Alto High Speed Rail

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by phil235

I don’t think you can necessarily say that because you don’t walk to your hotel when you take the train to a city, people won’t do it. I pretty much always walk to my hotel in Toronto or Montreal and often pick hotels in New York because they were walkable to Penn Station. I don’t think I’m that unusual.

As for Ottawa, the Delta is a bit far, but how many thousand hotel rooms are within a 5-10 minute walk of Union. People will clearly walk to the Chateau, the Westin, the Germain. Les Suites, the Doubletree, the hotels in the Market and the ones on the east side of the CBD like the Lord Elgin or the Metcalfe. Lots of destinations in walking distance. And no one is driving to the Roger’s/Shaw Centre from Union.

By definition not many people do because only a miniscule percentage of hotels are within walking distance of a central train station in most cities.

A 10 minute walk from the Senate (per google maps) is about Joey. There are not thousands of hotel rooms that distance. There are 3 hotels (Chateau Laurier, Westin, Lord Elgin).

[lrt's friend]

Fundamentally, our city is not designed well for this project.

Our transit plans from the last 20 years do not properly support any station location well.

If we wanted a downtown station, we should not have Bayview and Hurdman, that are remote from such important new infrastructure. Everything should connect , not being so piecemeal.

Tremblay is connected to the same one transit line but is not connected well to the south or Gatineau

The airport is out of the question the way we have designed rail, 3 trains and an an hour from downtown.

Our city council simply cheaped out by not having all our trains going through the downtown tunnel. Our decisions from 15 years ago delivered the minimum and will never allow a downtown station with optimum success.

Just like Tremblay, we will need to accomodate lines of Ubers and taxis but where?

Good luck on a station location. Most will need some sort of car access, just like the airport

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

By definition not many people do because only a miniscule percentage of hotels are within walking distance of a central train station in most cities.

A 10 minute walk from the Senate (per google maps) is about Joey. There are not thousands of hotel rooms that distance. There are 3 hotels (Chateau Laurier, Westin, Lord Elgin).

Not sure what your first sentence means. By what definition? And what is a miniscule percentage? Train stations tend to be downtown, which also includes the biggest cluster of hotels in the vast majority of cities. There are thousands of hotel rooms within walking distance of both Toronto Union and Gare Centrale. Not sure why that is even a debate.

As for your second point, Google Maps says Joey is 350m or a 5 minute walk from Union. Double that and you get to all of the hotels that I mentioned. Nobody is taking a cab to the Market from Union. Even the three hotels you mention that are basically next to the station have 1300 rooms, and you add in those within a 10-minute walk and you are at thousands.

Edit: just did some quick searching and it looks like there are about 3400 hotel rooms within 750m of Union station (over 5000 if you extend to the west side of downtown, nevermind downtown Hull). Based on about 11,000 hotel rooms in Ottawa, that means that something like 31% of those are within a reasonable walk of Union.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by phil235

Not sure what your first sentence means. By what definition? And what is a miniscule percentage? Train stations tend to be downtown, which also includes the biggest cluster of hotels. There are thousands of hotel rooms within walking distance of both Toronto Union and Gare Centrale. Not sure why that is even a debate.

As for your second point, Google Maps says Joey is 350m or a 5 minute walk from Union. Double that and you get to all of the hotels that I mentioned. Nobody is taking a cab to the Market from Union. Even the three hotels you mention have 1300 rooms, and you add in those within a 10-minute walk and you are at thousands.

Major cities have hundreds or thousands of hotels, yet there are rarely more than a handful to a dozen near the central train station. Gare Central has 9 within 500 metres (per Expedia). Union station in Toronto has a similar number. In both cases that isn’t an exact number because it depends where you exit the station (and also where you get off the train).

Most train stations are only “downtown” because a business district built up around them after they were built. St Pancras is nowhere near any of London’s traditional “downtowns”. Gare Centrale is nowhere near Montreal’s traditional downtown (by the cathedral). Nobody is proposing building a tunnel under London and underground train station to bring the Eurostar to Westminster or the City. The Eurostar brings people to a relatively central location where they can take transit or taxis to their destination. The same is true for Montreal, Rome, Moscow, Paris, New York, Washington, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, etc. I know we have a Toronto obsession in Ottawa and want to replicate the massive convergence of transportation and amenities that exists at Union Station, but that doesn’t work for Ottawa’s geography.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Major cities have hundreds or thousands of hotels, yet there are rarely more than a handful to a dozen near the central train station. Gare Central has 9 within 500 metres (per Expedia). Union station in Toronto has a similar number. In both cases that isn’t an exact number because it depends where you exit the station (and also where you get off the train).

Most train stations are only “downtown” because a business district built up around them after they were built. St Pancras is nowhere near any of London’s traditional “downtowns”. Gare Centrale is nowhere near Montreal’s traditional downtown (by the cathedral). Nobody is proposing building a tunnel under London and underground train station to bring the Eurostar to Westminster or the City. The Eurostar brings people to a relatively central location where they can take transit or taxis to their destination. The same is true for Montreal, Rome, Moscow, Paris, New York, etc. I know we have a Toronto obsession in Ottawa and want to replicate the massive convergence or transportation and amenities that exists at Union Station, but that doesn’t work for Ottawa’s geography.

I'm not sure what exactly your point is - that business districts grew up around train stations, rather than the reverse? Maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that they are there and surrounded by hotels and offices and apartments now, which makes it very convenient for travellers.

I'm not sure how to respond to the statement that major cities only have a handful of hotels near their train stations. That's largely untrue in North America, including in the New York example you cite. There are large hotel clusters within blocks of both Penn and Grand Central. In addition, the central hotels tend to be much larger and have more rooms than the suburban ones.

And that is also the case in Montreal. Regardless of the history, the station currently sits in pretty much the exact centre of the central business district. If, as you say, nine major hotels are within a 5 minute walk of the station, that is nothing to be dismissive of. A quick tabulation shows about 3800 rooms in those nine hotels. And if you extend your radius from 500 to 700m, which is a pretty easy walk for most people, you likely triple the number of hotels that are accessible, as you bring in the convention centre and the hotel cluster around it, a whack of hotels on Sherbrooke St, and the hotels surrounding the Bell Centre. No other location in the city can come close to matching that density of hotel rooms.

Sure some people will take cabs. Some will take the subway. Some will walk. In all three cases, those trips are shorter due to the central location of the train station. It would be the same in Ottawa. I really don't understand what is controversial about that. You are doing backflips to try to prove that downtown isn't the major destination for people staying in hotels?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

A 10 minute walk from the Senate (per google maps) is about Joey. There are not thousands of hotel rooms that distance. There are 3 hotels (Chateau Laurier, Westin, Lord Elgin).

It shouldn't take a reasonably health adult 10 minutes to walk 300 metres.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

It shouldn't take a reasonably health adult 10 minutes to walk 300 metres.

Unless we are talking about pigeons, it is not 300 m on a route you can legally walk.

Also, walking speeds with luggage are quite slow, particularly on crowded sidewalks.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by phil235

I'm not sure what exactly your point is - that business districts grew up around train stations, rather than the reverse? Maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that they are there and surrounded by hotels and offices and apartments now, which makes it very convenient for travellers.

I'm not sure how to respond to the statement that major cities only have a handful of hotels near their train stations. That's largely untrue in North America, including in the New York example you cite. There are large hotel clusters within blocks of both Penn and Grand Central. In addition, the central hotels tend to be much larger and have more rooms than the suburban ones.

And that is also the case in Montreal. Regardless of the history, the station currently sits in pretty much the exact centre of the central business district. If, as you say, nine major hotels are within a 5 minute walk of the station, that is nothing to be dismissive of. A quick tabulation shows about 3800 rooms in those nine hotels. And if you extend your radius from 500 to 700m, which is a pretty easy walk for most people, you likely triple the number of hotels that are accessible, as you bring in the convention centre and the hotel cluster around it, a whack of hotels on Sherbrooke St, and the hotels surrounding the Bell Centre. No other location in the city can come close to matching that density of hotel rooms.

Sure some people will take cabs. Some will take the subway. Some will walk. In all three cases, those trips are shorter due to the central location of the train station. It would be the same in Ottawa. I really don't understand what is controversial about that. You are doing backflips to try to prove that downtown isn't the major destination for people staying in hotels?

Sources vary, but there appear to be about 200 hotels in Montreal, so about 5% are near the train station, so the train station market share is pretty small. That number is even lower in larger cities like London and Paris.

My point is that the vast, vast majority of hotel guests in a city are not in walking distance of a the central train station, so they have to take some other means of transportation once they get to the train station. So why would we spend many many billions on a decade long excavation project to get a small number of people in walking distance of a small number of hotels?

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Look at what a protracted and costly experience building 3 underground stations and 3 km of tunnel was. A 10 km tunnel and a deep underground mainline station would be a nightmare. Stuttgart still hasn't finished their project, which started construction in 2010 and is now estimated at €12 billion, to convert their dead end station to a through station with tracks deep underground.

Sure but there is a reason they are building it. The last mile matters. Are we building HSR or not? If so we need to tunnel or build viaducts through the city anyway. From the east entry of Ottawa to exiting the city it's about 45 minutes on Via right now add the stop in Ottawa and the Ottawa Montrealt time via Laval and you are nearing two hours by the time you get to speed west of Carleton place. They have set a faster timeline which means either way there will be expensive work done in Ottawa to make that faster than current which isn't just a new trainset.

Your other points are good. The standard is not HSR right downtown for sure. In Japan it's often skirts the smaller cities because it's above ground.

It probably won't work but it would be great if they could save a few billion by putting the station at the airport we could get funded to add a rapid line from there to downtown. I know LRT says we have fixed what we have but that's not really accurate as this is 20+ years away so nothing wrong with building a new route south say along the transit with a direct airport connection overpass from there.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Sure but there is a reason they are building it. The last mile matters. Are we building HSR or not? If so we need to tunnel or build viaducts through the city anyway. From the east entry of Ottawa to exiting the city it's about 45 minutes on Via right now add the stop in Ottawa and the Ottawa Montrealt time via Laval and you are nearing two hours by the time you get to speed west of Carleton place. They have set a faster timeline which means either way there will be expensive work done in Ottawa to make that faster than current which isn't just a new trainset.

Your other points are good. The standard is not HSR right downtown for sure. In Japan it's often skirts the smaller cities because it's above ground.

It probably won't work but it would be great if they could save a few billion by putting the station at the airport we could get funded to add a rapid line from there to downtown. I know LRT says we have fixed what we have but that's not really accurate as this is 20+ years away so nothing wrong with building a new route south say along the transit with a direct airport connection overpass from there.

If the last mile is so important to the High Speed Rail industry, why has literally no country that operates high speed rail followed the proposed policy of tunnelling many km under the city to build an elaborate underground station in the traditional city centre?

In most cities the railway station used by high speed trains is outside of the traditional city centre. In London, for example, St Pancras is a 30-60 minute walk from Westminster or the City. The vast majority of the people arriving on HSR trains would expect to enter another vehicle on their arrival (another train, tube, taxi, etc). Gare de Nord or the other Paris HSR Termini are a similar distance from central Paris. The same is true in Vienna, Moscow, Rome (although it is debatable where the "downtown" is), New York, Washington (although you could have a similar debate about where the "downtown is.") In China, the favourite place of HSR stans, Beijing South is a good two hour walk from central Beijing. In all these places it is widely expected that you would get off of the HSR train and get onto some other form of transport (commuter rail, long distance rail, metro, bus, taxi, uber, etc.) to reach most major destinations in the city (or most of the hotels).

And, the "last mile" problem you are identifying here is a 10-20 minute taxi ride (in most traffic conditions) or a 15-ish minute transit ride. This is hardly a burden.

Ottawa has this weird phobia of following best practices in transportation. We built a BRT where other cities would build rail. We used tram vehicles where other cities would use light metro vehicles. Now we want to use HSR where other cities would use a metro.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by harls

The old train station is flat out a logistic nightmare. Tremblay will probably be the choice.

I think Alto saying they want 400m platforms as per international standard is their way of saying these pipe dreams aren't happening. This means they need platforms from Wellington to Laurier in a tunnel beside the canal.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ponyboycurtis

I can't imagine any logical reason why Tremblay isn't a reasonable choice.

What even is downtown?

I take VIA to Toronto often enough and ... Man.. I stay 2 places.. Richmond and Bay .. and midtown.

Even at Richmond and Bay I'm probably going to take the Subway up to Queen and then walk back down with a rolling carryon. Especially if its winter or raining I am just going to Uber. And thats like.. 4.5 blocks minus the labyrinth of the station itself.

After a 5 hours train ride I am plenty happy to just plunk a few dollars on an Uber and get me right to my spot so I can settle in, shit, shower, shave etc and then go hit the town.

Matter of fact. As a person who travels overseas for leisure as much as I can. I'm not super cool but I've been overboard a good dozen times. I don't ever walk from a train station or bus station when arriving in a new city. I just spent XYZ to get here plus my time. Just get me to my spot ASAP so I can unwind and prepare for the next level.

Someone staying at the Delta isn't going to walk from downtown train station man. It just.. won't happen. Even if you are doing an event at the Shaw centre or something, everything is going to be comped. Nobody is going to blink an eye at a $12 Uber.

Tremblay is incredibly central with great links in the grand scheme of things.

You're an actual frequent traveller. That's the difference. Most of those commenting are pushing for a theoretical trip they will take occasionally.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Look at what a protracted and costly experience building 3 underground stations and 3 km of tunnel was. A 10 km tunnel and a deep underground mainline station would be a nightmare. Stuttgart still hasn't finished their project, which started construction in 2010 and is now estimated at €12 billion, to convert their dead end station to a through station with tracks deep underground.

And we left a car in the sinkhole cause it was too difficult to get it out. After hearing their pros talk at the open houses, I appreciate they are disciplined enough to avoid additional risk without being rude about it. There is no way they'll push a downtown station unless directed to do so from on high. Even in Toronto, they've said they are pushing for Union and at platform level. No tunnel if they can help it.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Sources vary, but there appear to be about 200 hotels in Montreal, so about 5% are near the train station, so the train station market share is pretty small. That number is even lower in larger cities like London and Paris.

My point is that the vast, vast majority of hotel guests in a city are not in walking distance of a the central train station, so they have to take some other means of transportation once they get to the train station. So why would we spend many many billions on a decade long excavation project to get a small number of people in walking distance of a small number of hotels?

I think you are missing the point in two ways.

One, the number of hotel rooms near the station is much more relevant than the absolute number of hotels. That's how you measure the number of people it would serve. As I pointed out above, that is about 31% of the hotel room inventory in Ottawa, which is huge. We are talking about where to put the station in Ottawa, not London or Paris.

Two, it's not just about walking. A shorter transit ride/cab ride/drive is also desirable, and those modes take the number of hotel rooms in the vicinity to well north of 50%. If you have a location that serves 50% of tourists and business travellers really well, that is a real consideration.

I'm not saying it's necessarily worth spending billions or the risk of tunnelling, but it's a valid consideration, and Union is far ahead on that point.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You're an actual frequent traveller. That's the difference. Most of those commenting are pushing for a theoretical trip they will take occasionally.

Not sure how you know this, but even if it was true, aren't we looking to attract new riders with this project? Wouldn't it be a good idea to consider markets that don't regularly take the train, which for the record, I do regularly to both Toronto and Montreal. I can assure you that I am far from alone in lamenting the lack of service into downtown Ottawa, which is largely regarded as a mistake, including by frequent travellers. It's actually a major competitive advantage for rail, and features prominently in Via's marketing everywhere but Ottawa.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by phil235

Not sure how you know this, but even if it was true, aren't we looking to attract new riders with this project? Wouldn't it be a good idea to consider markets that don't regularly take the train, which for the record, I do regularly to both Toronto and Montreal. I can assure you that I am far from alone in lamenting the lack of service into downtown Ottawa, which is largely regarded as a mistake, including by frequent travellers. It's actually a major competitive advantage for rail, and features prominently in Via's marketing everywhere but Ottawa.

Again, with HSR, Tremblay will be 2 hrs from Union and 1 hr from Gare Centrale. This is faster than any flight will take you between those places. I don't think the majority of new ridership rests on whether or not one has to make a 10-15 min taxi or LRT ride to the core after the HSR ride. Like are we seriously saying people will not travel or will fly or drive instead based on that 10-15 min LRT or taxi ride? Come on now.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Again, with HSR, Tremblay will be 2 hrs from Union and 1 hr from Gare Centrale. This is faster than any flight will take you between those places. I don't think the majority of new ridership rests on whether or not one has to make a 10-15 min taxi or LRT ride to the core after the HSR ride. Like are we seriously saying people will not travel or will fly or drive instead based on that 10-15 min LRT or taxi ride? Come on now.

Not saying it is going to be the deciding factor for most people, but it will be a factor for some. In my opinion you would want to do everything you can to make this project as attractive as possible. Location is part of that. Via sees it as enough of a competitive advantage that they focus a tonne of marketing on it. Adding time matters for some potential riders. Adding cost matters for others like university students.

Acela isn't necessarily a great comparison for a few reasons, but it is the best North American comparison. I took a quick look at Acela station locations using city halls as proxies for the city centre, and despite them being primarily in larger cities than Ottawa, none are even close to as far as Tremblay. Unless you count New York, where Penn Station is right in midtown, the commercial centre of the city. Washington in the farthest at 2.9 km, and it is 750m from the Capitol building. All of the other stations are under 1.5 km from the city centre.

Ottawa would be an outlier in North America with Tremblay's location. It would be notably different than Toronto and Montreal. Not fatal, but yet another case where Ottawa is doing things differently than the normal practice.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Unless we are talking about pigeons, it is not 300 m on a route you can legally walk.

It is 325m on the route you can legally walk.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by phil235

Not saying it is going to be the deciding factor for most people, but it will be a factor for some. In my opinion you would want to do everything you can to make this project as attractive as possible. Location is part of that. Via sees it as enough of a competitive advantage that they focus a tonne of marketing on it. Adding time matters for some potential riders. Adding cost matters for others like university students.

Acela isn't necessarily a great comparison for a few reasons, but it is the best North American comparison. I took a quick look at Acela station locations using city halls as proxies for the city centre, and despite them being primarily in larger cities than Ottawa, none are even close to as far as Tremblay. Unless you count New York, where Penn Station is right in midtown, the commercial centre of the city. Washington in the farthest at 2.9 km, and it is 750m from the Capitol building. All of the other stations are under 1.5 km from the city centre.

Ottawa would be an outlier in North America with Tremblay's location. It would be notably different than Toronto and Montreal. Not fatal, but yet another case where Ottawa is doing things differently than the normal practice.

Acela has the luxury of using existing stations in downtown cores. Ottawa does not. So we're asking the project to take on billions in liabilities (that we would never accept on our own as local ratepayers and did not for our own transit system when we had the chance) for marginal gain. Sure, none of the Acela stations are as far from City Hall as Tremblay. But 5 km is not the struggle you're making it out to be either.

Would there be a marginal gain in ridership at Union. Maybe. But I seriously doubt it would be worth the cost increase and loss in ridership between Toronto and Montreal from slower service.

Also, as a transit user, Union would probably be worse connecting to the LRT than Tremblay. There's no way that tunnelling to the LRT will be easy and won't involve multiple level changes.

Either way. Alto saying they want international standard 400m platforms should tell you where this is going. Tremblay actually has a 500m platform today.

[Harley613]

Originally Posted by acottawa

If the last mile is so important to the High Speed Rail industry, why has literally no country that operates high speed rail followed the proposed policy of tunnelling many km under the city to build an elaborate underground station in the traditional city centre?

Zurich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel

Stuttgart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21

Madrid
https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/atocha-chamartin-tunnel-opens-in-madrid-on-july-1/

Frankfurt
https://www.fernbahntunnel-frankfurt.de/home.html

Barcelona has an HSR tunnel to the core to this station:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_Sants_railway_station

Antwerp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liefkenshoektunnel

Berlin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Nord-S%C3%BCd_Tunnel

Vienna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienerwald_Tunnel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lainz_Tunnel

London (HS1 runs in a tunnel into St. Pancras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1

Paris has a bunch of HSR tunnels to reach core areas

Bologna, Naples and Munich have HSR tunnels to their cores as well.

There are more examples, and I'm just talking about Europe. I have traveled Europe extensively by HSR and regular trains, and I expect to land in the centre.