I was very saddened to hear of the fatal accident yesterday at the intersection of Smyth and Othello. I appreciate all of you who have reached out with concerns about the victim and the victim’s family and for all those who were involved in and witnessed the accident.
While I do not have the details of what happened, the City of Ottawa’s Fatal Collison Review Committee (FCRC) will be reviewing this over the next several weeks. The FCRC includes representatives from the Ottawa Police Service, the City of Ottawa, and the Eastern Regional Supervising Coroner’s Office. Recommendations from the Committee will help inform educational efforts, engineering modifications and enforcement initiatives.
As many are aware, the re-alignment of the intersection of Smyth Road with Russell Road and Othello Avenue was included as part of the Elmvale Acres Secondary Plan. This is a Development Charges (DC) project that has been included in the 2025 DC Background Study Update, which is planned for Council approval later this year. Once the DC Update is approved, we anticipate that this project will move forward fairly quickly, with functional design tentatively planned to begin in 2026. Overall, the project is expected to take three to four years to complete, from the functional planning stage, to detail design, and construction. The City owns the triangular portion of land on the North-East quadrant of the intersection bordered by Russell and Smyth, which was purchased to facilitate the re-alignment.
In the Transportation Master Plan, there is a cycling project in the list that would see separated cycling lanes on Russell Road and St. Laurent Boulevard from north of Southvale Crescent to Bourassa Street. As part of this, there was a commitment to review the possibility of bike lanes west of St. Laurent Boulevard (On Smyth) to Othello Avenue. While this project was identified as being implemented past a 7 to 10-year timeline, I am hopeful that staff will consider bundling this project with the realignment project above.
There are some additional projects happening sooner in the area of this accident as well that will help manage traffic within Elmvale. These include: