Thanks for the link. I had read it before, but forgot about that detail. Probably because I was not impressed by the ‘plan’. It seems to be just further whittling away at what was Council Approved more than a decade ago. The arbitrary limits placed on tax levels have made so much ‘unaffordable’ – and flagged other elements as only getting done IF upper levels of government throw in the majority (or all) of the money – drive me to distraction.
One of the big problems with just removing a bunch of work from a ‘plan’ is that it creates, or moves around, bottle-necks, and generates poor connections. When segments are dropped (or postponed until someone else pays for them), it affects the entire system. Doing that should be generating entirely new options that should have been added. An example is the removal of the Line 1 in-fil station at Gloucester HS. What will take its place? I’m not seeing any increase in Transit Priority for the additional buses that will be needed.
This city has gotten so lax about actually PLANNING transportation infrastructure if should be called before the Province for dereliction of duty.
But, I’m ranting. Returning to the issue of getting Line 2 to run more reliably, they should be looking at a LOT of different options. For instance; with the train now running to Riverside South, is the South-east Transitway still required, or could the O-Train be moved over to take advantage of the existing, wide, grade-separated run to Billings Bridge? (Leading to a Bank Street Subway, of course.) That might remove the need for that Walkley overpass modification. And most of the work could be done without affecting the running of Line 2/4.
Conditions change, and simply deferring parts of a more-than-10-year-old plan is not really PLANNING. An example is the DND Carling Campus. Line 1 was ‘planned’ to go to Algonquin College – since that is what the Transitway did, so minimal ‘planning’ needed. There was vague talk of running a Transitway – to be convertible to trains – along the 417 to Kanata, but the buses were doing fine on the highway. In 2010, when the Government of Canada took over the old Nortel campus, there was talk of increasing the number of employees from about 5,000 to 10,000-12,500. Tunney’s Pasture Campus only has about 12,000 Federal employees, and it was considered to be essential to connect to it. Potentially, DND’s Carling Campus meant that there could be more ridership on a line going west than one going to the college. In typical City of Ottawa fashion, it simply dusted off a decades-old Transitway concept to ‘plan’ a Line 3 along the 417. However, again, in typical Ottawa fashion, the ‘plan’ was whittled down to one that serves no-one well. This is NOT PLANNING, in my view.
My take on that west-end issue? Lincoln Fields Station should have been a TRANSFER STATION between Line 1 and Line 3. With Line 1 running from Trim to Algonquin, and Line 3 only running from Lincoln Fields, west to Moodie, north to DND, west along Carling to a station near Station Road, in Kanata-North. (Station Station would be a transfer point with the March Transitway that runs in bus lanes north on March and south along Eagleson, Terry Fox, Old Richmond, beside Fallowfield Village, and east on Strandherd to Marketplace Station, and potentially east from there.) From Station Station, Line 3 would run south through the golf-course land (which is another change that should have affected the City’s latest ‘plans’) to Terry Fox. (Potentially, there could also be a Line 5 running from Lincoln Fields, and south-west from Moodie to Kanata-South/Stittsville.)
BOTH, Line 1 and Line 3 should be running at 5-minute frequency, or better, all day (05:00-20:00). A DND worker from Orleans would have a single, fast, transfer between trains.
A lot has changed since 2012. Just removing pieces of that old plan, because they are no longer considered affordable, is not enough. The parts need to be evaluated to see if they are still relevant, and whether new ideas should be added, with reference to removals of planned components, or city changes and predicted future changes. That re-evaluation is not something that has been evident in the City’s Transportation Master Plan for many years.
Prev
Linear Mode
