[lrt's friend]

Jeff Pollowin was interviewed today suggesting that the next mayoralty race will be fought on LRT for the second election in a row. He suggested that in addition to Alex Cullen, Peter Hume and Larry O'Brien, Jim Watson and even Bob Chiarelli may run. He also suggested that current City Councillors will take the brunt of the anger from the electorate.

The timing is indeed ripe for this scenario with an election only a year off. We have already set a precedent that city council should not sign a major capital contract during an election year, and it will be impossible to complete the necessary EAs, obtain funding, complete a RFP competition, and negotiate a final contract in time. This has been my prediction for the last year or two.

Although nobody will say as much, I am sure this will be sweet revenge by the provincial Liberals against Larry O'Brien and John Baird but pity the poor Ottawa voter who is being subjected to this again. We deserve better than this ongoing fight between Liberals and Conservatives, but it could easily be tit for tat.

I cannot imagine anything good coming from Bob Chiarelli's return to politics on an "I told you so" platform, no matter how right he was, since his LRT vision has been permanently discredited. The voters have 'burned that bridge' and I mean it in those terms. There is no going back as so many have said.

We could end up cleaning the City Council house and dumping the current LRT plan if it is perceived to be too expensive as was argued against the previous plan. If we burn that bridge, we will have few options left.

Cleaning the City Council house may easily become very popular, very quickly, as was Larry O'Brien's candidacy in the last election, but LRT may become an indefinite casualty of such a voter revolt.

It will be an interesting election campaign. I will absolutely not vote for Alex Cullen or Larry O'Brien.

[jeremy_haak]

I say get rid of them all. There are a few there who should stick around, but this Council is beyond repair.

[eternallyme]

I wonder if a candidate will come along to the right of O'Brien proposing to scrap the proposal altogether? While that would get virtually no support in the downtown and inner city, it would get decent support in the suburbs and very strong support in rural Ottawa...

[Proof Sheet]

I wonder if a candidate will come along to the right of O'Brien proposing to scrap the proposal altogether? While that would get virtually no support in the downtown and inner city, it would get decent support in the suburbs and very strong support in rural Ottawa...

Hmm, like Kilrea or Lowell....:slob:

[bikegypsy]

Even if this happens and the project is cancelled, in10 or 20 years at most, the core will be so clogged up with buses that traffic will be frozen at peak hours and they won't even have the luxury of going through lenghty debates, or debacles, at council. They'll just 'do it' like cities in South Korea or Japan handle such issues... right away and without public consultation.

[Dado]

Bob Chiarelli brought the defeat upon himself. 5 years ago this week, he was on the O-Train in Carp promoting rapid expansion of rail transit:

http://otra.sandelman.ca/otrain/carp/jager/105 Carp33-0.jpg
http://otra.sandelman.ca/otrain/carp/

Within 2 years, he had abandoned any notion of incremental expansion of the O-Train and went down the track of an expensive replacement project - and one that didn't even solve the bus congestion downtown. He never championed conversion of the main parts of the E-W Transitway system as a way out of the bus jams, nor did he champion the O-Train as a way to quickly expand service outwards beyond the Greenbelt. He, our most pro-LRT mayor in a long time, had gone off supporting an expensive rail replacement project (it extended southwestwards, I know, but the bulk of the cost was north of the airport) that neither solved the problem most transit users faced every day nor was it going to increase ridership by anything commensurate with its expense. If it had gone ahead, I think it would have been revealed to be such an extravagant failure that it would have given LRT a bad name for years to come and merely would have kept us on the path towards even more BRT - Bonsall and Haydon would be even more vocal in promoting their bus tunnel panacea.

I wasn't in Ottawa in 2006 and I'm glad because there was no one running I could have supported.


I think Council essentially has to be swept away. Not just because of the councillors themselves, but because it would also send a message to City staff that the population was unhappy with City Hall generally. For too long have staff been doing things that make no sense, and this Council has not stopped it, which is why they have to go. But I also don't subscribe to the simplistic "it's all Council's fault" reasoning. Council didn't conceive of a $200M Baseline Station; they approved it, true, and they should take the blame for that, but they didn't come up with it. They didn't write reports to justify it. Councillors didn't come up with the idea that it would take forever to determine a west-end routing for LRT, and therefore it should not be included in the first expansion increment. Council are not the ones who sat on their hands for two decades without getting an EA out the door for the Dominion-Lincoln Fields portion of the West Transitway. Council are not the ones who had the idea of re-studying the Lincoln Fields-Pinecrest portion of the West Transitway, long after a route was already determined and property acquired for it. Council ordered traffic studies be conducted on King Edward during its reconstruction, and this was disobeyed, as were other orders, among them Lansdowne. City Hall's problems go deeper than that of two dozen elected officials, but replacing the entire lot of them is the only tool available for voicing displeasure and getting a change in attitude.

[Dado]

Hmm, like Kilrea or Lowell....:slob:

What we want is Kilrea AND Lowell...

[Proof Sheet]

Bob Chiarelli brought the defeat upon himself. 5 years ago this week, he was on the O-Train in Carp promoting rapid expansion of rail transit:
http://otra.sandelman.ca/otrain/carp/jager/105 Carp33-0.jpg
http://otra.sandelman.ca/otrain/carp/
Within 2 years, he had abandoned any notion of incremental expansion of the


Wow, does Eli ever look younger in that photo.

[adam-machiavelli]

The problem is not with city council -it has NEVER been. It's with scary Larry, his greasebag supporters and ruralites being able to tell urban residents how to run the city. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the rural areas of the city should have the Ontario Greenbelt Act applied to them to prevent sprawl and then they should be kept politically separate from Ottawa. This could solve many of our problems.

Oh and by the way, I'd support Alex Cullen for Mayor. He may be a bit bookish but at least he cares about urban residents.

[eternallyme]

The problem is not with city council -it has NEVER been. It's with scary Larry, his greasebag supporters and ruralites being able to tell urban residents how to run the city. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the rural areas of the city should have the Ontario Greenbelt Act applied to them to prevent sprawl and then they should be kept politically separate from Ottawa. This could solve many of our problems.

Oh and by the way, I'd support Alex Cullen for Mayor. He may be a bit bookish but at least he cares about urban residents.

I doubt they would accept having the Greenbelt Act applied to the benefit of a municipality they would be legally separated from. They would be seen as being "bullied" by Ottawa. Unlike in Toronto where it is (somewhat) more reasonably applied by being on the Oak Ridges Moraine and Niagara Escarpment, that would be just for political reasons and not for any real environmental benefit and likely lead to expensive litigation with the rural municipalities.

Secession yes. Secession with the Greenbelt Act applied - no way, no how. The City of Ottawa would have no jurisdiction in those areas .

[adam-machiavelli]

They could have jurisdiction applied in rural areas if a Greenbelt isn't implemented. The old Metro government of Toronto had final say on all planning issues in every adjacent municipality.

[waterloowarrior]

I disagree eternallyme, the greenbelt is much more than NEP and ORM, it protects huge swaths of agricultural and rural land beyond those areas, most (56%) of the Greenbelt is outside those plans. Greenbelt offers key protection of agricultural resources (no settlement expansion from outside) and rural lands (no estate lot subdivisions) from development beyond the PPS. Combined with places to grow and metrolinx plan it's designed to reshape growth at a regional level

e.g. if Ottawa decides to prohibit estate lot subdivisions or 'stop sprawl', they'd be worried other places outside or the new "Carleton County" would encourage them, a Greenbelt or other regional plan could help prevent those types of decisions being based on what other ppl are doing rather than on 'good planning' as there is one set of rules that can't be overridden by municipal politicians

[jeremy_haak]

And further to what waterloowarrior said, it doesn't necessarily matter what those rural municipalities would think anyway. Ultimately, the decision and the implementation of such a plan would be a provincial matter.

[Mille Sabords]

The transit plan that we have now is too important to be a political issue. It is a city-building necessity and any candidate that opposes it should be discredited automatically as a city-destroyer. At least, that's how I hope things will play out.

Enough is enough. I was very pleased that Larry O'Brien read the riot act to Ken Gray this week after that article he wrote about the subway being an unnecessary frill. It isn't, and the media shouldn't be infecting people with stupid thoughts like that. At some point, even the media in its role as a society divider, should recognize when something is for the Greater Good and play ball. Governments cannot be indefinitely portrayed as incompetent (that becomes a game in itself). At some point, they have to be supported in the most basic, elementary functions they are there to accomplish.

[Dado]

The transit plan that we have now is too important to be a political issue. It is a city-building necessity and any candidate that opposes it should be discredited automatically as a city-destroyer. At least, that's how I hope things will play out.

Enough is enough. I was very pleased that Larry O'Brien read the riot act to Ken Gray this week after that article he wrote about the subway being an unnecessary frill. It isn't, and the media shouldn't be infecting people with stupid thoughts like that. At some point, even the media in its role as a society divider, should recognize when something is for the Greater Good and play ball. Governments cannot be indefinitely portrayed as incompetent (that becomes a game in itself). At some point, they have to be supported in the most basic, elementary functions they are there to accomplish.

It's quite unfair to characterize those who oppose a tunnel as being "city-destroyers". How does wanting to have rail on the surface downtown where it will be visible and well-used and will become an important part of the downtown transport network make one a "city-destroyer"? How does wanting to get something running sooner rather than later and freeing up funds for earlier expansion make one a "city-destroyer"? If we are to realize the benefits of light rail, it has to be extended outwards to at least the inside edge of the Greenbelt. If a tunnel detracts from that without providing a necessary component, then it should be dropped. John Bakker, who was part of the group that built the Edmonton LRT tunnel, has said that it was a mistake in hindsight in part because it moved activity off the streets of downtown Edmonton and it also delayed system and ridership growth. Is he guilty of being a "city-destroyer" now, or then? A tunnel will just take people from their office towers and out of downtown in a hole in the ground; people will see very little of the downtown itself and won't use the tunnel (especially 10 storeys down) to travel around downtown. In cities like London and Paris, which have plenty of sights and things to do on the surface already, this isn't too big an issue but in smaller North American cities like Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton what a tunnel will do is exacerbate the 9-to-5 problem.

We do not need a tunnel, and we certainly do not need the tunnel as it is being proposed. It could be dug a lot closer to the surface and it should have more stations. Having too few stations will do a lot more to destroy the city than having light rail on the surface.

What is the price of this tunnel? I mean that in the economic sense, not the financial sense. What do we have to give up or forego to get this tunnel? Let's assume that the rest of Phase I will be built and we'll have light rail from Blair to Baseline and South Keys. But will our finances then permit anything else? Perhaps LRT on Carling Avenue will be the price (not unreasonable since the difference in cost between tunnel and surface would be about the same as the cost of building LRT on Carling). Is foregoing LRT on Carling a worthwhile price to pay for a tunnel downtown? What is going to contribute more towards city-building? A tunnel alone, or surface LRT downtown and LRT on Carling? This isn't a question that can be dodged; there will always be an opportunity cost to any expenditure decision.


And BTW, Ken Gray never called it "an unnecessary frill". He simply called it "unnecessary", with no pejorative.

[lrt's friend]

Wow, what diversity of opinion about how LRT should be implemented! This has really summarized our differences.

I cannot support Alex Cullen's LRT tunnel or nothing approach because this may indeed lead to nothing and we can't have that. The province has expressed concerns repeatedly about the cost of the tunnel and hedged and hedged about funding for this reason. This has been going on for 3 years now and we have influential local politicians saying this. It is not like Toronto politicians are dictating this to us.

I also believe that we have closed too many doors on alternative ways to move transit through downtown. Too many special interest groups are having too much say on how downtown transit works or doesn't work. Why are downtown BIAs acting like NIMBYs when it comes to transit? Why can't the MacKenzie King Bridge be restricted to transit only? Why can't Sparks Street be used for LRT? Why can't Albert and Slater Street be more restricted to regular traffic during peak periods? Why can't LRT run through Confederation Square? Heaven knows, modern LRT can't be worse than streams of STO buses. Too many doors have been closed too quickly.

It was stated that LRT to Barrhaven would have been a big failure, but how could that be, when it would be serving a community which is already experiencing explosive growth, and areas with inadequate alternate transportation routes into the city. The bigger risk is some truncated route whose growth cannot take place because of choking civic debt. Indeed, the Edmonton scenario that Dado mentioned and I have in the past. Aren't we preparing for that truncated route that won't be expanded, when we start building those mega transfer stations at Baseline, Blair and now Tunney's Pasture?

The higher the pricetag for the tunnel gets, the longer we will have to wait for LRT in this city. Calgary's success was not built around a tunnel. They built their system first out to the suburbs, concentrated downtown employment, and built ridership. This will continue until they absolutely need to build that very expensive tunnel. For the most part, we are moving passengers to downtown and not through downtown. Tunnels are very difficult to fund for mid sized cities. This is easier to fund and justify in large cities because of the larger tax base and sprawling downtown areas, where moving people across downtown areas becomes more important.

[rodionx]

Wow, what diversity of opinion about how LRT should be implemented! This has really summarized our differences.

I cannot support Alex Cullen's LRT tunnel or nothing approach because this may indeed lead to nothing and we can't have that.

Regardless of the merits of any particular LRT plan, Cullen is right. Politically we're at a point where it's downtown tunnel or nothing. Support for the tunnel plan was about as close to consensus as this city is ever going to get. If LRT becomes an issue in the next election, the choice before voters will be whether to proceed with the tunnel, or just drop the whole thing and try to muddle through with buses for another ten years.

[Suzie]

As compared to the current plan, converting the Transitway along with a surface alignment downtown would be better for taxpayers (lower costs and risk) and riders (the system could be implemented in the East, the West and the South more quickly, and the downtown stations would be more numerous and not buried deep underground). Politically-speaking, this sounds like a winner.

Really, the only obstacle would be the Albert/Slater Coalition, the big winner under the current plan.

[acottawa]

The problem with a surface LRT is you're spending a lot of money to get a marginal improvement over a bus. A surface route is still subject to all the obstacles that impede buses (traffic lights, accidents, snow, Tamil protesters, parades) and has less flexibility that buses to get around obstacles or be re-routed. They also pose a risk to cyclists and pedestrians.

The defunct Barrhaven Streetcar project didn't replace buses downtown, it just added streetcars to the overcrowded chaos that already exists on Slater and Albert.

Surface LRT works best when there are wide streets and few intersections (Carling may work, downtown doesn't have a suitable street unless major demolition occurs).

[Mille Sabords]

How does wanting to have rail on the surface downtown where it will be visible and well-used and will become an important part of the downtown transport network make one a "city-destroyer"? How does wanting to get something running sooner rather than later and freeing up funds for earlier expansion make one a "city-destroyer"?

Because it is short-sighted. A subway will take longer to build but it will be there forever. On the other hand, planning the city's major downtown rapid transit leg as a surface line basically says to everyone that we don't expect it to be used beyond a certain level. It's also postponing the inevitable by a relatively short time (10-15 years? 20 tops?) before the subway finally gets built. Replacing today's bus operation with a surface rail operation, with no consideration whatsoever to ridership growth, is tinkering with the status quo - and very expensive tinkering at that. Nothing could be more damaging to transit in the long run.

If we are to realize the benefits of light rail, it has to be extended outwards to at least the inside edge of the Greenbelt.

The current plan does that.

If a tunnel detracts from that without providing a necessary component, then it should be dropped.

It does provide a necessary component. Downtown is jammed. Surface service no longer works. Telling people to sit in traffic as you crawl through downtown is arrogant and amounts to considering transit as the service of the poor.

John Bakker, who was part of the group that built the Edmonton LRT tunnel, has said that it was a mistake in hindsight in part because it moved activity off the streets of downtown Edmonton and it also delayed system and ridership growth. Is he guilty of being a "city-destroyer" now, or then? A tunnel will just take people from their office towers and out of downtown in a hole in the ground; people will see very little of the downtown itself and won't use the tunnel (especially 10 storeys down) to travel around downtown. In cities like London and Paris, which have plenty of sights and things to do on the surface already, this isn't too big an issue but in smaller North American cities like Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton what a tunnel will do is exacerbate the 9-to-5 problem.

I've never been to Edmonton so I don't know what kind of downtown they have or what type of urban culture. I am envious of their subway. Here in Ottawa, I know we have an emerging urban culture and an attractive downtown with plenty of tourism and plenty of locals taking to the streets to check things out. Again, how arrogant can you get to force people to look at downtown from the windows of a bus that is stuck in traffic. What's the point? Once people are on transit, they're on their way to someplace else. People in Ottawa come downtown, shop downtown, live downtown - that's here to stay. Such a downtown can handle a subway, in fact a subway will enhance it and make it easier for more people to come downtown.

We do not need a tunnel, and we certainly do not need the tunnel as it is being proposed. It could be dug a lot closer to the surface and it should have more stations. Having too few stations will do a lot more to destroy the city than having light rail on the surface.

This is being argumentative or wantonly contrarian for the sake of it and I'm just not impressed. None of these are arguments that cause a project like this one to be discarded. Could've, should've... There are subways with much deeper stations than ours and they work. People use a subway no matter how deep the stations are. People adapt.

What is the price of this tunnel? I mean that in the economic sense, not the financial sense. What do we have to give up or forego to get this tunnel? Let's assume that the rest of Phase I will be built and we'll have light rail from Blair to Baseline and South Keys. But will our finances then permit anything else? Perhaps LRT on Carling Avenue will be the price (not unreasonable since the difference in cost between tunnel and surface would be about the same as the cost of building LRT on Carling). Is foregoing LRT on Carling a worthwhile price to pay for a tunnel downtown? What is going to contribute more towards city-building? A tunnel alone, or surface LRT downtown and LRT on Carling? This isn't a question that can be dodged; there will always be an opportunity cost to any expenditure decision.

What do we give up by NOT having a subway? Nothing less than people's perception of the whole transit system. How twisted is our sense of priorities when we don't blink when a $2-billion bailout is handed to bankrupt car companies so they can last til the end of the current fiscal year, but an $80-million subway station is deemed too expensive? Which of the two will be there a hundred years from now?

Is foregoing Carling a worthwhile price for a subway? They're not mutually exclusive, I thing we should have both, and the city's plan has'em both. But the subway comes first. Downtown has to come first. We simply can't keep pushing it back time and time again. Downtown's time is now and it has to be done right.

I stand by what I said earlier in this post. This is too big an issue for politics. It's our future. Any politician that has the presumption to challenge something like this should be seen as a small man. One who only wants to advance his own short term interest at the expense of the city's future.

[Kitchissippi]

Also, let's put it in perspective. The costs for the tunnel peg it at about triple of what is being spent on Baseline station at the moment. There's a lot more fat to be trimmed elsewhere and stupid short term transitway expenditures should be cut first.

I'd love to see a ward by ward pie chart of where the city's tax revenues (commercial and residential) come from, and I'm sure the core wards (Sommerset and Rideau-Vanier) probably pull in more than their fair share. Contrast that with transit infrastructure expenditure, they'd probably be in the low end of the scale.

The tunnel will be a 100+ year investment, and the sooner it is built, the sooner it gets amortized in today's cheaper dollars in hindsight. Enough talk, consultation and discussion has gone on in the last few years, and anyone who is sour because "their idea" was not considered is just confusing the issue.

I find it disturbing that the tunnel is becoming a filibustering point. Its only downside is the cost, which when factored beyond transit issues (yes, aesthetics, noise and surface pedestrian/cycling environment are worthy factors) make it worth every penny even at twice the projected cost in my opinion.

[waterloowarrior]

It's amazing all the fuss about a measly 3 KM tunnel. We have the 4th highest % of commuters using transit (and riders per capita) in all metros of North America, behind only New York, Toronto and Montreal. We don't need to cheap out to build up ridership or build out into the suburbs, we already have an extensive suburban busway system.

Why spend billions on a system that still stops at red lights in the downtown? (and a surface downtown section would cost $100-200 million anyways). Like Kitchissippi said, this is a 100+ year decision; when Toronto built it's first subway in the 1950s, replacing a busy surface route, it had about the same metro population as us, 1.2 million, look at how 50 years later that line shapes the city and the core.

[lrt's friend]

Such a downtown can handle a subway, in fact a subway will enhance it and make it easier for more people to come downtown.

This is only true if we can have an adequate buildout of the system. If Phase 1 goes way overbudget, then buildout will not occur in a timely fashion as was the case in Edmonton. In fact, all transit may stagnate.

I have to say that the current rail plan makes it no more convenient to reach downtown than the existing Transitways since both use the same routes. I still have to take the same local bus to the same station or drive to the same Park n Ride lot. There will be no boom of new transit riders going downtown unless it is the result of other factors.

Is foregoing Carling a worthwhile price for a subway? They're not mutually exclusive, I thing we should have both, and the city's plan has'em both.

Just because its in the plan doesn't mean it will ever get built. If the city can't afford to build it because prior phases went overbudget or the plan was beyond our means in the first place, it won't happen.

The problem with the 'tunnel or nothing' approach is that if the tunnel fails to be built for whatever reason, we will simply abandon LRT, probably for a generation or more. It will be considered a total political failure, and we will return to building only busways. A tunnel may come eventually but it will be Andy Haydon's bus tunnel this time. The existing TMP actually leads us down this path because it allows busways to be built easier. LRT depends entirely on successfully funding a tunnel. If the tunnel is not funded, the entire LRT proposal collapses, and there will be no improvements to downtown transit whatsoever.

The pricetag on the tunnel is important. Taxpayers will need a lot of convincing if their taxes are going to increase to pay for it.

[Richard Eade]

...
The problem with the 'tunnel or nothing' approach is that if the tunnel fails to be built for whatever reason, we will simply abandon LRT, probably for a generation or more. It will be considered a total political failure, and we will return to building only busways. A tunnel may come eventually but it will be Andy Haydon's bus tunnel this time. The existing TMP actually leads us down this path because it allows busways to be built easier. LRT depends entirely on successfully funding a tunnel. If the tunnel is not funded, the entire LRT proposal collapses, and there will be no improvements to downtown transit whatsoever.

The pricetag on the tunnel is important. Taxpayers will need a lot of convincing if their taxes are going to increase to pay for it.
No problem then since the estimated price for the tunnel is $600M, and the Province has pledged $200M and the Feds have pledged $200M (-$35M for the Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge) and the City says it has the matching $200M. Thus, all $600M for the tunnel is already accounted for.

What our politicians need to do is get funding commitments for expanding the LRT network. This should be no problem since both the Prov. and the Feds have said that they will support Green Transit initiatives. For instance, the estimated price for converting 12 Km of the eastern arm of the Transitway was $227M; do you think the Prov. or Feds will not be able to come up with $80M each in the near future? The Rail Yard was estimated at $100M, but that seems to have jumped to about $175M. Will our funding partners not be able to find $60M each?

Quite honestly, there have been any number of values thrown around, but one of the most consistent has been that the upper levels are willing to go easily to $400M each, which, when matched by the City, would total $1.2B. So far, we have estimates for a $600M tunnel, $227M for the Tunneys to Blair conversion, and a $175M Rail Yard for a total of $1.002B. That leaves about $200M for vehicles which is just over 1/2 the amount estimated in the plan ($390M). Personally, I think the Province has been great at coming up with $50M+ every year for new buses, so I think they could be counted on for a few score of millions for more trains over a couple of years. Like the hybrid buses, I expect that we will be aquiring the vehicles over a few years any way, so not having the whole amount at the beginning is likely not a problem.

That means that for a City investment of $400M, with matching funds from the others (which I think we can count on), we can have the West-East line running, with the tunnel. The additional vehicles would be bought over time, and system extensions could be built as money permits. Every four years (or less), there are big elections for which Politicians throw around money. I am pretty sure that relatively inexpensive extensions to a train system would make good press.

I do find it a little disconcerting that people who have put forth the view that Bus-ways should not be built only to be converted to rail later, should be advocating that surface rail should be built now and the trains moved down into a tunnel in 20 years. I understand that some are suggesting that there should always be surface trains, and that the tunnel would augment that service, but is running a parallel rail system really the most efficient idea?

Any way, this thread seems to have gotten off topic a bit (a lot?). Maybe if this discussion is to continue, it would be better to move it to the Transit thread.

As for mayor, I think it would be suicide for a candidate to run on the platform that they are going to 'Press the RESET button yet again'. I think that they could, however, gather ideas on how to make 'small' modifications to substancially improve the current plan. I think people could be sold on 'Tweeks' which would differenciate the candidates.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

I say get rid of them all. There are a few there who should stick around, but this Council is beyond repair.


Ditto. We need to get rid of this group of Kindergarteners.

[Dado]

I do find it a little disconcerting that people who have put forth the view that Bus-ways should not be built only to be converted to rail later, should be advocating that surface rail should be built now and the trains moved down into a tunnel in 20 years. I understand that some are suggesting that there should always be surface trains, and that the tunnel would augment that service, but is running a parallel rail system really the most efficient idea?

That was the recommendation of the Peer Review Panel - they suggested adding in the Carling LRT line and running it through downtown on the surface. One of them even suggested building surface downtown first. The reason they wanted LRT on the surface is for the same reason I have stated in the other thread - to improve the downtown environment and act as part of the local surface transport network in a way that a tunnel simply cannot.



I do find one thing curious in all this... weren't most of you in favour of the N-S LRT that would have put light rail on the surface downtown in and amongst the buses?

[waterloowarrior]

Going back down the rabbit hole
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Going+back+down+rabbit+hole/2041137/story.html
Ottawa’s transit vision is facing the same problems that dogged the old plan: rising costs, details and politics.

BY MOHAMMED ADAM, THE OTTAWA CITIZENSEPTEMBER 27, 2009 11:19 PM


OTTAWA-Three years ago, city council killed its own plan to build a major new rail-transit system. Now, its even more ambitious replacement is facing the same problems that dogged the old plan: costs that seem to be rising quickly, a city council that’s having trouble explaining its plans, and political interference.

“One of the two things that was disturbing to me about the last plan was that it started as something that was going to max us out, but was manageable. But bite by bite it became bigger, to the point where I didn’t think we could afford it,” says Councillor Rick Chiarelli, who voted against the old plan because he didn’t think it was affordable. “I see those same caution flags emerging on this one. With the number of balconies flying by me, I am getting the feeling I am falling.”

The city’s new 25-year transit plan has been controversial from the beginning.

The plan, which councillors approved last spring, will see a downtown tunnel, an east-west electric rail line from Tunney’s Pasture to Blair Road, a north-south electric rail line from Bayview to South Keys, and extended Transitway lines to suburbs outside the Greenbelt.

Rising out of the ruins of the cancelled $880-million north-south rail project, it divided council and initially met with lukewarm support from the provincial government.

The first phase of construction, with a cost pegged at $1.7 billion, was supposed to be the tunnel, a partial east-west rail line, and extended busways. But recently the city added another wrinkle by giving the provincial government another option as city officials negotiate for funding: the same tunnel and east-west rail, but instead of extended busways, a north-south rail link. The bill for that option is $1.8 billion, including $400 million for the north-south rail.

As it was with the old plan, cost is becoming the Achilles heel of the new plan. Part of the reason north-south rail failed was that even as then-mayor Bob Chiarelli was dismissing claims of cost overruns, the cost was ballooning from $600 million to $880 million. Councillor Chiarelli, who also voted against the new plan, says he can see affordability becoming a big issue again.

After news reports claimed the current project, meant to be the first part of the decades-long master transit plan, is $100 million over budget before it’s even received approval, Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson waded in, saying that reported changes to the plan raise serious questions about its affordability.

“There are significant changes, changes to the routing, rail yards and so on and this comes as a surprise because I thought the plan submitted had taken care of these things. Obviously it hasn’t,” says Watson, the senior Ottawa minister in the provincial government. “I am concerned that costs keep escalating… and my message to the city is (to) make sure that when you submit your numbers in October, they are credible and defensible and are not going to evaporate off a page in a month’s time.”

Councillor Alex Cullen, the chairman of council’s transit committee and an ardent supporter of the new transit plan, says the reports of a $100-million cost overrun are “fabricated,” and it is absurd to draw parallels with north-south rail. Nancy Schepers, the deputy city manager responsible for the transit plan, says it is not unusual for cost estimates of major projects to escalate as concepts turn into reality. The city won’t know the exact cost of the project until a final design is approved.

Watching all the to-ing and fro-ing as the transit plan approaches final approval, it seems like déjà vu all over again for former regional councillor Frank Reid.

Reid believes the transit plan is getting caught up in the politics of the day as people who are considering running for mayor use it to position themselves for the race. The same thing happened in 2006, when the north-south project became a political football in the middle of a municipal election: John Baird, the Ottawa West-Nepean Tory MP and then president of Treasury Board, withheld federal funding for the plan that had been promised under the previous Liberal government, turning a done deal into an election issue and helping conservative candidate Larry O’Brien defeat Liberal mayor Bob Chiarelli.

“It is no secret that Jim Watson is thinking of running for mayor and people have to ask the question: is all the protest from the province because of cost overruns or is it because somebody is positioning himself for mayor?” Reid says. “The politics of this thing makes me wonder if everything is to do with the dollar — or ambition. I smell Watson, I smell (planning committee chairman and possible mayoral contender) Peter Hume, I smell politics, politics, politics.”

Indeed, given Baird’s role in killing the north-south plan, which the provincial Liberals fully supported, some have wondered whether the McGuinty government will ultimately back any plan fronted by O’Brien. Watson dismisses any such doubts, saying both he and the premier represent Ottawa and there is no reason why they’d want the city to fail. Politics, he says, has nothing to do with making sure that a plan that’s pegged at $5 billion is worth the money.

“The premier is very much a big-picture person. We represent the same constituents and taxpayers and it is in no one’s interest to have the city fail,” Watson says. “We want to make sure this is done right and we are not going to rush to meet some artificial deadline.”

Cullen, who is the only declared candidate for mayor in the next election in 2010, acknowledges the plan is expensive and, given its history, understands why people get nervous when the issue of rising costs — real or imagined — are raised. But there’s nothing unusual or alarming about how the city’s transit plan is unfolding, he says.

“In the evolution of a concept to a construction project, you go through the same steps whether it’s in Toronto, Vancouver or some other place. It is an issue we have to address and it is going to be a more transparent process than the previous plan,” Cullen says.

“Planning-level estimates are done for planning purposes and it will come as no surprise to anyone that the numbers that finally come out will be different from the estimates,” says deputy city manager Schepers, herself an engineer.

She says those numbers will be made public in the last week of October. In December or early January, the city will make a formal request for funding from the provincial and federal governments.

The bill for the first phase was estimated in 2007 dollars and two years on, the cost may already have gone up simply because of inflation. Councillor Marianne Wilkinson says if construction doesn’t begin in two years, the price is expected to hit $2.1 billion. That’s not counting costs that were never included in the initial estimate: for property acquisition, including subterranean rights, and design changes discovered to be needed as more engineering work is done.

Wilkinson says it is premature to talk about cost overruns when no firm budget has been established and no contract has been signed with any builder. Still, she believes the city could have done a better job of handling the project estimates. She is also unhappy with the decision to give the province the north-south rail option, because she believes it comes at the expense of busway expansion in her Kanata ward. She believes it is being done for political reasons, to entice the province with a recognizable version of the north-south rail plan the government previously agreed to support.

“Politics is definitely creeping into this,” Wilkinson says.

Reid says a big part of the reason the plan is being pulled apart in different directions is poor communications. For instance, Mayor Larry O’Brien should have been in front of the cameras explaining a $37-million settlement agreement with the consortium that had been contracted to build the original rail line — and how that squared with the city’s proposal to build a north-south rail line after all.

Instead, he allowed others to saddle the city with their own spin and interpretation. And as rumours swirled around cost overruns, he should have been out there quickly and emphatically putting them rest. O’Brien is the mayor, and Reid says that leaving Cullen and others like Hume to lead the way doesn’t inspire confidence.

“The thing that bothers me is that the communication on this has been pathetic. The way it has been handled, the information comes out in dribbles, it comes out as rumours. No one is out there to explain what is going on and pre-empt a lot of the stuff,” Reid says. “The mayor needs to show leadership. He has not done that.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[Mille Sabords]

:previous:

What a joke. I think Ottawa's transit vision is facing the same problem as the one before: small-minded and underperforming media, ambitious politicians out for only themselves, and pompous outrage about consultation that's never enough despite reams and reams of material available to anyone at the click of a frikkin' mouse.

Makes me puke.

[Richard Eade]

:previous:

What a joke. I think Ottawa's transit vision is facing the same problem as the one before: small-minded and underperforming media, ambitious politicians out for only themselves, and pompous outrage about consultation that's never enough despite reams and reams of material available to anyone at the click of a frikkin' mouse.

Makes me puke.
Well, that might be a big part of the problem: The CONSULTATION provides (filtered) information but doesn't actually 'consult'. That is, it is a one-way street.

On Oct. 29, 2008, Staff had their 'starting point' for developing an alignment for the DOTT. The report contained the following image:

http://REade.fileave.com/Downtown/Cross-Country-Oct29.jpg

When the final alignment recommendation was made in the report on May 6, 2009, the following image was used to portray the line:

http://REade.fileave.com/Downtown/Cross-Country-May6.jpg

So after six full months of study, all the feed-back that was received at the Open Houses, all the thousands of comments that were submitted, and all of the changes and alterations suggested, Not a single detail of the route changed. The 'Consultation' process was entirely for naught.

People are feeling that there has been NO consideration of other alternatives and options. That the plan had already been 'finalized' before it was presented for public input. Even bringing up the same north-south route which had previously been cancelled makes it look as if the people's wisher have been completely ignored. It is easy for Politicians to say "Oh, it is very different from the old N-S LRT plan." But people don't see it as being different.

In Mohammed Adam's article, Frank Ried is quoted as saying that there has been a terrible communications job done on the entire rail proposal, and I think he is dead-on. You have been closely following these events so you have a much better knowledge of what has happened than most people. If you only had a few (sensationalized) media reports to go on, do you think your opinion would be different?

[eternallyme]

Here's an idea: the federal government should create an interprovincial transit authority covering the National Capital Region and its surroundings. It would take power out of the hands of city bureaucrats and into the hands of an independent authority.

The committee should have 13 seats and be made up of the following:

*Mayor of Ottawa
*Mayor of Gatineau
*5 additional representatives from Ottawa (6 total - ensuring it does not have a majority)
*3 additional representatives from Gatineau (4 total)
*1 representative from the National Capital Commission
*1 representative from the surrounding Ontario municipalities
*1 representative from the surrounding Quebec municipalities

[waterloowarrior]

*5 additional representatives from Ottawa (6 total - ensuring it does not have a majority)


Why should Ottawa not have a majority, it has a clear majority in the population and especially the amount of people using transit

[eternallyme]

Why should Ottawa not have a majority, it has a clear majority in the population and especially the amount of people using transit

If any one group is given a majority, it would be able to hijack the committee and pass things on their own to the detriment of others. The only other option is to require a 2/3 vote to pass committee.

[waterloowarrior]

If any one group is given a majority, it would be able to hijack the committee and pass things on their own to the detriment of others. The only other option is to require a 2/3 vote to pass committee.

You could say the same the opposite way, that everyone else could join up to oppose Ottawa and increase their own funding disproportionately or there could be political deadlock... thus the problem with a political board and why in many places the boards are mostly made up of planners, engineers, business people/economists, and industry representatives rather than parochial politicians.

[Dado]

:previous:

What a joke. I think Ottawa's transit vision is facing the same problem as the one before: small-minded and underperforming media, ambitious politicians out for only themselves, and pompous outrage about consultation that's never enough despite reams and reams of material available to anyone at the click of a frikkin' mouse.

Makes me puke.

I wonder if the proponents of the original Transitway back in the late 70s and early 80s had the same sentiments (with "click of a frikkin' mouse" being replaced with "visit to the frikkin' library")?

And then again in the late 1980s when the Transitway tunnel was being contemplated.

Of course, the public perception was different than that of the proponents back then, too:


Meetings on tunnel plan called sham
Doug Yonson, The Ottawa Citizen
Oct 12, 1989

Two public meetings on a proposed bus tunnel under downtown Ottawa next week won't mean much because regional staff have already decided they want a tunnel, some regional councillors say.

"It's perfectly obvious where staff is headed for, where the consultants are headed for and quite frankly where the politicians are headed for," said Kanata Mayor Des Adam.

" You're going to get a tunnel -- it's going to be a question of when."

Adam told the regional transportation committee Wednesday that two recent studies on ways to improve transit flow in the downtown "are trying their hardest to justify the conclusion (of regional staff) that a tunnel is necessary."

Adam wondered why the region is bothering with the open houses on Tuesday and Wednesday "if in fact we have already decided."

He was particularly critical that no cost estimates will be available at the open houses.

"I don't know how meaningful the response will be from the public when they don't know what the cost will be.

"It's like you saying you want to buy a new car. Well, if the car is $140,000, you likely don't want it."

The recommended tunnel route would link the current LeBreton and Campus transitway stations. There would actually be two single-lane tunnels, under Albert and Slater streets, which would also serve the Rideau Centre.

Based on the cost of a transit tunnel nearing completion in Seattle, Wash., and including several future years of inflation, regional staff have suggested the twin tunnels could cost about $700 million.

One of the studies, released in August, examined three options to carry bus traffic when surface streets reached capacity -- an elevated roadway, a shallow tunnel and a deep tunnel. The study recommended a deep tunnel.

The other report, tabled Wednesday, recommended ways to extend the life of the current bus lanes on Albert and Slater Streets. It says construction of a tunnel can be delayed as long as 16 years by timing traffic signals to favor the bus lanes, installing passenger information screens at bus stops and allowing passengers to prepay cash or ticket fares at the bus stops.

Ottawa Ald. Tim Kehoe and Gloucester Mayor Harry Allen said they are concerned that other transitway priorities may be ignored in the current emphasis on a tunnel.

Allen said he feels the extension of the transitway east to Orleans and west to Kanata has a higher priority than a downtown tunnel. Kehoe said the region still has five years of construction to complete the initial transitway to South Keys, and is also under pressure to extend service to Barrhaven and to get transitway traffic off the Ottawa River Parkway in Ottawa's west end.

They said the public should not misled that the tunnel is the only priority.

"I get the feeling the region is pushing for the tunnel and trying to get it ahead of transitway extensions to Kanata and Orleans," Allen said.
Kehoe said he could not advocate a tunnel "without knowing how many other major legs we have to fund."

The region's transitway director, Ian Stacey, told Allen there were indeed a number of priorities, and a major decision facing council in the next couple of years is in determining which goes first.

He said regional council committed itself to some sort of tunnel or elevated busway 15 years ago when it endorsed a major role for rapid transit in the region's development.


I guess that bit about BRT being cheaper was all made up, then...


I also found this quite amusing:


Hottest air rose to top on transitway
Claire Hoy, The Ottawa Citizen
Oct 29, 1989

Once upon a time, there was a stupid man.

He wandered the land, lost and confused, until he found another stupid man in downtown Ottawa.

And so it went. Soon there were three, then four. Before long they had a quorum.

None of them had the wits to do anything useful with their lives, so they did the only thing they could - they got elected.

First to city council. Then the region.

The hottest air rose to the top.

One of the first things they did was set up a transit system.

They bought buses.

Other cities were using cleaner, more efficient, less congestive forms of transportation, using buses as feeders.

They bought more buses.

The city grew. The region grew. And the bus fleet, like Topsy, grew.

Wiser people told the stupid people to plan for alternatives, but they wouldn't listen.

They discarded the streetcars, ripped up railway tracks, and rejected modern alternatives.

They worshipped the bus.

Of course, some of them voted themselves limousines and generous taxi chits so they wouldn't have to ride in them.

Before long another stupid person wandered in with a dream. He called his dream the Transitway. He envisioned miles of grey, ugly concrete strips slashing through empty fields, met here and there by monstrous glass and steel stations.

Nobody knew what the cost would be. But it didn't matter.

Property taxes soared, soon to double that of comparable homes in Toronto.

Transit was more expensive and considerably less efficient.

But the Transitway was underway and the stupid men and women surveyed the blotted landscape and declared it good.

Soon, it wasn't enough.

They needed a tunnel. Two tunnels.

Again they hired engineers and planners who live their lives to build massive things, and they asked if they should build a tunnel underneath downtown.

The builders said yes. And for sharing this wisdom they were paid $1.6 million by the stupid men and women.

They will build the tunnels.

Again, they don't know how much it will cost. $500 million? $800 million? $l billion?

Who cares? After all, they cry, it will save the average commuter four minutes -- yes, that's F-O-U-R minutes.

So what's a billion?

Ottawa must have tunnels. Toronto has some. Montreal, too.

Are we a real city or not, they cry?

They didn't want to be accused of not consulting the public, so they held open houses and pretended to seek advice.

Of the 400 who came, only about 50 said yes, 25 said no, but the bulk left, speechless, some shaking their heads and muttering that these people must be crazy.

Perhaps they are, these stupid men, but they are going to have their tunnels.

And you are going to pay. So who is really stupid?

But even if some stupid people are replaced by other stupid people, it may be too late.

The course, once embarked upon, can not be altered.

Certainly not by common sense.

Without the tunnels, they say, the buses will clog the downtown streets.

That is because they have no alternatives to buses.

Ottawa buses carry more people out of the downtown during rush hour than any bus-only system on the continent, they cry. That's because there are so few bus-only systems. And it ignores the fact that at 6:05 p.m., nobody is left downtown. Except the bus drivers.

And so it seems we will have our three-kilometre tunnels, under Albert and Slater streets, linking both ends of the Transitway.

Generations will ask how this came to pass, how such awesome stupidity went unchallenged.

There is no answer.

Not as long as smart people stay away from elected office.

In local politics, stupidity is power.

Intelligent life need not apply.


One supposes a few more lines could be added to this poem today...

[lrt's friend]

Marianne Wilkinson's comments are so telling. We can't build a first phase without appeasing every part of the city in some way.

It is this kind of attitude that is creating so many compromises that we end of with a system that tries to satisfy everybody but ends up satisfying no one.

I do like the idea of setting up a regional transit authority like Metrolinx in Toronto, so that rapid transit planning gets at least a little more separated from the political process and the election cycle. The mandate of those on the transit authority board is to look at the big picture and this should reduce the demands to appease individual ward interests.

[eternallyme]

You could say the same the opposite way, that everyone else could join up to oppose Ottawa and increase their own funding disproportionately or there could be political deadlock... thus the problem with a political board and why in many places the boards are mostly made up of planners, engineers, business people/economists, and industry representatives rather than parochial politicians.

That would require Gatineau, the NCC and the rural municipalities all ganging up on Ottawa, when they have completely different interests.

[Mille Sabords]

Well, that might be a big part of the problem: The CONSULTATION provides (filtered) information but doesn't actually 'consult'. That is, it is a one-way street.

On Oct. 29, 2008, Staff had their 'starting point' for developing an alignment for the DOTT. The report contained the following image:

When the final alignment recommendation was made in the report on May 6, 2009, the following image was used to portray the line:

So after six full months of study, all the feed-back that was received at the Open Houses, all the thousands of comments that were submitted, and all of the changes and alterations suggested, Not a single detail of the route changed. The 'Consultation' process was entirely for naught.

People are feeling that there has been NO consideration of other alternatives and options. That the plan had already been 'finalized' before it was presented for public input. Even bringing up the same north-south route which had previously been cancelled makes it look as if the people's wisher have been completely ignored. It is easy for Politicians to say "Oh, it is very different from the old N-S LRT plan." But people don't see it as being different.

In Mohammed Adam's article, Frank Ried is quoted as saying that there has been a terrible communications job done on the entire rail proposal, and I think he is dead-on. You have been closely following these events so you have a much better knowledge of what has happened than most people. If you only had a few (sensationalized) media reports to go on, do you think your opinion would be different?

You make some good points about communications, no question about it. But it's also true, I think, that the media exaggerates and overdramatizes things partly because readership is falling and people are turning to the Internet more and more for their news. A big city with big projects is an easy source of controversy. And mark my words, when the subway is built and is open for service, the same media will be all over it, salute its vision, rave about its city-building force, etc.

What if, despite all the input and feedback received, the proposed alignment is indeed the best one? I remember the Rideau Centre being in the media as furious that they would lose MacKenzie-King station, which ensures the north-south flow of pedestrians through the mall. Did you know that the Rideau Centre is built on stilts because of the sandy soils beneath it? I believe that was said as well in one of the public forums and it's one of the main reasons why the route tilts to the north - going under the canal and building a subway station where MacKenzie King is now would be much more expensive and much deeper too. This is just one of many I've heard or seen to explain the route. Was this ever reported in the paper? No? That's what I mean. The media is focusing more on controversies than on the actual project, which is overall well put together when all is said and done.

[RTWAP]

I can't understand why the city is being asked to pay for this at all. In Southwestern Ontario the provincial government allocated something like $17 Billion for transit, covered 2/3rds by the province and 1/3rd by the feds. Why should Ottawa be any different?

[Richard Eade]

You make some good points about communications, no question about it. But it's also true, I think, that the media exaggerates and overdramatizes things partly because readership is falling and people are turning to the Internet more and more for their news. A big city with big projects is an easy source of controversy. And mark my words, when the subway is built and is open for service, the same media will be all over it, salute its vision, rave about its city-building force, etc.

What if, despite all the input and feedback received, the proposed alignment is indeed the best one? I remember the Rideau Centre being in the media as furious that they would lose MacKenzie-King station, which ensures the north-south flow of pedestrians through the mall. Did you know that the Rideau Centre is built on stilts because of the sandy soils beneath it? I believe that was said as well in one of the public forums and it's one of the main reasons why the route tilts to the north - going under the canal and building a subway station where MacKenzie King is now would be much more expensive and much deeper too. This is just one of many I've heard or seen to explain the route. Was this ever reported in the paper? No? That's what I mean. The media is focusing more on controversies than on the actual project, which is overall well put together when all is said and done.
Hmm, I'm sorry I didn't catch this earlier. As a matter of fact, I was aware that the Rideau Centre was built on piles. It turns out that there is a fairly deep valley in the bedrock under the north portion of the Rideau Centre which made deep piles necessary.

Now, my question to you would have to be "Do you remember where you heard that it would be more expensive to go under Mackenzie than the north route?"

The bedrock valley is shown nicely in the following image:

http://REade.fileave.com/Downtown/Rocks-Alternative.jpg

The orange area in the upper middle is the deep rock. You can see that it is under pretty much the entire north end of the Rideau Centre and continues north across Rideau. Notice that a southern route actually misses the worst of the valley.

It is generally much more expensive and risky to have to re-build the underpinnings of a building once you cut them off. By tunneling under the north of the Rideau Centre, many of the piles will need to be cut.

Using Delcan's own drawings:

http://REade.fileave.com/Downtown/Rideau-Profile.jpg

http://REade.fileave.com/Downtown/Mackenzie-King-Profile.jpg

The Mackenzie-King diagram is an older one, with the tunnel fallowing under the bridge. If the red line above is followed, the tunnel's bedrock buffer should be about the same. Recall, also, that now that the Campus Station is to be underground, the tunnel will not be heading 'UP' as shown in the picture, thus leaving even more rock between the tunnel and the piles.

Which do you think would be less expensive; cutting all those piles and re-building support for the Rideau Centre, or just tunneling through bedrock?

As for your other point, the depth: Recall that things generally flow north (roughly) in this part of the City. The canal flows north, so its bottom gets lower the farther north you go. Also, the large sewer, shown as a black rectangle in the profiles, flows north. It is clear that in the Mackenzie-King profile, the sewer is above about 51.5m, while in the Rideau route, it is down to about 47.5m. Also, there is a second deep sewer for the Rideau route, flowing under Colonel By, which must also be avoided.

Which do you think would force the tunnel the deepest; going under two sewers at 47m or one sewer at 51m?

I think that there is a lot of mis-information out there. Even the people of this forum, who follow things quite closely, occasionally take what Staff says as truth, when it might be incorrect. I'm not saying that Staff are trying to mis-lead the public, but not all of what they say is accurate.

[Uhuniau]

when Toronto built it's first subway in the 1950s, replacing a busy surface route, it had about the same metro population as us, 1.2 million, look at how 50 years later that line shapes the city and the core.

And I bet if you go back and look at the Toronto papers from the late 1940s, when they were first planning that initial subway (like the Blair-Tunney's proposal, it was about a dozen stations), the nattering nabobs of negativity were saying the same things there and then, as they are here and now.