The thing speaks for itself....bad government does not serve the people...who does it serve?
Rideau-Rockcliffe · Wateridge Village · Access
Boxed In: The Shabby Treatment of Wateridge Residents and the Interminable Lack of Access
Peter Karwacki, PMP, is a certified Project Management Professional and a member of the Project Management Institute. This is personal commentary on how Wateridge Village was sold as connected and then left half-closed. It is not an official PMI, City of Ottawa, or community-association position.
Wateridge Village was marketed as a 15-minute neighbourhood six kilometres from Parliament Hill. What residents bought is a growing town with two working gates. Both dump onto the same arterial squeeze. The western Hemlock link buyers were told would reopen is still a future phase, a study, or a reason to delay something else. That is not geography. That is a slow-moving political choice — and Wateridge is paying the commuting cost while everyone else keeps studying it.
Two ways in, two ways out — same handful of intersections
Transportation work for later Wateridge phases is blunt. The main access and egress points are Montreal Road and the Aviation Parkway — both major arterials. Inside the community, Codd’s Road and Wanaki Road are the collectors that carry traffic to and from Montreal Road.[1]
Functionally that means two ways in and two ways out, and they both funnel through the same handful of intersections. Add construction, school traffic, and more units every year, and you do not have a flexible grid. You have a bottleneck with nicer parks.
| What the plan promised | What residents actually have |
|---|---|
| A connected urban neighbourhood minutes from downtown | A large cul-de-sac whose car trips concentrate on Wanaki and Codd’s |
| Hemlock as a western relief valve toward Beechwood, St. Laurent, and downtown | Hemlock open inside Wateridge; the western connection still restricted east of the Aviation Parkway |
| Seamless transit | Weekday routes finally moved onto Hemlock; weekend service still an advocacy file |
| Complete-street treatment on the roads that carry Wateridge traffic | A Montreal Road plan that adds buses, bikes, and sidewalks — not general-purpose car capacity — while thousands of homes keep coming |
This is not a hunch. The funnel already has a safety record.
The Montreal Road / Aviation Parkway pinch is not a theoretical future problem. The City installs red-light cameras at intersections selected for collision history. One of those cameras sits at Aviation Parkway and Montreal Road — which is essentially the funnel point for a large share of Wateridge traffic. Councillor King’s own site lists it.[2]
Earlier traffic work on Phase 1B flagged a safety concern at Montreal Road and Burma Road and recommended protected left-turn phases based on the existing collision record. A fully protected left-turn phase was installed in 2019 at Wanaki Road / Bathgate Drive / Montreal Road specifically to cut collisions there. You do not put protected phases and enforcement cameras on a quiet local street. You put them where the network is already stressed.
Then there is the jurisdiction wrinkle that keeps getting treated as an excuse instead of a project risk. Aviation Parkway is federally owned. The surrounding streets are municipal. One of Wateridge’s only two access roads is not fully the City’s to redesign. Pedestrian crossings, parkway operations, and any future interprovincial traffic live in that same NCC–City coordination gap. A ward that cannot get a crossing or a connection delivered across that line is not “waiting on engineering.” It is waiting on someone to own the file.
Hemlock is the missing third leg — and most of it is a policy choice
People keep pointing to Hemlock as if it were already a relief valve. It is not.
The Wateridge side of Hemlock is built and working. It is open between Codd’s Road and Barrielle-Snow. Councillor King’s 2022 construction update said so.[3] In late 2025 and early 2026, OC Transpo moved Routes 17 and 25 onto Hemlock as the long-term alignment, off Mikinak, with new stops and the community’s first shelter.[4]
What is not open is the western leg: the stretch that would run from Beechwood Avenue into Wateridge, where access remains restricted just east of the Aviation Parkway. That connection was in the original community story. Canada Lands later tied the western entrance to the west stormwater pond and Fairhaven well protection. By winter 2024 the association was told detailed design would take a year, with hoped construction in 2025 and an opening around 2026.[5] A year later CLC was still describing back-and-forth with the City over pond configuration. Spring 2025: City and Ministry of Environment approvals still required before construction.[6]
Stormwater is real. Well protection is real. What is not fine is treating a road segment that already exists on the Wateridge side as if it were a blank field, then parking the delay on people who already live there.
One neighbourhood asked for the road. Another asked to wait. City Hall chose “more study.”
Wateridge residents have been asking for the connection for years. A 2023 Change.org petition addressed to the City and Councillor King said buyers were told Hemlock would eventually reopen, and that leaving it closed worsens commutes and cuts people off from businesses on St. Laurent, Beechwood, and downtown.[7]
Established Beechwood, Manor Park, and Vanier voices have been openly skeptical of a full opening. Vanier Community Association comments on the Beechwood redesign have questioned whether traffic-growth numbers match the actual pace of Wateridge. Manor Park groups have argued the western portion should not reopen until it is rebuilt as a complete street. Those are legitimate design demands. They are not a reason to leave a built community with no date.
Council approved $400,000 in the 2025 budget for a Beechwood Village functional design study. Councillor King has described it as the first comprehensive step toward fixing the corridor and closing active-transportation “missing links” between Beechwood and Hemlock.[8] That is a study. It is not a construction commitment. It is not an opening date.
A March 2026 Public Works and Infrastructure Committee report on the Manor Park integrated road, water, and sewer project goes further. It names the future reopening of Hemlock as one of several converging changes in Manor Park and uses that convergence as the argument for a “more flexible policy approach” — in other words, a reason to hold other infrastructure commitments until everything is studied together.[9]
So Hemlock-to-Wateridge is important enough to justify postponing work in Manor Park — and not important enough to schedule an opening. A segment that has sat in “further study” language since before the 2023 petition, through a 2021 political cycle, into a 2025 “first step” with no hard completion for the vehicle link, is a fair thing to call disrespectful of people’s time. That is the timeline, not spin.
The City’s own Montreal Road plan did not add car capacity
The City already ran an Environmental Assessment for the corridor that carries Wateridge’s traffic: the Montreal-Blair Road Transit Priority Corridor, covering Montreal Road from St-Laurent to Shefford. The recommended plan adds bus lanes, segregated cycle tracks, wider sidewalks, and protected intersections.[10]
Coverage at the time noted the plans kept the number of general traffic lanes the same. The Vanier Community Association criticized the design as too suburban for the scale of development coming at Wateridge.[11]
That is a fact pattern, not a vibe. The City’s finished plan for the road that carries Wateridge traffic explicitly did not add general-purpose car capacity while the City kept approving thousands of new homes that use that road. If the answer is “mode shift,” then weekend buses and a real second gate have to show up. If the answer is “we will study Beechwood later,” then say when later ends.
Take the Beechwood worry seriously. Then notice the closed road does not fix it.
The strongest version of this argument does not sneer at Manor Park or Vanier. Those streets are already busy. A sudden Hemlock opening without complete-street design, signals, and pedestrian protection would dump a problem westward.
Leaving the road closed does not solve that problem. It parks the cost on Wateridge residents — longer commutes, worse access to Beechwood and St. Laurent — while the capacity question sits unanswered for everyone else too. “Open it and manage the traffic” is a harder position to argue against than “keep it shut until we have studied it more,” especially when nobody has attached a study end-date to the vehicle connection.
From a project-management standpoint this is an integration failure:
- The critical path — Hemlock west plus the pond approvals — was never protected.
- Housing occupancy was allowed to run ahead of network completion.
- Federal parkway jurisdiction was treated as a shrug instead of a risk with an owner.
- Each new site plan calls added traffic “negligible.” Residents experience the network as a whole.
- The same missing link is used as a reason to delay Manor Park work and as a reason not to open Wateridge.
What would stop looking shabby
- Publish one public schedule for the western Hemlock connection: City gate, CLC gate, ministry gate, construction start, opening. If 2026 slipped, say so with the new date.
- Separate the complete-street rebuild from the padlock. Design Beechwood/Hemlock properly. Do not use the design need as a permanent closure.
- Name an owner for the Aviation Parkway coordination. Federal land is a constraint. It is not an alibi with no meeting calendar.
- Stop using Wateridge traffic as a reason to defer Manor Park work unless the same motion also dates the Wateridge connection. Holistic planning that only delays both sides is not planning.
- Match transit to occupancy. Weekday Routes 17 and 25 on Hemlock were late and still incomplete without reliable weekend service.
- Measure the funnel. Publish counts and collision updates at Aviation/Montreal, Wanaki/Montreal, and Codd’s/Montreal so the “study more” claim has a scoreboard.
Open the road. Manage the traffic. Stop studying the neighbours in circles.
References
- J.L. Richards. “Wateridge Village Phases 3 and 5.” Transportation planning summary: main access/egress to Montreal Road and the Aviation Parkway. jlrichards.ca.
- City of Ottawa / Rideau-Rockcliffe ward materials listing the red-light camera at Aviation Parkway and Montreal Road. See also City red-light camera program pages. Councillor site: rideau-rockcliffe.ca.
- Councillor Rawlson King. “Wateridge Village Construction Update,” noting Hemlock open between Codd’s Road and Barrielle-Snow and the Codd’s closure. rideau-rockcliffe.ca/wateridge_village.
- Wateridge Village Community Association. Winter 2026 Newsletter and transit pages: Routes 17 and 25 moved from Mikinak to Hemlock. wateridgeassociation.ca/winter-2026-newsletter; wateridgeassociation.ca/transit.
- Wateridge Village Community Association. Winter 2024 Newsletter, “Hemlock Road and West Stormwater Pond.” wateridgeassociation.ca/winter-2024-newsletter.
- Wateridge Village Community Association. Winter 2025 and Spring 2025 newsletters on pond design, Fairhaven wells, and outstanding City/MECP approvals. winter-2025; spring-2025.
- Change.org petition (2023) to the City of Ottawa and Councillor King calling for Hemlock Road to reopen into Wateridge, citing representations to buyers and cut-off access to St. Laurent, Beechwood, and downtown.
- City of Ottawa 2025 budget item of $400,000 for a Beechwood Village functional design study, described in ward communications as a first step toward corridor fixes and Beechwood–Hemlock missing links. See also Engage Ottawa project materials when posted.
- City of Ottawa, Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, March 2026 report on the Manor Park Integrated Road, Water and Sewer project, citing future Hemlock reopening among converging changes and arguing for a more flexible / sequenced policy approach.
- City of Ottawa. Montreal-Blair Road Transit Priority Corridor Environmental Assessment (Montreal Road from St-Laurent to Shefford): recommended bus lanes, segregated cycle tracks, wider sidewalks, protected intersections.
- CBC coverage of the Montreal-Blair transit-priority plan noting general traffic lanes were not increased, and Vanier Community Association criticism that the design was too suburban given Wateridge-scale growth.
- Wateridge Village Community Association. “About Wateridge” and “Neighbourhood Features.” wateridgeassociation.ca/about-wateridge.
- Wateridge Village Community Association. “Planning and Development” and “Developing More Consistent & Efficient Public Transit.” planning page; transit advocacy.
This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely.
Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.
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