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Highway 174, November 7, 2001. Things
haven't changed! (Photo-Patrick Meikle)
Highway 174 - Rockland to Ottawa
January 30, 2014: Highways (ie.
174) should not be political football
October 22, 2013: Province won’t
allow city to charge tolls for 174, minister says
May 30/June 27, 2013: Ottawa councillor promotes toll station at Canaan Road and 174
April 28, 2013: Crash closes
174 at Quigley Hill, injures senior
Feb.2013: Notice of Round #1 of
Public Open Houses
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This issue is vital to the thousands of residents who live along the Ottawa river and in the
many towns and villages both to the north and south. We thought it important enough as early as 2007 to start up
a page covering the saga of Highway 174. Will it ever be widened?
Your comments are
welcomed. Go...
Read what Wikipedia has to say about Highway 174: More...
Cameron and Highway 174
Traffic Cameras at 174/Trim and
Cameron Street at 174
(Go to the main list, and Click on the camera you want to see.)
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| Highways (ie. 174) should not be political
football |
I am astonished by the lack of vision this city has as far as roads are concerned.
Anyone, local or visiting, travelling the capital from east to west, is astonished by the quality of roads difference
between those two areas.
Crawling all the way from eastern Ontario, through Rockland with 20,000 people, and Cumberland with 12,000, the
traveller uses a narrow, winding two-lane road that dates back to the '40s and '50s.
Reaching Orléans, the road widens to four lanes to accommodate people working downtown. Just past downtown,
the road widens to six lanes and sometimes to eight lanes further west. Part of this road even has HOV lanes! Then,
four wide lanes take you all the way to Arnprior from the intersection of highways 7 and 417. Two years ago, Highway
7 was widened to four lanes right up to Carleton Place, population 10,000. One could tell me that the City of Ottawa
is not responsible for all those roads but it owns a good part of it and has a very powerful influence municipally,
provincially and federally.
To abandon the eastern part of the city is not fair, not equitable and lacks vision. We all pay taxes based on
the same criteria and all should be treated the same way, especially for infrastructure.
It is time for our representative to put pressure on city council. It is time for us in the east to act. Municipal
elections are just a few months away.
Denis Gagnon
Orléans
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| Province won’t allow city to charge tolls
for 174, minister says |
(Ottawa Citizen, October 22, 2013) The city government won’t be allowed to put toll gates at the east end of Hwy. 174,
says provincial Transportation Minister Glen Murray.
The city had asked the province for the authority to impose fees on drivers entering and possibly leaving the city
on the road, which the city owns and maintains because the provincial government forcibly downloaded it on Ottawa
in the late 1990s. It’s a former provincial road, with few access points and high speeds, built to the standards
of inter-city freeways; a significant proportion of its users are from Clarence-Rockland and beyond, meaning they
don’t pay for the road through property taxes the way Ottawans do.
Giving it back to the province has always been the city’s preference, but Cumberland Coun. Stephen Blais argued
last spring that if it can’t, it should at least charge non-Ottawans who use it. Toll gates at Canaan Road would
bring in about $6.5 million a year, he estimated. But because cities don’t have the authority under provincial
regulations to put tolls on roads, Ottawa had to ask permission.
Forget it, Murray wrote the city in a letter. “[W]e are not contemplating upload/downloads or a regulation to enable
road tolling at this time.”
The letter doesn’t explain the reasoning. (Indeed, toll roads are one of the ideas raised to pay for major transit
and road improvements in and around Toronto, including by provincial transit agency Metrolinx.) Murray spends most
of his letter talking about the province’s infrastructure programs and other ways it has uploaded costs to the
province from Ontario municipalities.
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| Ottawa councillor promoting
a toll station for all vehicles traveling from east, Rockland and beyond. |
(Ottawa, May 30, 2013) East-end Ottawa city councillor Stephen Blais says residents outside the
city limits should be forced to pay to use Highway 174 and is proposing an electronic toll be installed at Canaan
Road and the 174.
We featured several stories on this item. Click here... |
| Crash closes 174 at Quigley Hill, injures
senior |
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(Cumberland, Sunday, April 28, 2013) An 81-year-old woman suffered minor injuries in a single-vehicle
rollover crash on the 174 near near Quigley Hill in Cumberland Sunday afternoon. The Ottawa Fire Services originally
received a report of a person trapped inside the vehicle however upon arrival, crews found the unoccupied vehicle
in the ditch. It had knocked out a hydro pole and crews were needed to clean wires off the road.
Ottawa paramedics said the woman was in stable condition when she arrived in hospital. The road
was closed in both directions for about two hours.
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| Notice of Round #1 of Public Open Houses |
(February 2013) The United Counties of Prescott and Russell in partnership with the City of Ottawa
are undertaking a Class Environmental Assessment (EA) study for the Ottawa Road 174 and Prescott-Russell County
Road 17 corridor from Highway 417 to County Road 8 (Landry Road).
There are three meetings scheduled for this week, in three locations:
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 (Cumberland)
Cumberland Lions Club, Maple Hall
2552 Old Montreal Road, Cumberland
6:30 to 9pm, presentation at 7:00
Wednesday, February 6, 2013 (Orléans)
Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School, Cafeteria
1515 Tenth Line Road, Orléans
6:30 to 9pm, presentation at 7:00
Thursday, February 7, 2013 (Rockland)
City Hall, Council boardroom
1560 Laurier Street, Rockland
6:30 to 9pm, presentation at 7:00
For more information click here.
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Previous stories regarding Highway 174 (2004
to 2013)
(We started reporting on Highway 174 as early as 2004. There were a flurry of stories throughout
2008 and 2009 when the Federal and Provincial Governments came up with money to initiate a study on upgrading Highway
174 from Trim Road in Orleans, east to Canaan Road. However the City of Ottawa did not buy in to the plan and the
matter lay dormant. Two years later (2012), the issue came up again, this time leading to an environmental study,
then a round of open houses in 2013. Click
here to view the page containing previous news stories.)
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You can also SEARCH this website
for previous stories on Highway 174
Enter "Highway 174"
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