The Median Strip Idea: What St-Laurent Can Learn from a 130-Year-Old Bike Lane
Ward 13 · Infrastructure · Sept 19 Ride
The Median Strip Idea: What St-Laurent Can Learn from a 130-Year-Old Bike Lane
Peter Karwacki • Ward 13 (Rideau-Rockcliffe) Campaign
On September 19 at 10 am< , I'm leading a Critical Mass ride down St-Laurent Boulevard. We start at the controlled intersection at 815 St-Laurent, pass through McArthur, Donald, and Ogilvie/Coventry, and finish at the St-Laurent LRT station. The point isn't just to ride — it's to put a specific idea in front of residents, city staff, and whoever else is paying attention: a protected bicycle lane built into the median strip of the boulevard.
I want to lay out the case for that here, including the parts that push back on it, because that's the standard I try to hold every proposal on this blog to.
The precedent is older than you'd think
The instinct might be to treat a median-running bike lane as some untested, imported idea. It isn't. Brooklyn's Ocean Parkway got a bike path built into its landscaped median in 1894 — the first bike path in the United States. It's still there. Eastern Parkway, designed by the same team (Olmsted and Vaux, the Central Park architects), uses the same layout: a main roadway flanked by wide, landscaped medians carrying dedicated paths, separated from car traffic entirely.
Why it worked: not novelty — width. Ocean Parkway runs about 210 feet across, with two 20-foot landscaped medians on either side. The path functions less like a bike lane squeezed between traffic and more like a linear park with a road running through it. That's the model worth aiming for on St-Laurent, if the median has the room for it — a question the City needs to answer with real cross-section data, not assumptions.
The honest counterpoint
I'm not going to pretend every "median bike lane" in North America looks like Ocean Parkway, because it doesn't. More recent designs — narrow center-running lanes squeezed into tight medians between travel lanes — have drawn real, documented criticism.
Where this design fails
The core problem is turns. Going straight through a center-running lane is easy; turning left or right off it isn't intuitive. Cyclists queuing to turn can back up dangerously into the lane behind them. Delancey and Allen Streets in Manhattan is the standard cautionary example — a bike box meant to handle turning cyclists from both streets regularly can't hold them all, and the overflow blocks traffic.
Two designs sharing one label — they are not the same project
Ocean Parkway model
Narrow center-running model
Median width
Wide (20+ ft), landscaped
Narrow, squeezed between travel lanes
Function
Effectively an off-street path
An on-street lane relocated to the center
Main risk
Requires available right-of-way width
Turn conflicts at every intersection
NYC example
Ocean Parkway, Eastern Parkway (Brooklyn)
Allen St / Delancey St (Manhattan)
Treating these as interchangeable is exactly the kind of outputs-vs-outcomes conflation I've criticized in other city files. If we're going to build this, it needs to be the first model — and that starts with an honest measurement of what St-Laurent's median actually offers.
The timing isn't an accident
The City is already running an Environmental Assessment for the St-Laurent Boulevard Transit Priority Corridor, covering Hemlock Road to Innes Road/Industrial Avenue, explicitly looking at multi-modal design — walking, cycling, transit, and Complete Streets principles. That process is underway right now, which means the design of this corridor is not a hypothetical future decision. It's being made.
That's the opportunity and the risk in one. The opportunity: there's a live process to plug a specific, evidence-backed design idea into, instead of shouting at a wall. The risk: "it's already being studied" can become an excuse to avoid saying anything concrete about what that study should conclude. I'd rather be specific now and be wrong in public than stay quiet and be irrelevant.
Why I'm doing this as a ride, not just a post
Ward 13 residents can't be expected to track an Environmental Assessment study through every stage of city process — nobody has time for that, and I've said before that people need simplicity and clarity, not a homework assignment, to engage with civic issues. A ride down the actual boulevard, on the actual date, is a way to make an abstract design question physical and visible. You don't need to have read the EA scope document to understand what a protected lane down that median would feel like — you just need to ride it with us.
Join the ride — September 19
Critical Mass, St-Laurent Boulevard
Start: 815 St-Laurent Blvd at 10 amMcArthurDonaldOgilvie / CoventryFinish: St-Laurent LRT Station
When a 5.34% U.S. 30-Year Yield Reaches Ottawa TaxpayersThey will notice the result: deferred state-of-good-repair, higher rates, and a larger share of the levy servicing debt issued to catch up on work that was already late.
Municipal finance · Rates · Taxpayers
Few Taxpayers Notice a 5.34% U.S. 30-Year Yield. Ottawa’s Debt Renewals Make the Cost Local.
Rising long-term government yields do not stay in Washington. They show up in the price of the next City of Ottawa debenture, the refinancing of sinking-fund issues, and the share of property-tax dollars that must service debt instead of buses, libraries, and roads.
September 11, 2026 · City of Ottawa debt context drawn from 2025 financial statements, 2025–2026 debenture reports, and 2026 capital plans
The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield near 5.34% is easy to dismiss as someone else’s market. It is not. Long Canadian yields move with the same global repricing of duration, inflation risk, and fiscal supply. When Ottawa goes to market—or refinances a slice of an existing sinking-fund issue—the coupon is set off Government of Canada and Ontario benchmarks plus a municipal spread. That coupon becomes a multi-decade claim on Ottawa property taxpayers.
What Ottawa actually owes
At December 31, 2025 the City reported net long-term debt of $3.687 billion, up about $315 million from 2024. The increase reflected roughly $470 million of new issues plus a Canada Infrastructure Bank draw, partly offset by principal and sinking-fund accumulation.
That stock is a mix of installment and sinking-fund debentures (coupons historically ranging from near zero to 6%), Stage 1 LRT-related private debt, swaps, and other instruments. Principal coming due is front-loaded in the near years and then stretches into the 2030s and 2040s:
Year
Principal ($000s)
Interest ($000s)
Total debt service ($000s)
2026
179,934
175,769
355,703
2027
166,130
169,609
335,739
2028
146,184
161,390
307,574
2029
112,890
163,448
276,338
2030
112,643
159,210
271,853
2031 and after
1,602,622
2,081,425
3,684,047
Source: City of Ottawa draft 2025 consolidated financial statements, Note 12 (net of estimated sinking-fund earnings on the principal schedule).
Those figures are not abstract. Principal and interest on tax-supported debt are constrained by Council’s fiscal framework (debt service not to exceed 7.5% of own-source revenues). Every extra basis point on new or refinanced debt crowds the operating budget that property taxes must fill.
The 2025 renewal that already priced a higher world
In late 2025 Ottawa issued $250 million of 20-year sinking-fund debentures dated December 2, 2025, maturing December 2, 2045, with a 4.60% coupon. The issue priced at a yield of 4.60% after fees, 18 basis points over the Ontario 20-year benchmark. Moody’s Aaa / S&P AA+ supported demand. The structure explicitly allows refinancing of up to $60.4 million of the $250 million.
That 4.60% coupon is the local translation of a higher-rate regime. A few years earlier the City issued a $225 million sustainable sinking-fund debenture at 3.75% (October 2024, maturity 2034), with authority to refinance about $191 million later. The spread between those two deals is the cost of waiting—or of a market that no longer offers the post-pandemic trough.
Staff told investors that 2025 issuance totaled about $470 million: $220 million in a 10-year sustainable debenture and the $250 million 20-year conventional bond, plus CIB loan draws for zero-emission buses. For 2026 the plan was roughly $300 million in the back half of the year, with a reopen of the 20-year book a live option, plus further CIB draws.
Why a U.S. 5.34% long bond matters on Elgin Street
Canada’s own 30-year Government of Canada yield has been in the mid-4.2% area—lower than the U.S. long bond, but still well above the rates that financed much of Ottawa’s older book. Municipal pricing sits on top of provincial and federal curves. When U.S. long yields jump on fiscal supply, sticky inflation, or term-premium demands, Canadian long bonds usually follow. Ottawa does not set that curve. It pays it.
Three channels hit local taxpayers:
1. New money. The 2026 capital program still relies on debt for transit, roads, water, and facilities. A 20- or 30-year issue priced today is more expensive than one priced in 2021–2024. On $300 million, each additional 50 basis points is about $1.5 million more interest per year for the life of the bond—before compounding through sinking-fund mechanics.
2. Designed refinancings. Several Ottawa sinking-fund issues are built so that a large residual principal can be refinanced rather than fully amortized by maturity. The 2024 3.75% sustainable issue and the 2025 4.60% issue both contain that feature. When those windows open, the City will re-enter a market that now looks more like 4.6%–plus than 3.75%.
3. Opportunity cost inside the tax levy. Debt service is a first claim. Higher coupons do not automatically mean a tax-rate spike the same year—budgets already baked in the 2025 4.60% deal—but they reduce room for service growth, state-of-good-repair, or tax relief. The City’s own debt model shows tax-supported and transit debt service climbing as new issues stack on the existing stock.
What is already locked vs. what is still exposed
Ottawa is not rolling the entire $3.7 billion every year. Much of the book is fixed-rate, long-dated, and sinking-fund financed. Swaps converted a small floating slice ($8.7 million notional at year-end 2025) into fixed rates between 1.71% and 5.92% through 2031. That is prudent liability management.
The exposure is at the margin: new capital debt, planned 2026 issuance, CIB draws that still have to be serviced, and the refinancing legs written into recent by-laws. Housing-related refinancings (for example, Ottawa Community Housing mortgage refinancing to unlock repair capital) sit in a different silo but obey the same rate environment.
The taxpayer lesson
Federal interest on a $32 trillion public debt is a national story. A city of one million people feels the same arithmetic at a smaller scale. Ottawa’s credit remains strong. Its policy still caps tax-supported debt service. Those strengths do not repeal the price of duration.
When the U.S. 30-year trades at 5.34%, the relevant question for an Ottawa household is not the Treasury quote. It is whether the next $250–300 million the City borrows—or the $60 million slice it is allowed to refinance on the 2045 issue—prices closer to the 3.75% of 2024 or the 4.60% of December 2025, and how many more years of that coupon sit inside the property-tax bill.
Few residents will read a debenture by-law. They will notice the result: a larger share of each tax dollar reserved for interest, and a smaller share left for the services the debt was issued to build.
When a 5.34% U.S. 30-Year Yield Meets Ottawa’s Infrastructure Gap
Municipal finance · Rates · Infrastructure
Few Taxpayers Notice a 5.34% U.S. 30-Year Yield. Ottawa’s Debt Renewals and Its Multi-Billion Infrastructure Gap Make the Cost Local.
Rising long-term yields raise the price of the next City of Ottawa debenture. That would be a footnote if the City only had to refinance what it already owes. It does not. Staff have documented a roughly $10.8-billion ten-year infrastructure funding gap—often discussed in the $11-billion range, and sometimes rounded higher when replacement value and deferred work are stacked together. Closing even part of that gap with new debt is far more expensive at today’s long rates than it was at 3.75%.
September 11, 2026 · Ottawa debt, 2025–26 debenture issues, and Long-Range Financial Plan figures
The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield near 5.34% is easy to treat as a Washington story. Long Canadian yields move with the same global repricing of duration, inflation risk, and fiscal supply. Ottawa prices its 10- and 20-year sinking-fund debentures off Government of Canada and Ontario benchmarks plus a municipal spread. That coupon becomes a multi-decade claim on property taxes and water rates.
What Ottawa already owes
At December 31, 2025 the City reported net long-term debt of $3.687 billion, up about $315 million from 2024 after roughly $470 million of new issues and a Canada Infrastructure Bank draw. The book is a mix of installment and sinking-fund debentures, Stage 1 LRT-related private debt, and a small swapped floating slice.
Year
Principal ($000s)
Interest ($000s)
Total debt service ($000s)
2026
179,934
175,769
355,703
2027
166,130
169,609
335,739
2028
146,184
161,390
307,574
2029
112,890
163,448
276,338
2030
112,643
159,210
271,853
2031 and after
1,602,622
2,081,425
3,684,047
City of Ottawa 2025 consolidated financial statements, Note 12 (principal net of estimated sinking-fund earnings).
Tax-supported debt service is capped at 7.5% of own-source revenues. Every extra basis point on new or refinanced debt competes with buses, libraries, snow clearing, and the capital program that is already behind.
The 2025 renewal that already priced a higher world
In December 2025 Ottawa issued $250 million of 20-year sinking-fund debentures maturing December 2, 2045, coupon 4.60%, about 18 basis points over the Ontario 20-year. The structure allows refinancing of up to $60.4 million. A year earlier the City issued a $225 million sustainable sinking-fund deal at 3.75% (maturity 2034), with authority to refinance about $191 million later.
2025 total long-term issuance was about $470 million ($220 million 10-year sustainable plus the $250 million 20-year conventional), plus CIB draws for zero-emission buses. The 2026 plan contemplated roughly $300 million more in the back half of the year, with a reopen of the 20-year book a live option.
The jump from a 3.75% 2024 coupon to a 4.60% 2025 coupon is the local price of the same rate regime that put the U.S. 30-year near 5.34%. Canada’s long bond has been in the mid-4.2% area. Ottawa pays that curve plus a spread. It does not set it.
The infrastructure deficit sitting behind the next debenture
Debt service on the existing $3.7 billion would be manageable if the City only had to roll what it already borrowed. The Long-Range Financial Plan and asset-management work say otherwise.
Staff forecast a $10.8-billion gap over ten years between infrastructure needs and identified funding. That is the figure that appeared in 2025–26 reporting as an “$11-billion infrastructure gap.” It is not a single unpaid invoice. It is a stack:
Layer
What it measures
Scale
All-in 10-year funding gap
Renewal, growth, service enhancements, and climate adaptation versus planned funding (tax-supported plus rate-supported)
$10.8 billion
Tax-supported renewal shortfall
Roads, parks, buildings and other tax-funded assets vs. planned spending over 10 years
$3.8 billion
Priority “safe and functional” slice
Highest-priority tax-supported work the 2026 Long-Range Financial Plan actually tries to fund
$1.23 billion (~$120 million a year)
Broader annual tax-supported gap
Priority work plus growth, facility replacement, accessibility, climate resilience
~$143 million to $229 million a year
Water, wastewater, stormwater priority needs
10-year rate-supported renewal (funded by rates and debt, not the property-tax levy)
$4.8 billion, with ~$1.7 billion of new debt contemplated
Replacement value of assets
What it would cost to replace the stock, not the 10-year cash gap
Tax-supported assets over $39 billion; citywide AMPs on the order of $90 billion
Figures from City Long-Range Financial Plan coverage and asset-management reporting, 2025–June 2026. The $10.8-billion / ~$11-billion headline is the documented ten-year funding gap. Larger “$13 billion” shorthand sometimes used in public debate is not the official staff total; the official stack is $10.8 billion over ten years, on top of a replacement-value stock many times that size.
Council’s June 2026 tax-supported plan does not close the $3.8-billion hole. It chips at the $1.23-billion priority piece: double the dedicated tax contribution from $6 million to $12 million in 2027–28, steer 0.15% of assessment growth (~$3.5 million a year) to capital, draw $32 million once from the citywide capital reserve, and take on about $60 million of extra debt over two years, with borrowing planned to rise again from 2029. Staff floated a dedicated infrastructure levy (a 1% levy was described as roughly $46 a year on an average home) but did not enact one. Water and sewer are on a separate path of ~5% annual rate increases and more than a billion dollars of additional rate-supported debt.
More than 130 facilities reach theoretical end-of-life by 2035; the plan contemplates replacing only a fraction. Some aging sites face demolition or sale rather than rebuild. That is what an unfunded backlog looks like on the ground: not a bond ticker, a rink or a road that does not get replaced.
Why the yield and the deficit are the same problem
If Ottawa could pay cash, a 5.34% U.S. long bond would be someone else’s headline. It cannot. Closing even the priority slice requires new issuance on top of the $300 million already sketched for 2026 and the refinancing windows written into the 3.75% and 4.60% sinking-fund deals.
Arithmetic at the margin:
On $300 million of new 20-year money, each extra 50 basis points is about $1.5 million more interest every year for the life of the issue. The 85-basis-point gap between the 2024 3.75% sustainable coupon and the 2025 4.60% conventional coupon is already more than $2 million a year on a $250 million print—before sinking-fund and refinance legs. Scale that across the $1.7 billion of water-system debt and the extra tax-supported borrowing in the Long-Range Financial Plan, and the infrastructure gap is not only a construction problem. It is a duration problem.
Higher long rates also raise the political cost of the honest tools. A dedicated levy is harder to sell when households already face water-rate paths of 5% a year and mortgage rates tied to the same long curve. Debt looks cheaper in the year it is issued and more expensive in every year after. That is how a $10.8-billion funding gap and a 4.60% coupon become the same line on a tax bill.
What is locked vs. what is still exposed
Most of the existing $3.7 billion is fixed-rate and long-dated. Swaps fixed a small floating remainder through 2031. Credit remains strong (Moody’s Aaa / S&P AA+). Those facts limit the damage from a single week’s Treasury print.
The exposure is the unfunded capital program: 2026 issuance, CIB draws, the refinance residuals on recent sinking-fund by-laws, rate-supported water debt, and every year the City chooses debt instead of a levy or senior-government money to chip at the $10.8-billion gap. Older coupons in the 0–3.75% range will not be available when those windows open.
The taxpayer lesson
Federal interest on tens of trillions of public debt is a national story. Ottawa’s version is smaller and closer: $3.7 billion already on the books, a $10.8-billion ten-year infrastructure shortfall behind it, and new 20-year money that priced at 4.60% after a 3.75% deal the year before.
When the U.S. 30-year trades at 5.34%, the relevant local questions are simple. Will the next $250–300 million price closer to 3.75% or 4.60%? Will the $60 million refinance slice on the 2045 issue, and the much larger water-system program, lock in that higher coupon for a generation? And how much of each property-tax and water-rate dollar will then be reserved for interest instead of the roads, pipes, and rinks the gap was supposed to fund?
Few residents will read a debenture by-law or a Long-Range Financial Plan appendix. They will notice the result: deferred state-of-good-repair, higher rates, and a larger share of the levy servicing debt issued to catch up on work that was already late.
So the question is: will the video make it to the air and stay on the air? History says...no.
image from 2022 debate that "disappeared"
Fifteen minutes, one word he wouldn't say — Ward 13
Ward 13, Rideau-RockcliffeSeptember 11, 2026
Fifteen minutes, and one thing he wouldn't say
Today's Rogers Ward 13 debate ran about fifteen minutes. In that time, Councillor Rawlson King found a way to avoid the single largest infrastructure decision facing this ward and this city entirely: the East End Crossing.
That's not an oversight. Fifteen minutes is not a lot of time, which means every subject that comes up is a choice, and so is every subject that doesn't. King has held a consistent position against the bridge since at least 2021, built on a study showing it would divert only about 15% of truck traffic off King Edward Avenue. It's a defensible position to hold. It is not a defensible position to hide from voters in the one setting built for him to defend it.
So I said it myself, in my closing remarks: the East End Crossing is the most significant infrastructure project facing this ward, and this city. Not because I expect everyone to agree with me on it — I don't — but because a debate where the incumbent won't bring up his own council record on the ward's biggest file isn't really a debate. It's a performance with the hard part edited out.
Pattern, not a one-off
King's council motion this summer asked the federal review agency to extend its comment deadline past the election, with careful language noting the motion "does not constitute" a position for or against the bridge. The federal government is already spending $221 million on preconstruction. You don't need a procedural motion to hide behind a position you're willing to defend out loud.
1
He read his answers
Prepared remarks aren't unusual in a debate. But visibly relying on notes for direct questions made him less sure-footed once I pushed past the script — and it showed.
2
Credit belongs where the vote happened
At one point King's remarks implied he personally directs OC Transpo. He doesn't. Council decides — the same council that overrules individual wards 16-9 when suburban and urban interests split. I called that out in the moment, because it's the same confusion I've been writing about all year: crediting a single councillor for outcomes that are actually the product of a 25-member council, a budget process, and staff who report to all of council, not to one ward representative.
It's a small thing to catch in real time, but not a small distinction. If voters think one person delivers city-wide services, they'll misjudge what a vote for or against him actually changes. It doesn't.
3
Fewer wards, or just fewer illusions
I put a structural question to him directly: what if Ottawa cut its council from 25 wards to 12 — fewer seats, lower cost, decisions made by a body small enough for voters to actually track?
His answer was that it would be bad for democracy. I don't think that holds up. Only about 40% of eligible voters in this city actually vote. You can't credibly defend a 25-ward structure as protecting democratic representation when 60% of eligible voters aren't using the representation it already offers. A smaller council is easier to watch, easier to hold accountable, and cheaper to run — three things this city could use more of, not less.
4
The tone
A few exchanges had a condescending edge to them. Voters don't need to be managed. They need a straight account of what's been done and what hasn't — and I kept pulling the debate back toward outcomes, not intentions, every time it drifted.
Why this matters more than a debate performance
I'm not writing this to score a point on stage presence. I'm writing it because a fifteen-minute debate is one of the only moments all year where a Ward 13 voter can watch both candidates respond to the same question, live, without a press release smoothing the edges. If the incumbent can steer around the ward's single biggest infrastructure file in that window, voters need to know that happened — not because I said so, but because it's true, and they should decide for themselves what it means.
You don't have to agree with me on the bridge. You just deserve a candidate willing to say where he stands on it, out loud, when he's asked.
So will the Rogers debate make it to the air??? Sorry but history says, "No"
Why does the IMPACT ASSESSMENT AGENCY (IAAC) do a prescreening? If the impact assessment is going to happen anyway?
The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) uses a Planning Phase (often referred to as prescreening) to decide whether a full assessment is actually required and, if it is, to scope and customize the rules before the massive, multi-year process begins. [1, 2]
Even though a project might look like it automatically requires a full assessment, the prescreening phase is critical for three main reasons:
1. It Decides If an Assessment is Actually Required
Just because a project is on the government's "designated project list" doesn't mean a massive federal review is a done deal. The IAAC reviews the Initial Project Description to determine if federal jurisdiction is truly triggered (e.g., impacts on federal lands, migratory birds, or Indigenous rights). If the risks are minimal or can be fully managed by provincial laws, the IAAC can decide that a federal impact assessment is not required, saving millions of dollars and years of gridlock. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
2. "Tailoring" the Scope (No One-Size-Fits-All)
If an assessment is required, the prescreening phase is used to build the Tailoring Information and Studies Guidelines (TISG). [1]
Without prescreening: A company would have to guess what data the government wants, resulting in thousands of pages of irrelevant environmental studies.
With prescreening: The IAAC narrows down exactly what the company needs to study (e.g., "only focus on caribou migration and local water tables, don't worry about air quality modeling here"). [1, 2]
3. Early Off-Ramps and Alignment
The Early "No": Prescreening gives the Minister of Environment an opportunity to kill a flawed project early on if it is clear it will cause unacceptable environmental damage or will never pass federal muster, preventing wasted industry investments. [1]
One Project, One Assessment: Canada shares environmental oversight with provinces and Indigenous governing bodies. The prescreening phase allows the IAAC to coordinate with provincial regulators early, merging their processes so the proponent doesn't have to navigate two entirely separate, duplicating reviews. [1, 2, 3]
Are you trying to understand the 180-day timeline or how to submit a public comment? [1, 2]
So the government is spending $221 million on preconstruction costs. Its not something you do if the bridge is not going ahead.
Rideau-Rockcliffe's councillor must show leadership not pandering nimbyism
