Merivale Road (Baseline Road to Carling Avenue) Transit Priority EA

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Maybe when you compare the best few blocks of Merivale to the middling or worst of Beechwood or Montreal. But overall Merivale is still much more main drag than main street, and most of the TPM study is on a portion of Merivale that is not urban mainstreety at all.

Doesn't detract from my main point: damn near jack shite is being done to improve local bus transit on the urban main streets of Ottawa. Not Beechwood (recently worsened by Fleury and Nussbaum), not Rideau-Montreal (the current plans make things worse), not Bank (recently rebuilt at great expense with no improvements to transit service or amenities), probably not Elgin (we'll see what the final designs look like), not Somerset-Wellington-Richmond (we'll see what the Phase 2 station at/near Richmond will do for that one part of the street, but that's just one local stop), not Main (which has less shelter and worse stop placement than before, and no TPMs), not Bronson, not Preston, not McArthur or Donald.... who'd I miss?

So these are counted as urban streets:
Main: https://goo.gl/maps/atcqkGAqjco
Donald: https://goo.gl/maps/yFJGz1BcYV62

But Merivale here doesn't: https://goo.gl/maps/ygEi7zmKTyS2

Merivale isn't the best street in the city, sure, but it's certainly much more of a main street than Main or Donald (main basically has 1 block of 'main street' like build form, Donald has none that I've seen). McArthur or Montreal should be priorities, but Merivale has urban high density areas.

As for main drag vs. main street, Bronson is definitely far more a main drag than main street, yet you agree it needs more transit.

(Also, Preston and Wellington-Richmond both run so close to rapid transit lines that I'm not expecting any major transit improvements soon. It would be nice, but not a priority for the city wide transit network.And Elgin is so close to Bank it's unlikely to see anything if Bank gets improvements.)

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Beedok

So these are counted as urban streets:
Main: https://goo.gl/maps/atcqkGAqjco
Donald: https://goo.gl/maps/yFJGz1BcYV62

But Merivale here doesn't: https://goo.gl/maps/ygEi7zmKTyS2

Merivale isn't the best street in the city, sure, but it's certainly much more of a main street than Main or Donald (main basically has 1 block of 'main street' like build form, Donald has none that I've seen). McArthur or Montreal should be priorities, but Merivale has urban high density areas.

As for main drag vs. main street, Bronson is definitely far more a main drag than main street, yet you agree it needs more transit.

(Also, Preston and Wellington-Richmond both run so close to rapid transit lines that I'm not expecting any major transit improvements soon. It would be nice, but not a priority for the city wide transit network.And Elgin is so close to Bank it's unlikely to see anything if Bank gets improvements.)

If your destination is Elgin, transit on Bank is not at all convenient. Sure it is walkable but even if you are able bodied, that is a 15 minute walk. For the centre of the city, we can do better than this. We need to get serious if we want people to live without a car.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

If your destination is Elgin, transit on Bank is not at all convenient. Sure it is walkable but even if you are able bodied, that is a 15 minute walk. For the centre of the city, we can do better than this. We need to get serious if we want people to live without a car.

15 minutes? More like 5 minutes. It's only 550 metres between Elgin and Bank.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

If your destination is Elgin, transit on Bank is not at all convenient. Sure it is walkable but even if you are able bodied, that is a 15 minute walk. For the centre of the city, we can do better than this. We need to get serious if we want people to live without a car.

Also, Elgin is not just a transit destination; it is the street by which the main local route serving Old Ottawa East gets to and from downtown. If the city ever decides to get serious about improving local transit in the inner neighbourhoods and older, pre-war suburbs, improvements to streets like Elgin must be part of the mix.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Beedok

So these are counted as urban streets:
Main: https://goo.gl/maps/atcqkGAqjco
Donald: https://goo.gl/maps/yFJGz1BcYV62

But Merivale here doesn't: https://goo.gl/maps/ygEi7zmKTyS2

See there on Main how the commercial buildings come right out to the street line? That's a key difference.

Merivale isn't the best street in the city, sure, but it's certainly much more of a main street than Main or Donald (main basically has 1 block of 'main street' like build form, Donald has none that I've seen). McArthur or Montreal should be priorities, but Merivale has urban high density areas.

As for main drag vs. main street, Bronson is definitely far more a main drag than main street, yet you agree it needs more transit.

Bronson is a traffic sewer, but its built form is a street, not a drag.

(Also, Preston and Wellington-Richmond both run so close to rapid transit lines that I'm not expecting any major transit improvements soon.

Why not? They still have local transit demand and needs. LRT does nothing to move people along the major commercial street that is Wellington-Richmond.

It would be nice, but not a priority for the city wide transit network.

And there's the rub: the only "priority" is the "city wide" network. Local service in the core, which serves a very different function, socially, economically, and planning-wise from feeder locals in the suburbs, has been cannibalized and treated as politically expendable. The city will gladly take downtown tax revenues, which are very substantial, and funnel them into massive capital works located in, or principally serving the residents of, suburban communities, while letting the important work of local transit in the core fall to crap.

[SF Thomas]

Eric Darwin at the West Side Action blog commented on the three different sections of Merivale Rd, the northern section, the part adjacent to the farm and south of Baseline (by Clyde). He will also review the city's proposals for Merivale in a future post.