Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by citizen j

To address your question:

There are some Toronto subway stations that have only one access point (Wellesley is a downtown station and there is one entrance/exit). Others, including many downtown stations, have multiple access points but clustered at a single intersection, so that all passengers must enter and exit at a single point on the platform: Dundas, College, Museum among these. Others have multiple access points along the platform but still lead you back up to the surface around a single intersection: Queen's Park, St. Patrick, and Osgoode among these. There are perhaps only six stations downtown that have multiple street entrances. All the others have bottlenecks during peak hours. The TTC has had to open additional entrances at least two: Spadina and Broadview. Others have had or will have costly expansions to their platforms to increase capacity: Bloor and Union among them.

All this to answer your question with a Yes and a No. Depends on the station. Older ones tend to have the worst accessibility (and the narrowest platforms), since they were built when the city was smaller. Ottawa should keep this in mind.

Thanks for this. I also notice that in 2007 it was decided to add a second exit to all single exit stations; to be completed by 2012, I believe. Standards have changed in 50 years, I guess.

[Franky]

Dado,
The point of my post was that the O-Train is not an example of "build it and they will come." The line serves Carleton University, a captive ridership. It was built on existing track, not the case for any other LRT we may be considering. The LRV were not properly maintained which also affects their revenue/cost ratio. I stand by my statement that paving over that corridor and providing bus service that actually goes somewhere would likely have seen greater ridership, more utility and better cost recovery. Big trains are great at peak hours, but off-peak, you are moving a big train for just a few people whereas buses used can be smaller at off-peak times, using less resources (less fuel and wear on less expensive buses).

[ikerrin]

Originally Posted by Dado

See also:
http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/trc/2004/07-21/ACS2004-TUP-TRN-0009.htm
and
http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/utsp/otrainlightrailproject.htm

Basically, it looks like the City can't add or didn't bother to try too hard - they just fed a mishmash of old and new data to Transport Canada for the update. Revenues have apparently doubled to $2M but the recovery ratio hasn't moved since 2004, because it was already in the 36% range in 2004. That doesn't make any sense at all because there is no way that costs have increased by as much as revenue (a derivative of ridership), and, as below, there are reasons costs should now be lower as well.

Much of the cause of the relatively low cost recovery is the overhead costs being spread out over a small fleet - after all, there's 1/3 vehicle redundancy where a 1/6-1/8 is more typical. Insurance also seems to have been a relatively high number; this has probably come down as the system proved itself and now that the city owns the vehicles rather than leases them it can self-insure.

As I said the 36% recovery is from 2004; ridership has increased since then so the recovery rate would be higher. Moreover, the 36% includes - get this - property taxes on the RoW along with the lease of the CP yard. With property taxes and lease removed the rate is 39%. At the time, these two amounted to some $400,000 combined; unfortunately they aren't broken down further but it gives an idea of the ridiculous amount of money that railways have to fork over to municipalities for the pleasure of getting absolutely nothing in return. Anyway, given the higher ridership and removing the property taxes (since they're just flowing in a circle if they are still paid), the recovery rate today is well into the 40s. That places it at or above the system average.

Another aspect, not mentionned in either page, is that the cost of the feeder services are imputed into the operating cost of the O-Train. This is arguably a legitimate way of doing things - it maintains comparability with expresses for instance - but unfortunately it is not done for any other bus route (like the #95), probably because doing so would be terribly complicated. For example, if I take the #151 and then transfer to the #95, the recovery rate of each is measured separately - the poor recovery rate of the #151 is not factored into that of #95, whereas with the O-Train it would be for routes like the #146. According to the OC Transpo logic then, the only service that people transfer to/from is the O-Train.

Wow, sounds like you really know your stuff. You know that you can Access to Information the submission details to Statistics Canada and see what the actual submission was. The city is required to sign that that they are putting information that is accurate to the best of their ability. If, as you seem to suggest, they aren't taking due diligence, it would be a fairly big issue, I would think. Or perhaps, I am misunderstanding your point?

[Richard Eade]

Let's look at the downtown stations.



Given that image, I can assume 'standard' one metre wide treads on the escalators And it appears that the stairs are about 2.5-3 metres wide.

It looks as if the escalators are positioned back to back from the platform level, and the stairs and the elevator are also grouped. So, on the platform level, there is say 3 metres of platform beside the train, then 1 metre of escalator, then 2.5-3 metres for the stairs and then another 3 metres for the other platform. That gives a total of 9.5-10 metres for the central platform. Then there is probably 5 metres for each train tube, giving a total width of about 20 metres. So the station platforms will be about 180x20 metres. If the arched roof is, say, 10 metres to the centre, then there is almost 30,000 cubic metres of spoil from each station, excluding the excavations from the surface.

The diagram seems to be shortened a bit since the Building depth on the left is at most 19 metres and the platform depths are to be about 30 metres down. Given that, there will be even more stairs than are shown in the picture. Is it reasonable to expect people to climb the equivalent of 10 stories to get from the platform level to the surface? My bet is that most people will be taking the escalators. I would suggest that the stairs be replaced by more escalators.

I see that the escalators/stairs/elevators are drawn in a tight cluster. This makes sense from the point of view of digging down to install them: The tighter they are grouped, the smaller the excavation can be.

However, the idea being brought forth by the Staff is that the surface accesses will be widely spaced. If we are going to be digging long distances to install long escalators, then why are we boring so deeply to avoid surface disruption?

I expect the location of the stairs/escalators/elevators to be about 50 metres from the platform ends since this will help balance the train loading. This puts the two vertical groups about 80 metres apart; hardly the huge spacing that the Staff is talking about.

I assume that the fare collection level will also be a constraint on how far apart the two esalators are since it would be more economical to minimize any duplication.

The diagram seems reasonable to me in showing that all of the people ascending from the platform will exit to the street through one building door for each of the stair/escalator/elevator stacks. How much delay will this add? The weaving up the various escalators, and then funnelling through the building's door will take time.

I think it would be interesting for Ottawa to do what Montreal did and give the design of each station to a different architect. This would ensure that the stations were identifiably unique.

[Aylmer]

Definitely.

[waterloowarrior]

Originally Posted by Dado

See also:
http://www.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/trc/2004/07-21/ACS2004-TUP-TRN-0009.htm
and
http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/utsp/otrainlightrailproject.htm

Basically, it looks like the City can't add or didn't bother to try too hard - they just fed a mishmash of old and new data to Transport Canada for the update. Revenues have apparently doubled to $2M but the recovery ratio hasn't moved since 2004, because it was already in the 36% range in 2004. That doesn't make any sense at all because there is no way that costs have increased by as much as revenue (a derivative of ridership), and, as below, there are reasons costs should now be lower as well.

Much of the cause of the relatively low cost recovery is the overhead costs being spread out over a small fleet - after all, there's 1/3 vehicle redundancy where a 1/6-1/8 is more typical. Insurance also seems to have been a relatively high number; this has probably come down as the system proved itself and now that the city owns the vehicles rather than leases them it can self-insure.

As I said the 36% recovery is from 2004; ridership has increased since then so the recovery rate would be higher. Moreover, the 36% includes - get this - property taxes on the RoW along with the lease of the CP yard. With property taxes and lease removed the rate is 39%. At the time, these two amounted to some $400,000 combined; unfortunately they aren't broken down further but it gives an idea of the ridiculous amount of money that railways have to fork over to municipalities for the pleasure of getting absolutely nothing in return. Anyway, given the higher ridership and removing the property taxes (since they're just flowing in a circle if they are still paid), the recovery rate today is well into the 40s. That places it at or above the system average.

Another aspect, not mentionned in either page, is that the cost of the feeder services are imputed into the operating cost of the O-Train. This is arguably a legitimate way of doing things - it maintains comparability with expresses for instance - but unfortunately it is not done for any other bus route (like the #95), probably because doing so would be terribly complicated. For example, if I take the #151 and then transfer to the #95, the recovery rate of each is measured separately - the poor recovery rate of the #151 is not factored into that of #95, whereas with the O-Train it would be for routes like the #146. According to the OC Transpo logic then, the only service that people transfer to/from is the O-Train.

Their stats are all as of 2007, which is mentioned multiple times including for ridership, car trips removed, modal share, and cost recovery ratio. Why would the cost recovery specifically be different than all the other numbers in that section? The whole article is an update of a 2005 case study.

For cost recovery, Transport Canada compares 2002 numbers with 2007 numbers. If you look at the 2002 numbers they are exclusive of lease/property taxes on the ROW, etc (TC uses 26% to compare vs 23% cost recovery if they included rent), so it would follow that the 2007 numbers would be the same (although IIRC they bought the corridor in late 2004 so perhaps they just don't pay those things anymore). If they were using 2004 numbers they'd use the 39%.

Remember that from 2002 to 2007 diesel fuel increased quite a bit, doubling in many places (one possible factor for an increase in costs)

for reference, the NS electric line was estimated at 70-80% cost recovery (at least inital estimates, not sure what the final ones were)


edit: of course part of the problem is that it's such a small system.... you need all the rail yard, maintenance, supervisory infrastructure etc for only a few trains and can't take advantage of economies of scale. city staff report estimated a two-fold reduction in costs per hour with a larger system.

Anyhow, this is a bit OT since we are converting NS to electric, are we not?

[Richard Eade]

General ramblings about the recommendations:

Tunneys Pasture:
I hate to see the throw-away cost of partially back-filling the trench, and building a huge bus parking area, but that seems to be the best that Staff can come up with.

Bayview:
I absolutely agree that the train should be capable of going directly downtown.

I see that there is no plan to try to re-use the existing Transitway Bridge; Staff have decided that there must be a central platform on the upper level so the tracks are too far apart.

If the bridge is not being used, is there any reason to have the rail elevated over the O-Train track? Why not simply continue the trench and keep all of the lines below grade? This would allow for a single platform for the two interlined routes. Building over the train lines would be much easier if they were already sub grade.

I see they have kept the big (and enlarged by the looks of it) bus lay-up.

(I know they just ran a new water main along Bayview, but it is pressurized so it can be lowered here.)

LeBreton:
Why is the line so far from the canal? Why not run it where the Transitway currently is? The farther south the line is, the higher the road needs to go, unless the track is in a trench, and the more developable land is used.

I still say the line should run straight from LeBreton east under Slater instead of through the reversing curves to get to Albert.

Downtown General:
When I look at the 300m catchment circles, they don't touch: This means that the stations are more than 600m apart. In fact, the 500m ring only just reaches the 300m circles for some of the stations. I think the spacing to too great.

Campus:
I agree that the tunnel should continue as far as possible south: In fact, I would like to see it continue to Hurdman - but that won't happen.

In the Technical Briefing document, the position of the Campus Station is roughly in its current location. The Station Location Map shows it as being farther north. I don't know which is correct, but I suspect it will be in roughly the current location.

Lees:
Apparently the Lees Station 'NEEDS' to remain within the current corridor so that no contaminated land is disturbed. Personally, I would like to see them clean up the area instead of ignoring the problem.

I do find it odd that the station appears to be moved north, but they are balancing the distances to the neighbouring stations.

Also, the Robinson area is going to be re-developed sometime.

Hurdman:
It is a shame that they are ensuring that the S-E Transitway never gets converted to rail.

Train:
It looks as if all three structures will need to be replaced.

This station will cost more than they are expecting: The plan, from what I heard, is to bury the station so that the lawn can be restored in front of the VIA Station. If the Baseline Station is $207M, then expect this area to be about $100M. (Of course, the cost could nix the plans to replace the lawn.)

If three structures and a tunnel station is to be built, why not move the line to provide better access to the Train Yards?



St.Laurent:
Nothing to say about this one.

Cyrville:
Nothing to say about this one.

Blair:
I think this is going to be a very expensive station, and even more expensive to extend the line. This may be the east end equivelent of Baseline Station.

[Franky]

Richard Eade,
All of your comments make so much sense, it's hard to understand why the city is doing what it's doing. Is it incompetence or political influence or some other influence? Maybe alcohol?

Is it lack of money? Perhaps the realization that Andrew Haydon is right and the cost of doing LRT right is just a lot higher than everyone hopes?

If it's worth doing, it should be worth doing right, especially when Billions are being spent.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

Richard Eade,
All of your comments make so much sense, it's hard to understand why the city is doing what it's doing. Is it incompetence or political influence or some other influence? Maybe alcohol?

Is it lack of money? Perhaps the realization that Andrew Haydon is right and the cost of doing LRT right is just a lot higher than everyone hopes?

If it's worth doing, it should be worth doing right, especially when Billions are being spent.

You must know that working on a project, doesn't mean you like what you're doing or put interest in it. I myself couldn't care less about what I do at work, and can say that sometimes, it wasn't all that perfect.

This is why I don't understand why the consultants aren't listening to some individuals, because of the interest of these residents, the knowledge is higher than the so called professionals.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

You must know that working on a project, doesn't mean you like what you're doing or put interest in it. I myself couldn't care less about what I do at work, and can say that sometimes, it wasn't all that perfect.

This is why I don't understand why the consultants aren't listening to some individuals, because of the interest of these residents, the knowledge is higher than the so called professionals.

Of course, mistakes happen and sometimes, we don't give our best performance, but on a project of this size, you'd think that over time and with a collective effort these rough spots would get smoothed over and disappear into noise(rubble?). Especially when people like Richard are there to point out the rough spots.

[Richard Eade]

I was talking to a fellow who has done a bit of consulting and he shared an interesting thing with me:

Public consultations are not to get new or better ideas or to make any changes to an existing plan or idea. Consultations are held to gather a list of the questions and concerns that the public has so that reasons, and justifications can be developed to better support the existing plan when it is released.

Now I understand.

[Ottawade]

From one of my faves: http://www.despair.com

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by Ottawade

From one of my faves: http://www.despair.com

Fun site! Thanks.

I fear that this one pretty much sums up the entire Rapid Transit System, now and as 'planned'.

[Beltliner]

^^^ Still think this poster from echosphere.net sums up the demotivation issue:

[Richard Eade]

An interesting prediction from the Staff report http://ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/citycouncil/tc/2009/05-06/ACS2009-ICS-TRA-0005.htm

...
The present fleet size of OC Transpo is 1,025 buses. If LRT proceeds on schedule, according to the Transportation Master Plan, the City will actually reduce the bus fleet in 2017 and 2018. However, in 2019 and 2020, additional buses will be purchased to keep pace with growth. It is expected that by 2020, the City of Ottawa will have approximately 1,300 buses within its fleet. ...

So by 2020 they think we will need 1300 buses AND THE TRAIN from Tunneys to Blair! Good Heavens. From the sounds of it, there will be no buses saved from the south-west or west, nor from the south-east, and probably no buses saved from the east either. This is almost a 1/3 increase in the raw number of buses, and if we take into account the goal of raising the fleet availability from the current 80% (820 of 1025) up to 90% (1170 of 1300) this is a HUGE projected increase of buses (43%).

If we are still going to need over 40% more buses over the next 10 years, what are we spending all the money on trains for? Does this indicate to you that we really should extend the train to the suburbs just to cut down on the number of buses?

[Beltliner]

^^^ What's a 29-to-43-percent spike in the size of the bus fleet going to do to OC Transpo's labour budget?

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

I was talking to a fellow who has done a bit of consulting and he shared an interesting thing with me:

Public consultations are not to get new or better ideas or to make any changes to an existing plan or idea. Consultations are held to gather a list of the questions and concerns that the public has so that reasons, and justifications can be developed to better support the existing plan when it is released.

Now I understand.

"Illegitimi non carborundum" - "don't let the bastards grind you down"
Keep at it despite their efforts to dissuade you, please.

[eemy]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Fun site! Thanks.

I fear that this one pretty much sums up the entire Rapid Transit System, now and as 'planned'.

I dunno. It seems that in the case of Ottawa, mediocrity takes an awfully long time as well.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

I dunno. It seems that in the case of Ottawa, mediocrity takes an awfully long time as well.

Touché

[lrt's friend]

If we are still going to need over 40% more buses over the next 10 years, what are we spending all the money on trains for? Does this indicate to you that we really should extend the train to the suburbs just to cut down on the number of buses?

What can I say, we are only building a 12.5km rail line, and it does not serve growth areas. This is all seems reasonable that we will need more and more buses.

I have to say that I am shocked that we will have to descend 10 storeys by escalator. How much time will this take? How does this compare with downtown Montreal and Toronto?