Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[lrt's friend]

This is a travesty. All caused by Larry O'Brien's irresponsibility and east and west end councillors lording it over those representing the north-south corridor when decisions were being made in December 2006 and again in 2008. Just look at what is being talked about. Potentially we could end up with three different technologies used on the same corridor. electric trains for downtown section, diesel trains going southward and then buses in the southern suburbs. This is seemless transit? How many times are people expected to transfer to get anywhere? Is this a recipe for increased transit useage? Hardly! We have handcuffed ourselves for the future by irresponsible decisions made as result of politics from the 2006 election. And what is the outcome? We are creating a situation where most of this corridor will never be built. We are creating a situation where neighbours are going to oppose it. Where the corridor is to be most integrated with the community, we will be using the technology most poorly designed for this purpose. People do not want to live next to a busway. This is why we will need to increase the right of way from 20m to 40m, but is it already too late in parts of Barrhaven to do this? Why are the people of Chapman Mills Drive going to put up with what those on Browning Avenue would not? And we keep spending more and more yet the LRT section through Riverside South and Barrhaven was to be the cheapest part of the line to be built. Is it really going to be cheaper to build a busway? It is clear now that most of $100 million spent on the North-South project has been wasted. How soon we forget? Aw, but the money has already been flushed down the toilet. Let bygones be bygones. It is spent, so why not keep spending. What was planned in the past must now be replanned. Everything will end up being re-engineered and restudied and each time it will be more money. With this kind of planning, we are creating a rapid transit network that requires you to transfer repeatedly from bus to diesel train to electric train to bus. Why are doing this in a city this size? One planning mistake being compounded on another and another. Let's face it, as long as we are talking about busway between Riverside South and Barrhaven, it will never be built. The plan might as well fall behind the filing cabinet. The corridor will be the next Byron Avenue linear park that within 10 years will become sacrosanct to the local community.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Cre47

Yeah direct link to Algonquin indeed with the 94.

Note that the 94 will only accessible to Riverside South residents by transfer. You know, walk 15 minutes to the 99, take the bus for 3 minutes, then wait 25 minutes to transfer. An improvement over the almost impossible access today but still far from convenient.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Potentially we could end up with three different technologies used on the same corridor. electric trains for downtown section, diesel trains going southward and then buses in the southern suburbs. This is seemless transit? How many times are people expected to transfer to get anywhere?

To be fair, transfering between different modes of public transportation is pretty common in most cities. Toronto has at least 5 (Train, Subway, Streetcar, LRT, Bus) and many people have to take 3 to get to their destination; German cities have a Ubahn, sbahn, tram, bus and commuter rail. I think Ottawa is the only place in the world where people were ever told they could expect a single mode of transit (a streetcar in Otttawa's proposal) all the way from the downtown core to the outer suburbs.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by MountainView

Since the originally plan was for LRT to use that dedicated corridor (specifically on Chapman Mills Drive) is there anyway that residents can fight them changing it to BRT? Or is it set aside as a general transit corridor (of any nature) therefore meaning that the residents would have no say because they knew about this development from the moment their neighbourhood was planned / they bought their house.

Cities can change zoning and plans on the fly as long as the proper planning is followed, with all the required studies. No real recourse residents can take beyond trying to defeat the elected officials in the next election. Especially with the new transit environment project assessments, politicians have 100% control of technology choice in transit corridors.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by acottawa

To be fair, transfering between different modes of public transportation is pretty common in most cities. Toronto has at least 5 (Train, Subway, Streetcar, LRT, Bus) and many people have to take 3 to get to their destination; German cities have a Ubahn, sbahn, tram, bus and commuter rail. I think Ottawa is the only place in the world where people were ever told they could expect a single mode of transit (a streetcar in Otttawa's proposal) all the way from the downtown core to the outer suburbs.

I agree with you, but just a small correction: S-Bahn ist actually the commuter rail.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by acottawa

To be fair, transfering between different modes of public transportation is pretty common in most cities. Toronto has at least 5 (Train, Subway, Streetcar, LRT, Bus) and many people have to take 3 to get to their destination; German cities have a Ubahn, sbahn, tram, bus and commuter rail. I think Ottawa is the only place in the world where people were ever told they could expect a single mode of transit (a streetcar in Otttawa's proposal) all the way from the downtown core to the outer suburbs.

You missed my point. This is one rapid transit corridor. Why are we suggesting that we potentially use three modes of transit on the same corridor? It is like suggesting that when they designed the Canada Line, the downtown leg would be electric, the section running southward would be diesel and the leg to Vancouver airport be a busway. Come on! Use the same mode of transit for the entire route. Of course, there will be buses connecting to individual subdivisions. That is enough transfers. The more transfers that you create, the less ridership you will get. The less value you are getting for your investment. Why create unnecessary transfers as result of poor planning and poor integration of our rapid transit network? Even Toronto recognizes this and as result the Sheppard LRT has been scrapped in favour of a subway extension and the Scarborough RT is finally going to be incorporated with the Eglinton crosstown. Why would we deliberately design all these disjointed rapid transit segments?

[Kitchissippi]

I would not consider electric LRT and the diesel O-Train as different modes. They are both rail-based modes regardless of what powers them. As in metro systems, transfers between LRT lines are the norm, passengers go through several line transfers to get anywhere in Paris or Shanghai. As for transfers between trains and buses, expect one if you don't live along an LRT line, or move near a station if you don't want one — that is the fact that drives TOD, and why the "transferless" system of express routes on the BRT failed to promote it.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

I would not consider electric LRT and the diesel O-Train as different modes. They are both rail-based modes regardless of what powers them. As in metro systems, transfers between LRT lines are the norm, passengers go through several line transfers to get anywhere in Paris or Shanghai. As for transfers between trains and buses, expect one if you don't live along an LRT line, or move near a station if you don't want one — that is the fact that drives TOD, and why the "transferless" system of express routes on the BRT failed to promote it.

Balderdash! This is not Paris and it is not Shanghai. These are much larger cities with large areas of high density. Ottawa has a concentrated and compact central district and there is no technical reason for not running the trains downtown. Bayview is a useless terminus for the most part. It drives no ridership in itself and it is highly unlikely to become a transit destination in any reasonable time frame. Perhaps someday, there will be some condos there but lets face it, it is too far from downtown to become an extension of it.

And what is the end result of using Bayview as the long-term terminus? We will have to run extra trains between Bayview and downtown anyway to accomodate the extra ridership. So why not just run the North-south trains there directly? To save a few million on merging the trains?

[eternallyme]

The best solution IMO is to stick to BRT for that corridor indefinitely; the Southeast Transitway would be most usable then building the Transitway is best for now. The ridership potential is NOWHERE NEAR warranting LRT at this time, and not likely to be for at least 25 years.

The north-south line should go from Gatineau to South Keys (or south of there) all day, and to Lester and Leitrim during peak periods. In the long term, it could be extended, but I'd want to see densities and ridership support such. There are MUCH greater priorities at this time - the east-west line, then extend to Kanata, Barrhaven and Orleans which by then should be more densely developed in their cores.

[MalcolmTucker]

And what is the end result of using Bayview as the long-term terminus? We will have to run extra trains between Bayview and downtown anyway to accomodate the extra ridership. So why not just run the North-south trains there directly? To save a few million on merging the trains?

The big problem is still the low ridership on the Bayview O-Train route, even with extension. To get anywhere close to desireable frequency of a future LRT, you are going to have rather short trains running compared to the main line. Merging the lines would reduce the useful throughput of the tunnel by quite a bit. You would end up in a situation where you would have to decide in the future to implement a transfer, reduce frequency on the O-Train branch (costing ridership), or permenantly hobble the main line.

The main line will run at frequencies such that any transfer time will be more than made up in being able to run smaller trains at higher frequencies on the O-Train route compared to a rational design of the interline. Sometimes transfers are good even for the people that need to transfer. It might not look optimal at day 1 when there is lots of extra capacity to play with, but 15 years out I'm sure people would look back at the decision as the right one.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by Cre47

There is an article on Le Droit talking about an ambitious project of a monorail line from Gatineau to Rimouski.with connector routes from Quebec City to Saguenay and from Montreal to Sherbrooke. They are taking speed of 250 km/h, which would mean a trip to Montreal would take about 45 minutes to 1 hour and an extra hour to Quebec City.

i'll believe this when i see, which will probably be never, since they can't even afford to stop their bridges and roads from crumbling to dust and it's taking them a millennium to build a scaled down version of the 50.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The big problem is still the low ridership on the Bayview O-Train route, even with extension. To get anywhere close to desireable frequency of a future LRT, you are going to have rather short trains running compared to the main line. Merging the lines would reduce the useful throughput of the tunnel by quite a bit. You would end up in a situation where you would have to decide in the future to implement a transfer, reduce frequency on the O-Train branch (costing ridership), or permenantly hobble the main line.

The main line will run at frequencies such that any transfer time will be more than made up in being able to run smaller trains at higher frequencies on the O-Train route compared to a rational design of the interline. Sometimes transfers are good even for the people that need to transfer. It might not look optimal at day 1 when there is lots of extra capacity to play with, but 15 years out I'm sure people would look back at the decision as the right one.

Then we have been sold a bill of goods. You are now telling me that the tunnel does not have the capacity to serve two lines. Look at Calgary and they are limited by surface operations. We should have stuck to the original plan and run the north south trains on the surface. This would have addressed everything because you would have ended up with two routes into downtown. This is Calgary's future plan. This is Edmonton's future plan. This has already been accomplished in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

This still doesn't get past the original reason for building the north-south line first. COST. There is no possibility to running trains to Kanata or Orleans within most of our lifetimes. Yet, an opportunity exists to run trains to Barrhaven, which would also take some pressure off of a east-west route. I really don't think people fully realize the opportunity that exists in the south to attract new transit riders and to build communities around rail transit that are not possible in Cumberland or Stittsville or Kanata. We already have trains running at capacity on the O-Train route eventhough the South east Transitway still attracts the bulk of the ridership. Current low ridership is directly related to the fact that the O-Train does not run downtown and virtually everybody destined for there uses the Transitway. We really have some narrow thinking in this city.

Hasn't it been said a number of times that we designing our system for peak hour service only? Unfortunately, we also have to provide off-peak service as well and designing a disjointed rapid transit system is going to become a major impediment in creating a transit culture in this city. We already only offer 15 or even 30 minute service on some Transitway routes during evenings and weekends. If this is the level of service on a disjointed rapid transit network where it takes 2 transfers to reach the suburbs (even the inner suburbs), how will this ever attract significant ridership during off-peak hours?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

The best solution IMO is to stick to BRT for that corridor indefinitely; the Southeast Transitway would be most usable then building the Transitway is best for now. The ridership potential is NOWHERE NEAR warranting LRT at this time, and not likely to be for at least 25 years.

The north-south line should go from Gatineau to South Keys (or south of there) all day, and to Lester and Leitrim during peak periods. In the long term, it could be extended, but I'd want to see densities and ridership support such. There are MUCH greater priorities at this time - the east-west line, then extend to Kanata, Barrhaven and Orleans which by then should be more densely developed in their cores.

So you are suggesting running parallel rail and Transitways further south. How is this really an economical approach? Based on your ridership argument, the O-Train should never have been built.

[MalcolmTucker]

Then we have been sold a bill of goods. You are now telling me that the tunnel does not have the capacity to serve two lines.

There is more than enough capacity to serve the two lines worth of people, but interlining would lead to a significant capacity cut.

[MountainView]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Note that the 94 will only accessible to Riverside South residents by transfer. You know, walk 15 minutes to the 99, take the bus for 3 minutes, then wait 25 minutes to transfer. An improvement over the almost impossible access today but still far from convenient.

And if they need to go shopping at South Nepean Town Centre you can add "..take 94 to Woodroofe park and ride, wait 15 mins to transfer to the 176, take bus for 3 minutes to Barrhaven Centre and Voila!"

Total time on bus - 9 minutes
Total walking/waiting time - 55 minutes
Total transfers - 2
Distance - About 2-3km

[MountainView]

If people want surface rail downtown would it not have been possible to close either Albert/Slater to cars and have it an LRT only road for both directions with outside platforms (similar to Calgary) and have Albert/Slater turned into a 2 way street with 2 lanes running each direction? ( I realise there would be no street parking, but there could be off peak 9am-3pm, 7pm-7am parking on street with one lane open in each direction.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Cre47

There is an article on Le Droit talking about an ambitious project of a monorail line from Gatineau to Rimouski.with connector routes from Quebec City to Saguenay and from Montreal to Sherbrooke. They are taking speed of 250 km/h, which would mean a trip to Montreal would take about 45 minutes to 1 hour and an extra hour to Quebec City.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-droit/a...3_section_POS1

http://pdf.cyberpresse.ca/ledroit/Mo...9_article_POS1

Saw that in the paper this weekend. Sounds like a pie-in-the-sky to me.

[Cre47]

Originally Posted by Harley613

i'll believe this when i see, which will probably be never, since they can't even afford to stop their bridges and roads from crumbling to dust and it's taking them a millennium to build a scaled down version of the 50.

Originally Posted by Acajack

Saw that in the paper this weekend. Sounds like a pie-in-the-sky to me.

If this happens, it will be still like at least 50 years away. That would be almost a duplication of high-speed rail proposals/rumours.

[Cre47]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Note that the 94 will only accessible to Riverside South residents by transfer. You know, walk 15 minutes to the 99, take the bus for 3 minutes, then wait 25 minutes to transfer. An improvement over the almost impossible access today but still far from convenient.

Given the sprawl anticipated with the new bridge, they won't have choice to add a local route or make the 99 run funky loops. If the 99 runs to Barrhaven eventually and along a future corridor, the frequency would have to be boosted, if the all day route would be Barrhaven Centre to Leitrim and use Chapman Mills while the 176 stays on Strandherd or maybe a little bit north to cover the cuts on the 171 on the east side of Barrhaven since the spring.

The 94 does run every 15 minutes at most times during weekdays in the south, so that would help. Have a bus crossing the bridge every 7/8 mins (in the future) would be great.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

There is more than enough capacity to serve the two lines worth of people, but interlining would lead to a significant capacity cut.

So it is preferable to add extra trains between Bayview and downtown than interlining? Or perhaps, provide excess capacity on the entire east-west route to address extra passengers from the south for a very short distance. Or potentially every rider from the south during peak periods facing crush loading to reach downtown and perhaps waiting for multiple trains to pass. This is bad planning to have 90% of your passenger load on the O-Train transferring in the same direction. This suggests that direct service is warranted. Exactly how will an east-west train be able to deal with say 300 passengers heading downtown transferring from the O-Train all at once? If the O-Train is to become the primary route to downtown from the south, multiple car trains will be needed and east-west trains will not be able to handle the transferring passengers efficiently. Let's face it, the current 12,000+ O-Train passengers will triple or quadruple if downtown bound passengers are directed that way. And I gather that is the desired plan.

As I said, we are being sold a bill of goods.