The surface option is arguably more future-proofed as well. Running LRT on Wellington keeps the door open to extending the line back to Gatineau across the soon-to-be-rebuilt Alexandra Bridge. According to the STO, the tunnel option doesn't easily allow for future expansion.
J.OT13 put it well in the Ott-Gat subforum:
Quote:
Originally Posted by J.OT13
My concern, with the tunnel, is capacity. I know this seems counter-intuitive.
The system will be at street-level for most of its route, so no matter if it's street level or underground downtown will have no impact on capacity.
However, say we have 50 meter platforms running 48 meter Spirits every 2 minutes. Capacity would be 9000 per hour per direction. The problem is, there is just one direction. All traffic originating from Gatineau is coming through the tunnel and ending at Parliament before the train turns back with a handful of Ottawa passengers heading to Hull.
Should we choose the Wellington option, if/when a loop is built, full trains from Gatineau would be coming from both directions, still 9000 phpd, but now with two directions, so the capacity of the line is now up to 18,000 total. This future-proofs the downtown portion to allow for multiple Gatineau lines coming in.
It's like cutting off one of the branches of the Yonge-University Line in Toronto. Yonge terminates at Union and the University branch is never built. Capacity is halved.
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Moreover, I think that we armchair transit planners have a tendency to forget that a transit system is more than just a collection of infrastructure speed and capacity metrics. They are also works of urban design, for better or worse. A surface line is an opportunity to massively improve the look and feel of the Parliamentary precinct. Currently, Parliament fronts a dull and noisy five-lane road. We have better streets in front of McDonald drive-thru's than we do for one of our most important national institutions. This is an opportunity to completely re-evaluate that.
Barcelona also has a Wellington Street which mirrors many of the elements in the STO's surface option: wide sidewalks, limited vehicular traffic, and enough soil volume to allow for mature trees. If we could get our Wellington Street to look this good, it would massively improve the quality of our downtown and the image of the entire Parliamentary precinct.
Calle Wellington, Barcelona
sftrajan
I'm not saying that urban design matters and infrastructure metrics don't. But I'd argue that in many cases, it matters a whole lot. In the case of Wellington, the infrastructure advantage of a tunnel is debatable (the tunnel offers better reliability, but worse walk times and capacity future-proofing) and the urban design and cost advantages of a surface option are tremendous. To me, that's a pretty compelling case for a surface option.
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