The future of Ottawa's Transit

[lrt's friend]

The Carling Avenue LRT route may end up costing more, but are some of the suburban Transitway projects really that beneficial in the short or medium term? Some of that money could fund Carling LRT.

The Carling route also creates a second rapid transit route to the west. Won't that draw new ridership and make Carlingwood, the Civic, the Royal Ottawa, and the offices around Carling and Preston/Booth more accessible? Is it really 100% necessary to take almost all the buses out of downtown in phase 1? It would be nice but is it necessary?

I keep hearing that we need to funnel almost all our transit traffic into the tunnel to make the best use of our investment. That all sounds nice, but shouldn't our first consideration be moving more people faster? If we end up with 2 routes through downtown and across town and some of the traffic is taken off of Albert and Slater, and overall we are moving more passengers, have we not gone a long way in achieving our goals?

The Western Transitway could be converted later. The whole point is to expand our rapid transit network sooner than later, so we will end up with a clear spike in ridership.


We should at least study the Carling option, so we can properly assess its costs and benefits. We will then know once and for all, whether it should be dismissed or not.