[SENS ROOKIE]

If you got the chance to rebuilt Ottawa like Albert Speer attempt's for Berlin what would you do

[citizen j]

Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.

[SENS ROOKIE]

no Do you know how Albert Speer is

just look at wiki

[McC]

no Do you know how Albert Speer is



how would you speer Albert?

while we're nitpicking, could a moderator fix the typo in the Thread title? Now that we have Godwin's Law out of the way, this could be a fun thread, let's hear from all the closet Corbus, Enfants and Haussmen out there!

[matty14]

Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.

I don't like this thread, I'm getting depressed thinking what could have been :( lol

[SENS ROOKIE]

how would you speer Albert?

while we're nitpicking, could a moderator fix the typo in the Thread title? Now that we have Godwin's Law out of the way, this could be a fun thread, let's hear from all the closet Corbus, Enfants and Haussmen out there!

No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision

[McC]

No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision

Yes, I know who Albert Speer is, I've even read (and recommend) his book Inside the Third Reich; but I don't know 'how' he is, so I was poking fun at your spelling. One of the words you're looking for is "rebuild" with a 'd', by the way, and Hitler only has one 't'.

[Kitchissippi]

Yes, I know who Albert Speer is, I've even read (and recommend) his book Inside the Third Reich; but I don't know 'how' he is, so I was poking fun at your spelling. One of the words you're looking for is "rebuild" with a 'd', by the way, and Hitler only has one 't'.

Word Nazi! :D (how's that for upholding Godwin's Law?)

Last time I checked Albert Speer was still dead.

[SENS ROOKIE]

why your plan in making Ottawa a dream city

[Uhuniau]

Holt Report (1915 Federal Plan) as a historical foundation with the addition of point-tower skyscrapers in the core; Bank Street & Sparks/Rideau subways; streetcars not abandoned in the 1950s; Union Station still in use (tracks in a rail tunnel to Lees Ave.); solid 5- to 8-storey streetwalls on all mainstreets; no large trucks on any downtown bridges; better tree canopy along mainstreets, starting with King Edward.

:iagree:

BRING BACK HOLT! BRING BACK HOLT!

Next street to be re-canopied: Wellington, right in front of Parliament, like it used to be.

[McC]

:iagree:

BRING BACK HOLT! BRING BACK HOLT!


This map always gives me a semi:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3mJoEEHrVA/TfQstlsKzSI/AAAAAAAAFEg/jstpCorrK7Y/s1600/Drawing%252520no6B.jpg

[Uhuniau]

This map always gives me a semi:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p3mJoEEHrVA/TfQstlsKzSI/AAAAAAAAFEg/jstpCorrK7Y/s1600/Drawing%252520no6B.jpg

Only a semi? TMI! TMI!

[vid]

No, Albert Speer is the famous architect that was told by hittler to rebuilt Berlin into hittler vision

Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®

It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.

[S-Man]

That's quite the map. I guess underground light rail was just as impossible a dream back in 1915 as it is now.:rolleyes:

[eternallyme]

I wish I had a blank street map that could be used for a possible TMP (it comes up for renewal in 2013?). It includes a mixture of road and transit projects (I don't put all the eggs in the transit basket).

Some key elements:

Transit

* LRT to the suburbs as soon as funding is available, not just "beyond 2031"
* BRT corridors defined across the city with bus lanes on main arterials
* Surface trams on busy routes (i.e. Carling via QE Drive proposal to Montreal Road) when ridership warrants
* Redesign of key non-BRT bus routes with additional features
* More use of smaller buses and developer funding for local routes to reduce costs and taxes

Roadways

* Upgrades of several key arterials, including widening, transit priorities and in some cases, access management and interchanges
* Newly defined freeway corridor along Hunt Club Road from 417 to 416 which could also partially function as an outer ring road (although none is specified)
* Mixture of mainstreet arterials and traffic-focused suburban/urban arterials
* Collector and local roads in new communities would be controlled by developers
* Focus on intra-Ottawa and travel from Ottawa to neighbouring communities
* Interprovincial trucks not doing local deliveries would be prohibited from downtown Ottawa immediately to put pressure on the NCC (which should be abolished IMO) to approve a new bridge and encourage Gatineau-Montreal trucks to use 50/148
* Alternatively, encourage the NCC to toll the interprovincial bridges

[Dado]

Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®

It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.

At the time, the east bank of the canal was occupied by rail freight yards along with the station tracks. The Holt Plan would have been an improvement on what was there at the time since it would have removed the freight yards. From the looks of it, the west bank of the Canal between the plaza and Laurier was to be improved considerably. We also can't rule out the possibility that the covered-over plaza section was to be made more appealing somehow.

If you look carefully, you can see that one of the locks has been moved up the Canal to where the plaza covers the Canal alongside the railway station. This was to allow the trains to go under Wellington and still remain over the Canal with sufficient clearance for boats to pass underneath.


If I could go way back in time, like to Colonel By's era, I would realign the street grid of downtown Ottawa so that it used the final run of the Canal as its general baseline rather than working off the Ottawa River and the somewhat strange parallelogram survey grid (e.g. look at Scott, Carling and Baseline and compare with Bronson, Parkdale, Fisher, Churchill, Woodroffe, etc). So, given that the first streets were named Wellington and Rideau and assuming the same crossing point of the Canal, Wellington would now run from the Canal southwest to somewhere in the Carling/Preston/Prince of Wales/Dow's Lake area (the northern end of Dow's Lake is a bit of an artifice since it is essentially a dike and could have been placed anywhere). In the opposite direction, Rideau would head across what is now the Byward Market towards New Edinburgh Park, pretty much in line with Keefer St in New Edinburgh (the section of Sussex Dr beyond Boteler is on the same approximate grid as I envision, as is New Edinburgh). Assuming that Ottawa once again became the capital and that Barrack Hill (now Parliament Hill) also once again became the site of Parliament, the street grid would allow for the Parliament buildings to be the focus of two streets, one running up the west bank of the Canal more-or-less as the Queen Elizabeth Driveway does and another running parallel to Wellington, probably two streets over. This latter street would itself skirt the top of the escarpment that separates downtown from Lebreton Flats and the Preston/O-Train/Dows Lake depression, running pretty much through the St. Vincent Hospital site.

Oh yes, I would also have put another canal in along what is now the O-Train/Preston area to Nepean Bay and then through Lebreton Flats and some locks to Victoria Island. The reason for this is that it would have made Nepean Bay into a natural port location between rail and water in the latter part of the 19th century and might have even encouraged further canal building upstream in the Ottawa River (a partial canal was dug in the Fitzroy Harbour area on the Quebec side of the river - it shows up in Google Earth as some oddly straight bits of water channel; one of them crosses under the CN rail line).

To get really revolutionary, I might even have proposed a trihexagonal grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihexagonal_tiling).

[Uhuniau]

* More use of smaller buses and developer funding for local routes to reduce costs and taxes


How about more use of the RIGHT sized buses?

Some routes, maybe, could use smaller buses.

Many could use bigger: i.e., artics or DD, not 40-footers.

[Uhuniau]

Ottawa: Presented in Hittlervision®
It looks like the plan in that map is covering up the canal. I guess when it was produced the canal wasn't considered as much of an asset as it is today.

It doesn't really "cover" that much more of the canal than is covered today by the existing bridges that connect Rideau to Wellington and Queen/Sparks.

[Uhuniau]

the somewhat strange parallelogram survey grid (e.g. look at Scott, Carling and Baseline and compare with Bronson, Parkdale, Fisher, Churchill, Woodroffe, etc).

Aha. That's the original 18th century township survey at work. You can see other vestiges of it in the Bank Street dogleg and in the interrupted Main-Robert-Waller alignment. (Pop quiz: what was Waller Street originally named?)

[Dado]

:previous:

I know what the 'cause' of the parallelogram grid is, what I don't understand is why it took place at all. Surveying in parallelograms rather than rectangles or squares seems a damned strange thing to do. Within the former Carleton County, it was limited to the geographic townships of Nepean, Gloucester, North Gower and Osgoode. There are examples throughout the province but there are lots of townships surveyed on rectilinear lines as well.

They should have saved themselves some trouble and surveyed it all on equilateral triangles...

[bobert_d]

How about more use of the RIGHT sized buses?

Some routes, maybe, could use smaller buses.

Many could use bigger: i.e., artics or DD, not 40-footers.

What's the point of using a smaller bus than the 40 footers on some routes? The costs will be nearly exactly the same, as the maintenance budget will need to be about the same as inspections must occur on the same time frame, and it's unlikely to find enough cost savings in parts to make up for the extra training and storage required. The operator is the main cost of a route, and you'd have the same number of operators on a bus with less capacity that costs nearly the same in variable costs (parts, fuel)

[eternallyme]

What's the point of using a smaller bus than the 40 footers on some routes? The costs will be nearly exactly the same, as the maintenance budget will need to be about the same as inspections must occur on the same time frame, and it's unlikely to find enough cost savings in parts to make up for the extra training and storage required. The operator is the main cost of a route, and you'd have the same number of operators on a bus with less capacity that costs nearly the same in variable costs (parts, fuel)

You could assign lower-paid junior operators to those buses, and also they normally use less fuel over a run than a 40-foot bus. They would be mainly used evenings and weekends, unless a route never averages enough passengers to make a 40-foot bus worthwhile. By reducing operational expenses, they could increase the number of trips somewhat on the routes that are being cut back.

And yes, I agree, many routes could use articulated and double decker buses (the latter primarily on express routes; they would never be used on weekends except during special events like Winterlude and the Tulip Festival).

[Uhuniau]

What's the point of using a smaller bus than the 40 footers on some routes? The costs will be nearly exactly the same, as the maintenance budget will need to be about the same as inspections must occur on the same time frame, and it's unlikely to find enough cost savings in parts to make up for the extra training and storage required. The operator is the main cost of a route, and you'd have the same number of operators on a bus with less capacity that costs nearly the same in variable costs (parts, fuel)
I'm not overly keen on the idea either, but there may be some runs where it would make fuel-cost sense to do so.

Overall, though, I'm all for right-sizing, not down-sizing route. That means, OC Transpo, stop running g.d. 40-footers on route g.d. 12! :hell:

[Uhuniau]

And yes, I agree, many routes could use articulated and double decker buses (the latter primarily on express routes; they would never be used on weekends except during special events like Winterlude and the Tulip Festival).

Speaking of Winterlude and the Tulip Festival, and I already know that the answer is, as always, "the NCC is against it", but why can't there be a regular route running down the Queen Elizabeth Driveway, and not just an NCC Centrally Planned Spontaneous Annual Event Special route?

[Dado]

Speaking of Winterlude and the Tulip Festival, and I already know that the answer is, as always, "the NCC is against it", but why can't there be a regular route running down the Queen Elizabeth Driveway, and not just an NCC Centrally Planned Spontaneous Annual Event Special route?

Just a theory, but maybe the NCC has a small amount of taste. I find OC Transpo's colour scheme a bit stark and I have to admit it does not fit in too well with the NCC's earth tones colour scheme. When I see OC Transpo buses on the Driveway they look out of place - it's not that buses look out of place, just OC Transpo's. So my suggestion is that a number of OC Transpo buses be painted up to match the NCC colour theme and/or some painted thematically (i.e. for Winterlude, the Tulip Festival) - just as is done for some corporate sponsors - and deploy those buses along the Driveway.

[citizen j]

Special QE fleet of beige OCTranspo buses?

[vid]

To get really revolutionary, I might even have proposed a trihexagonal grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihexagonal_tiling).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Tiling_Semiregular_3-6-3-6_Trihexagonal.svg/240px-Tiling_Semiregular_3-6-3-6_Trihexagonal.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihexagonal_tiling)

I don't think Hitler would have liked that. :haha:

It doesn't really "cover" that much more of the canal than is covered today by the existing bridges that connect Rideau to Wellington and Queen/Sparks.

I don't live in Ottawa, so I'm not familiar with the canal, and I didn't notice it on the map when I made that post. I thought it was the grey section to the right of the railyard.

You could assign lower-paid junior operators to those buses, and also they normally use less fuel over a run than a 40-foot bus. They would be mainly used evenings and weekends, unless a route never averages enough passengers to make a 40-foot bus worthwhile.

The problem with that, and it's been brought up in Thunder Bay, as well, is that to implement that immediately, you would have to spend millions in capital on getting new, shorter buses. You could phase it in without any increase to capital costs, but that would take a long time and deprive the transit agency of money that could be used to replace existing 40 and 60 foot vehicles.

You could assign lower-paid junior operators to those buses, and also they normally use less fuel over a run than a 40-foot bus. They would be mainly used evenings and weekends, unless a route never averages enough passengers to make a 40-foot bus worthwhile.

Why would you have a fleet of buses that is used at one time, and another fleet of buses used at another time. If you're going to increase the amount of buses by 50 to 100 per cent, where are you doing to put all these buses? They might be 25% shorter than the rest of the fleet but they're still big.

[Dado]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5b/Tiling_Semiregular_3-6-3-6_Trihexagonal.svg/240px-Tiling_Semiregular_3-6-3-6_Trihexagonal.svg.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trihexagonal_tiling)

I don't think Hitler would have liked that. :haha:


Yes, well, if you follow the Chaos theory of things, it's possible that if Colonel By had laid out Ottawa like this Hitler would never have come to power in Germany.

[OttawaSteve]

:previous:

I know what the 'cause' of the parallelogram grid is, what I don't understand is why it took place at all. Surveying in parallelograms rather than rectangles or squares seems a damned strange thing to do. Within the former Carleton County, it was limited to the geographic townships of Nepean, Gloucester, North Gower and Osgoode. There are examples throughout the province but there are lots of townships surveyed on rectilinear lines as well.

I looked into this but couldn't find a definitive answer. Both the Historical Atlas of Carleton County and Bruce Elliot's The City Beyond take the shape of Nepean Township and orientation of the grid for granted.

The township was first laid out in 1792-3 (although the lot surveys were completed later) and the grid runs N16'W and S56'W. Obviously, lot and concession lines are surveyed relative to, and thus determined by, two things: waterfronts and the township boundaries. Township boundaries themselves are often constrained and determined by those of pre-existing townships that they abut, and this is apparently one of the main reasons for parallelogram-shaped lots in Upper Canada.* However I can't see how this would have affected Nepean, Osgoode, or Gloucester.

Interestingly, both Nepean and Gloucester have fronts along both the Rideau and Ottawa rivers, with both adhering to the same angles (see map). I wonder if the the N16'W lines are a trade-off between retaining perpendicularity with the Ottawa and being exactly parallel with the NE/SW orientation of the Rideau.

*A pretty good overview of typical survey methods in Upper Canada can be found in "The Survey Methods," an excerpt from a German book by Carl Schott translated by Andrew Burghardt in The Canadian Geographer 25, no. 1 (March 1981): 77-93.

From the Canadian County Atlas Digital Project
http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/showtownship2.php?townshipid=nepean
http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/images/maps/townshipmaps/small/car-m-nepean.jpg

[Uhuniau]

From the Canadian County Atlas Digital Project
http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/countyatlas/showtownship2.php?townshipid=nepean


Thanks, Ottawa Steve, for inducing yet another sleepless night here at my world HQ. There should be a rule against tipping people off to the existence of mind-blowingly time-wastingly cool websites.

[Cre47]

There was an article in the Citizen today on building a better Ottawa

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Building+better+Ottawa/5249416/story.html

[adam-machiavelli]

That article in today's Ottawa Citizen is pretty laughable. Here are my 2 reasons:

1. We now know it does not pay off in the long run for governments to get deep into debt to fund mega-construction projects. They should instead build such projects in increments or figure out how to reach the same goals with less infrastructure.
2. The idea presented in the article that the City's planning department should be run by an architect is absolutely ludicrous. Chicago tried this in the early and mid 20th century. All that happened is the City spent insane amounts of money to look good, while at the same time ghettoizing vast swaths of the built up area just outside downtown. Ottawa's Development Review section already spends a lot of time making sure new developments are as best designed as they can be within the applicants' budgets. The last thing we need are self-absorbed architects with grand plans for the population.

[waterloowarrior]

city gets beat up on in the latest article
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/easy+being+developer/5252602/story.html

[S-Man]

The city, as well as most of its residents, deserve to beat up on.

I, for one, think it woulf be a good idea to at least HAVE an architect working in the planning department, or the NCC for that matter.
Maybe then we can focus on design a little more that the exact millimetre of the building's setbacks and height.

[Uhuniau]

The city, as well as most of its residents, deserve to beat up on.

I, for one, think it woulf be a good idea to at least HAVE an architect working in the planning department, or the NCC for that matter.
Maybe then we can focus on design a little more that the exact millimetre of the building's setbacks and height.

I like a really exact amount for setbacks, myself: 0mm.

[adam-machiavelli]

The city, as well as most of its residents, deserve to beat up on.

I, for one, think it woulf be a good idea to at least HAVE an architect working in the planning department, or the NCC for that matter.
Maybe then we can focus on design a little more that the exact millimetre of the building's setbacks and height.


1. Both the City and NCC have architects and more importantly, urban designers on staff.
2. The language of setbacks is standard across the province. The City can't change that. From what I've seen lately, the City is happy to let developers deviate from the setback provisions if their proposal is well designed.

[S-Man]

I still say that having the NCC oversee development is like having a car company run solely by accountants - you're doomed to failure because at the end of the day people want something that looks nice, not just drives adequately.

[adam-machiavelli]

My only problem with the NCC is it absolves the City from thinking about issues related to a national capital and the City absolves the NCC from thinking about issues related to urban living.

[kevinbottawa]

There's an interesting article in Build magazine called "Fast-forward to the future". The caption says, "Three experts look ahead to 2071, when boomers will have come and gone, and today's preschoolers will be thinking about retirement".

http://shopping.ottawacitizen.com/SS/Page.aspx?secid=107108&pagenum=40&sstarg=&facing=false&

What do you think of the article? What do you think Ottawa will be like in 2071?

[Uhuniau]

There's an interesting article in Build magazine called "Fast-forward to the future". The caption says, "Three experts look ahead to 2071, when boomers will have come and gone, and today's preschoolers will be thinking about retirement".

I thunk it; Wellar said it:

Ottawa is one of the least-innovative cities either of us have ever seen.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

What do you think of the article? What do you think Ottawa will be like in 2071?

I think it will be just as boring, green, plain, dreary and bureaucratic as it is today, only with even more NIMBY's since there will be even more old people due to dwindling birth rates.

[Uhuniau]

I think it will be just as boring, green, plain, dreary and bureaucratic as it is today, only with even more NIMBY's since there will be even more old people due to dwindling birth rates.

But think how vibrant it'll be with All That Green Space! You'll hardly be able to stand, it'll be vibrating so hard with shrubbery-induced vibrancy!

[S-Man]

Thinking about that vibrancy gives me the tingles!

Yes, in 50 or 60 years I think the NCC will be just finishing the most recent 'how to improve the city' survey, then immediately declaring they don't have the money to do a single project, similar to the previous five decade-long surveys. Surveys, and the people it takes to create them, are expensive you know....

Andy Haydon will be 148 years old and advocating for horse-drawn omnibus service as the best transit mode of the future.

Ken Grey will be 125 and trying to save an abandoned parking lot from development near Tunney's Pasture, though by then the suburbs will have stretched to Prescott in the south and into the Lanark Highlands to the west.

"I support intensification but not if it means change" he'll mutter, along with "tunnel to nowhere" and snippets from Trudeau speeches.

Entry level public servants will be making seven figures, but wondering if that could be just a little bit higher.

The Glebe will be the site of pitched battles between geriatric second-generation hippies (their weapons will be potato guns and biodiesel-fueled VW Microbuses) and the rest of Ottawa who hate them. Lansdowne Park will now be the Lansdowne Protected Wildlife Preserve, built around the heap of rubble that was once a stadium and culturally significant heritage buildings.

Dalton McGuinty will be in his 20th term, having promised so much to unionized employees over his lifetime, and will now be taxing the amount of excrement leaving your ass based on readings on the mandatory Smart Butt Meter he had installed on ever resident's posterior.

[kwoldtimer]

Far from vibrant, in 2071 Ottawa will be struggling to adjust to its precipitous decline 15 years after the Conservative government, to celebrate 50 years in power and for security reasons following Quebec independence, moved the national capital to Fort McMurray. In particular, the vacant former Parliament buildings will be in an increasingly serious state of disrepair as developers' proposals for a world class residential, commercial and cultural complex, including a concert hall and a central library, are bogged down in endless court challenges from the Friends of the Hill.

Futurology can be so much fun. :D