Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[lrt's friend]

Why are they wasting money building transitway south of baseline that will just need to be converted later? I hope they are least ran back of the napkin CBA compared to building LRT to hunt club where there is lots of land, or to fallowfield.

We are in a rush to build Transitway south of Baseline and right through to Barrhaven Town Centre, so that we will not attempt to resurrect the old LRT plan also to Barrhaven Town Centre. By the time we are done, we will be sure that the money spent planning and buying the old corridor is definitely wasted. It will lay there, weed infested, as a monument to this city's stupidity for decades to come.

Blair should use the existing Transitway, with a reconfiguration of the interchange should an Orleans extension be built.

If we really wanted LRT to be useful, we should be building it right through to Place d'Orleans where the most suburban routes presently terminate. Then it would make sense to build a more permanent transfer station in Orleans, rather wasting our money on a megastation half way out to the suburbs, when our goal should be to go further.

[waterloowarrior]

just a note... the highest rated Blair station by the consultant looked like this. The one Dado posted had the lowest rating (the links were broken for the other ones, but I found the error they made on the website by looking at the URL of the image that worked... add /getinvolved/ between public_consult/ and /op_1 )



the top rated hurdman station looks pretty sweet

[eternallyme]

I definitely agree that any future Hurdman Station needs to protect an access to converting the Southeast Transitway. That would be best accomplished by shifting the bus platforms to the north slightly to be under the new Hurdman Station at an angle, to keep it elevated above. (The current station would be graded out for a layover area).

[Franky]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

I definitely agree that any future Hurdman Station needs to protect an access to converting the Southeast Transitway. That would be best accomplished by shifting the bus platforms to the north slightly to be under the new Hurdman Station at an angle, to keep it elevated above. (The current station would be graded out for a layover area).

I agree with angling the station at Hurman for S-E access. It seems to me that elevating the LRT platform at Hurdman would be much more expensive than a simple overpass for buses. It's especially wasteful if the long-term goal is to connect with an LRT line along the S-E transitway.

[lrt's friend]

Maybe I am stupid, but where in the Blair station design do the trains change tracks for their return trip?

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by O-Town Hockey

I like that Hurdman Station. It's not extravagent by any means and is very functional. I don't see why places like Blair and Baseline can justify such ridiculous plans when something like this would do the trick just fine. It's not like our beautiful new LRT vehicles will be an eyesore or anything. Great rendering of Tunney's! Are these all part of the official proposal? What is the next decision-making step and when is the vote?

I don't think the stations are functional at all. Where is the wind, cold and snow pretection in these kind of shelters? It seems that they're taking the design du jour and just apply it to the diagrams, much like to the Miama Transitway stations.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Maybe I am stupid, but where in the Blair station design do the trains change tracks for their return trip?

Probably an X before the station. Anyways, where is the LRT in all this? I told you guys it it would end in a metro look. There was no way that they could sustain their numbers with regular LRT (read, streetcar).

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Probably an X before the station. Anyways, where is the LRT in all this? I told you guys it it would end in a metro look. There was no way that they could sustain their numbers with regular LRT (read, streetcar).

That's what converting a busway gets you - light-metro - which is more capacity than is needed but with all of the cost. The transit user numbers don't justify the expense.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

That's what converting a busway gets you - light-metro - which is more capacity than is needed but with all of the cost. The transit user numbers don't justify the expense.

Actually, it's not more than what the capacity is needed. That's actually the point! The numbers were too high for normal LRT. They will even be high for light metro.

[Richard Eade]

From what I have been hearing about the new Baseline Station, it involves a 30m tunnel with mixed bus and train service. Although there is no bus stop within the tunnel, the buses will still travel through the tunnel.



To my mind, this will generate a dirty, polluted environment for the train station which has a central platform.



Notice that the side bus platforms force wider structures for the Tower Rd., bus station, and bus overpass. This is shown by the flaring of the south end of the tunnel.

If the bus lanes are segregated by a wall, then the rail system could be much more pleasant.





In this arrangement, the station is still 36m (assuming 3m per bus platform), and the tunnel still 30m. The difference is that the flair is only on one side for the segregated configuration.

An added benefit is that the train north of the Baseline Station is to the east of the bus Transitway. This means that any buses traveling east from Kanata do not need to cross the tracks.

[eternallyme]

This is how I think Baseline should be designed (it can be staged effectively whether Baseline is a terminal station or extended to Barrhaven). The park and ride would need to be eliminated though to stage an LRT/BRT connection and allow the Southwest Transitway to access the local bus platform. The entire station is at-grade.

Yellow line = LRT

Blue line = Bus access (local), SW connection not shown but would run through the park and ride

Thin red line = Elevated pedestrian access connecting the platforms to the communities

Orange box = LRT platform (centre loading)

Blue boxes = Bus platforms (added a second side-loading platform if necessary)


(my own design)

[waterloowarrior]

^ what about the large redevelopment project for the site?
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=159739

[MalcolmTucker]

^ Why should the city pay the extra amount to accommodate those plans. If the college wants that, they can pay for it.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

just a note... the highest rated Blair station by the consultant looked like this. The one Dado posted had the lowest rating (the links were broken for the other ones, but I found the error they made on the website by looking at the URL of the image that worked... add /getinvolved/ between public_consult/ and /op_1 )

I found that error too... because interestingly enough the one I posted is what I thought was the second-rated one but on closer inspection they've used the same drawing for the second and third rated alternatives! (image #6).

The one you've posted may be the top-rated, but do you not see a pretty big problem with it, future-wise? It's pointing at a road embankment, which will require either a sharp curve or yet more reconstruction work in the future.

the top rated hurdman station looks pretty sweet

But not provision for future conversion of the SE Transitway...

[eternallyme]

The only way to keep the Southeast Transitway open to conversion in that design is to extend off the curve, and that would require a second platform in a rather awkward chevron shape.

As for Blair, I do see the problem, but at least it is not unmanageable to extend eastward. All that would be required are new underpasses for Blair Road and its ramps (or cutting a 500m tunnel) to line back up with the Transitway just before the RR174 entrance. Although most likely any LRT alignment would have to switch sides to run the southern side of 174 to Place d'Orleans...

[waterloowarrior]

Originally Posted by Dado

I found that error too... because interestingly enough the one I posted is what I thought was the second-rated one but on closer inspection they've used the same drawing for the second and third rated alternatives! (image #6).

The one you've posted may be the top-rated, but do you not see a pretty big problem with it, future-wise? It's pointing at a road embankment, which will require either a sharp curve or yet more reconstruction work in the future.

But not provision for future conversion of the SE Transitway...

I am guessing they would then dig under the interchange? $$$

Yeah that's true, but I love the look.... reminds me of some stations I saw in Germany.

I'm really not liking all the temporary transfer stations... I wish they would have just cut road and BRT funding, spent less money on the stations, and extended the light rail lines to the suburban town centres.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Actually, it's not more than what the capacity is needed. That's actually the point! The numbers were too high for normal LRT. They will even be high for light metro.

There is a chart in the http://ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/transit_tunnel/getinvolved/op_1/overview_en.html site that states 32,350 trips into the inner city area in the AM peak hour by 2031. That's 16,000 people per hour per direction which is in fact higher than true LRT can handle (closer to 10,000), but if you consider interlining, the S-E and Blair bound tracks on one side and West end plus (Carling or Gatineau or O-train single track) on the other, the only section that truly needs to be "light metro" is the city section from Hurdman to Bayview which is essentially in a tunnel. The rest could/should be "real" LRT. The kind that was proposed along Carling. Simple stations and fewer expensive grade-separations. The $5B sticker price on this thing is too much money for too little benefit.

[lrt's friend]

The $5B sticker price on this thing is too much money for too little benefit.

I have been screaming about this since this plan was made public over a year ago. The senior levels of government have repeatedly been demanding a plan that generates 'substantial' ridership growth. I see none of this.

All I see is a dead end LRT plan that will be difficult to extend, and only delivers halfway service to where growth is happening with impossible conditions for extension to those growth areas. Bus Transitways will continue to be our future forever.

The result is a megastation at Baseline with an astronomical price tag and a major LRT blockade just to the south and and an east end terminus which will require a complete reconstruction of an interchange to go further. The Blair interchange is beyond the study area, so why consider whether the existing Transitway route and overpass can be made use of . Of course, if we were seriously considering extension to Orleans, we would be considering the best route to make use of existing infrastructure at Blair, instead of ending LRT at an interchange embankment.

With $5B+, we should have been able to build LRT to suburbs in 2 of the 3 directions, at least plus the downtown tunnel, therefore forgoing the expense of unnecessary megastations at Blair and Baseline and some Transitway extensions. This would have required difficult political decisions where one direction would have only received Transitway improvements but at least LRT would have done a good job where it did run. We all know that this City Council cannot make decisions that will actually result in real construction of truly useful new infrastructure.

[waterloowarrior]

for $5 billion, we could build 50 KM of subway easily... especially since most of that length is greenbelt or already has a ROW reserved.

ex. for comparison



another example of the 'transition' spending is that AV Parkway-Nicholas Bridge

[Dado]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

The only way to keep the Southeast Transitway open to conversion in that design is to extend off the curve, and that would require a second platform in a rather awkward chevron shape.

It's possible but they have to bring the platform north towards the bridge and angle it more.

As for Blair, I do see the problem, but at least it is not unmanageable to extend eastward. All that would be required are new underpasses for Blair Road and its ramps (or cutting a 500m tunnel) to line back up with the Transitway just before the RR174 entrance.

That's kind of the point, isn't it? Either you design the rebuilt Blair Station to line up with the existing underpasses to facilitate future extension, or you don't and instead commit to spending a lot more money (again) in the future.

Although most likely any LRT alignment would have to switch sides to run the southern side of 174 to Place d'Orleans...

True, but where? It could remain on the north side until past Montreal Rd to serve the Canotek business park before switching sides. Or it could use the existing flyover (which is wide enough for two tracks of LRT).