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Covering it entirely would, in the Senators’ proposal, make room for a pedestrian plaza with gardens and trees overlooking the LeBreton aqueduct. Storefronts — coffee shops, that kind of thing — would be below, facing the aqueduct and with their backs to the enclosed rail line.

In the renderings it looks both prettier and more functional than the version presented in the competing “Canadensis” plan from consortium DCDLS Group. DCDLS would add one lovely curving wooden footbridge but otherwise leaves the rail line pretty much as it is, letting the stations at Booth Street and Bayview do most of the work of getting people across it. This is one of the few areas where the Senators’ proposal is grander than their competitor’s.

“We’ve been very, very focused on all the 21st-century thinking and accessibility is a huge part of the puzzle with this plan,” Bird says. A lot of stairs and climbing up and down won’t do.

He’s also personally driven by the story of Sarah Stott — a friend of his daughter’s, he says — the Ottawa woman who lost her legs to a train in Montreal as she took a shortcut home from work in 2014.

“While that was going on, we were doing this (planning) and we thought, ‘Dammit, that can’t be our downtown,'” Bird says.

On the face of it, $25 million — which is worked into the IllumiNation LeBreton budget — is an astoundingly low estimate.

You need ventilation, lights, drainage for water that might get in — all things a surface line pretty much lets the great outdoors take care of. Safety demands fire suppression and emergency access.