Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by kyle_olsen

That way, all your potential bidders can do all the cost analysis for you, instead of prejudging the best solution. Who knows, you could get bids with automated trains, some with conventional LRT.

I don't understand why the city hasn't gone this way. It's like they want to have control on every little detail. If the contractor said, well it's cheaper to build under McKenzie King bridge, even if it's more complicated, they'll go for it. I find the city studies to be a big waste of time for everyone.

[Richard Eade]

I see Christine Leadman is planning to change the DOTT all by herself.

From her newsletter:

Tunney’s Pasture not a viable future transit hub

Just ahead on the transit horizon is also the Transportation Master Plan (TMP). Stage one of phase one of the TMP end terminus as it currently stands will be at Tunney’s Pasture. City staff proposed this change in the middle of the tunnel debate saying it was necessary for Tunney’s Pasture’s traffic flow to be incorporated into the downtown tunnel.

Tunney’s was never originally considered. Focus shifted from Bayview, which had been the site originally under consideration, to Tunney’s. Having Tunney’s as the end terminus will limit the city’s transit options and present significant implementation issues.

This is an important change as it would solidify the western option meaning the use of the Ottawa River Parkway as a transit corridor. If the parkway ends up not being the approved route, the other option being mentioned would be the Byron Linear Park. Both these options are clearly unacceptable.

Councillor Leadman is in favour of seeing Bayview as this terminus instead of Tunney’s as she feels it is better suited for the pressures of being a main transit hub.

Bayview is the logical location because it’s where all directions of transit meet. It has ample room for turnarounds, transfers and bus layups. It’s also currently a stop for Light Rail and could remain so with few adjustments.

Tunney’s has little room for extra buses and is not easily accessible for north-south transit. The work that would be necessary to achieve this would require land not owned by the city, unlike at Bayview.

While she realizes transit needs to be expanded and is in favour of more service to the ward, she does not believe that using Tunney’s Pasture as the future end terminus is the best way to do this.

Because this is such an important issue, Councillor Leadman will be holding a public meeting on May 26 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Hintonburg Community Centre. For more information about this meeting please see the advertisement in this edition.

Transit is important in our ward and we as a community need to ensure that it is done right.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

I see Christine Leadman is planning to change the DOTT all by herself.

From her newsletter:

You can't really blame her. Of course city staff wants a fait accompli.

[Kitchissippi]

This is an important change as it would solidify the western option meaning the use of the Ottawa River Parkway as a transit corridor. If the parkway ends up not being the approved route, the other option being mentioned would be the Byron Linear Park. Both these options are clearly unacceptable.

What she is really saying by this is she opposes anything but the Carling corridor, which means rail would never go on the transitway trench.

She is playing a silly game with this. She really should just fight for the city to bite the bullet and go for a tunnel on the Byron corridor right away. Much of this cost could be recovered by the hundreds of buses not having to do the distance from Baseline to Tunneys.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

What she is really saying by this is she opposes anything but the Carling corridor, which means rail would never go on the transitway trench.

She is playing a silly game with this. She really should just fight for the city to bite the bullet and go for a tunnel on the Byron corridor right away. Much of this cost could be recovered by the hundreds of buses not having to do the distance from Baseline to Tunneys.

I agree, completely!

I guess that $250M-$300M would be needed to cut and cover two lines, one under the road shoulders on each side of the linear park - east-bound trains under the north shoulder of Byron, and the west-bound trains under the south shoulder of Richmond. The stations would be between the tracks, under the park; just simple, shallow central-platform stations. There would be no underground mezzanine level, the park on the surface would handle that job in a landscaped, roof covered area which is accessable to everyone. Passengers would pay to go down to the platform level.

Having the tunnel buried along Byron/Richmond means that most of the cross streets can remain and there should be very few complaints from the area residents.

In the grand scheme of things, is $300M too much to add to a $7.2 Billion project?

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by Dado

You mean like the Transitway itself? With all its unnecessary trenching, grade-separations and pricey stations - unnecessary because had we gone with light rail from the outset much of it would not be needed - the Transitway is a 'gold-plated' monument built with little regard to cost as a legacy to future generations. Insanely, it took a recession and an NDP government of all things to bring some fiscal sense to the monument-building by saying 'No' to the ultimate in gold-plated Transitway extravagance, a massive twin bus tunnel project comprising four subterranean lanes in total. The legacy aspect is clear: just look how emotional Andy Haydon gets when 'his' Transitway is to be converted. Or that John Bonsall finds a need to come back to Ottawa years after he left to also defend 'his' Transitway from conversion to light rail. They're both still disappointed that their legacy is incomplete as it is missing its tunnel. With no bus tunnel on the horizon, the latter of the two went on to work with one of the major consultation companies involved in transitway construction and promoted the concept in places like Brisbane, Australia, which now gets bus jams just like in Ottawa.


So the current tunnel project is just following the well-trodden path established by the Transitway project in monument-building.

There are certainly parts of the Transitway that were overbuilt in my opinion. The Lincoln Fields and Queensway stations come to mind and there are no doubt others. They could qualify as monuments, albeit small ones. However, there are instances where the Transitway was quite frugal as existing infrastructure (e.g., the Ottawa River Parkway and Highway 174) was extensively used. I also don’t have major complaints about the Scott Street trench for example, except that too many road bridges were built over it given the low traffic volumes of some streets.

With regards to the Ontario NDP, it is funny that their fiscal sense did not extend to Toronto. The Sheppard subway line, a truly horrendous waste of public money, is a case in point. Certainly, the $1 billion or so that was spent on that white elephant would have yielded much greater benefits had it been used instead to build a downtown bus tunnel in Ottawa (who knows, maybe there would have been some money left over, which would have allowed us to build some of the Transitway segments that are currently missing) . If, on top of that, we had adopted bus rapid transit best practices (you know, really cutting-edge, complex stuff like fare collection prior to boarding, which is something that Brisbane has also failed to do and hence the bus jams), we’d be in great shape right now and set for at least the next fifty years thanks to capacity of 25,000 to 30,000 pphpd. With that level of capacity, the bus tunnel would have accommodated both OC Transpo and the STO. We would have a world-class transit system, the best in Canada. Instead, we are going to end up with a costly rail transit system that has poor door-to-door speed, very limited coverage and terrible integration with the STO/Gatineau, and this after a very disruptive conversion.

I cannot speak for Haydon and Bonsall since I know neither of them. But perhaps they are like me in that they are deeply disillusioned with the process that has led us here. If Haydon does challenge this before the OMB or some other forum, he’ll at least have the facts and common sense on his side:

- The claim that a bus tunnel would have trouble handling demand for 2031 and beyond (14,000 pphpd without the STO and 20,000 pphpd with the STO) is based on total ignorance of how state-of-the-art BRT systems are operated today. The reference documents they used date back to the early 1990s and thus don’t take into account the great BRT innovations of the past decade that are allowing such systems to achieve the capacities of subways.

- The ridership model result that a rail system with longer waits, slower travel times for many trips (i.e., as compared to express buses) and vastly more transfers would garner significantly more ridership than the bus option with a tunnel is completely illogical. Either the modelling was deeply flawed or the model results were tampered with.

- The peer-reviewed studies on modal preferences, which have consistently shown that riders are indifferent between rail and buses when travel characteristics are the same, were ignored. Instead, when there was a discussion of modal preferences, we got totally irrelevant blurbs on stuff like the impact of rail systems on land values.

- The large operating cost advantage of the rail option was calculated using unrealistically low off-peak frequencies (seven times lower than bus frequencies) and did not account for the higher average speed of express buses.

[Richard Eade]

The Display Boards from the 1st Open House for the Hospital Link / Cumberland Connection are up on the City's Web Site.

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/hospital_cumberland/index_en.html

[Richard Eade]

A couple of things to note about the Hospital Link / Cumberland Connection (HL/CC):

This is to be a BUS TRANSITWAY, there is no thought of doing this as rail.

Many 'Alternative Transit Corridors' are shown from Hurdman to St. Laurent, but this is called the "Hospital Link" for a reason; there realistically are only a very few possibilities. My bet would be 1-36, 1-5, 1-34, 1-28, 1-38, 2-3, 2-7, 5-8, 2-10, 3-3, 4-1-1, 4-4, and 4-5. The multiple sub-versions shown along the same alignment (such as 2-7-1, 2-7-2, 2-7-3) are simply placement options (north, median, south) within that alignment. Showing possible routes along Industrial, et al, are not realistic for a "Hospital Link", and Smyth is a small, crowded residential road. The Hospital Plan shows the already chosen route through the hospital lands. [I don't think anyone at the Open House was fooled by the many routes shown.]

The route from Hurdman to the hospital, 1-36, is not the S-E Transitway; it is an additional strip of asphalt between the towers and the river. Having the new Transitway on the west, allows it to better use the Nicholas Connector, as the AVTC Bridge is now to be called. [Apparently the AVTC is too 'hot' a handle so they changed the name so people would feel better about it.] There will need to be some co-ordination with the DOTT folks about the design of the Hurdman Station since 1-36 seems to come in through the proposed new bus lay-by.

The line through the hospital lands (south end of 1-36, 1-5, and 1-34) will be at least in a trench (and possibly be covered), due to the large number of things it must pass under (Riverside, Transitway, Old Riverside, VIA, Alta Vista, AVTC, access road 1, access road 2, and the AVTC again). It might also continue depressed through the Browning Corridor to appease the neighbours and avoid the Hydro Substation. Then, of course, it might as well stay depressed to pass under Russel and St. Laurent.

There are two places to cross the 417. I am betting on the bridge because it does not make use of the VIA corridor - remember, this is a BUS Transitway which would not mix well with the VIA trains. 2-11 might be an option (and my preferred option if this were an LRT run), but I doubt it will be chosen for buses.

For the Blair connection, notice that the options close to Blair Rd. (5-7 and 5-6) show no interconnection to the Innes route; that is why they will not be chosen.

The bus will go through Blackburn Hamlet so 4-4 is the only real option here.

So many apparent options, but so few actual choices.

[Franky]

Route 1-1, 1-19, 1-26, 2-2... through the Ottawa Train Yards is another good possibility. It might even make sense to have transit stops at either end of the large project. Infrastructure is already available (old train yard access).

The cost of the "Hospital link" - Browning corridor alignment seems ridiculously high needing tunnels or overpasses at Russel and St-Laurent.

BTW, the Ottawa Hospital (inside the ring road, named OHSC at the OMB hearing) spoke out against having transit cut through their land inside the ring road! They are building a multi-storey parking garage and don't seem to care much about transit - the current dedicated bus must do the trick. This is not about Hospitals, using the hospital name is just to give justification to an otherwise unjustifiable road.

[Richard Eade]

Franky, this is a political decision so it doesn't matter how expensive it is (a $210M Baseline Station instead of a $20M one, remember). It has already been decided that there is to be a "Hospital Link" and the land has been set aside for it. It doesn't matter if there are better routes or the main stakeholders don't want it (remember the tunnel under Rideau, despite the Rideau BIA and the Rideau Centre rallying against it).

If you really want to get fussy, there is no need for a new Bus Transitway from Orleans (south) to Hurdman at all. Orleans folks can be directed up to Blair and a 'local' bus could travel from St. Laurent to Hurdman via the Hospital - Oh, wait, that is what happens now and, as you said, the Hospital doesn't seem to care about buses.

It is not that the need, route, or cost has to make sense; it just needs to be a Council approved decision. Not all of Council needs to be in favour of the idea (remember the AVTC is not a vote getter for Councillors so it is being slid into the TMP Update to make it more palatable), but there should be approval at some time for at least an EA; that seems to be enough to write the plan in stone.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Franky, this is a political decision so it doesn't matter how expensive it is (a $210M Baseline Station instead of a $20M one, remember). It has already been decided that there is to be a "Hospital Link" and the land has been set aside for it. It doesn't matter if there are better routes or the main stakeholders don't want it (remember the tunnel under Rideau, despite the Rideau BIA and the Rideau Centre rallying against it).

If you really want to get fussy, there is no need for a new Bus Transitway from Orleans (south) to Hurdman at all. Orleans folks can be directed up to Blair and a 'local' bus could travel from St. Laurent to Hurdman via the Hospital - Oh, wait, that is what happens now and, as you said, the Hospital doesn't seem to care about buses.

It is not that the need, route, or cost has to make sense; it just needs to be a Council approved decision. Not all of Council needs to be in favour of the idea (remember the AVTC is not a vote getter for Councillors so it is being slid into the TMP Update to make it more palatable), but there should be approval at some time for at least an EA; that seems to be enough to write the plan in stone.

I agree with what you said, but it's our money, our taxes they are wasting! I will not roll over and take it, I will keep telling them they are wrong until it is built and maybe some time after that. We deserve better than "it's a political decision" without a mandate I might add. It looks even worse when you consider campaigns are funded by developers, the only people who stand to benefit from these indefensible projects.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Suzie

There are certainly parts of the Transitway that were overbuilt in my opinion. The Lincoln Fields and Queensway stations come to mind and there are no doubt others. They could qualify as monuments, albeit small ones. However, there are instances where the Transitway was quite frugal as existing infrastructure (e.g., the Ottawa River Parkway and Highway 174) was extensively used. I also don’t have major complaints about the Scott Street trench for example, except that too many road bridges were built over it given the low traffic volumes of some streets.

That's just it - the bridges were "needed" to mitigate the trench. The entire trench itself is a monument to the extravagance of BRT. With LRT there would have been no need for a trench. Even a train passing every 2 minutes in each direction can be handled. It would just be an at-grade line that widened the then-existing railbed, an underpass (down and up) at Island Park and simple (but not "cheap") stations. No other bridges, no blasting, no carting away of thousands of cubic metres of rock, no sprawling multi-level stations like Tunney's and Westboro.

I cannot speak for Haydon and Bonsall since I know neither of them. But perhaps they are like me in that they are deeply disillusioned with the process that has led us here. If Haydon does challenge this before the OMB or some other forum, he’ll at least have the facts and common sense on his side:

Haydon will have neither. He's living in a dream world where busways cost $2.6M/km. The Southwest Transitway through Barrhaven is slated to cost $79M for 3 km - or $26M/km. He's an order of magnitude out, and the Southwest Transitway in Barrhaven is pretty close to ideal: it follows a long-time rail corridor for much of the length so there are few roads to cross nor is there much of a need to trench it or put it in a gully. The rest of the route is in a reserved corridor, so no need to move anything out of the way or go around things. One of the stations will use an underpass for pedestrians (i.e. oversized culvert) rather than a skyway. I think there's all of one road grade separation. Short of building a busway through the Greenbelt, realistically suburban busway doesn't get any better than this - and still it costs 10x what he thinks it costs.

Haydon also thinks that Pittsburgh's LRT system makes a suitable comparison for Ottawa since it also has a BRT system. Well their 40 km LRT system gets all of 26,000 riders per day. Here in Ottawa, the Transitway carries something like 240,000. Meanwhile, out in Calgary, their 45 km LRT system carries upwards of 250,000. The 8 km O-Train carries a third of Pittsburgh's ridership! Demographically, Pittsburgh has a long-term declining population - in other words, it has road and other infrastructure built to handle a larger population. It is a poor comparison to Ottawa for just about anything, yet time and again he cites high LRT costs (along with their somewhat lower but still high BRT costs) as if this somehow proves that LRT costs more and that we in Ottawa should not go for LRT. The figures he cited recently in the Sun ($2.16 BRT and $3.79 LRT) were from 1999 and in US$ (I know this because I found another study from 2000 with a bar chart that had bars at approximately those numbers). More recent numbers are considerably higher for both. Among cities with both LRT and BRT, Pittsburgh seems to be unique in having higher LRT than BRT costs per passenger. Funny that he (and Bonsall) should choose to pick Pittsburgh as a comparison rather than another Canadian city with rapid transit ridership far closer to what we have... the mind just boggles.

As I said, if Haydon goes to the OMB he'll have neither facts nor common sense on his side. As for being disillusioned with the process, well I'm disillusioned with a process that allowed him and Bonsall to create the Transitway in the first place.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Franky

Route 1-1, 1-19, 1-26, 2-2... through the Ottawa Train Yards is another good possibility. It might even make sense to have transit stops at either end of the large project. Infrastructure is already available (old train yard access).

That kind of defeats the purpose of trying to serve the hospital complex...

The cost of the "Hospital link" - Browning corridor alignment seems ridiculously high needing tunnels or overpasses at Russel and St-Laurent.

BTW, the Ottawa Hospital (inside the ring road, named OHSC at the OMB hearing) spoke out against having transit cut through their land inside the ring road! They are building a multi-storey parking garage and don't seem to care much about transit - the current dedicated bus must do the trick. This is not about Hospitals, using the hospital name is just to give justification to an otherwise unjustifiable road.

How does that prove anything? So what if the Ottawa Hospital doesn't want rapid transit on their doorstep? Whether the administration/management of the Ottawa Hospital wants it or not is close to irrelevant; it's not being built for them but to serve the people who go there. I'm sure the staff and many visitors and even some patients would appreciate it because then they would be able to avoid paying to park. It's just like airports being opposed to decent transit service since it eats into their parking revenue, but that's not a reason to not serve airports with transit.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Dado

That kind of defeats the purpose of trying to serve the hospital complex...

The Hospital is not the goal, transit numbers are the goal. The hospital is an excuse to sell unjustifiable roads. The EA will actually run the numbers and will figure out what the expected increase in transit will be.

Even if the Browning corridor isn't used, the AVTC will still have dedicated bus lanes to serve the Hospital and even if there is no AVTC, a short bus and emergency vehicle-only road connecting Alta Vista to the Hospital ring road would both shorten the Hurdman to Hospital bus route and provide better access to the Hospital without wrecking the neighbourhood or putting the city into more debt.

Originally Posted by Dado

How does that prove anything? So what if the Ottawa Hospital doesn't want rapid transit on their doorstep? Whether the administration/management of the Ottawa Hospital wants it or not is close to irrelevant; it's not being built for them but to serve the people who go there. I'm sure the staff and many visitors and even some patients would appreciate it because then they would be able to avoid paying to park. It's just like airports being opposed to decent transit service since it eats into their parking revenue, but that's not a reason to not serve airports with transit.

Actually, it is. Instead of wasting millions of dollars, on service nobody wants, plant trees to offset GHG emissions. Who wants to bring their luggage on public transit and how many people will decide to go to the emergency because it's conveniently on their route? Transit to shopping centres makes more sense than to a hospital. Anyway, the EA study will do the work of figuring out the numbers.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Franky

Actually, it is. Instead of wasting millions of dollars, on service nobody wants, plant trees to offset GHG emissions. Who wants to bring their luggage on public transit

I think you need to get out of North America more often. Take a flight to Heathrow or Gatwick. At the latter, you can descend a single storey to the train platforms below the airport terminal.


flickr: RachelH_
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bagelmouse/3150119887/

There are, like, travelling people with luggage getting onto trains there. It's AMAZING!


flickr: jovike
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvk/1050076290/



This summer I'm going to Europe and I'll be flying into Heathrow and I shan't be taking a taxi into London.

and how many people will decide to go to the emergency because it's conveniently on their route? Transit to shopping centres makes more sense than to a hospital.

Do you realize how major an employment node a hospital is? Hundreds of nursing and care staff, technical staff, kitchen and cafeteria staff, support staff, volunteers, visiting clergy, and probably others I haven't even thought of, plenty of them at lower income levels. And then we have a whole cluster of hospitals in one place. There are also plenty of reasons to go to a hospital other than an emergency as a patient, any number of which might prevent one from driving but not from taking transit. The above comment of yours is actually quite an ignorant statement.

[Franky]

Are any of those places less than 1 million people? Our small percentage using public transit doesn't translate into enough people to justify rail.

Also, we ARE in North America where cars rule and we have large spaces and specifically in Ottawa, the boundary will continue to expand and roads will continue to be built, sometimes even where it makes no sense, like into the city core.

Spending millions on BRT to the hospital makes no sense either. Perhaps Cumberland should just connect at Blair, though connecting to Hurdman makes more sense. Connecting to the SE transitway (the "hospital" route) is equivalent to connecting at Blair where number of transfers is considered, Hurdman would have a transfer choice of 3 directions.

[AuxTown]

Franky, I'm guessing you're not a hospital employee and they you've never travelled to the hospital via public transit. Being a physician at the Ottawa Hospital myself, who just happens to use public transit, I know that there is a demad for it. The Ottawa Hospital directly employs 11000 people and there are thousands of others, who work at the hospitals through private or volunteer agencies. The 160 is packed every morning and afternoon with 5-10 minute frequencies and with the parking shortages at the hospital, it's sure to get busier in coming years. This is not to mention the patients that use public transit as well, and believe me they do. I see entire families taking the bus to CHEO, elderly patients that can't afford a cab and don't drive take the bus, and countless others who just don't want to pay for parking and already have a bus pass. This link is needed and makes more sense than just about any other transit investment currently being implemented or that is on the table for the near future.

The airport is a whole other issue, but we better get things figured out in terms of rapid transit to the airport because it's another large employment hub and to be a city on the world stage means attracting tourists and visitors from all walks of life, including those that can't afford a $50 cab ride into the city or a rental car. The bus works for now (actually quite well), but our new LRT system will be adding a transfer at Hurdman and no one wants to do that with luggage.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by O-Town Hockey

Franky, I'm guessing you're not a hospital employee and they you've never travelled to the hospital via public transit. Being a physician at the Ottawa Hospital myself, who just happens to use public transit, I know that there is a demad for it. The Ottawa Hospital directly employs 11000 people and there are thousands of others, who work at the hospitals through private or volunteer agencies. The 160 is packed every morning and afternoon with 5-10 minute frequencies and with the parking shortages at the hospital, it's sure to get busier in coming years. This is not to mention the patients that use public transit as well, and believe me they do. I see entire families taking the bus to CHEO, elderly patients that can't afford a cab and don't drive take the bus, and countless others who just don't want to pay for parking and already have a bus pass. This link is needed and makes more sense than just about any other transit investment currently being implemented or that is on the table for the near future.

The 160 doesn't go to the General Hospital, did you mean 106? Assuming you meant 106, it's not running every 5-10 minutes it runs every half-hour! Hard to believe your analysis from this.
http://www.octranspo.com/maps_menue.htm

[AuxTown]

Sorry, I meant 106. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here because your link shows clearly 5-10 minute frequencies at peak period. From that link you can see that the 106 stops at the hospital at 722, 729, 737, 744, 751, 758, 806, 813, 821, 828, 836, 843, 851, 858, 906, 921 and has similar frequencies at the P.M. peak period. This is a busy route that serves a 456-bed teaching hospital, CHEO, The Eye Institute, Ottawa Rehab Centre, Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre, and the U of O medical school. This is not to mention the thousands of people that live along this route in fairly dense neighbourhoods (especially if we move it away from the mansions on Smythe toward the AVTC with its surrounding low-income housing and townhouse developments).

[Franky]

Originally Posted by O-Town Hockey

Sorry, I meant 106. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here because your link shows clearly 5-10 minute frequencies at peak period. From that link you can see that the 106 stops at the hospital at 722, 729, 737, 744, 751, 758, 806, 813, 821, 828, 836, 843, 851, 858, 906, 921 and has similar frequencies at the P.M. peak period. This is a busy route that serves a 456-bed teaching hospital, CHEO, The Eye Institute, Ottawa Rehab Centre, Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre, and the U of O medical school. This is not to mention the thousands of people that live along this route in fairly dense neighbourhoods (especially if we move it away from the mansions on Smythe toward the AVTC with its surrounding low-income housing and townhouse developments).

Ha, sorry, the 160 runs every half-hour. The 106 buses seem to run every 7.5 minutes at rush hours between 7 and 9 a.m. That's 8 buses per hour. This does not seem particularly high or unmanageable. 131 people on an articulated bus (assuming they are articulated?) is 131 * 16 = 2100 people for the rush hours. So how many more people do you figure will switch to transit if the busway goes in? Even 10% more is only 210 people or 1.5 buses more over 2 hours.

A simple bus and emergency vehicle-only road connecting the ring road to Alta Vista would also serve that population and cost about $100 million less.