Making the Proposed Development at 265 Centrum Work

Some of you may have heard that there is a new development proposed at 265 Centrum. While this development does not fall in the Convent Glen Orléans Wood Community Association catchment area, it is a big development that will have an impact on our community.

For those of you who don’t follow development applications and the city’s Planning and Housing Committee, the objection to most developments is not the people who will reside in those developments, but the cars that those people will drive. In this case, the development of 1500 residential units is proposed with only 136 visitor parking spaces and no resident parking. As a community association, we generally favour a “yes, and…” approach to evaluating developments. Here is what we see as needed to support this development.

Current Situation

Let’s start by looking at how people move around in Orléans using the origin-destination survey from 2022. In 2022, 72% of trips that began in Orléans ended in Orléans. Of course, this was before the current push to return to the office. That number in 2011 was 61%. In Ottawa suburbs, the modal share was 61% by car as a driver, 18% by car as a passenger, 6% transit, 8% by foot, 2% by bike, and 5% other. In 2022, 79% of trips involved a car. The assumption that this development does is that those trips could be done using other modes of transportation because the development is located close to an LRT station. The LRT may help for a portion of the between 28-39% of trips that are made outside of Orléans assuming that the bulk of these trips are related to a daily commute and a portion of the trips within Orléans. Let’s dig a bit deeper on the options to get around someone living in that development would have for those other trips within Orléans using Traveltime.com which provides a good tool to evaluate travel times. 

For walking, there are studies that show that people are generally reluctant to walk more than 15 minutes to get to a destination. Using 20 minutes as a walkshed is reasonable. As you can see in the 20 minute walkshed map, it does include the LRT station and Place D’Orléans which is a good step towards accessing most amenities. The walkshed also includes French and English schools and some churches. Based on a 20-minute walkshed, it is reasonable that residents in the new development would be able to walk to most amenities that they need. 

However, walkability is not about being theoretically able to walk somewhere. In his book, Walkable City, Jeff Speck outlines other criteria to consider which are safe, comfortable, and interesting. I have done the walk from Centrum to Place D’Orléans a few times and I can tell you that the walk stops being safe and comfortable. The intersection of Centrum and Brisebois currently offers no pedestrian crossing, wide four-lane roadways to cross, no daylighting, or any safety features of any kind except for a sidewalk next to moving traffic. Things get significantly worse when you try to get to Place D’Orléans where you need to cross the four lanes of Place D’Orléans Drive, a truck route with high speed traffic, only to be dumped in the mall parking lot. Just getting to the mall fails the safety, comfort, and interesting criteria outlined by Jeff Speck. Things are not better if you use St-Joseph where the sidewalks are right next to high speed traffic. This is looking at it from the perspective of me walking as a fit male adult. Things get a lot worse when you consider children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. The area is not walkable so walking is unlikely to be a viable option for many trips within Orléans.

For cycling, unless you are comfortable with vehicular cycling, which the vast majority of people are not, the area should be avoided. Without added infrastructure this development will at best create 753 empty bicycle parking spots and at worst, encourage people to put themselves in danger by forcing them to ride in dangerous conditions. Cycling is not a viable option for most trips within Orléans.

For public transportation, the entire system in the suburbs is designed to bring people to LRT stations. The 20 minute Traveltime.com map for public transportation is not much different from the walkshed map. Using public transportation in Orléans for trips within Orléans is generally not faster than walking. Public transportation is not a viable option for trips within Orléans.

Needed to make it work

The best way to address any transportation issue is to eliminate the need for transportation. The area does include a lot of commercial space. Access to that commercial space would be significantly improved if Centrum and Brisebois were to be pedestrianized. This would also improve the area as it is intended to be Orléans’s town square. The experience for festivals and other events in the area. However, the area is currently hard to access without a car so making those changes without providing better access to the site without a car would be politically difficult.

However, addressing access to Centrum by means other than a personal vehicle would also do much to improve the feasibility of the proposed development. Connecting the LRT station with good walking and biking routes would be a start, but it would be difficult since Place D’Orléans Drive is a trucking route and the major access to the 174 for a large section of Orléans, so developing that infrastructure would likely be expensive and/or politically difficult.

Public transportation and cycling infrastructure could be used to improve access to amenities outside of the Place D’Orléans and Centrum area. There is already a bike corridor proposed for St-Joseph, however, what is proposed in the Orléans Corridor plan is currently illegal to implement due to Doug Ford’s bill 60 as it would reduce the number of car lanes. Other important connections would be stores located on Innes and on Tenth Line. Both of these are good examples of stroads, which are unsafe for any vehicle but especially for people outside of cars. Access to Innes and Tenth Line would be possible by public transportation but that would require some changes to the bus network. A quick Google search on how to get from Centrum to Shawarma Palace on Innes shows that the routes are circuitous and infrequent.

Another option would be to develop car share in Orléans. There are currently no car share service in Orléans, but Communauto, the biggest such service in Ottawa, have on average one car for 12 users. Assuming that the 1500 units have 1.3 users per unit (based on the 2022 number of cars per household in Ottawa), you would have 163 car share parking spots for the 1950 users. This number of spots could easily be accommodated in nearby parking lots such as Place D’Orléans and the mall parking lot is generally pretty empty. Walkability between the mall parking lot and Centrum would still need to be addressed.

The current infrastructure does not support the proposed development for 265 Centrum. The changes required to make the area liveable without cars, even if it is just to the LRT station, needed to make this development work would be politically difficult, expensive, and/or not allowed under provincial law.

It is possible that the development could be supported using the current stock of parking spots. The area around Centrum is often used to run festivals and other events so the parking stock around Centrum (quick estimate of around 300-400 spots) already fails to meet peak demand. There are plenty of empty spots at the mall. The mall could monetize some parking spots, especially those close to Centrum that are not frequently used by shoppers. In the long run, it would be better if the mall replaced its nearly 3800 parking spots (over 29 spots for 130 retailers) with anything that would make better use of the land.

This development would be reasonable if there was a strong commitment by the city and developers to:

• address the walkability issues between the development, the mall, and the LRT
• create a viable local bus service that allows residents to conveniently access St-Joseph, Tenth Line and Innes
• develop a robust car share service for the area

Orléans is a very car-centric suburb today, but it doesn’t have to remain that way. These developments are a step in the right direction, assuming that the city and developers do what is needed to support them.

The Convent Glen Orléans Wood Community Association supports what is proposed in the Orléans Corridor Secondary Plan Study where the Centrum area is shown as “station core“, a designation that includes tall buildings. We want to ensure that new developments improve our community by providing much needed housing, improving environmental and financial sustainability, and improving community connections. We are currently thinking of supporting this development with the condition that the transportation infrastructure discussed above are implemented concurrently with construction. We plan on delegating when the application comes to committee. If you have any comments or questions, please let us know.