Ken Gray: NIMBY watch

[Nepean]

Originally Posted by McC

not sure where you're coming from with the RER analogy. The RER is the "Réseau Express Régional". GO, AMT's Train de Banlieu and Vancouver's West Coast Express are the closest examples we have to the RER: heavy rail commuter trains that run largely on existing rail corridors to connect stations within far flung suburbs to a very limited number of stations in the core of the city. The difference with the Canadian ones is that most don't provide the all day frequent service using electric trains that the RER uses to complement (and relieve congestion on) the Paris Metro.

RER trains are NOT LRVs, they're big, heavy, high-capacity trains (e.g., double-deckers on the RER-A). The trains run on lots of track, many stations are at least triple tracked so express trains can bypass them, and there are lots of branches on the lines as they cover a huge network. The trains usually only stop at one station central to each suburb/town, and stop at a very limited number of stations in the Paris core, either for correspondence to Metro lines, or to serve an area without a nearby metro line (e.g., Luxembourg on the RER-B, the newest RER, the E has been planned to similarly augment the metro, but that line's expansion has been slow to progress)

If we were building something on the RER model, we would be buying dozens more O-Train type vehicles (with the intention to eventually convert to electric, like GO and AMT plan to do, for more efficient service), and we'd be running them as often as possible, on all of the existing tracks in the region, as far as possible east and west as well as south (presumably double/triple tracking stations to reduce headways). Downtown, we'd have a short tunnel to link Bayview to Union station, with at most one stop in between. That would be it. Also, if we were doing like France, we'd probably be converting the Transitway to a driverless metro (Siemans Neo-VAL would be a leading technology choice, I bet -- see the planned Ligne-B in Rennes, pop ~250K), and of course, we'd be adding more stations and building above the line wherever possible on top of all that, we'd probably be digging metro lines under Bank and Rideau-Montreal, as well as building tram lines to link the suburbs to each other, complete with nice happy new town squares all along those lines.

What we're planning is a strange camel-type creature, taking LRT/Tram hardware, using it to serve subway/metro capacity in the core, with the intention of running it more like a commuter line for the short branches outside of the core (i.e., avoiding development areas and stopping as little as possible to provide as fast service as we can to far flung suburbs, but suburbs which we won't actually be running trains anywhere near for decades, if ever). It's not commuter rail because it doesn't go anywhere near commuting suburbs, or use heavy commuter trains. But it's not LRT either, since it's turning it's back on development areas, running long trains, and skipping along too long between stops in the already-intensifying areas. And it's not a metro, because we want to have drivers, we don't want to run under the densest parts of town, hit big secondary destinations, and we don't want people to use it for local connections from one urban neighbourhood to another.

whew, that got long.

You are correct that there are numerous differences between what is being proposed in Ottawa and Paris' RER. However, my point was more of an analogy than a direct comparison.

In Paris, if you want to come into Paris from a faraway suburb you take the RER. If you are on Île Saint-Louis and want to go to the Louvre you take the Paris Métro. Both systems are completely different.

I was using Paris as analogy to say that the primary objective of LRT in Ottawa is to connect suburbs like Orleans and Nepean to downtown. It is not to allow a person on Preston to get to Sparks St. faster. That being said, you are right to point out that the RER is very different from what is being discussed in Ottawa. My main point was to simply say that Ken Gray is essentially calling for a street car system to act as a commuter line. This, I now see, is an incorrect point of view.

[McC]

Originally Posted by Nepean

In Paris, if you want to come into Paris from a faraway suburb you take the RER. If you are on Île Saint-Louis and want to go to the Louvre you take the Paris Métro. Both systems are completely different.
.

The systems are not completely different, they make a networked whole with integrated fares, linked stations, etc. People do use the RER within Paris to get across town quickly all the time because the core of Paris is so much larger, and there were so many more existing rail lines to draw on when the system was built (that's the role of complementing and relieving the metro that I mentioned). Sure, going to the Louvre, you'd take the Metro, but going to the Opera or a train station you'd take the RER if you're lucky enough to be starting near a station or have connection en route, as it would be faster and more direct.

In any event, if you want to scare Ottawans into opposing running LRT in their area, compare it to the RER all you want. Just know that people would be correct to imagine it looking more like:
http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=...r:10,s:0,i:101
(a photo of the RER D) and
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tville.ogg.jpg
with big loud trains and lots of track and wires in a wide ROW which literally would "destroy" parts of a neighbourhood or waterfront were something RER-like actually what we were planning to run down Richmond-Byron or the ORP, respectively; as opposed to the lovely images of trams running down green ROWs like Harley613 posted above (essentially you've reversed the argument Harley613 was making in that post)

[Nepean]

Originally Posted by McC

The systems are not completely different, they make a networked whole with integrated fares, linked stations, etc. People do use the RER within Paris to get across town quickly all the time because the core of Paris is so much larger, and there were so many more existing rail lines to draw on when the system was built (that's the role of complementing and relieving the metro that I mentioned). Sure, going to the Louvre, you'd take the Metro, but going to the Opera or a train station you'd take the RER if you're lucky enough to be starting near a station or have connection en route, as it would be faster and more direct.

In any event, if you want to scare Ottawans into opposing running LRT in their area, compare it to the RER all you want. Just know that people would be correct to imagine it looking more like:
http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=...r:10,s:0,i:101
(a photo of the RER D) and
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tville.ogg.jpg
with big loud trains and lots of track and wires in a wide ROW which literally would "destroy" parts of a neighbourhood or waterfront were something RER-like was actually what we were planning to run down Richmond-Byron or the ORP, respectively; as opposed to the lovely images of trams running down green ROWs like Harley613 posted above (essentially you've reversed the argument Harley613 was making in that post)

OK, fair enough, I will drop the comparison with Paris' transportation system. My main point was only to say that we need to distinguish between Suburb-downtown transport and public transit within a city proper. Carling makes sense for the latter, but not the former.

[J.OT13]

Concerning the 2004 plan, I mostly don't get the point of the LRT's from Orleans and Kanata running down to the south part of the inner greenbelt, there are absolutely no destinations. The ridership would have been ridiculously low. McC, as you pointed out, the buses would have been the only efficient route to downtown (until you actually get there, competing with trains). Compared to that ridiculous plan, we would have been better off building Haydon’s bus tunnel.

As for the comparison to the Paris's RER, I think it is a good comparison. Same concept but with a different technology. From Wikipedia;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER

RER functions like the Métro, but as it has fewer stops, the system acts as one of express trains

I also think Ottawa's LRT plans are of similar concept to San Francisco's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) used as commuter rail in the suburbs and a subway in the city (single lines in the suburbs come together downtown to form a more frequent/high capacity service). They have 44 stations on 167 km, so 3.8 km average between stations, stations closer together downtown than in the suburbs. But again, different technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BART

[waterloowarrior]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

For those who don't know, here is a link to a 2004 "Rapid" Transit "Master" Plan. Note that the "rapid" LRT mostly uses existing railways on the urban fringe and that the central city is only served by one tram line (Carling-Bronson-Rideau/Montreal) and buses. Also note that only the tram and Barrhaven/Riverside South have direct access to downtown. People from Kanata and Orleans would have to transfer on a. buses, b. overcrowded trams or c. take a huge detour to the Barrhaven/Riverside South line (which would have had overcrowded 2 car trains eventualy stuck in downtown traffic).

I cannot figure out how anyone could think this was a good idea, but yet it passed on council and some people still advocate this fatally flawed plan. WTF?


http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa...06%20final.htm

The plan was framed a different way, downtown capacity wasn't the main issue (although BRT improvements were proposed). The focus was on attracting new riders so they were proposing 163km of new rapid transit (102km LRT, 61km BRT) They were predicting the City would grow up to 50% by 2021 and had a goal of increasing transit commuting from 17% to 30%.

2001 statement of work for the RTES
http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa...V-POL-0038.htm

2003 RTES
http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa...V-POL-0010.htm

2003 RTES Implementation report
http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/cit...V-POL-0036.htm

East-west corridor statement of work (2005)
http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/cit...%20ENGLISH.htm

[Dado]

Shockingly enough for all the energy that has apparently been expended over the years, what we haven't really had in Ottawa-Gatineau is a serious discussion on rapid transit touching on such issues as: downtown capacity, connection to Gatineau, service inside the Greenbelt (I would include Hull here), service outside the Greenbelt (also the Aylmer and Gatineau sectors), the role of rail and bus as well as the role of radial, orbital and secondary corridors, what kinds of rail (i.e. all one type or multiple types), an honest accounting of the Transitway, etc.

It sort of looked hopeful in the run-up to the 2003 TMP, but as we saw that just devolved into a BRT protection plan with an LRT veneer.

The only time we've had a go at looking at the system broadly was the Mayor's Task Force. It almost had too much of a regional focus for its own good (I found the urban component a bit lacking and I think it kept the transitways unconverted for too long), but they attempted to address the issue of urban vs suburban service by proposing the use of dual-mode light rail vehicles so that lines in areas of high traffic density could be electrified while elsewhere they could use diesel power to extend the reach of the rail system beyond the Greenbelt for a relatively small outlay. Also, since you are using light rail vehicles, they would be suitable for use within suburban town centres, something that cannot be said for either standard commuter trains or buses.

The 2008 TMP was, quite frankly, a rather pathetic effort, whatwith its four options on a limited part of the network with no discussion permitted on any other part. The 2008 TMP is some ways yet another BRT salvage plan, this time to save BRT from itself in the core (and even here they still maintained the claim that a bus tunnel would solve their problems), while BRT would continue to act as an extension of the primary corridors.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by S-Man

I think many years down the line, after Ottawa has moved out of its growing pains phase, those who were here will remember Gray as the embodiment of the attitude that held the city back.

Ottawa will never, ever, grow out of that phase.

[S-Man]

A great singer - I believe it was Sean Connery - once said 'Never say never.'

That said, Mr. Connery would probably agree that old mindsets die hard.

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by Nepean

It appears to me that Ken Gray does not read his own newspaper. After David Reevely did an excellent job of explaining why Carling is not the right street for the western extension of LRT, our favourite Bull Dog blogger posted several emails arguing why Carling is the "obvious" choice for such an extension.

I try to be as open minded as possible so I make every effort to take Ken Gray's arguments seriously. I think his open letter to Mayor Watson contained some valid points, and in a previous post to this site I even wrote that Carling should be seriously considered as an alternative route. But I find it inexcusable for a journalist to continue arguing a point while ignoring the fact that a colleague as his own newspaper has clearly explained why this point is problematic.

There is nothing wrong with changing one's mind after reviewing all of the evidence. For instance, in my previous post on Carling, I said that I agreed with Ken Gray's view that Carling should be seriously considered as an LRT extension. After doing further research, however, it has become clear to me why this position is wrong.

I know that Ken Gray views many of his opponents as trolls, but David Reevely is no troll, so why does he completely ignore Reevely's post?

I think Ken Gray is the troll. He just wants debate, so it drives traffic and views on his blog. But debate based on informed opinion is boring because it usually just exposes a difference in opinion about relative priorities.

Much better to mobilize the uninformed masses by posting their complaints about how the city isn't doing any planning or analysis.

As an example, I'll point out that I can never recall Ken Gray ever responding to a well-written constructive response that disproves one of his articles or blogs. He ignores those. He'll respond to people who claim he's a NIMBY, or somehow tainted by working for the Citizen, or a poor journalist. If you attack then he'll defend, but if you respond intelligently then you'll be ignored.

[lrt's friend]

The 2008 TMP was, quite frankly, a rather pathetic effort, whatwith its four options on a limited part of the network with no discussion permitted on any other part. The 2008 TMP is some ways yet another BRT salvage plan, this time to save BRT from itself in the core (and even here they still maintained the claim that a bus tunnel would solve their problems), while BRT would continue to act as an extension of the primary corridors.

I know this is sacrilege, but just remember what Clive Doucet said about the 2008 TMP, that it was really a bus plan and not a rail plan at all. When you consider the number of Transitway extensions proposed, he was quite correct. And what have we built since then? Lots of roads, and a couple of Transitway extensions. Not an inch of rail has been built. This will hopefully change but even in the longer term, I think we will be building more busways than LRT. What I have never liked about the 2008 TMP is the plan to not use rail for entire corridors. This is why the Orleans LRT extension is coming up over and over again. People do not like the idea of having to use LRT and BRT to reach Orleans. This is going to come up constantly as soon as rail opens to Blair. Why is rail not going to where most of the transit riders live, which is Orleans? Of course, we have heard all the nonsense about density but I have always thought this as an excuse, or code for, we can't afford to do it right. There is ample ridership to justify LRT to Orleans.

[McC]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I know this is sacrilege, but just remember what Clive Doucet said about the 2008 TMP, that it was really a bus plan and not a rail plan at all.

No need to get defensive, I don't think anyone here will argue with you on most of these points. The only one where you get debate is about whether the (very limited) rail portions of the first phase of the 2008 plan are superior to the rail portions of the first phase of the 2004 plan. There's no doubt the old plan (if we stuck with it, highly doubtful if past experience is any predictor of future behaviour) would have delivered much more rail to much more of the city and encouraged a lot of interesting (re)development of many corners. But that plan made the gong show of downtown worse. The new plan (if we follow it, see above) solves some of the downtown gong show, but fails to bring rail very far or to very many parts of the city, and (I agree with you, that it gets REALLY dumb here) it "saves" by building slightly-less-expensive new busways in those far corners instead of rail, which will simply encourage (re)development along those corridors to follow the same crappy models it has to date (if it happens at all).

[lrt's friend]

Concerning the 2004 plan, I mostly don't get the point of the LRT's from Orleans and Kanata running down to the south part of the inner greenbelt, there are absolutely no destinations.

That is not true. It almost seems to me that some people think that everything south of the Queensway is some unknown territory where only wylde beasts and barbarians live. This was designed to do a number of things.

1. Make use of existing rail lines where it makes sense to keep costs down.
2. Provide a fast cross-town service that bypassed downtown.
3. Serve several suburban business Parks presently poorly served by transit. This includes the proposed Orleans Business Park, in south Orleans. There is huge future potential here. The Innes Road Industrial Area, the Ottawa Business Park south of Walkley, the Colonade Business Park, Algonquin College, Queensway-Carleton Hospital, and the Kanata Business Park.

Now that we know that the RCMP is moving to Barrhaven and DND to Moodie Drive, this kind of service would also provide a much faster connection. Because this would work completely differently from traditional bus routes serving these locations, there would have been a great opportunity to attract new ridership.

Of course, this would not be the same type of LRT as we propose for downtown. It might work more like the O-Train with a train every 15 minutes.

I think it is very sad that this kind of innovative thinking has been completely abandoned.

The fact of the matter is that there are no fast transportation links whatsoever across the southern tier of the city and demand is increasing every day.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

That is not true. It almost seems to me that some people think that everything south of the Queensway is some unknown territory where only wylde beasts and barbarians live. This was designed to do a number of things.

1. Make use of existing rail lines where it makes sense to keep costs down.
2. Provide a fast cross-town service that bypassed downtown.
3. Serve several suburban business Parks presently poorly served by transit. This includes the proposed Orleans Business Park, in south Orleans. There is huge future potential here. The Innes Road Industrial Area, the Ottawa Business Park south of Walkley, the Colonade Business Park, Algonquin College, Queensway-Carleton Hospital, and the Kanata Business Park.

Now that we know that the RCMP is moving to Barrhaven and DND to Moodie Drive, this kind of service would also provide a much faster connection. Because this would work completely differently from traditional bus routes serving these locations, there would have been a great opportunity to attract new ridership.

Of course, this would not be the same type of LRT as we propose for downtown. It might work more like the O-Train with a train every 15 minutes.

I think it is very sad that this kind of innovative thinking has been completely abandoned.

The fact of the matter is that there are no fast transportation links whatsoever across the southern tier of the city and demand is increasing every day.

1. Save cost while sacrificing ridership
2. How many people travel from Orleans to Kanata and vis-versa?
3. Very small business parks as opposed to downtown with 40% of office space (18 000 000 sqft, 100 000+ jobs, all this not counting Hull (5 000 000, 20 000 jobs)

I understand it wasn't a borderline metro service, but it still wasn't a good idea.

I do agree we need to use the existing rail lines for commuter rail, forming something similar to the 2004 plan and serving the smaller business parks (and ideally downtown, but I doubt they will ever build a VIA/commuter rail tunnel to old Union). But it would also have to stretch to the towns and villages within the city limits (Richmond, Carp, Vars...) and outside the city limits (Smith Falls, Carleton Place, Casselman...).

But first we need to properly serve the big suburbs within Ottawa with high capacity LRT heading downtown.

Their 2008 plan was an idiotic way to make the city look like there against urban sprawl "we will build rail to the edge of the greenbelt and the suburbs won't get any til' they are dense enough". That was total bull; are they saying Bayshore isn't dense enough? Edge of the greenbelt isn't Lincoln Fields.

Even with this, they still wanted to waste money on BRT to be converted in 20 some years. I guess they didn't learn from the first time they pulled this screw up.

I think we should drop every single BRT project and solely concentrate on LRT, specialy now that they are telling us they can't afford every project they were planning to build by 2031.

Just to be clear, I am in total agreement with phase one of the LRT, the next phases just don't go far enough.

[lrt's friend]

I am the first one to complain about the lack of good quality downtown service. I am the one who is complaining about the planned 'primary' LRT route from the south not directly running into downtown.

At the same time, we are not considering the overall trend of jobs moving to the suburbs. This is a fact. We just have to look at the thousands of RCMP jobs moving to Barrhaven and the thousands of DND jobs moving to Moodie Drive. And how many thousands of jobs are located at the Kanata Business Park? I might add that a lot of these people presently live in Orleans who will face difficult commutes in the future.

We make it sound like these suburban areas have only a handful of jobs.

Why would we give preference to a commuter service from Casselman, population 5,000 and Smiths Falls, Population 9,000, when the number of jobs served by a rail line across the south tier will number in the tens of thousands and the number of residents will exceed 100,000? There is a lack of logic here.

I have no problem in building a top notch service to downtown costing billions. But why is it, that we cannot afford to spend $50 million for an O-Train type service for the thousands of jobs and residents that I mentioned?

[Dado]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

1. Save cost while sacrificing ridership
2. How many people travel from Orleans to Kanata and vis-versa?
3. Very small business parks as opposed to downtown with 40% of office space (18 000 000 sqft, 100 000+ jobs, all this not counting Hull (5 000 000, 20 000 jobs)

I understand it wasn't a borderline metro service, but it still wasn't a good idea.

The idea when first conceived wasn't to put a lot of money into it, just buy a few more Talents, throw up a few more basic stations and put in a few more passing sidings, along with running out some new track in the Cumberland corridor to Orleans. Had that been done in conjunction with a plan to sort out the downtown gong show, it would have provided some bypass capacity while limiting the need to go downtown, in particular for Algonquin and Carleton students living east of downtown in Orleans who unnecessarily clog up the system in the morning trying to get to classes (ever wonder why the system suddenly starts working a bit better in May?). It would also have made getting to the Kanata North business park easier for many: take a look at how many use the 101, and we have to remember that coming out of the 1990s many people who used to work in government were now working in the tech sector on the other side of the city. It would have given us a "relief valve" to make sorting out the downtown easier.

Unfortunately, that's not what the 2003 TMP ended up proposing. Instead it left the BRT gong show in place downtown while what were to be quick and easy O-Train expansions turned into full-fledged LRT lines, and then they went after changing over the one part of the system that was actually working properly.

I do agree we need to use the existing rail lines for commuter rail, forming something similar to the 2004 plan and serving the smaller business parks (and ideally downtown, but I doubt they will ever build a VIA/commuter rail tunnel to old Union). But it would also have to stretch to the towns and villages within the city limits (Richmond, Carp, Vars...) and outside the city limits (Smith Falls, Carleton Place, Casselman...).

It really is too bad that the Holt Plan's train tunnel under Wellington was never built. I think we would have ended up with an east Ottawa station (old Union Station) and a west Ottawa station (somewhere on LeBreton Flats, combining the two stations that used to be there). It would have come in useful for HSR, if we ever get that.

But first we need to properly serve the big suburbs within Ottawa with high capacity LRT heading downtown.

Their 2008 plan was an idiotic way to make the city look like there against urban sprawl "we will build rail to the edge of the greenbelt and the suburbs won't get any til' they are dense enough". That was total bull; are they saying Bayshore isn't dense enough? Edge of the greenbelt isn't Lincoln Fields.

It also misses the point that what matters is ridership density, i.e. riders per kilometre of track, not residential or commercial density.

Even with this, they still wanted to waste money on BRT to be converted in 20 some years. I guess they didn't learn from the first time they pulled this screw up.

It gets worse: they won't even redesign the new busways they build to make them easier to convert.

I think we should drop every single BRT project and solely concentrate on LRT, specialy now that they are telling us they can't afford every project they were planning to build by 2031.

I wish Ken Gray - since this thread is supposed to be about him - would go after the various BRT projects in planning or on the go. Like, why is there an 8-lane wide tunnel in the leda clay of Baseline? Or, why did the City not try to stop the MTO from building a ten-lane freeway to Kanata including a pair of bus lanes that will become redundant once a rapid transit line is extended to Kanata (be it BRT or LRT) and for which there is an approved EA in place that everyone should have known about? Or why is it that the West Transitway study in Kanata is busy proposing a whole whack of elevated busway in the vicinity of Scotiabank Place (woohoo! pillars on more leda clay! nothing problematic about that, no sirree)? Or, why is the City proposing to build the Cumberland Transitway - which is largely in its own reserved corridor - as almost entirely grade-separated when it is supposed to be converted to light rail some day? Or, why did the City go about terrorizing people in the Pinecrest area threatening to expropriate them when an earlier EA had already decided on a shorter, more efficient route using a tunnel and the OC Transpo garage property and for which they had already purchased three - now rather derelict - houses (the irony here is they did this at the same time as they were putting in the much bigger tunnel at Baseline)?

These are all part of what Doucet realized was the BRT plan encompassing a small LRT plan at the centre. These would be useful things for the self-styled Bulldog to go dog the City on rather than getting worked up about running light rail along Richmond.

Just to be clear, I am in total agreement with phase one of the LRT, the next phases just don't go far enough.

Or, as above, they are completely insane.

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

That is not true. It almost seems to me that some people think that everything south of the Queensway is some unknown territory where only wylde beasts and barbarians live. This was designed to do a number of things.

1. Make use of existing rail lines where it makes sense to keep costs down.
2. Provide a fast cross-town service that bypassed downtown.
3. Serve several suburban business Parks presently poorly served by transit. This includes the proposed Orleans Business Park, in south Orleans. There is huge future potential here. The Innes Road Industrial Area, the Ottawa Business Park south of Walkley, the Colonade Business Park, Algonquin College, Queensway-Carleton Hospital, and the Kanata Business Park.

Now that we know that the RCMP is moving to Barrhaven and DND to Moodie Drive, this kind of service would also provide a much faster connection. Because this would work completely differently from traditional bus routes serving these locations, there would have been a great opportunity to attract new ridership.

Of course, this would not be the same type of LRT as we propose for downtown. It might work more like the O-Train with a train every 15 minutes.

I think it is very sad that this kind of innovative thinking has been completely abandoned.

The fact of the matter is that there are no fast transportation links whatsoever across the southern tier of the city and demand is increasing every day.

It's an interesting point. I remember those plans for a regional rail type solution quite fondly. I was very much in favour of them at the time. They would have been relatively cheap and easy to build and operate. They would have had decent numbers of riders.

At the time I couldn't understand why the idea wasn't more popular. It all seemed so obvious.

My impression now is that it was a combination of two factors. The first being TOD. Along much of that rail route the rail goes through the backs of neighbourhoods or industrial parks, or fields. It mostly avoids a lot of vibrant areas. I used to think that was a positive for the line (it is for a regional rail line).

The second reason was never officially stated but one I slowly began to suspect. The city wants to build a core LRT system that will be the backbone of the city's transit solution. That core requires lots of riders, and the extensions require lots of subsequent demand to ensure they are built. There is a kind of logical inevitability to it. But building a regional commuter solution that takes people by train from Kanata or Orleans to the train station makes the core LRT much less likely.

You lose a chunk of the riders you were counting on to ride the LRT. Which pushes back the start of any core LRT, which means running buses longer, which means building more BRT and more express buses. They would quickly get to the point where they would need to restrict the downtown to core BRT routes only. And once they convert to a bus-based hub and spoke system with only 4 or 5 bus routes stopping at downtown stations then they're alleviating one of the big pain points of the current BRT.

They need those pain points to build support for LRT. Solving them within BRT isn't helpful to the long term vision of an effective, efficient, economical rail transit network core.

I guess I'm just suspicious. Luckily I also think their ultimate goal will lead to a better, more vibrant and liveable city.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I am the first one to complain about the lack of good quality downtown service. I am the one who is complaining about the planned 'primary' LRT route from the south not directly running into downtown.

At the same time, we are not considering the overall trend of jobs moving to the suburbs. This is a fact. We just have to look at the thousands of RCMP jobs moving to Barrhaven and the thousands of DND jobs moving to Moodie Drive. And how many thousands of jobs are located at the Kanata Business Park? I might add that a lot of these people presently live in Orleans who will face difficult commutes in the future.

We make it sound like these suburban areas have only a handful of jobs.

Why would we give preference to a commuter service from Casselman, population 5,000 and Smiths Falls, Population 9,000, when the number of jobs served by a rail line across the south tier will number in the tens of thousands and the number of residents will exceed 100,000? There is a lack of logic here.

I have no problem in building a top notch service to downtown costing billions. But why is it, that we cannot afford to spend $50 million for an O-Train type service for the thousands of jobs and residents that I mentioned?

We should serve the big 3 OT suburbs with LRT. That's why I'm saying drop all BRT projects to extend the LRT to the town centres. This would also serve DND former Nortel campus.The new RCMP HQ in Barrhaven isn't built anywhere near futur BRT/LRT or existing rail lines.

I agree with commuter rail (more GO transit as opposed to O-Train) serving serving towns/villages farther away, but I would also include stops in the suburban business parks where possible. The central LRT is also important to support commuter rail so that people heading downtown using commuter rail transfering on Tremblay road and need something with capacity. Packed buses won't do the trick.

BTW, the feds aren't moving jobs to the suburbs to benifit the city but to save money. They don't care who they step on to do and they won't invest any more money on transit to counter balance their moves. (case and point the commute from Orleans to Barrhaven or Moodie (although Moodie's likely not as bad)). I'm hoping that the downtown LRT will encourage private companys to move in the city.

[lrt's friend]

The second reason was never officially stated but one I slowly began to suspect. The city wants to build a core LRT system that will be the backbone of the city's transit solution. That core requires lots of riders, and the extensions require lots of subsequent demand to ensure they are built. There is a kind of logical inevitability to it. But building a regional commuter solution that takes people by train from Kanata or Orleans to the train station makes the core LRT much less likely.

I don't buy this. The point of a south cross-town route is not so much to move people from Orleans to Kanata and vica-versa, it is to capture passengers making shorter trips at all points in between including from Kanata to various mid points and Orleans to various points. It will not impact a core system to any great degree, but instead provide an alternate way to get around town, that is not effectively served by the core system. The problem with the core plan is that it runs so far north between downtown and Lincoln Fields. It creates an enormous service gap that the core plan does not address.

It is really worrisome that in a city this size we are not building any redundancy into our backbone network. Furthermore, although I am sure 'some' riders would use the core network instead, it is more likely that many people who would be attracted to a southern cross-town route will simply not use transit at all because the core network simply is useless for their non-downtown oriented commute.

In my case, if I needed to commute to Kanata or the new DND campus or even the occasional trip to Scotiabank Place, I would drive every time instead of having to travel by transit through downtown or the 'slow as molasses in January' more direct bus routes that are bogged down in traffic and 100 signalled intersections.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

BTW, the feds aren't moving jobs to the suburbs to benifit the city but to save money. They don't care who they step on to do and they won't invest any more money on transit to counter balance their moves. (case and point the commute from Orleans to Barrhaven or Moodie (although Moodie's likely not as bad)). I'm hoping that the downtown LRT will encourage private companys to move in the city.

In fact, it's the Conservatives... they have an interest in making cities more sprawly and suburban. Suburban neighbourhoods and the auto-dependent are good "demographics" for them.

[Nepean]

Key Gray is using the recent OMB decision on 335 Roosevelt to launch a crusade against condo towers in the city. In this post, he is indirectly encouraging residents to fight against the proposed condo towers at Richmond / Woodroffe and Parkdale Avenue. He also makes the vague threat that, "The electorate is getting angry and the election is but two years away."

Don't be surprised if Ken Gray decides to run against Katherine Hobbs in the next municipal election, or at the very least use his blog as a mouthpiece for an anti-development, anti-Hobbs candidate. The thing about municipal politics is that the majority of people do not follow it closely, while voter turnout is relatively low. As such, an organized and vocal minority can have a lot of sway in an election, and then impose their vision on the majority of city residents. That is why even though the next city vote is still two years away, I don't see how Coun. Hobbs can be re-elected.

Ken Gray insists that he is not a NIMBY and that he favours "appropriate" development. But I have never (and I mean NEVER) seen him write about a project that he supports, or at the very least not criticize. That is why I am getting concerned that he and his angry followers will use their spare time to elect anti-development candidates in 2014.

We all saw how the election of Larry O'Brien as Mayor was a disaster for Ottawa. I only hope that we will avoid a similar snafu in 2014. All of the great work that is being done could be undermined by a wave of angry councillors who want nothing more than to yell "No" into the face of every developer, undermine Peter Hume and Jim Watson at every step, and attack without mercy Coun. Hobbs.