Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Weird, it's the first time I see a city official not calling the new rapid transit system LRT, but a metro. And he's not just naming it that way once...

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Rail+project+shows+Ottawa+right+track/1742534/story.html

Calling it a metro should sink this project. We don't have ridership to support that sort of expense, this should be obvious now. On the other hand, given the HUGE sticker price, calling it anything else just makes it look dinky and expensive - LRT for metro price.

It's just not the right technology combination for the city's ridership numbers. BRT + tunnel or surface LRT seems more appropriate (or maybe some new technology in the near future). But what the hell, it's only taxpayer money...

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

Calling it a metro should sink this project. We don't have ridership to support that sort of expense, this should be obvious now. On the other hand, given the HUGE sticker price, calling it anything else just makes it look dinky and expensive - LRT for metro price.

It's just not the right technology combination for the city's ridership numbers. BRT + tunnel or surface LRT seems more appropriate (or maybe some new technology in the near future). But what the hell, it's only taxpayer money...

Franky, since the projected risherhip is higher than many metro lines in the world, why do you say that the city doesn't have the ridership for it?

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by Franky

Calling it a metro should sink this project....

No it won't. The average public has no idea what the technology difference is, and doesn't really care. [Heck, I'm not even sure - maybe heavy vs. light rail?] Anyway, I'll submit that all the word metro means to the average citizen is "underground rail-based transportation system". No more, no less. So calling it a metro, even if only part of the system will be subterranean, won't make a difference at all.

If anything, it might make people think of the Montreal Metro, and it's underground downtown shopping district, a vision that should be a positive one for our proposed system.

[lrt's friend]

Like a true politician, Michel Bellemare has put a positive spin on everything as I think of my drive by earlier today of the half torn down stadium at Lansdowne Park, an embarrassment to a city of this size. It took people outside of city council to get the Congress Centre and the Shenkman Arts Centre going. We will see what happens with the rest of what he is talking about. Until a shovel is in the ground, I am a skeptic.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Franky, since the projected risherhip is higher than many metro lines in the world, why do you say that the city doesn't have the ridership for it?

Just because someone else makes a mistake doesn't make it OK to do the same. Which "many metro lines?"

[Franky]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

No it won't. The average public has no idea what the technology difference is, and doesn't really care. [Heck, I'm not even sure - maybe heavy vs. light rail?] Anyway, I'll submit that all the word metro means to the average citizen is "underground rail-based transportation system". No more, no less. So calling it a metro, even if only part of the system will be subterranean, won't make a difference at all.

If anything, it might make people think of the Montreal Metro, and it's underground downtown shopping district, a vision that should be a positive one for our proposed system.

True, a fool and his money are soon parted...

[lrt's friend]

Montreal's underground city is a product of the 1960s construction boom, including the Metro, and the euphoria that led up to Centennial Year and Expo 67 and a visionary mayor. Montreal has never seen so much construction before or since. Will this translate to something similar in Ottawa? What happened in Edmonton as a result of building its subway? I have my doubts that we will be able replicate Montreal's experience and whether it is even desirable here, as it will certainly have an impact on surface commerce.

[MalcolmTucker]

Edmonton's is integrated into the underground 'pedway' system. However, I doubt you could really kill Sparks anymore than it already has been.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

Just because someone else makes a mistake doesn't make it OK to do the same. Which "many metro lines?"

What mistakes? Please support your statements in how their choices were mistakes. Antwerp, Lausanne, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Vancouver among others.

The only mistake I can see is the Sheppard Subway in Toronto, but that is due of the short size of the line (and has less than half the ridership of Ottawa's LRT anyways). But the ridership for that subway line is still higher than LRT or buses whould have brought.

The trend is to have shorter stations with automatic trains, it saves costs compared to longer LRT trains while offering faster service than LRT.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Montreal's underground city is a product of the 1960s construction boom, including the Metro, and the euphoria that led up to Centennial Year and Expo 67 and a visionary mayor. Montreal has never seen so much construction before or since. Will this translate to something similar in Ottawa? What happened in Edmonton as a result of building its subway? I have my doubts that we will be able replicate Montreal's experience and whether it is even desirable here, as it will certainly have an impact on surface commerce.

Actually most of the underground city was started in 70s, with the major expansions in the 80s and 90s. Most of the area where I live (Square-Victoria) was actually built in the last five years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city,_Montreal

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

What mistakes? Please support your statements in how their choices were mistakes. Antwerp, Lausanne, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Vancouver among others.

The only mistake I can see is the Sheppard Subway in Toronto, but that is due of the short size of the line (and has less than half the ridership of Ottawa's LRT anyways). But the ridership for that subway line is still higher than LRT or buses whould have brought.

The trend is to have shorter stations with automatic trains, it saves costs compared to longer LRT trains while offering faster service than LRT.

Vancouver doesn't even have a subway. I don't have time to go through capitalized expenses for each of these places and I can understand adding to a existing system, what else can you do, you're trapped by rail? But Ottawa's plan is just too expensive for what we're getting - no increase in ridership and an expensive system that will never run at justifiable capacity.

Since Ottawa's CBD will be limited to around 25,000 pphpd because of height restrictions (to keep the peace tower impressive and so make Ottawa a nation's capital) we will never get ridership numbers in the 40,000 to 50,000 pphpd of other cities so a subway tunnel expense is wasted here. This money should be spent providing electric transportation to the satellites of Ottawa - Orleans, Kanata, Barrhaven and Gatineau. Ottawa isn't about who can build the tallest skyscrapers, it has more subtle ambitions in architecture in the city core at least. So in such a distributed model, Huge expenses in the core seem silly.

Yes, smaller, cheaper automated "trains" like Urbanaut.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

Vancouver doesn't even have a subway. I don't have time to go through capitalized expenses for each of these places and I can understand adding to a existing system, what else can you do, you're trapped by rail? But Ottawa's plan is just too expensive for what we're getting - no increase in ridership and an expensive system that will never run at justifiable capacity.

Since Ottawa's CBD will be limited to around 25,000 pphpd because of height restrictions (to keep the peace tower impressive and so make Ottawa a nation's capital) we will never get ridership numbers in the 40,000 to 50,000 pphpd of other cities so a subway tunnel expense is wasted here.

Actually 40000 to 50000 is upper subway territory, as in extremely crowded territory. What do you call the Canada Line in Vancouver then? Half of it is underground....

It's interesting that you say trapped by rail, because it's the point of TOD.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Actually 40000 to 50000 is upper subway territory, as in extremely crowded territory. What do you call the Canada Line in Vancouver then? Half of it is underground....

It's interesting that you say trapped by rail, because it's the point of TOD.

Ah, it's a new line. $2 Billion for the line expected to move 15,000 pphpd driven by the 2010 Olympics. 15 km, so $133 million per km!!!

150,000 riders (by 2021) per day (assuming commuters) means $2 Billion/75,000 people or about $25,000 per rider, not including Operation and Maintenance!

On man's junk...

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Franky

Ah, it's a new line. $2 Billion for the line expected to move 15,000 pphpd driven by the 2010 Olympics. 15 km, so $133 million per km!!!

150,000 riders (by 2021) per day (assuming commuters) means $2 Billion/75,000 people or about $25,000 per rider, not including Operation and Maintenance!

On man's junk...

I could name many highways that are build at the same price per km and have less ridership. It's all about perspective, and you need to put operational costs savings, which are about 55M$ per year for them. The line will have paid itself in 25-30 years.

That's why I argued a lot with LRT's friend on this subject. Sure the new project may not bring new ridership, but it brings about 20M$ per year in operational savings. If it's automated, much more, and if the project has lots of spare room, you can have 20 years go buy without buying new cars, and your cost by user decreases enormously.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

I could name many highways that are build at the same price per km and have less ridership. It's all about perspective, and you need to put operational costs savings, which are about 55M$ per year for them. The line will have paid itself in 25-30 years.

That's why I argued a lot with LRT's friend on this subject. Sure the new project may not bring new ridership, but it brings about 20M$ per year in operational savings. If it's automated, much more, and if the project has lots of spare room, you can have 20 years go buy without buying new cars, and your cost by user decreases enormously.

I'm not sure how you do your math, but transit systems don't even cover their O&M costs.

Operational savings compared to what? Compared to automobiles which in Ontario cover their costs?

[waterloowarrior]

Originally Posted by Franky

I'm not sure how you do your math, but transit systems don't even cover their O&M costs.

Operational savings compared to what? Compared to automobiles which in Ontario cover their costs?

The majority of roads are municipal and they don't even come close to recovering their (internal) costs. All forms of transportation are subsidized, especially the external costs.

[lrt's friend]

When was the last time that we have seen a transit line being funded that will not deliver both faster travel times and higher ridership? With our rail project, we will not get either. Then we claim operational savings as the selling point. What? Let's say we save $50M per year (I don't believe this), it will still require 26 years to recoup our $1.3B capital investment (if the project does not exceed that figure), not taking into consideration the cost of financing that money for that period of time. As I pointed out long ago, automation may save on train operators, but will add to capital costs for extending the proposed line because of the requirement of a 100% exclusive ROW and a secure ROW. The south route price tag automatically increases substantially as proposed level crossings will have to be eliminated. The alternative of building a second rail route through downtown to serve the south end using another technology, still adds costs, and begs the question of why we cancelled the previous plan, if we chose this alternative in the future.

Hmmm, $50M equals 500 bus operator jobs eliminated assuming $100K per driver per year. Can we realistically eliminate that many jobs as a result of opening a Tunney's/Blair LRT line? I would be shocked to say the least.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Franky

I'm not sure how you do your math, but transit systems don't even cover their O&M costs.

Operational savings compared to what? Compared to automobiles which in Ontario cover their costs?

He was comparing to our current high-cost BRT system. A reduction in operating costs compared to that is a savings in operating costs even if the savings are not enough to bring the system to parity.

With all this stimulus money about to start flowing for road improvements, I doubt the voracity of a claim of cars covering their own costs will last for long and if I recall correctly that claim is from a study in the early 2000s in which Ontario was in a range that straddled cost recovery and wasn't necessarily in full cost recovery (no other province even straddled cost recovery). I doubt cars are in full cost recovery now anywhere in Canada and certainly not in the US. At any rate, the study would be kind of dubious anyway since most roads are financed through municipal property taxes and development fees while gas taxes go to senior governments for various uses. Moreover, in urban areas where transit projects are built the cost of grade separations usually gets assigned to the transit project even though most of the time it's done for the benefit of the road users (the alternative would be to stop traffic every time a bus or train passes). Since much of the cost of a transit project can be grade separations with roads, it's really only fair that car-related revenue sources like gas taxes and congestion charges are used to fund them.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

The majority of roads are municipal and they don't even come close to recovering their (internal) costs.

Roads (in Canada) have also long benefited from being deeded by the Crown from the time of settlement or from initial subdivision, meaning that there are often no direct land acquisition costs associated with most roads (there are even quaint policies dealing with current land subdivisions for transferring corner triangles - all for the benefit of the car). Today those costs are borne by developers who pass them on to the future landowners in the subdivision, which is a tad unfair if you happen to have an arterial road running through your land whose great size is needed to serve people in other subdivisions. With the land used up for wider road allowances a developer could have built more houses or provided more amenities. Those are some of the hidden costs of roads that we never see.

All forms of transportation are subsidized, especially the external costs.

Well there is one that probably isn't: rail freight. Any 19th century subsidies for building railways have long since been paid off through taxes and a generally enlarged economy. Today, railways pay income taxes on their profits, fuel taxes on their fuel and most galling of all property taxes on their rights-of-way - all the while in competition with trucking companies that pay no such equivalent tax (even the 407 ETR doesn't pay property taxes).

[bikegypsy]

Originally Posted by Franky

Calling it a metro should sink this project. We don't have ridership to support that sort of expense, this should be obvious now. On the other hand, given the HUGE sticker price, calling it anything else just makes it look dinky and expensive - LRT for metro price.

It's just not the right technology combination for the city's ridership numbers. BRT + tunnel or surface LRT seems more appropriate (or maybe some new technology in the near future). But what the hell, it's only taxpayer money...

Wow... wait wait, let me put on my sunglasses, something very bright is hurting my eyes.
Calling it what ever is not going to do anything.
Metro is a term used loosely. It's all rail technology.
You could call it "purple strawberry" and it would still be the same thing and would still be going to happen.