If you're a devoted listener of CBC's Ottawa Morning, you would have heard a couple of days ago about how local groups will soon have to pay more to get the National Capital Commission to close its roads rent out its parks. You can follow those links to get both sides of the story.

This is a cached link to the old fee structure. And this is the new structure.

The whole thing had us curious about a couple of things:

• How often do people obtain permits for road closures and park rentals?
• How much revenue does it generate for the NCC?

Here are some answers, visualized for your pleasure. Below are two charts outlining the number of times each roadway was closed and each park was rented out during each of the last three years. Scroll over the bars for more detailed information.

Confederation Park and the Lebreton Flats, not surprisingly, are closed more than any other park, and Major's Hill Park isn't all that far behind. Lac Leamy's closures dropped off this year.

The second graph shows one major trend. NCC road closures have climbed steadily since 2009. Colonel By Drive leads the way, and has closed almost twice as many times in 2011 as it did in 2009. But Rockcliffe Parkway has closed almost three times as many times as just two years ago.

As far as revenue goes, NCC senior manager of media relations Jean Wolff sent along the following information: For the 2010–2011 fiscal year, the NCC generated about $75,000 from these rentals. It expects to generate just over $120,000 per year when the new structure is implemented.

Photo by klwatts via Flickr.