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That’s key because the city will need federal funding — in the range of tens of millions of dollars, based on preliminary estimates — to upgrade the bridge for rail.

Watson said Pedneaud-Jobin “is interested in looking at that as another transportation link between the two provinces.”

“We want to find a better way to get people out of their cars and into transit,” he said.

The Stage 2 LRT plan would extend the Trillium Line south to Bowesville Road in Riverside South and include a four-kilometre spur to the Ottawa International Airport by 2021.

An eastern arm to Trim Road would be completed by 2022, followed by western links to Algonquin College and Moodie Drive by 2023.

The package includes building 23 new stations, buying new buses and trains, and widening the city-owned Highway 174.

“This is obviously a very historic and exciting day for the city and its future,” Watson said.

It’s a far stretch from six years ago, when the city had no realistic plans and no financial backing from other levels of government. “When we had discussions with the federal and provincial governments, quite frankly they didn’t take us all that seriously because we did not have our act together,” Watson said.

Now, Ottawa is building LRT farther and faster than anyone believed was possible, he said.

Several councillors continued to question the need for widening the 174 at a time when LRT is being extended to Orléans. The city has an analysis, not included in any public report, that says widening the highway will take 10 per cent of the anticipated riders from the rail line and still leave the 174 overcrowded.