In a previous article, we saw how Ontario rules force the city of Ottawa to spend many times more money just fixing old roads (hundreds of millions a year) than fixing active transportation like sidewalks and paths (just over $10 million per year). But what happens when we try to build new things? The city should be able to spend some money each year to build new, safe sidewalks, path networks, and bike lanes, right?
This is where city budgets show their second big bias. It comes down to what we call “growth” spending vs. “discretionary” spending.
When a city builds brand-new projects, it usually fits into one of two buckets. The first bucket is “growth” projects. These are funded by development charges, which are fees developers pay to the city when they build new houses. This money is steady, reliable, and legally protected.
In the 2026 Budget, the city used this growth money to fund massive road-widening projects in the suburbs. Specifically, they approved $56.1 million to realign Greenbank Road and the bridge, and another $20.4 million to widen a small section of Carp Road. That is a whopping $76.5 million spent on just two road projects designed to make driving on the periphery of the city slightly easier.
Now, let’s look at the second bucket: “discretionary” spending, or what we can think of as the “nice-to-have” fund. This is the money the city uses to build things like brand-new bike paths, painted lanes, and pedestrian crossings to fill in missing transportation links in our neighbourhoods.
For the entire city of Ottawa, an extremely large municipality, the 2026 Budget set aside just $32.1 million for any new priority pedestrian and cycling facilities.
Why the massive gap? Because road widening is treated as a necessary default to “fix traffic” in growing areas. The city views this as an imperative and worthy of spending our tax dollars on it, even though only a small percentage of Ottawa residents will ever use it, much less use it regularly.
Applying a feminist lens to this, as Cassie does in her thesis, we often see that transportation networks in cities tend to prioritize the needs of men getting to and from their jobs. That’s not to say women (whether they’re working for a paycheck or not) can’t use these road networks to get where they need to go, but that typically isn’t their purpose.
Now, let’s look at active transportation. In contrast to the way roads are considered and funded, building a network that is safe for walking and biking is treated as optional, just nice to have. Because these active transportation projects are seen as extras, they often rely on one-time government grants or programs from the provincial or federal government. If that money runs out or doesn’t come in at all, the projects get delayed or canceled. Meanwhile, the multi-million dollar road widening moves ahead with secure direct funding from the city’s tax base, every time.
This funding model makes safe streets and human-scale communities feel like a luxury instead of a basic right. Next in this short series, we’ll look at the final piece of the puzzle: how promises to keep property taxes low make a better transportation system practically impossible.
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