Carling Avenue is a major east-west arterial road in the west end of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It runs from March Road in Kanata to Bronson Avenue in the Glebe. The road is named for John Carling, founder of Carling Brewery and Conservative MP and Senator, Postmaster General and Minister of Agriculture.
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It begins north of Kanata and runs east until the Ottawa River where it bends south to go around Crystal Bay and Britannia Bay. At this point it runs in a straight direction towards the city core and ends at the fringes of the Glebe neighbourhood. It used to run all the way to O'Connor Street, one block east of Bank Street, but the part east of Bronson was renamed Glebe Avenue in the 1970s. It is a four to six-lane principal arterial road for most of its urban length, with a speed limit of 60 km/h (37 mph). The portion through the Greenbelt and into Kanata is generally a two-lane rural highway (although widening is planned, which would also remove a substandard underpass in the 3700 block about midway between March Road and Moodie Drive), with a speed limit of 80 km/h (50 mph).
In December 2005 one lane in each direction between Booth Street and Cambridge South just before Bronson was converted to a bus-only lane. This very short (roughly 150 m) bus-only section speeds up bus traffic through the Carling/Bronson intersection during rush-hour.
Carling is home to Andrew Haydon Park, the Lincoln Fields Shopping Centre, Carlingwood Mall, Fairlawn Plaza, Westgate Mall, the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, the Ottawa Civic Hospital and the Old Dominion Observatory, the Communications Research Centre, and Mitel. It also runs along the northern boundaries of the Central Experimental Farm and Commissioner's Park.
Carling is now known as Ottawa Road #38 but used to be Highway 17B east of Richmond Road until the Ontario government downloaded the highway to the local government. Until the 1970s, the western part of Carling was also part of Highway 17.
In every year from 2004 to 2007, Carling Avenue has been named one of Ontario's worst 20 roads in a CAA survey,[1][2] citing frequent bumps and potholes. Construction is underway through certain portions of it.
Key OC Transpo bus routes on Carling Avenue include:
These are supplemented by peak hour routes:
There is a Carling Station (OC Transpo), presently servicing the O-Train, that connects with the aforementioned routes, as well as Route 3 from nearby Preston Avenue.
The addresses change erratically on Carling; they are not consistent from point to point and rise rapidly in the eastern part, then slow down to a very slow rise west of Bayshore.
Major intersections (from west to east, approximate address point):
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