What would you call our new LRT system?

[Justin10000]

Canuck Line?

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

Transit OUTAOUAIS Transit

Hey, we be bilingue in this here city...

[LilZebra]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

It would be nice to have a unique name that nobody else uses and has a bit of local flavour. Here, I even mucked around with a logo of a swimming otter during the weekend (I got bored of chipping ice off my driveway).





I'm not sure if my clumsy french translation makes sense:



It's red and black for the Sens fans among you. Should I add some gold?

You're good at that stuff, aren't you...

Great logos.

[Dado]

I'd call the rapid transit system... now wait for it...

The Transitway



Just to see ol' Bonsall squirm at how his system was now running trains and not buses. The first day there's a train on the Transitway, I'll be there to photograph it and then send a huge wall-poster sized copy of it to Bonsall.

I like the O-Tram/O-Train suggestions for tram and suburban train systems though.

[AuxTown]

Otter is catchy, but I like O-Train. I guess if we used Otter we could have some kind of ridiculously awesome mascot........



or the Larry Obrien zero means zero balanced budget version:

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

I'd call it the O-Train or metrO and the "O" would stand for Outaouais...

[Richard Eade]

I like the name OTTER. (much better than OC Trainspo)

Actually, I'm thinking that I'd call it "Too little - Too late".

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

How about we call it NELRT? Non-Existant Light Rail Transit.

[lrt's friend]

"The Never Neverland Train" with a slogan "Transit only in our dreams"

[eemy]

I really think that OCTranspo should brand their smartcards as OTTER cards. The name makes sense (Ottawa Electric Railway). It also links somewhat to the rivers (I assume that otters would be native to the Rideau/Ottawa/Gatineau Rivers). It's not necessarily exclusively branded to OCTranspo, so they could possibly use the same smartcard in Ottawa and Gatineau. It has very good branding potential - Otter souvenirs anyone? Advertising with Ollie the Otter? You get my drift. I don't think the LRT itself should be so branded, just the cards.

[Richard Eade]

There might be a problem re-branding the 'Presto' card since it really isn't ours. We are just paying the Toronto system a 1% fee for its use. (Do you think having the card will reduce our other costs by 1% to compensate? Or are our costs (and taxes) going to increase? Sorry, that's for a different thread.)

Anyway, the name 'OC Transpo' was chosen because it was acceptable to both English and French, according to the RMOC (Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton). (The 'OC' is for Ottawa-Carleton, which dissappeared with amalgamation. Ottawa decided that the branding was too well known to be changed so they kept the 'OC' in the name.) I'm afraid that OTTER will be viewed as too English. Loutre is the French translation, I believe, which is too different from the English. 'Transpo' is a single word which isn't really either English or French. I think that we will need to find a word which is either the same in both official languages, or, like 'Transpo', is meaningless in both.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

There might be a problem re-branding the 'Presto' card since it really isn't ours. We are just paying the Toronto system a 1% fee for its use. (Do you think having the card will reduce our other costs by 1% to compensate? Or are our costs (and taxes) going to increase? Sorry, that's for a different thread.)

Anyway, the name 'OC Transpo' was chosen because it was acceptable to both English and French, according to the RMOC (Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton). (The 'OC' is for Ottawa-Carleton, which dissappeared with amalgamation. Ottawa decided that the branding was too well known to be changed so they kept the 'OC' in the name.) I'm afraid that OTTER will be viewed as too English. Loutre is the French translation, I believe, which is too different from the English. 'Transpo' is a single word which isn't really either English or French. I think that we will need to find a word which is either the same in both official languages, or, like 'Transpo', is meaningless in both.

But it's the same imagery in both languages, yet makes accromymical sense in both of them.

[J.OT13]

What about the stations? I think we need to rename a few stations and find proper names for Downtown East/West stations. Here is a list of stations that should get their names changed-reason for name change-and suggestions. Keep in mind that some of my suggestions might not be a good idea because of backroom deals/lawsuits (see Downtown West).

Baseline-Who gets off at Baseline station for Baseline road?-College or Algonquin
Dominion-Doesn’t tell us much of anything-Westboro (especially if they build underground behind Wesboro Station condo)
Westboro-on the edge of Westboro, false advertisement-Scott or Metropole
Downtown West-Obvious- Place de Ville or Lyon
Downtown East-Obvious-Confederation (see O-train Confederation below)
Campus-doesn’t tell us much-University
Train-Train? WTF-Tremblay, Coventry or Terminal maybe
O-Train Confederation-Much better name for Downtown East which will have a Confederation theme near Confederation Blvd. with an entrance near the Confederation building and on Confederation Square within sight of Confederation Park-anything but Confederation


Any thoughts or comments?

[J.OT13]

Oh, and my vote is for metrO for the same reasons Mille Sabords voted for it 4 years ago; bilingual, internationally known and no apologies for being "light".

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

What about the stations? I think we need to rename a few stations and find proper names for Downtown East/West stations. Here is a list of stations that should get their names changed-reason for name change-and suggestions. Keep in mind that some of my suggestions might not be a good idea because of backroom deals/lawsuits (see Downtown West).

Baseline-Who gets off at Baseline station for Baseline road?-College or Algonquin
Dominion-Doesn’t tell us much of anything-Westboro (especially if they build underground behind Wesboro Station condo)
Westboro-on the edge of Westboro, false advertisement-Scott or Metropole
Downtown West-Obvious- Place de Ville or Lyon
Downtown East-Obvious-Confederation (see O-train Confederation below)
Campus-doesn’t tell us much-University
Train-Train? WTF-Tremblay, Coventry or Terminal maybe
O-Train Confederation-Much better name for Downtown East which will have a Confederation theme near Confederation Blvd. with an entrance near the Confederation building and on Confederation Square within sight of Confederation Park-anything but Confederation


Any thoughts or comments?

Agreed re: switching Dominion and Westboro, but that would be too confusing. But there is no other suitable name I can think of, and it is well established that Westboro Station is the one in the eastern part of the community.

Baseline would be better named Algonquin or something like that, since that is the main trip generator there. Likewise, Campus would be best named uOttawa (keep it simple, yet descriptive of their short form name). My picks for the downtown stations are:

Downtown West - Library/Centretown

Downtown East - Parliament

(If a third station is built downtown, the central station should be Parliament and the east station Confederation Square). The station on the other side of the canal should be Rideau Centre/Lowertown.

Agreed, Train is a poorly named station too. Possibilities: Tremblay, Trainyards, Coventry, Belfast, Overbrook...

[KHOOLE]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Oh, and my vote is for metrO for the same reasons Mille Sabords voted for it 4 years ago; bilingual, internationally known and no apologies for being "light".

metrO is good but it is already in use in Montreal (copyrights? confusion?)

How about Transpo-O ? and if ever Ottawa and Gatineau get to merge their two operations as a seamless operation with same fare and scheduling and maybe same colour identification, the combined transit systems could be called Transpo-O with O standing for both Ottawa and Outaouais.

[eemy]

You realize that would simply be called transpoo?

Metro is a universal name and there would be no issues in referring to the LRT as such.

Confederation Square is a poor name to use, since there is already a Confederation Station on the O-Train line. Perhaps Memorial instead?

[McC]

As I've said in another thread "Westboro Station" should be relocated to Richmond and Golden, where the historic train station was (and cues should be taken from it's design in the the new station, cause it was purrrdy. this would replace the half-assed "station" at Dominion)
The current station at Tweedsmuir should be moved west a shade and be called "Winston-Churchill" with art elements drawing from his famous portraits and speeches here in Ottawa.
A new station should be built at Island Park (which I would like to see call Mosque or Champlain, and either way be given an Islamic theme inside, e.g., some cool Turkish tile or Moroccan scrollwork).
Tunney's Pasture should be named "Holland" and should commemorate Canada-Dutch friendship (like the recent exhibit on the west wall of the Chateau Laurier parkade), I would even be so bold as to suggest asking the Dutch Royal Family to curate the competition for it's internal design elements.

MetrO is good but would scare the no-tax crowd that elects mayors in this town, and is more ambitious than what we're building anyway. So I'd call the B-Train (Baseline-Blair), when the Bayshore spur is eventually built they could be split into B-1 and B-2. The eventual/fictional Carling and Confederation Loop lines would be in a race for which one would get the C-Train name.

[KHOOLE]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

You realize that would simply be called transpoo?

Metro is a universal name and there would be no issues in referring to the LRT as such.

Confederation Square is a poor name to use, since there is already a Confederation Station on the O-Train line. Perhaps Memorial instead?

You are probably right about "transpoo" but I thought a hyphen would make a difference (?).
Metro is also a grocery store chain name. May be copyrights issues.
Unless the o in metro is capitalized as in MetrO ?
Could do the same with TranspO
Just thinking.

[Admiral Nelson]

I don't think you can trademark a word like Metro, it predates the grocery chain.

Originally Posted by McC

MetrO is good but would scare the no-tax crowd that elects mayors in this town, and is more ambitious than what we're building anyway.

It could also jolt Ottawa out of its small-town mindset.