Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[RTWAP]

Maybe we can pay for LRT by making the NCC pay full property taxes for the development potential of all the land they have.

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/...ments-in-lieu/

M E M O / N O T E D E S E R V I C E

To / Destinataire Mayor and Members of Council

From / Expéditeur

M. Rick O’Connor, City Clerk and Solicitor

Marian Simulik, City Treasurer

Subject / Objet Halifax Citadel PILT Case –

Supreme Court of Canada ruling Date: June 15, 2012

The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has released its decision today on the Citadel Hill National Historical Site “assessment value” dispute between the City of Halifax and the Federal Government. The SCC has unanimously agreed with the City of Halifax that the site has more than a nominal assessment value, which will result in the City of Halifax receiving proper “payment in lieu of taxes” from the Federal Government for the property. This decision is welcome news for the City of Ottawa and all Canadian municipalities who received “payments in lieu of taxes” or “PILTS”.

In the Halifax case, the Minister had attributed a nominal assessment value of $10 to 42 acres of land beneath a grassy slope called “the glacis”, at the Citadel Historical National Historical Site. This resulted in a total valuation on the site that was millions of dollars lower than the value arrived at by the assessment authority for Halifax. The Minister considered that the value was nominal because it had a national historic site designation, which prevented its development or commercial use.

Although properties owned by the Federal Government are exempt from paying municipal property taxes, municipalities collect “payments in lieu of taxes” that are equivalent to the property taxes that would be charged, if the property were taxable, as permitted by the federal Payment In Lieu of Taxes Act. In Halifax, the Minister’s decision to attribute a nominal assessment value to its property had a significant impact on the City’s anticipated PILT revenue from the property.

The SCC has unanimously disagreed with the Minister’s position that parts of its Citadel Hill property are valueless and has recognized that it would hardly be fair or equitable to conclude that it has no value. The Court states in its decision that the overall purpose and broader policy of the Act is to treat Canadian municipalities fairly in relation to PILT payments.

“The Minister’s position is also at odds with the broader policy of the Act, which is to treat municipalities fairly. It can hardly be thought either fair or equitable to conclude that 42 acres in the middle of a major metropolitan centre has no value for assessment purposes.”

The City of Ottawa has a significant number of PILT properties which may have special designations attached. The SCC’s decision confirms that such properties have value, despite such special designations.

The City of Ottawa’s Finance Department has a number of outstanding PILT appeals currently at the Dispute Advisory Panel (DAP – a body that makes recommendations to the Minister of Public Works who also appoints the members of the panel). As has been the custom, the staff of the Revenue Branch and the staff of Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) are currently seeking to resolve the differences on the values of the properties in dispute. Where an agreement cannot be reached the appeal will be heard by the DAP. In past years, City of Ottawa and PWGSC staff has been able to come to a satisfactory arrangement on all disputes.

We trust that this memo brings you up to date in this matter.

TL;DR - The Feds have to pay in lieu based on the value of the land, not the current use to which they are putting it.

Taken to an extreme, they could have to pay for the privilege of providing us with parkland.

[MalcolmTucker]

If the O-Train is built up, I wouldn't be surprised if it got its own maintenance centre, for everything except heavy overhauls. The dead head is just a tad long.

[Chris-R]

Originally Posted by RTWAP

Maybe we can pay for LRT by making the NCC pay full property taxes for the development potential of all the land they have.

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2012/...ments-in-lieu/



TL;DR - The Feds have to pay in lieu based on the value of the land, not the current use to which they are putting it.

Taken to an extreme, they could have to pay for the privilege of providing us with parkland.

We'd had to amend the Constitution in order to levy taxes on the Federal Government. As we saw in the article, the courts may choose to either highlight the discrepancy or order payments based on a fair assessment of the land in question. It's likely that it would have to be somewhat egregious for it to be worth it though.

[RTWAP]

Originally Posted by Chris-R

We'd had to amend the Constitution in order to levy taxes on the Federal Government. As we saw in the article, the courts may choose to either highlight the discrepancy or order payments based on a fair assessment of the land in question. It's likely that it would have to be somewhat egregious for it to be worth it though.

PILTS are equivalent to property taxes, but with a dispute resolution mechanism built in. The court is basically giving guidance to those dispute resolvers that you can't ignore the underlying development potential of a property just because it will never be developed. That's the property owners decision. If I own an entire city block parking lot downtown, the city assesses me based on what the land would be worth, not based on what I say I intend to use it for.

The NCC and the Feds own a LOT of land in Ottawa though. If they've been doing the same thing here that they did in Halifax, defining land as having nominal value because they have no intention offering it for commercial development then there could easily be a very large discrepancy between what they value the land at, and what it's value is from a property assessment point of view.

For example, the NCC owned Moffat Farm for years (east of Prince of Wales, a few hundred meters south of Meadowlands). I bet they paid minimal PILTS on it because it was 'greenspace' and not for development. And then they developed it and made a huge profit on what they originally paid when they expropriated it.

[Acajack]

Information recently posted on the STO website very subtly announces that the Rapibus will be a hub and spoke system and that express routes will be eliminated when Rapibus is put into service.

This is a quite a surprise to me because all of the plans and info about Rapibus so far indicated that the STO would adopt the same approach as OC Transpo and the Transitway, with express service in peak periods coexisting with the basic hub and spoke system that operates all day.

But this will not be the case apparently. Everyone in Gatineau is going to be using a hub and spoke system starting sometime next year.

The STO is billing this a a service that is "like a métro"...

[gjhall]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Information recently posted on the STO website very subtly announces that the Rapibus will be a hub and spoke system and that express routes will be eliminated when Rapibus is put into service.

This is a quite a surprise to me because all of the plans and info about Rapibus so far indicated that the STO would adopt the same approach as OC Transpo and the Transitway, with express service in peak periods coexisting with the basic hub and spoke system that operates all day.

But this will not be the case apparently. Everyone in Gatineau is going to be using a hub and spoke system starting sometime next year.

The STO is billing this a a service that is "like a métro"...

Good news for bus congestion on Rideau/Wellington.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by gjhall

Good news for bus congestion on Rideau/Wellington.

Indeed. I wonder if pressure from Ottawa and the NCC did not play a little bit into the decision.

[eternallyme]

The Ottawa LRT will be the hub-and-spoke opportunity. That is why it needs to be built to the west end as soon as possible once the first section is completed.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

The Ottawa LRT will be the hub-and-spoke opportunity. That is why it needs to be built to the west end as soon as possible once the first section is completed.

For sure; even if the Feds/Province don't contribute a fair amount of money, we nee to come up with new solutions to raise the proper capital. I'm thinking we could sell the air rights between Tuney's and Westboro stations.

Another possibility would be to extend the O-Train to South Keys, add a station at Walkley and then sell the the South-East Transitway lands between Walkley and South Keys (why have lrt and brt running parallele for 3 stations?).

[MalcolmTucker]

^ Those wouldn't be worth much. Air rights are only worth the value of comparably zoned and located land minus the infrastructure costs of building on the constrianed site.

In Manhattan over big areas like rail yards it can be profitable. In suburban Ottawa over small areas I wouldn't count on people even wanting to turn over $1 to the city for the privledge.

[agl]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Information recently posted on the STO website very subtly announces that the Rapibus will be a hub and spoke system and that express routes will be eliminated when Rapibus is put into service.

This is a quite a surprise to me because all of the plans and info about Rapibus so far indicated that the STO would adopt the same approach as OC Transpo and the Transitway, with express service in peak periods coexisting with the basic hub and spoke system that operates all day.

But this will not be the case apparently. Everyone in Gatineau is going to be using a hub and spoke system starting sometime next year.

The STO is billing this a a service that is "like a métro"...

Quite a bit of information available now in an FAQ section of a new Website for Rapibus: English - http://libreauquotidien.sto.ca/faq-en.php; French - http://libreauquotidien.sto.ca/faq.php

They are proposing a red line that takes you directly to downtown Ottawa and a blue line going directly to downtown Hull, with local buses running out of the Rapibus stations to serve neighbourhoods along the way. They mention UQO will be served by a Rapibus line, not sure if it will be the blue line after passing through downtown Hull or another line altogether.

Info seems to indicate this will affect bus service only in Gatineau, Buckingham, and Masson-Angers, so Aylmer service might continue as is, though I foresee the potential for a line along Tache/Aylmer Rd to Rivermead and one along Allumetieres to the new Park and Ride at Eardley at some point in the future, with or without a dedicated busway.

They state only 1 transfer required from local bus to rapibus to get to either downtown Hull or Ottawa. For those that don't work in either downtown, for their sake I hope the city puts in and/or maintains cross-town service with minimal transfers.

[J.OT13]

What happened to the Interprovincial transit report the NCC was supose to come out with a few months ago? All I heard was something about creating one transit commission for both cities, but no actual report ever surfaced (as far as I know).

As for the RapiBus, I'm glad they decided on a hub and spoke system.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by agl

Info seems to indicate this will affect bus service only in Gatineau, Buckingham, and Masson-Angers, so Aylmer service might continue as is, though I foresee the potential for a line along Tache/Aylmer Rd to Rivermead and one along Allumetieres to the new Park and Ride at Eardley at some point in the future, with or without a dedicated busway.

There are no express routes to Aylmer per se. Some of them already operate on a hub and spoke system by way of transfers (at Rivermead notably), while others go directly to the downtowns from residential areas of Aylmer.

But none of them have the express feature of going long stretches without stopping at bus stops along the way like the Gatineau sector routes do.

All of the Aylmer routes can and will stop at any corner along Alexandre-Taché in Hull, for example.

[McC]

Wow, I am amazed that they built a Transitway-style BRT, with those big heavy stations, dedicated expressway, and everything, that will be nowhere near capacity, and yet they're not going to run express buses on it? I don't know whether I'm impressed or aghast. It seems to me that until Ottawa hit capacity downtown, Express buses and routes like the 86 and 87 were the only advantage of the Transwitway system. Sure they cost more to operate, but the benefits of transferless trips to many more parts of the city are huge and obvious, and I think it's accepted wisdom that they are the reason for our high ridership rates. wow.

[Dado]

That's the BRT lobby for you. They dangled the "flexibility" of BRT and the possibility of running express buses to get a busway built in a rail corridor - where it is inherently cheaper to build additional tracks rather than blow the place to bits to build a busway - and then once the thing is built they decide they're going to run it as hub-and-spoke anyway.

It sure is too bad that Gatineau wasn't planning its Rapibus at the same time that Ottawa was planning the N-S LRT... oh, wait, they were. Well at least it's not like they both used the same consultants... oh, wait, they were.

And naturally, I don't think the expresses actually do account for our high ridership. Plenty of express buses are only partially full until they go through the big suburban P&R lots, which ironically results in a better and more even utilization of the express buses.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

For sure; even if the Feds/Province don't contribute a fair amount of money, we nee to come up with new solutions to raise the proper capital. I'm thinking we could sell the air rights between Tuney's and Westboro stations.

That RoW is just 100' wide, so basically the best you can hope for is a long row of townhouses or maybe "village homes" (essentially two rows of townhouses back-to-back), though I suppose a long mixed-use development with apartments above some kind of retail is possible.

Except at the stations, you're just not going to get any substantial development.

Another possibility would be to extend the O-Train to South Keys, add a station at Walkley and then sell the the South-East Transitway lands between Walkley and South Keys (why have lrt and brt running parallele for 3 stations?).

The most likely thing to happen in that circumstance is that the Southeast would be given over to a second carriageway for the Airport Parkway, at least between the two rail crossings (VIA @ Confed Heights, CN @ Greenboro).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by McC

Wow, I am amazed that they built a Transitway-style BRT, with those big heavy stations, dedicated expressway, and everything, that will be nowhere near capacity, and yet they're not going to run express buses on it? I don't know whether I'm impressed or aghast. It seems to me that until Ottawa hit capacity downtown, Express buses and routes like the 86 and 87 were the only advantage of the Transwitway system. Sure they cost more to operate, but the benefits of transferless trips to many more parts of the city are huge and obvious, and I think it's accepted wisdom that they are the reason for our high ridership rates. wow.

Yes, it does appear to be a huge gamble. The transfers onto the main Rapibus lines are going to have to be seamless in rush hour. The STO has alluded to 4-minute headways in peak periods.

As for the local routes, as a long-time user and observer of them passing me by as well, express runs at the moment are generally about 20 minutes apart on each line in this part of Gatineau. So I expect the local feeder routes in the peak period will have to run on similar headways if they want to keep people happy. Not sure what all of that means operationally.

Maybe it will be easier and less onerous to run a local route through a small area of Gatineau with little traffic than to send a bus from the same area all the way into Ottawa in rush hour traffic, and then back again.

[McC]

Originally Posted by Dado

:
And naturally, I don't think the expresses actually do account for our high ridership. Plenty of express buses are only partially full until they go through the big suburban P&R lots, which ironically results in a better and more even utilization of the express buses.

I didn't mean to suggest that the express routes account for Ottawa's ridership, but that the riders that they (and other long routes that feed into the Transitway like the 86 and 87) add at the margins put Ottawa's ridership rates over the top (i.e. the people on those routes who might not use the system otherwise push our rates from "good" to "relatively high" for a purely bus-based system). The buses don't have to be full at the extremities for this hypothesis to be true, but I don't know if the numbers actually support it.

Originally Posted by Dado

:
That RoW is just 100' wide, so basically the best you can hope for is a long row of townhouses or maybe "village homes" (essentially two rows of townhouses back-to-back), though I suppose a long mixed-use development with apartments above some kind of retail is possible.

Except at the stations, you're just not going to get any substantial development.

I would imagine the vibrations in such townhouses would be intolerable, no? especially after 10-20 years. My way would be to build the "Albert Street extension" over top of the Transitway cut, reduce Scott down to a one-way lane to access the addresses right on it, and offer up the existing Scott St ROW for development. Not sure if there's enough room there, either. That RMOC water infrastructure under the MUP kinda makes it difficult to do much of anything in that corridor. Really the only spots where development over the cut makes sense is adding to the strip of (near)vacant land all along the south end of Tunney's Pasture, and similarly in redeveloping the government lands north of Westboro Station (as well as Merkley / Bayview Yards, where it's not in a cut, but could be).

[lrt's friend]

Another possibility would be to extend the O-Train to South Keys, add a station at Walkley and then sell the the South-East Transitway lands between Walkley and South Keys (why have lrt and brt running parallele for 3 stations?).

Over my dead body you will. South Keys to Hurdman has become a critical transit link between the south and east. The majority of ridership on the southeast Transitway is originating at South Keys. And there are a lot of drop offs at Billings Bridge and Hurdman. The O-Train serves neither of those locations.

[lrt's friend]

And naturally, I don't think the expresses actually do account for our high ridership. Plenty of express buses are only partially full until they go through the big suburban P&R lots, which ironically results in a better and more even utilization of the express buses.

I think you should understand why expresses started? It was because the then OTC wanted to operate the hub and spoke model in Beacon Hill and the community association said no because the service would be so slow. They decided to operate a private bus service running directly downtown via the Queensway. OTC wanted to use Montreal Road and they probably also wanted a double fare. Ridership took off using the private service and only when OC Transpo agreed to provide a similar service did the private service end. When the success of this private operation became apparent, express service became the model for the rest of the city and many suburban neighbourhoods experienced significant ridership increases as a result including my own. Without express service, ridership in most suburbs would have dropped like a stone in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Express bus service is what really drove the building of the Transitways. Some look at that with regret. I know, I remember it but Ottawa did not have the tax base to build LRT in the 80s. Calgary and Edmonton only could do it because of the oil boom in the late 70s.

I have very mixed feelings about Park n Rides. In the grand scheme of things they don't deliver that much ridership for the space they occupy. If you have 200 spaces, you might get 300 riders if you are lucky. And those locations are occupying prime development locations at transit stations. They also drain ridership from local suburban routes making them less economically viable.

[lrt's friend]

The most likely thing to happen in that circumstance is that the Southeast would be given over to a second carriageway for the Airport Parkway, at least between the two rail crossings (VIA @ Confed Heights, CN @ Greenboro).

Wow! We hate busways so much that we would actually turn them into an expressway for private vehicles.