Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[bikegypsy]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

LRT/Suzie.

Also, during the 3 years of construction, the transitway as we know if will be closed. How many people will endure this? How many people will find alternate ways of commuting and never come back, especially when the new service will be inferior to the existing Express Service?

Citizens of various cities around the world have endured it, so can we. It appears to have paid off on the long run in all cases. You talk about using alternate ways of commuting... like what? The car? The existing quasi door-to-door service is a pure luxury which is doomed on the long run as rush hour will become impossible. The new service will be inferior in terms of convenience, but far superior in other ways such as adjustment of capacity and long-term costs as well as being light-years better in terms of trafic management.

This fascination with Trains is all about trying to make Ottawa into a big city (yeah, we got a subway too syndrome!!). Not sure it is going to be relevant in the not too distant future anyway, how and where we work will evolve. I, like a growing minority of people in this city, have the option to work from Home, this will continue to grow (along with flex hours etc..) Governments are laggards when it comes to this policy, but they'll catch up someday.

Understood that Ottawa is no Tokyo but with all due respect, a lot of people have the obsession of seeing Ottawa as a one-horse-town. I guess it gives them a nice cozy reassuring feeling. Up to them, the reality is what it is and there are several reasons why the vast majority of cities of modern industrualised nations begin to incorporate rail in their respective transit system when their population reach the quarter million to million range.

Just like you -- I assume --, I'd much rather take the bus than some kind of rail transit. I sojourned long term in mega cities such as Bangkok, Paris and NYC and absolutely hated being underground. I'm talking about the experience, not the size. Furthermore, I'm no expert on the subject but I think that it's far easier to increase capacity on rail rather than bus based transit. What would happen if would let the system as it is? What would happen then when the region reaches 2 or 3 million sometime during the next 50 years? At the point where public transit -- or walking, or biking -- is no longer a choice but an obligation?

[DubberDom]

Why don't we simply start by moving to a Hub&Spoke model today? Under Light rail, in order to do from say a house in Orleans to Algonquin College, you will need to take 4 different trips
1. Local bus to Place D'orleans (or other)
2. 95 route to Blair
3. Light rail to Tunney's
4. 95 route to Baseline

Currently, this trip only takes 2 buses (local and 95)

If congestion in downtown is the issue, let's remove all the Express buses and move to Hub&Spoke right now. Tell me why we don't do this now?

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Why don't we simply start by moving to a Hub&Spoke model today? Under Light rail, in order to do from say a house in Orleans to Algonquin College, you will need to take 4 different trips
1. Local bus to Place D'orleans (or other)
2. 95 route to Blair
3. Light rail to Tunney's
4. 95 route to Baseline

Currently, this trip only takes 2 buses (local and 95)

If congestion in downtown is the issue, let's remove all the Express buses and move to Hub&Spoke right now. Tell me why we don't do this now?

It already started last year with bus routes ending at Place D'Orléans.

I expect local buses to end at LRT stations, not Transitway stations. But then again, I wouldn't be surprised of the opposite.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Why don't we simply start by moving to a Hub&Spoke model today? Under Light rail, in order to do from say a house in Orleans to Algonquin College, you will need to take 4 different trips
1. Local bus to Place D'orleans (or other)
2. 95 route to Blair
3. Light rail to Tunney's
4. 95 route to Baseline

Currently, this trip only takes 2 buses (local and 95)

If congestion in downtown is the issue, let's remove all the Express buses and move to Hub&Spoke right now. Tell me why we don't do this now?

The local/express routes can terminate at Blair. That's adding only one transfer, in exchange for delays caused by downtown congestion. Both LRT transfer points are likely to be high frequency and sheltered. In the future when LRT reaches Baseline, your above scenario will be reduced to one bus to blair and LRT to Baseline, exactly what it is today less downtown congestion.

We could have moved to a Hub-and-Spoke model a long time ago, but I suspect OC Transpo was reluctant to because the amount of buses required would have made it more obvious that LRT is a better choice. Why pay for hundreds of drivers and maintain engines for each bus on Transitway-only routes when a few trains could do the job better, faster, cheaper and with less pollution?

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

The local/express routes can terminate at Blair.

So then every local bus in Orleans should terminate at Blair?? Are you serious???

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

It already started last year with bus routes ending at Place D'Orléans.

"Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis??"


In all the projected revenue models, what rate did they use to come up with the figures? Since LRT's Hub & Spoke model will essentially eliminate the Express service, will everybody's passes cost $22.50 less per month (Reg vs Express pass). Although the Express service may seem less efficient, they also do generate more revenue.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Why don't we simply start by moving to a Hub&Spoke model today? Under Light rail, in order to do from say a house in Orleans to Algonquin College, you will need to take 4 different trips
1. Local bus to Place D'orleans (or other)
2. 95 route to Blair
3. Light rail to Tunney's
4. 95 route to Baseline

Currently, this trip only takes 2 buses (local and 95)

If congestion in downtown is the issue, let's remove all the Express buses and move to Hub&Spoke right now. Tell me why we don't do this now?

I agree, EXCEPT for Blair being the "hub" for Orleans. That's just plain nuts. Place D'Orleans is the natural hub for Orleans; there's barely enough room for Blair routes at Blair, to say nothing of the inherent dumbosity of routing Orleans traffic through Blair.

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I agree, EXCEPT for Blair being the "hub" for Orleans. That's just plain nuts. Place D'Orleans is the natural hub for Orleans; there's barely enough room for Blair routes at Blair, to say nothing of the inherent dumbosity of routing Orleans traffic through Blair.

Moreover, what will be the Hub for Kanata? Tunney's????

[c_speed3108]

In the transportation master plan 2008, bus lanes on Bathgate are specified as well as bus lanes along Montreal Rd heading west from Bathgate as well as an increase in the Bus lane no parking times on Rideau street and Montreal Rd. Clearly someone is building a bus route downtown along the lines of the 15 that will alot more buses on it then the current batch serving La-Cite.

I suspect some buses to continue downtown via roads and such. I doubt very much express buses will be all gone...in part due to politics. Express bues were never a transit designed thing, they were a community driven thing. That is why they make so little sense from a transit design standpoint. Certainly there won't most of the transit way for them anymore, but I suspect there will still be some in existence. Many did exist pre-transitway. There is also routes like the Clarence-Rockland ones that will need to go someplace.

I expect that there will be more express-like routes like the one running from Orleans to the old JDS building and to other various employment locations outside of downtown....particularly because more than two buses (or trains) does not seem to really fly with people in our climate.

[c_speed3108]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Moreover, what will be the Hub for Kanata? Tunney's????

My understanding was most of the buses from the west are going to continue into downtown for the time being (until the west leg is built), but I could be wrong.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I agree, EXCEPT for Blair being the "hub" for Orleans. That's just plain nuts. Place D'Orleans is the natural hub for Orleans; there's barely enough room for Blair routes at Blair, to say nothing of the inherent dumbosity of routing Orleans traffic through Blair.

What is more nuts is having Tunney's Pasture being the hub for Kanata and Barrhaven and Hurdman being the hub for Riverside South and Greenboro. Of course, during off-peak hours they won't be but that just adds insult to injury, because it will take 3 transit vehicles to reach downtown.

Furthermore, our multibillion dollar plan which builds enormous numbers of park n ride spaces but very few of them will offer direct to downtown transit service even at the end of the current planning period. Sounds like good planning to me?????

I also wish to point out about capacity issues, almost every urban rail system has this problem, and it is almost always worse than a bus system. Why? There are many constraints on a rail network. Even buying additional rail cars takes a long period of time before delivery.

As far as capacity problems are concerned, look at the Yonge Street subway, the C-Train, and the Skytrain. All of these will take enormous amounts of time to correct at huge costs. It is interesting that in Edmonton, they are actually begging people to travel other than the busiest hour in the morning and afternoon. With rail networks, crush loading will be the norm during peak periods.

My concern is not so much the choice of rail or even the tunnel but the choice of the first route and the choice to require western and southern transit riders to transfer to LRT that does not serve their parts of the city. Everything has been designed to maximize disruption and maximize long-term inconvenience.

If our LRT implementation is botched and I believe their is a good possibility, people will start finding other ways of transport. For those not travelling downtown, cars will be the obvious choice and for downtown, carpooling will become more common. We cannot assume that just because we putting in a rail system, that there will be 9% increase of ridership. How did they arrive at that figure? If the system proves less convenient, why will some people not find other means to get to their jobs?

As far as conversion disruption, does the city really have a plan that will bring this to an acceptable level?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by c_speed3108

In the transportation master plan 2008, bus lanes on Bathgate are specified as well as bus lanes along Montreal Rd heading west from Bathgate as well as an increase in the Bus lane no parking times on Rideau street and Montreal Rd. Clearly someone is building a bus route downtown along the lines of the 15 that will alot more buses on it then the current batch serving La-Cite.

I suspect some buses to continue downtown via roads and such. I doubt very much express buses will be all gone...in part due to politics. Express bues were never a transit designed thing, they were a community driven thing. That is why they make so little sense from a transit design standpoint. Certainly there won't most of the transit way for them anymore, but I suspect there will still be some in existence. Many did exist pre-transitway. There is also routes like the Clarence-Rockland ones that will need to go someplace.

I expect that there will be more express-like routes like the one running from Orleans to the old JDS building and to other various employment locations outside of downtown....particularly because more than two buses (or trains) does not seem to really fly with people in our climate.

Many of these crosstown routes use the Eastern Transitway. Once the Eastern Transitway is gone, the route will be eliminated or will be forced into mixed traffic. It will be inevitable that service will suffer.

Exactly how will the Clarence-Rockland service get downtown? Either it will have terminate at Blair or service will be forced into mixed traffic on the Queensway and Nicholas. Why will they get preferential treatment over someone living in Orleans?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by c_speed3108

My understanding was most of the buses from the west are going to continue into downtown for the time being (until the west leg is built), but I could be wrong.

My impression is that all express buses will be terminated at Tunney's Pasture. The same from the south at Hurdman.

During earlier parts of the planning of the tunnel, there was a plan to build a new bridge across the Rideau to maintain service from the south end, but someone decided that this was too expensive and it would be unfair to cancel the express buses in the east end but not other parts of the city. As matter of fairness, the planners decided that all express buses should be cancelled by the time the first leg of LRT opens.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

"Whatcha talkin 'bout Willis??"


In all the projected revenue models, what rate did they use to come up with the figures? Since LRT's Hub & Spoke model will essentially eliminate the Express service, will everybody's passes cost $22.50 less per month (Reg vs Express pass). Although the Express service may seem less efficient, they also do generate more revenue.

A few bus routes that went directly Downtown now end at Place D'Orléans. Last year's TransPlan explained the routing change.

A hub and spoke approach with buses has limits. There is no point emptying a full bus to have people transfer to another bus. The hub and spoke for Orleans was to take half-full buses and merge the people at Place D'Orléans.

[Kitchissippi]

What's so nuts about making Blair the hub for express buses to and from Orleans when downtown is presently the hub?

Express buses from the west can terminate downtown in the AM but leave from Tunneys in the PM.

A Blair to Place d'Orleans extension would probably be really cheap to build on the south side of 174 (which is now a city road) but the expensive bit downtown has to exist first for that business case can be even considered.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

LRT/Suzie.

Thanks for the great points. I'm no civil engineer, so what I say is mainly based upon what I see. The "Express" service is one of the main contributors to Ottawa's relatively high public Transit usage. We are going to ask riders to make 1-2 transfers whereas today they need not make any. How will this impact ridership?

You might want to check the facts before you write...

Express passes account for 4% of ridership. On top of this, there might be some express users buried in the Ecopass (14.5%, likely) and tickets (21.4%, less likely). Interpreted generously, expresses make up maybe 12% of ridership.

The notion that expresses are responsible for Ottawa's relatively high transit usage is just another aspect of the Transitway Mythology.

Also, during the 3 years of construction, the transitway as we know if will be closed. How many people will endure this? How many people will find alternate ways of commuting and never come back, especially when the new service will be inferior to the existing Express Service?

By the time we get light rail running, most of the whinging bus lovers of Andy Haydon's generation will be retired.

The far more well-travelled generation that is following them will be glad to have a system that finally starts to look vaguely like what most European cities half Ottawa's size already have. Never mind Ottawa aspiring to be Vancouver or Toronto or Paris or London, aspiring to be like Dresden or Newcastle (off the top of my head) in terms of rapid transit would be improvement.

And if we didn't have a bunch of BRT nuts in charge of things, we could probably get conversion done a lot faster than three years. Calgary is building a whole new light rail line of similar length right now with elevated sections (including an elevated station), tunnels (including a tunnelized station) and interchange reconfigurations and it's due to be completed in the same amount of time.

Originally Posted by DubberDom

In all the projected revenue models, what rate did they use to come up with the figures? Since LRT's Hub & Spoke model will essentially eliminate the Express service, will everybody's passes cost $22.50 less per month (Reg vs Express pass). Although the Express service may seem less efficient, they also do generate more revenue.

Express passes nominally generate more revenue, but expresses cost a lot more to run, too. Despite the higher charge for express passes, they don't pay their way relative to other routes. Admittedly, the same is probably true for the trans-Greenbelt 90&100-series buses on their trans-Greenbelt portions, but they also get better loadings and better utilization rates so how the two route types compare in terms of carrying extra-Greenbelt passengers in the end is a good question.


My guess is that in the post-LRT inauguration era extra-Greenbelt local services and expresses will be merged to run across to the nearest LRT terminal. We're already seeing some of this in places like Blackburn Hamlet. They make take the opportunity to change some of the fare structures.

I do share some concerns about having a rail system limited to within the Greenbelt. We're just wasting money sending scores of buses across the Greenbelt all the time, and, moreover, once LRT finally extends across the Greenbelt the local extra-Greenbelt routes will have to be chopped back to what they were originally.

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by Kitchissippi

What's so nuts about making Blair the hub for express buses to and from Orleans when downtown is presently the hub?

This would be only marginally more efficient than the current Express model where an Express bus in the AM picks up passenger in Orleans, goes through downtown and onward to another community in the West to do the same thing. If the Kanata Express runs to Tunney's and then turns around to do a second run in Kanata, there would be no more efficiency vs the bus simply continuing on the current transitway to Orleans.

[DubberDom]

The other myth I would like to dis-spell are the estimated saving of $100M/year with LRT vs current system. These estimates are based upon reduced routes (ie. Service cuts), switch to hub & spoke and LRT.

The impact of LRT in terms of efficiency is likely closer to $40M/year, not $100M

So, you could basically implement the Lower Service delivery and Hub& Spoke model under the estimated cost model that has been presented and save $50M-$60M/year.


Just so that we all understand the ROI (Return on Investment).

We are being asked to pay $2.2Billion (likely $3B by the time it's done) for an ROI of 60-75 Years????

Let's not forget that their model also assumes a 9% rider increase. I'm not sure what this means, but we will likely have 9% more riders regardless of LRT by 2018 simply due to population growth.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

Just so that we all understand the ROI (Return on Investment).

We are being asked to pay $2.2Billion (likely $3B by the time it's done) for an ROI of 60-75 Years????

Let's not forget that their model also assumes a 9% rider increase. I'm not sure what this means, but we will likely have 9% more riders regardless of LRT by 2018 simply due to population growth.

You are muddling the figures here, picking and choosing facts as if they were in a buffet.

Return on investment does not only come from operating cost savings. Keeping the BRT also would also incur capital costs, like new buses and replacement facilities and roadways, which you have completely ignored.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by DubberDom

The other myth I would like to dis-spell are the estimated saving of $100M/year with LRT vs current system. These estimates are based upon reduced routes (ie. Service cuts), switch to hub & spoke and LRT.

The impact of LRT in terms of efficiency is likely closer to $40M/year, not $100M

So, you could basically implement the Lower Service delivery and Hub& Spoke model under the estimated cost model that has been presented and save $50M-$60M/year.


Just so that we all understand the ROI (Return on Investment).

We are being asked to pay $2.2Billion (likely $3B by the time it's done) for an ROI of 60-75 Years????

Let's not forget that their model also assumes a 9% rider increase. I'm not sure what this means, but we will likely have 9% more riders regardless of LRT by 2018 simply due to population growth.

The math on this doesn't work, I agree, but in the magical world of political math, it's easier to understand how we get to stupid numbers. If you put a HUGE amount of money into capital costs, the federal and provincial gov't picks up 2/3 of the tab. If you run a busway and need a new bus, it may come out of the operating and maintenance budget - the provincial and federal gov't don't pitch in, but they may (and have) "encouraged" buying domestic articulated buses (instead of double-deck buses) for example that are known lemons. So the city may be picking up more of the tab in a overall less expensive bus system.

As to the idea of "tried and tested" brought up by someone else, the tried and tested O'Trains are broken after a half-dozen years. I think rail is becoming more and more technology of the past as freight is moving to trucks and passenger travel to cars. It just makes more sense to put money into a right of way that will be used constantly instead of sporadically, perhaps this is a similar failing of dedicated busways. New transit systems can potentially share the right of way with smaller taxi and freight like vehicles (perhaps something busways should consider, or maybe something only automation can deliver safely?).