City councillors on Ottawa's transportation committee want Mayor Jim Watson to take the next step towards a new downtown tunnel for car and truck traffic.

​If city council agrees, Watson will ask the federal and provincial governments to pony up about $2 million dollars each to help pay for an environmental assessment of the project, a process that would take up to three years and cost between $6 million and $7 million.

The preferred scenario would see two separately bored tunnels, each carrying two lanes of traffic. A consulting firm estimates up to 25,000 vehicles would use the tunnel daily, including 1,700 large trucks.

The corridor would stretch from a southern portal at the Vanier Parkway exit of Highway 417, under Strathcona Park in Sandy Hill and under Lowertown, emerging on King Edward Avenue behind the Lester B. Pearson building so traffic can continue to Quebec over the Macdonald-Cartier bridge.

Tunnel could ease downtown traffic

Rideau-Vanier ward Coun. Mathieu Fleury, has been pushing for the tunnel as a solution to the long-standing problem of transport trucks clogging King Edward Avenue as they weave through the city's core.

The push comes after efforts to decide on a location for a new interprovincial bridge fizzled, Fleury said.

"We're moving forward with an environmental assessment [for a tunnel] because the other options don't have the provincial and federal support," he said.

A tunnel could cost $2 billion, but Fleury's hope is that the upper levels of government would pay for it.

He argues it's not the city's responsibility to connect a 400-series Ontario highway to an interprovincial bridge.​