Quote:
Originally Posted by acottawa
The 2008 Transportation Master Plan identified the trillium line conversion to LRT as a phase 3 project. The 2013 TMP replaced that with continuing to use DMUs as a mostly single track and put the emphasis on Orleans.
I tend to think most of the reasoning is political - Orleans is a swing riding while Ottawa South and Nepean Carleton are not.
Also, I don't think there is consensus on its long term future - should it be a branch of the confederation line, permantly a DMU, or the trunk of a regional rail system (currently being proposed) and that lack of consensus discourages big investments.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PHrenetic
Good Day to you, and welcome !
It basically boils down to 3 different factors, and how they are balanced by those who must be obeyed :
The cost .vs. passenger traffic. The cost has risen enormously since the old 2004-6 Chiarelli plan (which had one of two different basic flaws (not going downtown .vs. getting ties up in downtown (surface) .vs. downtown tunnelling, depending on your point of view), and the passenger load forecast (problematic to analyse) is just too low in the short term (future demand would have been there, but that was to have been in the future ! ) .
Conflicting priorities .vs. cost - how much to invest (fiscal capital and political capital) in the line before political blowback from 'neglected' destinations elsewhere in the city outskirts.
Nickel-and-diming the product - a matter of -- oh, we can achieve that (frequency/load) without spending that much (full doubling) -- resulting in a fudging of the cost factors and the load factors to tell us that the same result of capacity and frequency can be achieved with a lesser investment - resulting in the current disaster of service.
And as for commonality of equipment - yup, a reasonable assumption until the economics kick in - in that the cost savings on the common equipment alone are simply insufficient to justify the rest of the necessary investment.
Plus, though you may not be aware, the previous history of the line - in that it was created in the first place as a pilot project ( a highly successful one) in the face of utter and outright opposition (war) by BRT and bus-first-and-only lobby proponents who won the first war (the transitway) by use of mis-representation and mis-statement of what the Tway would consist of, cost, and how it would operate.
That's a capsule of the discussion. And -oh, my, have I ever stirred up a hornet's nest now.
All this has been debated in the past in several of these threads of this forum; and I recommend you browse the backlist.
EnJoy!
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Personally, when I lived in Ottawa and attended the transit consultations, I found the old LRT plan to be bonkers. And not just because I lived in Vanier/Gloucester. It made no sense to me why they were proposing a North-South line when they were saying most of their ridership was East-West. And they were saying this was going to relieve the bus traffic in the core?
I'm happy they came to their senses.
More broadly, I agree with some of the complaints here about taking LRT outside of the greenbelt. And what's strange here is how unbalanced the plan is. They go to Moodie in the West (and that's justifiable with the new DND campus at Nortel). But all the way to Trim in the East? Why? At least going to the airport in the South makes sense.
Anyway, as somebody due to move back in a year and a half, it's just super-exciting to see major Ottawa transit development. I am impressed to see Ottawa actually embracing urbanism at such a rapid pace.
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