OC Transpo

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

In hindsight a bus tunnel with Electric busses would have been an ideal solution.

The bus transfer issue was aparent even before the system opened which is why I think they launched phase 2 so urgently. It isn't clear that solves the whole problem though. Bus to line 2 then transfer to line 1 and sometimes even another transfer after that is looking like at total disaster. I think they will have to keep some of the south end direct to downtown busses.

Been saying this for years.

[FactaNV]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

It has been a transit disaster. Ridership is so far down with so many people turned off, that we are now gutting the transit network. The biggest remaining problem is the go slow orders that have trains running at bicycle speed over a critical section just east of downtown. I don't have much confidence that this will be resolved for years, if ever. I know that the downtown bus jam needed to be resolved, but once outside of downtown, buses ran much faster, than the rail line east of downtown. The slow speed is very noticeable and affects connections to local buses.

So an actual death spiral, not just National Post hyperbole. No bueno. In your local opinions, what can be done and should be done to alleviate and rectify the issue?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

In hindsight a bus tunnel with Electric busses would have been an ideal solution.

The bus transfer issue was aparent even before the system opened which is why I think they launched phase 2 so urgently. It isn't clear that solves the whole problem though. Bus to line 2 then transfer to line 1 and sometimes even another transfer after that is looking like at total disaster. I think they will have to keep some of the south end direct to downtown busses.

Direct buses to the south end will never happen. A number bus routes in the south end are about to be made much worse with added transfers, reduced frequency, or even more indirect routing.

A bus tunnel would have worked if we continued to allow overflow buses to run on Albert and Slater, but the subway concept was intoxicating even at several billion. Electric buses was not a viable alternative when the tunnel was being planned. Electric buses would have been faster if we managed congestion especially with the Hurdman rail problem.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by FactaNV

So an actual death spiral, not just National Post hyperbole. No bueno. In your local opinions, what can be done and should be done to alleviate and rectify the issue?

The track should be reconfigured to eliminate the many tight turning radii that are the cause of the problem. This will undoubtedly be very expensive and take years to correct. But this is a transit corridor that should be designed to last a century, so there's no better time to do it than now. Ridership and general public confidence in the system are at a low point, so fixing this now would have the least additional impact. Take the east end of the existing system offline and get the job done. Rip up and re-lay track. Move Hurdman Station if necessary. In the meantime, the east, south and west extensions will come online, providing brand new service and hopefully start to rebuild confidence in the system. Yes, busses would have to fill the gap from St. Laurent Station to Rideau Station, but this is a well practiced measure. Then finally, one day in the future, the entire system will run properly, and the track geometry will cease to cause undue wear on the train wheels.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

In hindsight a bus tunnel with Electric busses would have been an ideal solution.

The bus transfer issue was aparent even before the system opened which is why I think they launched phase 2 so urgently. It isn't clear that solves the whole problem though. Bus to line 2 then transfer to line 1 and sometimes even another transfer after that is looking like at total disaster. I think they will have to keep some of the south end direct to downtown busses.

B – I – N – G – O; B – I – N – G – O; and ‘Bingo’ was his name . . .

Yup. The most economical solution could have also been the best solution.

A bus tunnel would have added huge capacity for increased bus movement through the core – which was the main bottle-neck of the Transitway system. Realize that not ALL buses needed to be moved into the tunnel – which shows how silly the argument was when people said that a tunnel was just moving the bus-jam underground.

“But what about the cost?” “Buses are much more expensive to run than trains.”

Probably true, IF the trains have a lot of passengers onboard. A near empty train is very expensive to run. And it can’t be down-sized as easily as a string of buses can be. How much did the transit budget drop because the Confederation Line began running – even before CoViD-19?

But that is all ‘Water Under the Bridge’ – or ‘Public Money Spent’. It can’t be retrieved. There is no going back.

I think that OC Transpo needs to fundamentally change its thinking, and divide up the city into regions. Within each region, there would be excellent ‘LOCAL’ bus service. Between regions, the trains would be used.

For example, people in Kanata hardly use the bus for travel within Kanata. I believe this is because intra-Kanata bus service SUCKS. The same holds for Orleans and Barrhaven. Try to get from the east side of Barrhaven to the Walter Baker Centre on one bus. The central core would also be a ‘Local’ region, with ‘Local’ bus service that is not geared to commuters.

Create many bus routes that efficiently transport people to places within their own community. Notice that I said “many” bus routes. DO NOT create one or two long, winding, routes that ‘do everything’. Definitely include ‘rapid’ routes that take the most direct path from place to place – especially during peak periods (which may vary for destinations). It should be quick, and easy for a person living in Bridlewood to get to their job in Kanata-North.

Make these ‘Local’ services cheap, and run them on frequent e-buses. (Smaller buses would be preferable, since that forces higher frequency.)

Yes, such local service is expensive, but I believe that people are willing to pay higher transit taxes if they feel that they are getting a major benefit. It is when taxpayers see big, empty, buses meandering through their neighbourhood every hour, not providing any useful service to them, that they complain about the waste of tax money on transit.

Use the trains for moving people between regions, and charge more for that service.

(Also, build the Baseline BRT as an LRT, with its own median lanes, so that there can be central median platforms – including one in the middle of the Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge, with elevators and a catwalk connecting the two bridge’s stairs under the decks.)

[J.OT13]

Electric buses weren't really a thing in 2008 during the planning phases. A bus tunnel would have been twice the cost for a moderate capacity increase.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

B – I – N – G – O; B – I – N – G – O; and ‘Bingo’ was his name . . .

Yup. The most economical solution could have also been the best solution.

A bus tunnel would have added huge capacity for increased bus movement through the core – which was the main bottle-neck of the Transitway system. Realize that not ALL buses needed to be moved into the tunnel – which shows how silly the argument was when people said that a tunnel was just moving the bus-jam underground.

“But what about the cost?” “Buses are much more expensive to run than trains.”

Probably true, IF the trains have a lot of passengers onboard. A near empty train is very expensive to run. And it can’t be down-sized as easily as a string of buses can be. How much did the transit budget drop because the Confederation Line began running – even before CoViD-19?

But that is all ‘Water Under the Bridge’ – or ‘Public Money Spent’. It can’t be retrieved. There is no going back.

I think that OC Transpo needs to fundamentally change its thinking, and divide up the city into regions. Within each region, there would be excellent ‘LOCAL’ bus service. Between regions, the trains would be used.

For example, people in Kanata hardly use the bus for travel within Kanata. I believe this is because intra-Kanata bus service SUCKS. The same holds for Orleans and Barrhaven. Try to get from the east side of Barrhaven to the Walter Baker Centre on one bus. The central core would also be a ‘Local’ region, with ‘Local’ bus service that is not geared to commuters.

Create many bus routes that efficiently transport people to places within their own community. Notice that I said “many” bus routes. DO NOT create one or two long, winding, routes that ‘do everything’. Definitely include ‘rapid’ routes that take the most direct path from place to place – especially during peak periods (which may vary for destinations). It should be quick, and easy for a person living in Bridlewood to get to their job in Kanata-North.

Make these ‘Local’ services cheap, and run them on frequent e-buses. (Smaller buses would be preferable, since that forces higher frequency.)

Yes, such local service is expensive, but I believe that people are willing to pay higher transit taxes if they feel that they are getting a major benefit. It is when taxpayers see big, empty, buses meandering through their neighbourhood every hour, not providing any useful service to them, that they complain about the waste of tax money on transit.

Use the trains for moving people between regions, and charge more for that service.

(Also, build the Baseline BRT as an LRT, with its own median lanes, so that there can be central median platforms – including one in the middle of the Heron Road Workers Memorial Bridge, with elevators and a catwalk connecting the two bridge’s stairs under the decks.)

Agree we need to have a water under the bridge attitude but let's be realistic moving forwad.

If we run an e bus every five minutes from multiple locations in Kanata how many people you think are going to take one to Costco etc? There is no evidence this kind of demand exists. What suburb in North America has such a bus service? A few in Los Angeles maybe heavily subsidized and for use by their hired help and teenagers. We need to fix the core of our system which is to get people to work before we try to make our city some European paradise despite half the density and half the gas costs they have.

[lrt's friend]

I was highly critical of the Transitway conversion because it required substantial conversion at enormous cost to maintain an already existing transit market with no additional speed benefits other than fixing the downtown problem. As we are now seeing, rail is not really moving people to their destination faster, often much slower if coming from neighbourhoods. At one point, after getting much ridicule, I shared that a bus tunnel would have been more effective with only the downtown tunnel needed to resolve the bus jam.
I have always favoured rail on new corridors to drive new ridership, whether under Bank, Rideau, to South Orleans growth area, or Baseline. Once rail was also chosen in the tunnel, I was also upset when they cancelled the link at Bayview so the Line 2 trains could share the tunnel, allowing more seamless travel to the south including the airport and to share the same rail technology on Line 1 and 2. With Line 2 closed for over 4 years, conversion to Line 1 standards was doable. What we end up with is too many double transfer requirements for popular trips. We are spending a fortune to deliver worse service to too many people. It is unforgivable bad planning that was predictable. We could have had both great buses and rail that would have made the public proud, but we made planning errors and cut corners to appease people who really did not understand what was needed to make transit better.

Regarding Hurdman, if the ideal track geometry and station location do not require demolition of the current station until the relocation is completed, the length of closure might be minimized, just long enough to connect the new track and station to the existing Line 1.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Regarding Hurdman, if the ideal track geometry and station location do not require demolition of the current station until the relocation is completed, the length of closure might be minimized, just long enough to connect the new track and station to the existing Line 1.

Even if we weren't dealing with the absolute political suicide of ripping up 5 year old track and Stations I don't see any system spending that amount of money ($100 million+) to straighten out for what a 2 minute time savings?

Phase 2 is mgiht be the last capital expenditure for this system for a generation. We should figure out how to make the best of what we have increase the revenues as much as we can and see where we are in 5 to 10 years when maybe we have transit friendly federal government again.

[Ottawaspotlight]

our issue in this city is that we're too used to thinking small, so when we try to do anything other than "small town mindset" things we fail miserably.

the reality of things is that our city is living 50-60 years behind the times of transportation infrastructure.

When the BRT was don in the 60's it should've been the start of our LRT system and we should now be graduating to a full subway system rather than LRT.

But that's besides the point, because for us and our city's mindset an LRT is still too big of a thing and there are too many people involved in these projects that don't have the right understand and mindset which creates barriers, issues and confusion which gives us the result that we have now.

even in this thread with some people saying that we should've done a bus tunnel, how is that a solution for the future of our growing city? it might be fine for a limited period of time for the present time but then what?

let's start pulling together for the future of our city and change our mindset at every step so that we can stop having small town mentality syndrome on big infrastructure projects.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Ottawaspotlight

When the BRT was don in the 60's it should've been the start of our LRT system and we should now be graduating to a full subway system rather than LRT.

.

The BRT (Transitway) was actually done in the 1980s.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Even if we weren't dealing with the absolute political suicide of ripping up 5 year old track and Stations I don't see any system spending that amount of money ($100 million+) to straighten out for what a 2 minute time savings?

Phase 2 is mgiht be the last capital expenditure for this system for a generation. We should figure out how to make the best of what we have increase the revenues as much as we can and see where we are in 5 to 10 years when maybe we have transit friendly federal government again.

It bears repeating the curves in our system are far from tight by LRT standards. Virtually every system has much tighter curves then ours. What is unique to us is running metro length LRT trains that are 100% low floor. Virtually all other systems that are as metro like as ours (Calgary, Edmonton Seattle) use either high floor or 70% low floor LRVs, which have swiveling bogeys. We shouldn't rip up the track, but throw away the trains if we were going that route

[LRTeverywhere]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

It bears repeating the curves in our system are far from tight by LRT standards. Virtually every system has much tighter curves then ours. What is unique to us is running metro length LRT trains that are 100% low floor. Virtually all other systems that are as metro like as ours (Calgary, Edmonton Seattle) use either high floor or 70% low floor LRVs, which have swiveling bogeys. We shouldn't rip up the track, but throw away the trains if we were going that route

Exactly, medium term I think it wouldnt be a bad idea that we buy 70% low floor LRV's for line 1 / 3 and reuse these trains for Carling LRT thats mostly straight and less metro like. Either that or we sell them (if they'd take em) to Gatineau for Gat Tram

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

The BRT (Transitway) was actually done in the 1980s.

The course was set in the 70s.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by LRTeverywhere

Exactly, medium term I think it wouldnt be a bad idea that we buy 70% low floor LRV's for line 1 / 3 and reuse these trains for Carling LRT thats mostly straight and less metro like. Either that or we sell them (if they'd take em) to Gatineau for Gat Tram

That's a nice idea. Are there 70% low floor LRVs with the identical floor height as our trains, so that we don't require changing all our station platforms?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by LRTeverywhere

Exactly, medium term I think it wouldnt be a bad idea that we buy 70% low floor LRV's for line 1 / 3 and reuse these trains for Carling LRT thats mostly straight and less metro like. Either that or we sell them (if they'd take em) to Gatineau for Gat Tram

This would increase capacity especially seated at the expense of manoeuvre but would it solve the turn problem?

Sticking with low floor LRT after we decided to forgoe mixed traffic seems like the most unforgiveable mistake. Most of the rest were compromises rather than mistakes.