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  #41  
Old Posted Oct 30, 2007, 9:49 PM
p_xavier p_xavier is offline
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Originally Posted by Jamaican-Phoenix View Post
True, but one thing that the Previous N/S LRT plan had done that so far no one else has, is plan for the future. It was shown that the community of Riverside South was going to grow and move east. They realized that if they wanted to get people out fo their cars, they would need to offer good/great transit in the area; N/S Line provided that by encouraging smart growth and providing walk-on stops/stations.

it was also meant to be a part of a Transportation Master Plan; not to replace it. It seems that people have lost sight of that recently...
Yes, and in a way, I agree with them, but in the other, so many infilling and TOD can be done in the city itself, we don't need to feed the suburbs. What I see for the woodroffe corridor, is if a LRT goes there, to close 2 lanes, like they will in vancouver (man, I should move there, I'm stealing all their ideas), to have more bike paths, and encourage walking.

I find that people here are abandonning the existing places, oh well, too late, let's start something different elsewhere.

But then again, this is a really subjective issue that can't be quantified, some people will always prefer their cars.
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  #42  
Old Posted Oct 30, 2007, 10:05 PM
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In some cases it's not just about preference, but necessity. For example, my mom's job requires her to be able to get up adn go to meetings and appointments at a moments notice. She's also involved in other things socially that require her to have a car.

She has said repeatedly that if there was good transit, she'd sue it as often as possible, leaving the car at home, but because of her job and lifestyle, she needs a car. And no, we don't live in Suburbia.
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  #43  
Old Posted Oct 30, 2007, 10:20 PM
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I'm sure you've read the original Rapid Transit Expansion Study report to the Transportation and Transit Committee. It is very clear about its methodology: how corridors were selected, how different factors were weighted in making decisions, what every step was along the way, etc. By all appearances, it seems to be built on a fairly sound knowledge-base.

I do think there are a few glaring flaws. They say that they cut out all the options with glaring flaws, and yet, the option that they put on the table includes LRT running at grade downtown. Their data in that very report points out that the capacity would likely be roughly 9000 people per hour per direction, while they predict that there would be up to 30000 people per hour entering the downtown. I don't know about you, but that seems to be a glaring flaw to me. I also guess that they put far more weight on cost then their surveying suggested they should. Perhaps they weren't ambitious enough and figured that a more expensive project wouldn't gain political support. Regardless, by looking at their report, I can examine their conclusions and decide whether I find them reasonable or not.

With the metrO proposal, I have no similar idea of what the methodology was that brought you to your conclusions. For example, I don't have any idea how you are approaching this. What would a success be? The RTES explicitly states that in designing the network, they assumed that transit ridership would increase from 15% to 30% and from 87 million trips per year to 260 million trips. How did you assess corridors and technology? What criteria did you use? How important was cost as a factor in making your decisions?

None of these questions should be overly difficult to answer. Presumably you went through some sort of process to arrive at this design, and all I'm asking is that you simply document that process. Really, if you're serious about this idea, you should start from scratch and approach this step by step starting from the beginning. Determine what your objectives are. Determine how you will evaluate the corridors and technology. Based on that, draw up a few options that satisfy those conditions and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Only then, once you have sufficient information to draw conclusions, should you propose an actual plan. This shouldn't even be that long or difficult. You could probably mostly work directly of the information that was drawn up by the Rapid Transit Expansion Study. The key is that such a process is systematic and rational.

You very well could have done all of this, in which case, it should be fairly simple to provide a summary of what steps you took.

***

I really can't emphasize how important this documentation is. In all fairness, I did make an attempt to contribute to a discussion on what an optimal network would be. I even drew out a map outlining some of the changes I thought could improve your plan, though mainly I was interested in stirring up some discussion. Your response fell somewhere along the lines of dismissing what I said, because interlining is apparently bad, and then assuring me that you guys worked really hard on this, and thought of every angle. This is very problematic. Instead of encouraging participation, you shut it down. Without documentation, I have no way of actually interpreting what you said. What do you mean interlining is bad when its done all over the world? Just what sort of frequency do you plan to run on these lines? What do the origin and destination studies actually say about Ottawa South? Maybe you were right, or maybe I could pull together some data to refute your assertions, but without anything but your assurance that you thought of all the angles, I can't say anything. How in the world can I contribute in such a situation? On the other hand, if you actually documented your work, I might not have any questions at all.

I can guarantee that if you hand in a report like that to council, you'll get burned; you need a solid foundation to present on, and it doesn't have to take years either. If you want participation on this project, tell people how and make it possible. I can tell you that you already destroyed any interest I have in participating unless you start from the ground up, because I don't have any confidence in the process and thus, have no confidence in the result. Good luck.

*steps down from pedestal*
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  #44  
Old Posted Oct 30, 2007, 10:46 PM
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Originally Posted by d_jeffrey View Post
Yes, and in a way, I agree with them, but in the other, so many infilling and TOD can be done in the city itself, we don't need to feed the suburbs. What I see for the woodroffe corridor, is if a LRT goes there, to close 2 lanes, like they will in vancouver (man, I should move there, I'm stealing all their ideas), to have more bike paths, and encourage walking.

I find that people here are abandonning the existing places, oh well, too late, let's start something different elsewhere.

But then again, this is a really subjective issue that can't be quantified, some people will always prefer their cars.
There's an interesting article on Gord Hunter's website. It seems that the OMB considers the city's projection that it can keep all growth within the existing urban boundary faulty. More suburban developments are pretty much inevitable, and I'm in agreement with Gord Hunter on this point; it's better that the development be directed by city council rather than repeated trips to the OMB.
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  #45  
Old Posted Oct 30, 2007, 11:19 PM
p_xavier p_xavier is offline
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Originally Posted by jeremy_haak View Post
I'm sure you've read the original Rapid Transit Expansion Study report to the Transportation and Transit Committee. It is very clear about its methodology: how corridors were selected, how different factors were weighted in making decisions, what every step was along the way, etc. By all appearances, it seems to be built on a fairly sound knowledge-base.
*steps down from pedestal*
Again, I'm a researcher, this is how you do things, but it's not as simple and easy as you make it out to be, if it would, everyone would finish their degrees in 2 weeks. I'm asking for help, and you people say good luck, this is not what I need. You oversimply the process by a whole lots. It reminds me of the simpsons episode, where Bart is in France. It's so short an easy to make wine, just take a raisin... then do it a million times.

If you guys when to meet, and we could be asigned tasks, I could go for it. In the meantime, I'm working as fast as I could for what I can put. At least, if we meet, things could clearer, and I could answer questions without losing 15 minutes to type the answer.

I'll accept that your ideas are not accepted easily, and neither is the plan correctly referenced. I'll take the interlining example, it is good when your line split is mostly equal for destinations, for example, A goes to B, and A goes to C at a 60/40 ridership. But lets say if at line A, people needs to go to B, to C, to D, to E, and to F (which corresponds to the MTF lines), and the ridership is 80% B, 5% for C,D,E,F. You have one line, the minimum headway is 3 minutes (which is usually the standard, see Montréal Métro, Toronto, Vancouver achieves a 2 minutes headway because it's automated). This means, for equal trains, that you will have only one that goes to your destination every 18 minutes. This is not high service frequency. Let's say you have 3 trains for B, and 1 train for each C,D,E,F. The service frequency will be higher for B, but will be 21 minutes for the other lines.

If you have two lines, A, and A', with trains to B, C on the first one, and D,E,F on the second one. With the same headways, you can achieve a service frequency of 6 minutes for the line A, and 9 minutes on line B. Even if you transfer, from line A to A', the maximum waiting time is 15 minutes. This gives a better service overall on two lines, rather than interlining. If the stations are parallele to each other, and only about 10' to walk, you don't lose your clients, but with destination to B offering much better service, you will keep and improve your service for them, which results in a happier client.

Was that written somewhere? No, because it's simple math. To explain it properly takes 2 pages, and that's only one issue you people brought forward. Try adding the 1000s more, and see that you reached a 10 year study.

But but but, d_jeffrey, do we really need 3 minutes headways? No for now we don't, that's why I mentionned that interlining for to types of trains is possible, this way service is for every 6 minutes. LRT has a maximum capacity of 11000 pph (average) for 3 minutes headways, for trains of about 550 passengers each (4 cars train, platforms of 80m). You then need to split that, which is 6500 passengers per destination per hour. The Origin Destination survey for 2005 was 29 700 transit passengers daily trips for Ottawa Centre peak times, from 6:30 to 9. That makes on average 11880 pph, which is our 4-car trains at 11000pph at a 3 minutes headway. Just there, your line is nearly full (that's why opting for automatic LRT greatly increases your pph, because of the 2 minutes headway). Of course, it's assuming that all buses are gone from the core, which will depend on the length of the LRT lines.

If you look at the entry points for other regions, it's all about minute percentages, it comes back to the interlining question, since we would have about 25%, 10%, and many many 5%, is that a good solution? No, because it will remove services for the remote suburbs. Well, why your metrO line goes to Kanata and not Orleans then??? Because, my friends, the Origin Destination reports travels for the morning, at 9500 for merivale, 6500 for ottawa west, and 2500 for Kanata. This will give us one line, that has great ridership both ways.

For the Orleans line to Hull metrO line, we have one big chunk of people going from Orleans to DT, and one big chunk of people, that goes to Hull (7500), but much less from Hull to Ottawa. (this is where I said that it makes more sense for Ottawa to invest in a loop for Hull than vice-versa). And the Orleans people are the ones that go to Hull the most.

But d_jeffrey, since the projected ridership is much higher than your 11000pph? How dare you use LRT? Well like jeremy mentionned, the projected pph is 30000 at peak times, of course. But there's not only one line that will go DT, but two. The Bank St. one adds to the E-W one. Assuming we can achieve headways of 1.5 minutes, which is feasible with correct technology. This will give us a system capacity at the core of 44200 for 4-car trains. 50% more than the planned ridership, and that's without buses or streetcars.

And for those who will ask, I doubt the Toronto Subway has a 3 minutes headway minimum turn around, well the turn around at Finch is 140 seconds, and that's at perfect operation.

Last edited by p_xavier; Oct 31, 2007 at 12:03 AM.
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  #46  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 4:24 AM
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I think we forumers have run into a big issue. In the absense of any concrete plans being presented by the city in the last while, we have all resorted to dreaming up our own vision of what rapid transit should be. It's great that we all think about this stuff and really put a lot of thought into rail corridors, transit-oriented development, and the future of our downtown. The reality is that there is a team of experts working for and with the city to develop a visionary and viable transit plan for our future. I suspect all this bickering amongst ourselves will disappear once the plan is unveiled and we'll resort to bashing the city councillors. Here's waiting for a new and concrete plan from the city so that at least we'll have something real to bicker about.
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  #47  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 5:00 AM
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Hopefully that'll happen within the next two weeks with the Urbandale proposal...
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  #48  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 5:17 AM
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I think the bickering amongst ourselves was mostly a creation of our politicians who made LRT such an issue in the last municipal election. The LRT decision process had gone on for years and most of us were only paying a little bit of attention to it. We saw plans in the paper and there was a little bit of discussion amongst the councillors from time to time. I thought it was all kind of cool that we were heading in that direction. It was really Alex Munter who started the ball rolling in his bid to become mayor who started agitating the public. It is too bad since most of public really doesn't have a clue and they shouldn't be involved in such a complex planning process. I am sure that the public didn't vote for or against the Queensway in the 1950s.

I listened to experts at city hall on the day it was approved and I could see that enormous thought had gone into the project. Was it perfect? No! There were budget limitations that required compromises. Ideally, a downtown tunnel would have been included, but there was no budget for it. Maybe this will be added but we still don't know the cost and where the money is coming from. Anyway, we all know what happened in the election and the December defeat of the plan just invited us all to get into a free for all. We have seen so many plans over the last several months and they have all been flawed, some more than others. There will never be a perfect plan but it is more likely that our transportation planners will come up with the 'best' plan, more so than any of us or a mayor's task force, consisting of people more or less just like us. We need to wait to see what the experts come up with, and hopefully we can mostly support it, otherwise, we are going to get nowhere. In the meantime, it is fun to discuss options and learn from each other, and perhaps 'the experts' may pop in here from time to time and find something that might be useful in developing their plans.
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  #49  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 3:07 PM
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Originally Posted by jeremy_haak View Post
I think it's important to point out that one of the primary goals in the TMP was to see an increase of the transit modal share to above 30% (something like that anyway). To those people advocating conversion of the West and Southwest Transitways over the original NS plan, do you really think that a corridor that already sees higher than average transit modal shares will increase that much more with LRT? I certainly don't think so.
Sorry, where do you get the idea that the Transitway corridors have higher than average transit modal shares? I did a GIS project on this very topic where I took 2001 commuter census data (2006 wasn't available at the time) and then mapped the transitways onto them. I also did a regression analysis on it. There was absolutely no correspondence (visual or regression) between commuter ridership in a census tract and proximity to a transitway. NONE WHATSOEVER. To the extent that the Transitway has a ridership effect, its effect is 'global' or city-wide (or its local effect is so small and localized as to be a wash within the tract as a whole). Its existence matters, not its specific location. By contrast, Calgary's CTrain had noticeable corridor effects but still pretty good overall ridership and Vancouver had very high corridor ridership but piss-poor overall ridership.

If we convert the transitways to rail and run frequent service on them, there is no reason to believe we'll lose city-wide ridership and we'll probably increase ridership everywhere but particularly on the corridors themselves (people from the Metropole etc. might actually start taking transit). We can free up scores of buses for suburban collector use rather than wasting them on express runs, half of which is deadhead.

Quote:
Right now transportation to the SE part of Ottawa is a major problem. The road capacity is very limited, and the transit capacity is also quite limited. Considering the growth that is expected to occur in Riverside South, transportation in that part of the city could become a crisis if something isn't done.

Part of the solution was the NS project. It was considered that if LRT was introduced into this area early, the development would be centred on transit and there would be a greater opportunity to keep people on transit instead of in their cars. This is instead of building a road along the Altavista Transportation Corridor - a possibility that grows ever more likely as a transit solution is ignored.

Frankly, it's mind boggling that people are willing to throw this opportunity away. Here is a situation where the city actually has an opportunity to choose between roads or transit instead of simply roads AND transit. Here's a situation where the city has a developer that is keen on proceeding with a transit-oriented development. Here's a situation where the city has a fantastic opportunity to draw people out of their cars and actually achieve that 30% modal split for transit.
I fail to see how a transit-oriented development could be centred on a suburban arterial intersection (Limebank and Earl Armstrong) surrounded by big box development with the only area of large scale employment (nearer the airport) not being on the line itself. The only bit that was "transit-oriented" was the higher density housing along the line (which, if parts of Kanata and Barrhaven are any indication, is just a recipe for more asphalt and less green). If you were hoping of living in a nice townhouse or stacked apartment, being able to walk five minutes to the train, get on, go a few stops, step off and start shopping at some neighbourhood scale stores, well, that's not what Riverside South was going to be like. Your townhouse would probably have had a dominating garage out front or your entire back yard would be asphalt. To go shopping you'd be getting off in a big box power centre and would probably have to walk across acres of asphalt. The only nod to transit-orientation there was that the big box power centre would be laid out on a grid to allow future infill. Just like Barrhaven Town Centre, where it was apparently felt that traffic was impeded by pedestrians so the corners of intersections have large-radius curves that cut deeply into the sidewalks.
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  #50  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 5:30 PM
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Sorry, where do you get the idea that the Transitway corridors have higher than average transit modal shares? I did a GIS project on this very topic where I took 2001 commuter census data (2006 wasn't available at the time) and then mapped the transitways onto them. I also did a regression analysis on it. There was absolutely no correspondence (visual or regression) between commuter ridership in a census tract and proximity to a transitway. NONE WHATSOEVER. To the extent that the Transitway has a ridership effect, its effect is 'global' or city-wide (or its local effect is so small and localized as to be a wash within the tract as a whole). Its existence matters, not its specific location. By contrast, Calgary's CTrain had noticeable corridor effects but still pretty good overall ridership and Vancouver had very high corridor ridership but piss-poor overall ridership.

If we convert the transitways to rail and run frequent service on them, there is no reason to believe we'll lose city-wide ridership and we'll probably increase ridership everywhere but particularly on the corridors themselves (people from the Metropole etc. might actually start taking transit). We can free up scores of buses for suburban collector use rather than wasting them on express runs, half of which is deadhead.
That sounds like an interesting study. I'd propose that one possible reason for the lack of a corridor effect is the nature of Ottawa's bus network. The Transitway isn't really an exclusive corridor in the same sense of the C-Train or the SkyTrain. With almost every bus route in the city travelling on the Transitway at some point, the effects of the Transitway are spread throughout the city rather than concentrated along its length.

I read a study awhile ago (admittedly from a pro-LRT lobby), that pointed out that most of Ottawa's big gains in ridership came before the Transitway was ever in place, and that most of the benefit came from the restructing of the route network and transit priority measures on existing city streets. They also point out the effects of the limitations on core parking, an effect that I've read about in another more comprehensive study across N. America.

In looking at the possibility of switching to LRT, I'm not nearly as prepared to say that there's no reason to believe we'll lose city-wide ridership from such a conversion. I'm not prepared to say we will either, but I don't think the case is closed on the matter. The fact of the matter is that such a change would cause a huge transformation in the transit network of the city, and would require a similar change in its use by its riders. Considering that the report above seems to indicate that much of Ottawa's high ridership is due to the present route structure, it seems reasonable to believe that a radical change to it could have a negative effect.

Looking at the information you provided, Ottawa's land-use is not corridor based, so a conversion to LRT won't really benefit from higher population densities along its length. You can probably provide more information, but I suspect the situation in Calgary and Edmonton is not good with respect to the bus system feeding LRT. Anecdotally that seems to be true, but I don't have any true data to back that up. I suspect that the Park n' Ride system in Calgary is that much more comprehensive for that very reason. People drive to the nearest station and then take the train downtown.

Switching to a trunk-feeder system would be a huge challenge, and I have no doubt that it could backfire. While I do think that some people would appreciate the relative luxury of riding on a train, it is still public transit, and I don't buy into the idea that trains will draw people out of cars where buses can't. This challenge is why it's so vitally important that land-use be an important part of the discussion re: transit. If Ottawa is going to propose a radical new transit system, it has to propose equally radical reforms to its land-use planning in order for it to work.

For the record, I do think that a change is necessary. I think an incremental approach that would allow the changes to occur slowly would be more successful which is one of the reasons why I support transit along Montreal Rd and Carling ahead of Transitway conversion. Not only does it introduce new RT corridors and realign to the traditional city axis (see the article linked to below), it also allows the travel patterns to adjust at a more reasonable pace.

*BTW, d_jeffrey, I'd point you to the 'Making Sense of Public Mass Transit in Ottawa' report by Glenn Gobuyan that you have hosted on your website as an excellent example of a report. It doesn't even have any references, but the idea is clearly outlined.
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  #51  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 7:34 PM
p_xavier p_xavier is offline
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Originally Posted by jeremy_haak View Post
In looking at the possibility of switching to LRT, I'm not nearly as prepared to say that there's no reason to believe we'll lose city-wide ridership from such a conversion. I'm not prepared to say we will either, but I don't think the case is closed on the matter. The fact of the matter is that such a change would cause a huge transformation in the transit network of the city, and would require a similar change in its use by its riders. Considering that the report above seems to indicate that much of Ottawa's high ridership is due to the present route structure, it seems reasonable to believe that a radical change to it could have a negative effect.

Looking at the information you provided, Ottawa's land-use is not corridor based, so a conversion to LRT won't really benefit from higher population densities along its length. You can probably provide more information, but I suspect the situation in Calgary and Edmonton is not good with respect to the bus system feeding LRT. Anecdotally that seems to be true, but I don't have any true data to back that up. I suspect that the Park n' Ride system in Calgary is that much more comprehensive for that very reason. People drive to the nearest station and then take the train downtown.
For the record, I do think that a change is necessary. I think an incremental approach that would allow the changes to occur slowly would be more successful which is one of the reasons why I support transit along Montreal Rd and Carling ahead of Transitway conversion. Not only does it introduce new RT corridors and realign to the traditional city axis (see the article linked to below), it also allows the travel patterns to adjust at a more reasonable pace.

*BTW, d_jeffrey, I'd point you to the 'Making Sense of Public Mass Transit in Ottawa' report by Glenn Gobuyan that you have hosted on your website as an excellent example of a report. It doesn't even have any references, but the idea is clearly outlined.
I don't think you understand what I said, I know how to write a report, and documentation, I said I needed help, which no one here offered yet. You people want to have some change, you need to put in the effort too. Some people are thinkers, some ar doers, I need more of the latter at the moment.

And for the Transitway corridor, a good analogy could be with the Bus only Sheppard Line before the subway. The city and developpers actually came up with a plan to connect the buildings before they were built. The Transitway has low TOD, really low. Transit usage goes higher for the corridor when it's rail based. As shown with the 28% increase in transit usage by the Laval commuters since the opening of their metro extension, well above their predictions. Same thing can be said for the Millienium Skytrain, where they have reached their projections, and that with a LRT line missing.

Also, in Montréal, the will have new university campuses directly linked, plus other condo development. Carleton and Ottawa U showed much interest in building stations on top of the LRT. I can't understand why you say it won't help the corridors to change from Transitway to LRT.

As an opinion I can make, I think that high transit usage in Ottawa is due to the fact the region is the highest educated in Canada. University people are more prone to use transit, and try to help the environment.
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  #52  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 7:58 PM
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Frankly speaking, before anyone invests a whole lot of time into a more formal report I would wait to see the updated TMP arriving this Spring.

I'm sorry I haven't been following this thread more closely but I have one question directed mainly at d_jeffrey.

What would be the purpose and or thesis of your report/proposal?
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  #53  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 8:13 PM
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Originally Posted by d_jeffrey View Post
Yes, and in a way, I agree with them, but in the other, so many infilling and TOD can be done in the city itself, we don't need to feed the suburbs. What I see for the woodroffe corridor, is if a LRT goes there, to close 2 lanes, like they will in vancouver (man, I should move there, I'm stealing all their ideas), to have more bike paths, and encourage walking.
That's a great idea. Close two lanes of a street that is over utilized while building more bike paths even though the numerous ones in the corridor are under utilized.

There isn't a lot of room to infill in the Woodroffe corridor since it is comprised of mostly single family homes.
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  #54  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 9:32 PM
p_xavier p_xavier is offline
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Originally Posted by the capital urbanite View Post
Frankly speaking, before anyone invests a whole lot of time into a more formal report I would wait to see the updated TMP arriving this Spring.

I'm sorry I haven't been following this thread more closely but I have one question directed mainly at d_jeffrey.

What would be the purpose and or thesis of your report/proposal?
That's what I'm wondering too. If you guys want to present something official, I'll work on it. If not, well I won't finalise and publish engineering studies for nothing, that's for sure.
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  #55  
Old Posted Oct 31, 2007, 9:41 PM
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Originally Posted by BlackRedGold View Post
That's a great idea. Close two lanes of a street that is over utilized while building more bike paths even though the numerous ones in the corridor are under utilized.

There isn't a lot of room to infill in the Woodroffe corridor since it is comprised of mostly single family homes.
There is enormous potential of development. Just look at google maps, you'll see that single homes don't take much of that corridor, and there's a buffer zone. If you remove lanes with that, you have great potential.

http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&ll=45...&t=h&z=13&om=1
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  #56  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2007, 2:24 AM
BlackRedGold BlackRedGold is offline
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Originally Posted by d_jeffrey View Post
There is enormous potential of development. Just look at google maps, you'll see that single homes don't take much of that corridor, and there's a buffer zone. If you remove lanes with that, you have great potential.

http://maps.google.ca/?ie=UTF8&ll=45...&t=h&z=13&om=1
There is a corridor that was setup to eventually be a transitway. Other then that and the land around the former Nepean City Hall there isn't much room for development.
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  #57  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2007, 2:35 PM
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I find it interesting that we always put converting the West and East transitway as priority number 2 or 3 on our list of things to get done. We all realize that to start we need to fix downtown with an LRT tunnel and we need someone to use that tunnel, expanded double-tracked O-train. But why not try some other corridors after that before we start interfering with a good thing, the East-West transitway. One such corridor would be the Alta-Vista transportation corridor. It's prime land with only power lines on it, just waiting for some tracks to be laid. The downtown portion can be extended to Hurdman (like many have suggested) and then a new track would extend through Alta Vista past the Ottawa General Hospital (which has a huge number of transit users via the unreliable 85 currently). The track could split off to go to two poorly serviced areas under the current transit system, South-East Ottawa and the quickly growing South end of Orleans. Just a thought.
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  #58  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2007, 4:43 PM
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Dado Dado is offline
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Location: Ottawa, Canada
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Right, but let's think this through a bit more. First you need to get downtown, so that means converting the section of transitway from Laurier/Campus to Hurdman. So that means that buses from the east end can no longer go downtown via the Transitway, and buses from the west end will have no place to get out once they get downtown. So that means FotO-type transfer facilities at Bayview and Hurdman, just the sort of thing that few seem to want. To avoid that, you have to convert the transitways right back to Blair, Greenboro/South Keys, Baseline and Bayshore so that any transfers are early enough in the journey not to matter too much.

Don't get me wrong: I'm in favour of building the Cumberland Transitway as light rail, not busway, but the implications are quite wide-ranging.
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  #59  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2007, 4:50 PM
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waterloowarrior waterloowarrior is offline
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Location: Eastern Ontario
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no mention of the future transit plans/Urbandale in the agenda for the Nov 7th transit committee meeting, so it looks like we'll find out more at the joint meeting Nov 21. . .

edit: n/m, see post below this
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  #60  
Old Posted Nov 1, 2007, 4:51 PM
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waterloowarrior waterloowarrior is offline
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Location: Eastern Ontario
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err scratch that
from Nov 7th agenda
1. PRESENTATION ON RAPID TRANSIT ISSUES - JOHN BONSALL
PRÉSENTATION SUR LES PROBLÈMES QUE POSE TRANSPORT EN COMMUN RAPIDE – JOHN BONSALL
Verbal Presentation / Présentation Orale

He worked on designing the transitway in Ottawa as transit planning head and GM .. bio
there's also a "Special Meeting" on November 26th ...
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