Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Dado]

As I wrote in the text you quoted, the block lengths are more than enough for 4-car trains. On the basis of length, 5-car trains would be theoretically possible.

Laurier to Waller would be a bit of a challenge because a compromise would be required. It's just long enough to fit a 4-car train - but doing so would necessitate a fairly sharp turn of about 50 m radius. Calgary has a few such turns, but they're hardly desirable. To get a better radius like 100 m (going through that triangular parking lot) would mean no longer being able to store a train in the block, thus requiring the two sets of lights to be synchronized (or some other scheme, like lowering Waller as Nicholas already is). I would put Laurier Station south rather than north of Laurier but I think it would be fair to say that introducing 4-car trains to downtown would require a rethinking of how traffic is managed in that area generally, which might not be a bad thing.

With headways, I wouldn't want to try for anything below 2.5 minutes until we were pretty good at it. That's 150 seconds so the traffic signal cycles would need to be sped up from 55 to 50 seconds. Going down to 2 minutes would probably cause them to be bumped up to 60 seconds. 2:15 is 135 seconds, or 3X45 seconds, which is probably pushing it. 1:40 is 100 seconds (36 trains per hour) so you're back at 50 second cycles. I have seen two CTrains on 7th separated by 75 seconds (I was riding a train from the south and a train from the NE was at the east junction just as we arrived and it was 75 seconds from then until the train I was on entered the avenue) but I think dealing with crossings at the junctions limits Calgary to 100 seconds in terms of scheduling. It kind of depends though on what you're thinking: will there still be a lane of traffic operating on Albert? It sort of seems like it since you mention Slater being configured for two-way traffic but you also mention only using the "northernmost" lanes on Albert. What was your idea there? Somehow you have to provide platform access to both directions. One way is to use the two northernmost lanes for LRT and then the next lane to the south for platforms and the final lane for one-way traffic (which deals with access on the south side) but that leaves loading without much of an option. Another would be to use the same three lanes but make the middle one the platform with the final lane for loading, but that means that the eastbound LRT lane would have to be shared.

If the street is completely or nearly completely closed to traffic one can probably get away with much greater fiddling with traffic signal timings since pedestrians can (and will) cross during the extended periods when no trains are present and because the width of the street that is to be crossed is less. But dealing with access (property and loading) becomes a whole lot more complicated once the street is completely shut to all other traffic in the sense that alternative accesses and loading areas have to be provided elsewhere. Turning Slater into a two-way road would probably also result in loading zones/parking being banned during peak periods and who knows what would happen to the dedicated left-turn lanes (on the plus side though, it might finally cause the City to sort out the street naming mess on LeBreton Flats - make it simple: Scott west of Booth, Slater east of Booth).

One of the really surprising things about the N-S LRT project was that every block downtown was slated to have a transit platform of one sort or another. Not only were trains and buses going to be mixing it up together, but the drastic reduction in loading/parking space would have caused other problems as well. I just don't get the impression it was all that well thought-out.