‘We would destroy the neighbourhood’: Alto CEO rules out downtown Ottawa stop

As Alto outlines possible landowner compensation for high-speed rail, officials dismiss the idea of a downtown Ottawa station. CTV’s Kimberley Fowler reports.

The CEO of Alto, the Crown corporation in charge of the proposed Toronto-Quebec City high-speed rail line, says a station in the heart of downtown Ottawa is simply not feasible.

Ottawa is one of seven proposed stops on the line, and several business and tourism officials have said a downtown station would maximize economic returns and signal the importance of Canada’s capital.

Proponents of a downtown station point to the former Union Station building on Rideau Street, across from the Château Laurier. It currently serves as the Senate of Canada, while Centre Block is under renovation.

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But the man leading the project says running a high-speed train through downtown Ottawa would not work.

“It is true that the downtown Senate building, the old station, has been mentioned many times, but let me be clear that there’s no way that we could do an above-ground station there. There’s simply no space,” said Martin Imbleau on Newstalk 580 CFRA’s CFRA Weekends with Andrew Pinsent on Saturday.

“We would completely destroy the neighbourhood if we were to do an above-ground station. There’s simply no space.”

An underground station is also questionable, he said.

“I’m not sure that it’s even doable. I’m not sure, from a cost perspective, that it’s responsible,” he said.

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Federal Transportation Minister Steven MacKinnon also said that downtown Ottawa would not be a feasible location.

“The current Senate, the old train station, it became clear it posed some geotechnical challenges, not least of which is that a canal runs on top of the tracks that you would have to put in place, (in) a tunnel. We saw with the Rideau Street cave-in, when the light rail was being built, that the geology of that area can be very problematic,” he told reporters on Friday.

A massive sinkhole opened on Rideau Street in 2016 during construction of O-Train Line 1. It took months to repair, delayed construction of the light-rail tunnel under downtown Ottawa, and led to multimillion-dollar lawsuits that took years to settle.

Imbleau said station sites need to be economically viable, able to ensure travel times are not unnecessarily impacted, can increase ridership, and can minimize the inconveniences of construction, none of which apply to the Senate building downtown.

“A downtown station needs to be a dead-end station that needs to be very, very slow for many kilometres coming in and very slow using another path going out. You lose a lot of time, and time is money, and it’s not something that is easy to do,” Imbleau said.

Eyes on Tremblay Station

While Imbleau stressed that final decisions have yet to be made, he did say the existing Via Rail and O-Train Line 1 station on Tremblay Road has more potential than the former train station downtown.

“When you look at the land available and the development opportunity that this site represents and you project Ottawa in 50 and 75 years, you can redeploy that sector not only to have the LRT, the (high-speed rail), the existing Via being connected, so you can create a transportation hub,” he said. “You have spaces to do something that is a landmark in terms of transit development, housing development, commercial development. That’s what high-speed rail brings. It is the dream of redeploying a sector.”

Imbleau said putting high-speed rail at Tremblay Station would allow Alto to create a station that could keep travel times as low as possible.

“It has features that are interesting and ensure that the journey time is correct, you get to Montreal in one hour. That site allows a through station, so you stop and you go directly, then to Peterborough and Toronto,” he said.

MacKinnon said he would not rule out exploring other options potentially closer to downtown Ottawa, but also said final decisions have not been made.

The Alto project would build its first leg between Ottawa and Montreal, with an estimated start date of 2029. Public consultations wrapped up last week on the first phase of the proposed rail link.

• 12 eastern Ontario mayors, reeves sign letter opposing Alto high-speed rail project

Imbleau said a “what we heard” report is expected to be published in June.

“It has become probably one of the largest consultations we’ve ever seen in the country. Three-hundred thousand people went to the website to consult the maps and get the information,” he said. “We had 10,000 people attending the open houses, which is a record, I’ve never seen something like this, and we’ve received 15,000 comments, suggestions, critics, and a few insults, also.”

More details on a proposed alignment for the rail line are expected this fall.