Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Are suggesting that we relocate our downtown to Gatineau? Why would we link the airport to Gatineau? That is poor planning. Whenever the airport is linked to Rapid Transit, it goes directly downtown. Look at the Canada Line in Vancouver. Look at the new rail connection to open soon in Toronto. Look at LRT in Portland Oregon. Look at BART in San Francisco. I believe they are now building a direct link in Salt Lake City, and Dallas, and Dulles Airport in Washington. There are no doubt numerous other examples.
If you want ridership to be maximized on the O-Train and the southern tier of the city, you need to link the population to its preferred destination, downtown.
I do not understand the arguments to the contrary. You are investing hundreds of millions in a tunnel and then you are not going to make the best use of it to maximize ridership and therefore revenue. There is no reason why the tunnel cannot share two lines. Countless cities do this. If you don't, you are going to need surplus train capacity for the entire Confederation Line.
But this city makes all kinds of bad decisions.
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In full agreement. I seem to neglect this argument when I state my position against extending the O-Train to Gatineau. A new argument against the airport-downtown link would arise "O-train line already goes to Gatineau, better not cut them off and spend money on a rail interchange at Bayview to downtown".
As for multiple lines through the tunnel, I would like to point to the Oslo Metro where six lines share the same city centre "Common Tunnel". It is worth noting that the Oslo Metro's daily ridership is 268 000 (2009) and that the systems longest trains (6 cars, 108 meters) has a max capacity of 986 passengers, not much more than an Ottawa Alstom Citadis of 130 meters (around 800) . Three lines should eventually run under downtown Ottawa (Corel Centre, Algonquin, Airport/South).