Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

First, how can we focus transit only on the urban area? All home owners in urban transit area pay transit tax. Can we assess a tax and deliver little or no service? Also, the urban area now amounts to the minority of Ottawans. It seems to me that this just promotes the death spiral.

Our next generation of transit riders are our student population particularly those in post-secondary institutions. Students have flexible hours, therefore, reducing or eliminating service in off-peak hours particularly in the evening just shoots ourselves in our own foot. If we don't serve the student population, how can a compulsory student pass continue? If the majority of students can no longer use transit daily even when classes end at 10 pm, we have eliminated another transit market.

If we run expensive trains to the suburbs and offer poor connecting bus service, we are also shooting ourselves in the foot. Just like in many American cities, rail ridership will plummet because we have made the last mile problem much worse.

The solution, but hardly easily implemented under the current circumstances, is to spend infrastructure money only on projects that actually speed up service. This makes transit more efficient and makes it more attractive to increase ridership. The Confed Line has failed to accomplish this so far.

Don't see the reason to re litigate the past. My ideas for suburban express would make trips faster. As would another OPs idea to straighten routes.

Cutting costs is never going to make things better but we can cut in ways that limit the damage is my claim.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Low hanging fruit for sure makes sense. There is a politically palatable solution too if we prioritize suburban rush hour express routes and main grid routes. Suburbanites don't care about service that doesn't get them to work. Express routes especially to areas not covered by LRT would make sense. Portage, RCMP are two that come to mind Hospitals possibly. If Blair had an express bus to each of those for example. Slash and burn the milk runs and non peak service.

If we are just talking about financial viability, express routes aren't great as they rarely pay for themselves.

[Takingoff]

Originally Posted by phil235

If we are just talking about financial viability, express routes aren't great as they rarely pay for themselves.

Not referring to traditional Ottawa peak hour express runs (with their deadhead returns). Moreso limited stop point to point connectors. Why are we shipping people from Barrhaven to Kanata via baseline when they could go to Kanata directly by rapid bus. Most runs aren't money makers, but these connector buses (such as the old 95) could make a difference to service levels in the suburbs at little additional cost.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

First, how can we focus transit only on the urban area? All home owners in urban transit area pay transit tax. Can we assess a tax and deliver little or no service? Also, the urban area now amounts to the minority of Ottawans. It seems to me that this just promotes the death spiral.

The question that is being posed is how we stop ridership from sliding and stabilize the system. The reality is that urban residents take the bus in far greater numbers than suburbanites and at all hours of the day, not just commute times. They are transit’s core market, and the urban area is much cheaper to serve than the suburbs. Whatever your ideal for some future date, that is where you have to start if you want to increase ridership. There is no world where residents of suburban Ottawa start taking most of their trips by transit in the near term.

You can serve the suburbs better and still increase ridership by providing a frequent service grid on arterials. There is tonnes of evidence that infrequent buses winding through streets of single family homes do not increase ridership. There is no reason to expect something different by continuing to do the same thing.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by phil235

If we are just talking about financial viability, express routes aren't great as they rarely pay for themselves.

No transit service pays for itself. My point is I agree urban riders form the backbone so remove the winding busses in the core. (The 19 is the worst for this it actually goes backwards at one point. Cut Suburban busses but replace with some express busses so politically there is a win for them to with relatively little cost. It's 6 busses a day from from maybe 10 neighbourhoods improving service while we gut their non peak service to save costs and make it all more palatable.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by phil235

The question that is being posed is how we stop ridership from sliding and stabilize the system. The reality is that urban residents take the bus in far greater numbers than suburbanites and at all hours of the day, not just commute times. They are transit’s core market, and the urban area is much cheaper to serve than the suburbs. Whatever your ideal for some future date, that is where you have to start if you want to increase ridership. There is no world where residents of suburban Ottawa start taking most of their trips by transit in the near term.

You can serve the suburbs better and still increase ridership by providing a frequent service grid on arterials. There is tonnes of evidence that infrequent buses winding through streets of single family homes do not increase ridership. There is no reason to expect something different by continuing to do the same thing.

You do that in my neighbourhood and you lose 80-90% of the ridership. Likewise in Greenboro/Hunt Club. The arterials are poorly located in relation to where people live. It is more complicated than you suggest.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You do that in my neighbourhood and you lose 80-90% of the ridership. Likewise in Greenboro/Hunt Club. The arterials are poorly located in relation to where people live. It is more complicated than you suggest.

I’m not sure that is the case. There is all sorts of evidence to show that people will walk further to more frequent and direct transit. What are you basing your 80-90% figure on?

And even if that’s the case, you’re not really proposing a solution. The system is hemorrhaging riders and money and you seem to be suggesting that we put more money into something like the status quo. Do you really think that will cause a big shift to transit in the suburbs in the short term? Any examples of that happening in the real world?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by phil235

I’m not sure that is the case. There is all sorts of evidence to show that people will walk further to more frequent and direct transit. What are you basing your 80-90% figure on?

And even if that’s the case, you’re not really proposing a solution. The system is hemorrhaging riders and money and you seem to be suggesting that we put more money into something like the status quo. Do you really think that will cause a big shift to transit in the suburbs in the short term? Any examples of that happening in the real world?

The geography of the neighbourhood and the location of the arterial that bypasses most of the population and with limited pedestrian accesses. And we know, that moving transit to the arterial, will result in much longer walks for the exact same level of service. I don't buy the argument that better frequency will be offered. It would be a cost saving measure as previous optimization processes have resulted in. We also know that transit use begins to fall steeply for walks over 500m.

I don't have magic solutions, but mishandling a redesign could easily make things worse.

A lot of suburbs also were designed with a transit plan to allow pedestrian accesses. Once you move transit to the arterial, pedestrian accesses may be less than ideal. For example, moving Greenboro/Hunt Club bus service to Hunt Club Road instead of using the current interior streets. How would this ever be an improvement?

In Findlay Creek, if you ran transit service only down the arterial (Bank Street), you would get close to zero ridership. Most of the neighbourhood has an east-west orientation.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You do that in my neighbourhood and you lose 80-90% of the ridership. Likewise in Greenboro/Hunt Club. The arterials are poorly located in relation to where people live. It is more complicated than you suggest.

I'm calling BS. People living in leafy suburbs take the bus mostly because they have to. A walk of 500 meters isn't going to make a car and parking spot appear out of thin air. If you mean 90% of the riders taking the bus despite having a spare car and free parking spot downtown I'd still doubt that but that's a tiny share of bus riders.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You do that in my neighbourhood and you lose 80-90% of the ridership. Likewise in Greenboro/Hunt Club. The arterials are poorly located in relation to where people live. It is more complicated than you suggest.

Oh no. 80% of the 10 people who take transit? What a loss!

What you describe is a direct result of the lack of density. And if cuts have to be made, it's easier to serve dense areas and corridors than neighbourhoods and areas where you'll be lucky to get 1 rider per stop every half hour.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Oh no. 80% of the 10 people who take transit? What a loss!

What you describe is a direct result of the lack of density. And if cuts have to be made, it's easier to serve dense areas and corridors than neighbourhoods and areas where you'll be lucky to get 1 rider per stop every half hour.

Is that the best you can come up with. My neighbourhood has a lot of mixed residential types. It has a lot of modest income housing, town homes, and high rises. But if we don't want to serve those who live in modest income housing, so be it.

[zzptichka]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Is that the best you can come up with. My neighbourhood has a lot of mixed residential types. It has a lot of modest income housing, town homes, and high rises. But if we don't want to serve those who live in modest income housing, so be it.

And I bet 90% of that "low income housing, town homes, and high rises" is located within a 10-min walk from an arterial.

[DogsWithJobs]

I have to say I agree. More frequent, more direct routes that are a short walk away would be better than the slow, infrequent routes with a stop 1 minute from my house.

I have already abandoned the local routes around me because they are too unreliable. They have reached the point that I no longer even consider them an option, they may as well not exist. Either I walk 20 minutes to the train as I know once I get there the wait will only be 5 minutes tops, or I don't use transit. I'm not going to wait 30 minutes for a bus that may not even arrive.

If they cut the local routes and ran frequent service on the main roads that would be a dramatic improvement in service. When your system is dying, you need to start prioritizing what will get actual users. You can worry about all the edge case users when the system isn't hemorrhaging riders.

[huntclub]

I have to disagree completely, If I had to walk to a main road to catch a bus rather than the one at the end of my street I would feel like taking the bus less.

[Truenorth00]

A bus every 30 mins is practically useless. If it's a choice between 30 min residential road service and 10 min arterial service, the latter will always win out. It's still faster to walk 10 mins and get a bus.

And let's face it, when it's 30 min residential road service, people who can drive will already be doing that. Those who take the best will do so if the stop is on front of their house or a 10 min walk away.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by huntclub

I have to disagree completely, If I had to walk to a main road to catch a bus rather than the one at the end of my street I would feel like taking the bus less.

The service isn't aimed at you. Very likely you'd drive if the service on your street was reduced to half hourly. If a 10 min walk stops you from taking transit, so would a 20-30 min wait for a bus.

[Athens]

Council needs to get their head out their ass and realize the policy of “maximum 2% property tax increases annually” is literally choking the city. These effectively result in a net reduction in per capita tax, leading to funding shortfalls for critical services. That’s not to mention the inequity of tax paid vs services supplied to urban vs suburban residents. Rural residents pay much less in tax for less service, so why aren’t suburbanites paying more?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by huntclub

I have to disagree completely, If I had to walk to a main road to catch a bus rather than the one at the end of my street I would feel like taking the bus less.

So there is a car sitting in your driveway you don't use because the bus comes right to your street? If true you are rare indeed.

Originally Posted by Athens

Council needs to get their head out their ass and realize the policy of “maximum 2% property tax increases annually” is literally choking the city. These effectively result in a net reduction in per capita tax, leading to funding shortfalls for critical services. That’s not to mention the inequity of tax paid vs services supplied to urban vs suburban residents. Rural residents pay much less in tax for less service, so why aren’t suburbanites paying more?

There is no appetite for paying more property taxes to fix these problems. We have consistently demonstrated that in municipal elections where the further right candidate wins despite the city being politically very liberal in general.

Originally Posted by DogsWithJobs

I have to say I agree. More frequent, more direct routes that are a short walk away would be better than the slow, infrequent routes with a stop 1 minute from my house.

I have already abandoned the local routes around me because they are too unreliable. They have reached the point that I no longer even consider them an option, they may as well not exist. Either I walk 20 minutes to the train as I know once I get there the wait will only be 5 minutes tops, or I don't use transit. I'm not going to wait 30 minutes for a bus that may not even arrive.

If they cut the local routes and ran frequent service on the main roads that would be a dramatic improvement in service. When your system is dying, you need to start prioritizing what will get actual users. You can worry about all the edge case users when the system isn't hemorrhaging riders.

Exactly and we can't do it all as there is no property tax increase or other level of government riding to the rescue.

[huntclub]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

So there is a car sitting in your driveway you don't use because the bus comes right to your street? If true you are rare indeed.



There is no appetite for paying more property taxes to fix these problems. We have consistently demonstrated that in municipal elections where the further right candidate wins despite the city being politically very liberal in general.



Exactly and we can't do it all as there is no property tax increase or other level of government riding to the rescue.

Yes as someone with anxiety who finds driving downtown or in busy congested areas very stressful I take the bus everytime I go downtown or that direction. Which is quite often.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

A bus every 30 mins is practically useless. If it's a choice between 30 min residential road service and 10 min arterial service, the latter will always win out. It's still faster to walk 10 mins and get a bus.

And let's face it, when it's 30 min residential road service, people who can drive will already be doing that. Those who take the best will do so if the stop is on front of their house or a 10 min walk away.

Let's be realistic. The vast majority of the city is only served by 30 minute buses if we are lucky.

The city has already lost a sizeable portion of its ridership partly because of previous service cuts, both before and after Covid. This has led us to deteriorating, unrealiable and slow service. The remaining service is losing huge amounts of money and plans to cut service yet again. This cannot come with a service improvement from 30 minutes to 10 minutes no matter how straight the routes are. That is simply not happening, at least for the vast majority of the city. The city can't even run Line 2 at a 10 minute frequenc