of users and enable people who live in outlying areas of the city and the suburbs to be able to access downtown.”

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