It's time to resolve the Albion Road issue once and for all

An Ottawa Sun article reports today that the Albion Road through traffic issue will be debated again at a meeting of Ottawa City Council tomorrow. Here's hoping common sense prevails and they can proclaim "case closed!" at the end of the debate.

Albion Road has been an arterial road for just about as long as anyone still living today can remember. According to the Sun story, "a consultant revealed traffic on Albion Road north of Lester had far exceeded the limits for a residential collector road" back in 2002. If memory serves, this road closure was in response to a very small handful of complaints to the City resulting in a knee jerk reaction that caused all kinds of problems to residents living south of that particular area. For those who blame Rideau Carleton Raceway, Albion was a busy road before the racetrack was upgraded to a casino of sorts... yet many moved there despite the traffic count. What gives them the right to complain years after settling in? They knew what the road was like when they got there!

There are many who will loudly proclaim that an excess of cars is threatening the neighbourhood's quality of life. I've heard people living on Bronson, Maitland, Kirkwood, Baseline and Pinecrest whining about the traffic whizzing by their front doors too over the last decade. Tough, folks - if you want a quiet residential street, move to a cul de sac and don't try diverting traffic from your arterial road to the immediate area's side streets!

Why politicians feel the need to bend over and take it from a vocal minority most each and every time, I have no idea. When I someday get elected to City Council and a resident calls my office to complain about how hard it is to back out onto Carling Avenue or how airplanes flying over their new terrace home near Hunt Club and Riverside, I'll ask them how long Carling has been the road it is now or how long the international airport has been where it currently sits. I might lose their vote, but there's far more people out there who knew what they were getting into and they're not complaining.

Same thing goes for the whining millionaires living in the Glebe. If anybody there is 140 years old or older, they have the right to complain each and every August. Anybody else should shut up and grow up - the Central Canada Exhibition has been around longer than each and every resident of this fair city.

Come on, folks, if you choose to live on a busy street, next door to a mall or a few blocks away from a major airport, you made your choice - it's not the politicians' role to legislate whatever perceived nuisance into oblivion.

So Albion Road residents - if Council comes to its senses and the former regional road is re-opened to through traffic, move if you don't like it. That road's a heck of a lot older than you are and if you were surprised by its constant use by motorists after settling in, you didn't do your homework before buying there in the last forty or more years.

That's not the City of Ottawa's fault.