Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[waterloowarrior]

Technical Woes Boost Light-Rail Cost, Hume Says

By Kenneth_Gray Fri, Sep 18 2009 COMMENTS(0) The Bulldog
Filed under: Larry O'Brien, light rail, Peter Hume, City of Ottawa, OC Transpo, Clive Doucet


Ottawa's light-rail plan is running into new costs and technical difficulties, the chairman of the city's planning committee says.

Peter Hume said Friday that city staff is discovering that running rail from downtown to Blair Road Transitway station is likely to cost more than original estimates.

The Alta Vista councillor says the rail line cannot run solely on the eastern Transitway to Blair Road because of tight turns near the Train Transitway station. The councillor says light rail needs longer turns than buses so running the line exclusively, and relatively inexpensively, on the Transitway bed is not possible along the entire eastern route.

That realization is boosting the cost of the $1.8-billion option that would see a downtown tunnel and east-west rail from Blair Road to Tunney's Pasture as well as north-south rail from Bayview to South Keys.

The north-south link has caused controversy recently because city officials pitched that option to provincial leaders as the city was negotiating a $36.7-million settlement with the Siemens consortium resulting from cancellation of the first light-rail plan that duplicated part of the new north-south route.

In addition, Hume said there are likely to be extra expenses resulting from an extension of the downtown tunnel for technical reasons. However, the councillor said the province appears to be happy with cost estimates on the tunnel. The city says the tunnel will weigh in at about $550 million.

That's not the end of troubles for the new rail plan. Indications are from Queen's Park that the provincial and federal contribution to the new light-rail plan is likely to be about $800 million in total. That leaves the city on the hook for about $1 billion, and that's before the new aforementioned costs are added to the total.

Hume said the additional charges have not yet been estimated.

"It's still up in the air," said Hume, though indications are from Queen's Park, which has been monitoring progress on the rail project, that they will be substantial.

That opens the question as to whether taxpayers will be prepared to foot such a bill. They squawked loudly recently when they were told that the $36.7-million settlement would cost them about $100 per household on property taxes. That would be a fraction of the cost of the new rail plan.

"That would be a challenge" for the city to handle, Hume said Friday. "We would have trouble."

"Council will have some hard decisions to make," the planning committee chairman said. "We cannot afford to do it alone."

Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson said Friday he does not know how much his government is prepared to spend on the project. However, if the city must pay more than $1 billion for the first phase of the plan, he said: "My belief is that will stretch them beyond their capacity." That's because rail is not the only large expenditure the city must undertake over the next few years.

Watson said he knew costs were rising on the project, but he had been told that was due to inflation.

The province is concerned that the costs for the rail plan are too fluid, Watson said. The minister is also worried about possible overruns on the tunnel due to technical difficulties that had been experience on similar projects in other jurisdictions. The province will not write a blank cheque, Watson said.

Queen's Park wants "rock solid" projections on the project's cost, Watson said.

"This is a lot of tax dollars," he said

[lrt's friend]

This illustrates why I have not liked our transit plan.

Building busways and converting them to LRT costs more money in the long-run. This is now becoming standard policy in this city (build busways first and convert later), which is something no other city does. Clearly, busway designs are not fully compatible with LRT. I expect we will see this problem elsewhere when conversion is attempted. A perfect example is the curves near the old Riverside Hospital.

This city should be deciding once and for all the technology to be used on each particular route and stick with it. If a busway is considered best, choose it and that should be the permanent choice. If LRT is best, build LRT from day one. We should only switch if there is a very compelling reason to do so, but since BRT and LRT have similar capacities and speeds given a similar right of way, this should rarely be necessary.

I have followed plans in Denver and when planning various routes, they decided what technology is best on each route depending on the circumstances. Various routes are ending up as BRT, LRT and heavy rail. I do not expect those technology choices to change in our lifetime. They understand that these are long-term choices. Why are we not doing the same thing?

[Dado]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Lane shifting to the east would be almost impossible: it would run into a commercial building as well as Crestlea Crescent. Plus there would be nowhere to put a noise fence if such is warranted.

This is getting perilously close to the "it can't be done" attitude that so infects this city's engineers. I don't believe I'm going to have to do this, but so be it.

Here's the cross section we have right now on Woodroffe between Hunt Club and Knoxdale, west-to-east:

sound wall | sidewalk | bike lane | bus lane | lane | lane | median | lane | lane | bus lane | bike lane | sidewalk

Here's how you do the "almost impossible lane shifting to the east":

sound wall | track | track | sidewalk | bike lane | lane | lane | median | lane | lane | bike lane | sidewalk

There - shuffled eastwards. At the Hunt Club end it would go into a short tunnel and would shuffle back over the tunnel to match the other side. At Knoxdale there's plenty of room all round and would shuffle back through the intersection.

Since there are a couple metres of extra land on the east side, everything could also be shifted over slightly. The commercial building would be the constraint to how much it could be shifted, but it doesn't prevent shifting per se. They might end up with a sidewalk against their building. Boo hoo - it'll look slightly more urban than it currently does. If a noise fence on the east side is not warranted under current conditions, it'll not be warranted under the new conditions either, but it's not like a sound fence takes up much width anyway. Crestlea Crescent can be narrowed from 10 m to, say, 7 m, which still leaves two full lanes. If need be it can be made one-way. If worst comes to worst, a metre or two from the front lots can be taken off to shift Crestlea over, but that would wipe out some trees so I'd avoid that.

If the residential buildings immediately west of Woodroffe are expropriated, it would actually be ideal to end Majestic at Cheryl Road, and run that street up to Knoxdale as a western access for Knoxdale Station and possible stops for Routes 172 and/or 174. Some redevelopment space would also exist there, since a Park and Ride probably is not warranted there. Nothing on Pritchard Drive needs to be expropriated.

Wow. We'll expropriate two blocks' worth of townhouses (8 distinct terraces), some of which are facing perpendicular to the axis that is needed, and which will be next to a future rapid transit station - and in so doing we can avoid expropriating one of seven detached houses on Pritchard Drive (note we need only one on Pritchard - any one of the seven will do, which makes it a lot easier to secure since you're more likely to find a willing seller). I'd like to be a fly on the wall when the weighting exercise to justify that one is concocted. I can see it now - "integrity of existing Woodroffe RoW" is given overriding weight by a team of 'expert' engineers who didn't bother to ask anyone else what weights should be used. Oh yes... I know exactly how these so-called objective weighting exercises work in practice.

After expropriation, there would be less room to develop but still some room for greenspace or narrower buildings along Cheryl Road south of Majestic.

Someone had better put in a small condo tower to restore the lost density and walk-on ridership of this scheme.

Also, with the access to Majestic closed and the corridor moderately fenced with limited frontage, it would be ideal to increase the speed limit along Woodroffe to 70 km/h from Norice to the start of the 80 zone concurrently with the extension.

While we're at it, why not just lower the grade of Woodroffe all the way from the railway underpass to Hunt Club and put in interchanges at Hunt Club and Knoxdale? That way it can be an 80 zone all the way to Norice. LRT could be put down there with it and the entire corridor would have nice grassed embankments. That sole commercial building would have to be wiped out but that's all right because suburban arterials aren't supposed to have frontages anyway.

The existing bus lanes should become wide bicycle lanes and a slightly narrower roadway, since 6 general lanes are not warranted and likely will never be warranted along Woodroffe.

There are already wide bicycle lanes along there. You could just fill in the bus lanes with trees, though that might discourage people from going so fast (apparently trees next to the road do that). Funny though that you realized that putting in a new RoW for LRT would free up lane space in the Woodroffe RoW but that you did not realize that this would enable you to just shuffle ("almost impossible") the lanes around.

[lrt's friend]

The simple answer is to buy up the houses as they come on the market and rent them out until we need the land. After all, LRT is not intended to be extended beyond Baseline station until after 2031. By then, few houses will need expropriation.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

Technical Woes Boost Light-Rail Cost, Hume Says

$1.2B doesn't buy us a tunnel.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

This illustrates why I have not liked our transit plan.

Building busways and converting them to LRT costs more money in the long-run.

Indeed it does cost more, in the long-run, to build a busway first and convert it later. It's not a very good way of doing things when considered from the long-run perspective when you don't have anything built yet. However, once a busway already exists, the economics change. Converting is easier than building anew.

This is now becoming standard policy in this city (build busways first and convert later), which is something no other city does.

Not so - Bonsall has sold Brisbane, Australia, on this idea. Now they've got bus jams too.

Clearly, busway designs are not fully compatible with LRT. I expect we will see this problem elsewhere when conversion is attempted. A perfect example is the curves near the old Riverside Hospital.

As is often the case, the reports from Ken Gray - which are already second or third hand - don't match up with reality. LRVs are perfectly capable of getting around the curves at Train. Those are 100 m radius curves; the C-Train goes around a 35 m curve at Lion's Park. The N-S LRT would have gone around curves tighter than those at Bayview (you know, where the City declined to buy the land next to the City Centre that the NCC was selling?). The actual problem is that the space for the station is insufficiently long to get a six-car 180m train in without a curved platform, which is why the proposal is to realign and rebuild one of the overpasses, with the end result of removing one curve and softening the others.

The curves at the Riverside Hospital are also 100 m radius curves, but since there isn't a station going in between, it's not an actual problem that they're so close together. The fact of them being so close together does, however, mean that superelevation of the curves is, ahem, "almost impossible", but since there are two stations so close together it scarcely matters. Any superelevation that can be achieved would be enough.

This city should be deciding once and for all the technology to be used on each particular route and stick with it. If a busway is considered best, choose it and that should be the permanent choice. If LRT is best, build LRT from day one. We should only switch if there is a very compelling reason to do so, but since BRT and LRT have similar capacities and speeds given a similar right of way, this should rarely be necessary.

I have followed plans in Denver and when planning various routes, they decided what technology is best on each route depending on the circumstances. Various routes are ending up as BRT, LRT and heavy rail. I do not expect those technology choices to change in our lifetime. They understand that these are long-term choices. Why are we not doing the same thing?

Not going to answer that... what I will say is that I don't think 'BRT' should go beyond the on-street implementations (including freeway shoulder lanes). Those are cheap enough and they do the job for long enough that they can be considered worthwhile, even if they end up being planted over with trees and grass decades later. But creating new RoWs for buses with an intent to convert later is rather pointless, if only because the land, station and grade-separation requirements for buses are so much greater.

[lrt's friend]

$1.2 B will likely buy us only the old plan now.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The simple answer is to buy up the houses as they come on the market and rent them out until we need the land. After all, LRT is not intended to be extended beyond Baseline station until after 2031. By then, few houses will need expropriation.

They're townhouses, and, by the looks of it, probably non-market (or whatever the PC mot-de-jour is). That in and of itself, if true, creates another problem - they can't just be bought and demolished, they would actually have to be replaced first.

Better increase the weighting of "integrity of existing Woodroffe RoW" in developing that social utility function...

[lrt's friend]

what I will say is that I don't think 'BRT' should go beyond the on-street implementations (including freeway shoulder lanes).

I believe the Denver-Boulder BRT is exactly that, freeway shoulder lanes that can be built considerably cheaper than a separate LRT right of way, therefore, being the best choice. In most cases, the best choice of technology is reasonably easy to determine.

[waterloowarrior]

Transit money available: premier

Says province expects to put more into multibillion-dollar project
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show....php?p=4463880

By Mohammed Adam, The Ottawa CitizenSeptember 19, 2009 12:01 AM

OTTAWA — Dalton McGuinty has given the clearest indication yet that the province will support Ottawa’s multibillion-dollar transit project, saying the Liberals will provide more money for the new plan.

The premier told reporters Friday that it is unrealistic to expect that the $200 million the province provided as its contribution to the cancelled north-south rail line will be enough to modernize the city’s transit system.

“I think any sensible assessment of our needs in this community when it comes to a modern transit system is going to require more than $200 million from the people of Ontario through their provincial government,” he said.

“Obviously, we want to be realistic … but being realistic requires that we recognize that $200 million is not going to cut it. We’re going to have to do more than that and, over time, we expect we will.”

McGuinty was in Ottawa to open the new $58-million Garry Cardiff wing at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

His declaration on the $5-billion transit project will come as great relief in Ottawa, where until now, no one was certain of provincial support.

The McGuinty government was excited about the $800-million north-south project, which collapsed in December 2006 after then-Treasury Board secretary John Baird pulled the plug on federal funding, saying he wanted a new council to make the final call. Baird’s decision, in the middle of a municipal election campaign, was seen
by many as an attempt to undermine then-mayor Bob Chiarelli, a Liberal.

When the new council, under conservative Mayor Larry O’Brien, killed the plan, it was seen as a political move, casting serious doubt on the willingness of the McGuinty Liberals to back a new plan.

After council passed the $5-billion plan, Queen’s Park expressed only lukewarm support, with ministers such as Jim Watson, the MPP for Ottawa-West Nepean questioning whether it was affordable. Provincial support was uncertain, and the plan seemed to be in limbo despite brave talk from city politicians.

However, hopes were raised this week when Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman said definitively for the first time that Ontario is willing to provide more than the $200 million set aside in 2004. McGuinty has now put his own stamp of approval on additional funding, suggesting the Liberals have moved on from their 2006 disappointment.

Officials say what may have turned minds was a recognition by the city that a plan with a significant bus component would not cut it with the province. In 2006, provincial transport officials were as keen as their political masters on the north-south rail line. In discussions with city officials, it became clear that the new plan’s significant extension of busways into the suburbs didn’t grab the province.

It was not surprising that the city eventually included an option for provincial funding that would see a reduced, but recognizable, version of the original north-south rail line as an early part of the new plan.
Friday, Watson dismissed suggestions that the city included the north-south link to appease the province. But he said everyone recognizes that for the transit plan to pass muster, it must meet the approval of all three partners — the city, the province and the federal government.
McGuinty also refused to be drawn into a discussion of a resuscitated north-south link, saying he will not “insinuate” himself into the discussion under way between his bureaucrats and the city’s.

“I think it is an important part of the conversation to have between the city folks and the ministry folks,” he said.

Still, the premier warned that the province doesn’t have “an endless supply of money” to pour into the project, and Watson stressed that the plan must still meet two important tests: First, it has to show that it will increase transit ridership and move people from their cars, and second, it has to make financial sense.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[Franky]

Anyone know where the new tunnel estimates are. Where does the $550M number come from? Is it all in the cost of the stations?

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by Dado

As is often the case, the reports from Ken Gray - which are already second or third hand - don't match up with reality. LRVs are perfectly capable of getting around the curves at Train. Those are 100 m radius curves; the C-Train goes around a 35 m curve at Lion's Park. The N-S LRT would have gone around curves tighter than those at Bayview (you know, where the City declined to buy the land next to the City Centre that the NCC was selling?). The actual problem is that the space for the station is insufficiently long to get a six-car 180m train in without a curved platform, which is why the proposal is to realign and rebuild one of the overpasses, with the end result of removing one curve and softening the others.

Would Train be able to accommodate 3-car or 4-car trains without any modifications? Perhaps the problem is, when the Transitway was designed, the designers did not envisage the use of long 6-car trains, only shorter ones.

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by Dado

Here we go again... selecting the most expensive length of track to do first, and one that happens to already have rail running on it.

If this city had any sense, it would put light rail on the surface downtown and convert the existing transitways from Blair and South Keys in the east and Bayshore and Baseline in the west, along with filling in any missing bits in the west. That would be the biggest bang for our bucks since it would remove the high-cost buses from the backbone and core of the system in as short a time as possible and for as little capital expenditure as possible. That is what should have been proposed in the 2003 TMP but wasn't and that's what should be in the 2008 TMP and isn't.

After that we could argue about where to go next. If a tunnel is truly needed for future capacity, that could still be built in due course.

If we are to convert the Transitway to rail, then I would agree. The surface option with would make the most sense from the perspectives of riders and taxpayers. I noted a few months ago that there is sufficient space on Albert Street to give two lanes exclusively to rail and have stations on the same four blocks as we have now while maintaining access to buildings for delivery trucks and other vehicles. I don't know how much a conversion with an Albert alignment would cost, but it would be significantly less than what is being proposed now.

I suspect that most Ottawa residents would prefer something like that over the option now being peddled of building the eastern segment to Blair along with a downtown tunnel and the N/S line to South Keys using the O-Train corridor. If we end up with that, we're going to end up with a terrible transit system in ten years.

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

That's not true, for several reasons:

1) There is a stigma among people that trains are different than "just a bus". That makes Park and Ride facilities much more attractive. Every North American city that put an LRT line in found that as opposed to the parallel bus service.

Actually, the real-world evidence we have suggests that, when performance is the same (i.e., trip times, frequency, reliability, etc.), there is no preference between the two modes.

Now, you can argue that, because of the use of off-board fare collection, levelled boarding, the ability to board using all doors, no interaction between drivers and riders (i.e., no time lost because drivers have to answer questions), exclusive use of its downtown lanes, a more direct route between Bayview and downtown, and the absence of bike racks, the rail option would be much more reliable. So, perhaps there would be some ridership gain. Also, a Byron/Richmond alignment may be able to attract more riders (although, based on low ridership on the #2 (west of Westboro Station) and the western portion of the #87, the potential may not be that high, at least initially).

At the same time, there would be losses because of the increase in transfers and the lower frequencies.

2) With bus service already at or over capacity downtown, having much larger trains would ease congestion greatly. Those on routes that would remain (such as the 1, 2, 16 and 85) would have much less congestion to deal with downtown. If it were to remain status quo, the system would break down in the downtown area at rush hour and ridership would drop significantly.

Unless the rail option accommodated the Gatineau traffic, the routes that you mention would still have to compete with STO buses and cars for the same road space. The reduction in congestion would be negligible. They would also continue to be negatively impacted by illegally-parked tour buses on Wellington.

How Gatineau traffic could be accommodated is big question? I think that, to justify its high cost, any rail line into Gatineau would need to serve Place du Portage and Terrasses de la Chaudiere, along with major portions of Hull and Gatineau. The PoW bridge option would not do that very well.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by Suzie

...

Unless the rail option accommodated the Gatineau traffic, the routes that you mention would still have to compete with STO buses and cars for the same road space. The reduction in congestion would be negligible. They would also continue to be negatively impacted by illegally-parked tour buses on Wellington.

How Gatineau traffic could be accommodated is big question? I think that, to justify its high cost, any rail line into Gatineau would need to serve Place du Portage and Terrasses de la Chaudiere, along with major portions of Hull and Gatineau. The PoW bridge option would not do that very well.

If the train is in a tunnel, freeing up Albert and Slater, then some OC Transpo buses could be moved from Rideau onto those streets. Of couse we couldn't move all the buses since this would again ruin the pedestrian 'flow-through' that the Rideau Centre enjoys as well as re-clogging Albert and Slater with buses. By spliiting the buses, though, both corridors (Albert/Slater and Rideau) can be improved.

As for Gatineau riders, it will be a problem. Gatineau is pretty fixed on buses at this point and would not likely want to pay anything to have rail access.

Isn't the north end of the Prince of Wales Bridge (PoW) fairly near Terrasses de la Chaudiere? If a train crossed the PoW, passed north of the Terrasse and Place du Portage, and returned across the Portage Bridge, wouldn't that cover the main commuter destinations? I admit that is doesn't cover (old) Gatineau or Aylmer, but I imagine they could have Rapi-bus bringing people to the train. Such a centralized train could encourage higher density redevelopment of the Hull sector.

[Richard Eade]

OK, here's a thought: How about extending the rails from a Tunneys terminus to one at Westboro Station and using all of the extra space between the two for train storage?

It looks (using Google Earth) as if the Transitway Trench is 14m wide which should allow two storage tracks beside the two running tracks. At a length of about 1300m, there should be room to store about 85 LRVs. And it wouldn't take too much to cover the trench to widen the linear park.

Having a west end storage area should make things more efficient - especially using fully automated LRVs.

[lrt's friend]

If they are suggesting running LRT to South Keys from Bayview, and we still don't know where we are running LRT westward, what is the point of a Tunney's Pasture stub line? It seems to me that trains should just be shuttling between Blair and South Keys.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Franky

Anyone know where the new tunnel estimates are. Where does the $550M number come from? Is it all in the cost of the stations?

Found it, the $550M was for the 2.5 km tunnel and is the same price now that it's a 3.2 km tunnel - strange.

There is a $55M/km number to put tracks/electric in the tunnel. Why is it so much more expensive than outside the tunnel? Someone mentioned the need for a rigid power rail - is that all the expense?

[Dado]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

If they are suggesting running LRT to South Keys from Bayview, and we still don't know where we are running LRT westward, what is the point of a Tunney's Pasture stub line? It seems to me that trains should just be shuttling between Blair and South Keys.

For someone who has criticized the Bayview-Hurdman shuttle option in the past on the grounds of forcing transfers, I'd have thought it was obvious: it's so that east-end riders who work at Tunney's Pasture don't have to transfer to go one stop.

The same line thinking would argue against extending it to Westboro as well - people from the west end who work at Tunney's Pasture would have to transfer at Westboro to go one stop.

None of these arguments make any global sense in that people from the west end are going to be expected to transfer a lot closer to downtown than people from the east, and anyone going to Hull has to transfer anyway. Similarly, if you live in the South Keys/Greenboro/Walkley area, you luck out with a direct train but if you live closer to downtown on the Southeast Transitway near Billings Bridge or Pleasant Park, well, you have to transfer at Hurdman.


There's also absolutely no point in sending every train from Blair all the way to South Keys since the capacity is required to carry people from the west, not the south. We also "know" that LRT will run west on the Transitway to Westboro and Dominion. Where it goes west of that is open to some debate, but we all "know" it will go that far at least.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Dado

For someone who has criticized the Bayview-Hurdman shuttle option in the past on the grounds of forcing transfers, I'd have thought it was obvious: it's so that east-end riders who work at Tunney's Pasture don't have to transfer to go one stop.

The same line thinking would argue against extending it to Westboro as well - people from the west end who work at Tunney's Pasture would have to transfer at Westboro to go one stop.

None of these arguments make any global sense in that people from the west end are going to be expected to transfer a lot closer to downtown than people from the east, and anyone going to Hull has to transfer anyway. Similarly, if you live in the South Keys/Greenboro/Walkley area, you luck out with a direct train but if you live closer to downtown on the Southeast Transitway near Billings Bridge or Pleasant Park, well, you have to transfer at Hurdman.


There's also absolutely no point in sending every train from Blair all the way to South Keys since the capacity is required to carry people from the west, not the south. We also "know" that LRT will run west on the Transitway to Westboro and Dominion. Where it goes west of that is open to some debate, but we all "know" it will go that far at least.

Why don't they build it to Lincoln Fields or Bayshore right away? The west route EA can be done while the tunnel is being done. If/since the parkway isn't the right route for LRT, there would not be interference (except for the Tunney's to the tunnel section) which can be done last.