Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Hospitals are major transit destinations and yet not one of our four major hospitals is going to be on our primary rapid transit routes. This is bad planning. The fact that 3 of hospitals are on secondary routes shows the lack of priority as the secondary routes will be much slower and most likely to be cancelled as a result of budgetary constraints.

Not only that, but there are very real movements in favour of removing one hospital to an even more remote and harder-to-serve-by-transit location, AND a NIMBY movement killed the pencilled-in plan to provide a sane transit line connection to the one big-ass hospital campus that already exists.

This pathetic town is so screwed up.

[Ottawan]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Now, I am going on memory on this, but I think the project had been green lighted by the province and federal government at all stages. It was only after the correspondence between O'Brien and Baird and the discovery of that funding clause that Baird insisted that the new City Council had time to confirm the project by another vote before the feds would confirm the funding. In other words, the feds were prepared to green light the plan with a second final vote by the new City Council. This was all highly irregular in view of the fact that the contract was already signed.

100% true and why I cannot stand Baird to this day. His petty personal politics is responsible for the N/S LRT plan failing. While I believe we should support the current plan as the most realistic transit option to be completed (and it will solve capacity and other problems of the current system) I do believe that we would have been in a much better situation had the old plan passed (note: East/West LRT was to be studied and completed next. Had we gone with the N/S plan we would have that line in NOW, and be at the exact same stage of planning with regard to E/W, which potentially could use a tunnel as currently proposed).

The N/S plan had completely secured federal and provincial funding. That is why the preliminary surveying had even been completed at the time it was cancelled. Baird 'decided' that it needed to be confirmed by the new council only in the middle of the campaign, and with the obvious goal of disrupting politics (at which he succeeded, and from which we have still not recovered, and clearly won't for another 4 years at least, when perhaps we will have mayoral candidates that are palatable).

[eternallyme]

If the LRT was built at-grade on Albert and Slater instead of in the tunnel, how much money would be saved? Or if it is a partial cut-and-cover tunnel (from Elgin to LeBreton) while using the Mackenzie King Bridge for LRT?

In that scenario, Albert and Slater would use reserved lanes with a separation, OR one of them would be transit-only, if LRT is at the surface. Mackenzie King Bridge would be LRT-exclusive.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

If the LRT was built at-grade on Albert and Slater instead of in the tunnel, how much money would be saved? Or if it is a partial cut-and-cover tunnel (from Elgin to LeBreton) while using the Mackenzie King Bridge for LRT?

In that scenario, Albert and Slater would use reserved lanes with a separation, OR one of them would be transit-only, if LRT is at the surface. Mackenzie King Bridge would be LRT-exclusive.

The problem is that the Albert/Slater Business Coalition had big sway in all this debate. They were one of the big reasons why the N-S plan was killed. O'Brien is a businessman so the Coalition had his ear. They wanted minimal disruption to their businesses, which is understandable. On the other hand, there must be consideration of the greater public good and cost/benefit analysis and this fell by the wayside to a great extent. The Coalition considered surface or cut and cover to be both too disruptive and therefore we had to go deep, 143 feet deep.

As long as we have an Albert/Slater Coalition sympathetic mayor, no other options will be considered. Forget a bus tunnel. Forget and cut and cover tunnel, forget a surface route, forget a less deep bored tunnel.

Then you get this whole business about the cross-country route which is one of the reasons why the subway is so deep and then we had to appease the Rideau Centre by relocating the local downtown bus routes from Rideau to the MacKenzie King Bridge because the tunnel or commuter route was being moved to Rideau. We can't kill business at the back end of the mall.

This all goes back to the beginning of this debate when many claimed that there were predetermined conclusions and how debate was continuously cut off, because it was either too early or too late to discuss a particular issue.

[Franky]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

BRT is batshit crazy.

A bus tunnel ("bunnel"?) is batshit crazy.

Build-first-convert-later is batshit crazy.

Exhibit A: The City of Ottawa.

It is envisioned that BRT
will operate in future LRT
corridors in the north,
west and southeast areas
of Calgary. In concept,
BRT emulates the key
features of LRT service
and will serve as a
prototype for the
development of future
LRT lines, similar to the
earlier “Blue Arrow”
expresses. It is proposed
that the first phase of BRT
service be introduced in
the Centre Street and
Bow Trail / 17 Avenue
corridors in 2004
September and be expanded to other transit corridors over the next 10 years.

Guess Calgary Transit (and the rest of the world) are batshit crazy too?

BTW, you're original unfortunate comment was about LRT to Orleans and Kanata in 4 years.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Ottawan

100% true and why I cannot stand Baird to this day. His petty personal politics is responsible for the N/S LRT plan failing. While I believe we should support the current plan as the most realistic transit option to be completed (and it will solve capacity and other problems of the current system) I do believe that we would have been in a much better situation had the old plan passed (note: East/West LRT was to be studied and completed next. Had we gone with the N/S plan we would have that line in NOW, and be at the exact same stage of planning with regard to E/W, which potentially could use a tunnel as currently proposed).

The N/S plan had completely secured federal and provincial funding. That is why the preliminary surveying had even been completed at the time it was cancelled. Baird 'decided' that it needed to be confirmed by the new council only in the middle of the campaign, and with the obvious goal of disrupting politics (at which he succeeded, and from which we have still not recovered, and clearly won't for another 4 years at least, when perhaps we will have mayoral candidates that are palatable).

I have said this before, O'Brien was a fool for not approving the original plan even if he favoured a tunnel. There was no reason why Phase 2 could not have been the downtown tunnel and its planning could have moved forward just as quickly. I simply don't believe all this nonsense about a surface route being a waste of money. It will be useful to connect a future route (perhaps Carling) to downtown or the N-S route could have continued to use it. Even Edmonton is now planning a downtown surface route. O'Brien simply blew $100 million of our money because of his big ego and his desire to 'push the reset button' to appease his constituency who were also foolish enough to believe 'zero means zero'. That money could have been used for his tunnel project. After all, that $100 million is being paid by us on top of the $2.1 billion for the tunnel.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Franky

Guess Calgary Transit (and the rest of the world) are batshit crazy too?

BTW, you're original unfortunate comment was about LRT to Orleans and Kanata in 4 years.

BRT is going to die in central Ottawa for a simple reason: the marginal cost between a BRT tunnel and the LRT is too small to justify keeping vehicles that burn diesel and require a high driver to passenger ratio. There is no way to change that fundamental fact about buses. Now, it is appropriate to argue about what type of train or train like device goes in the tunnel, but buses even if they provide superior service, will not reduce peoples future tax burden, and aren't future proof out for as much capacity.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by Franky

Guess Calgary Transit (and the rest of the world) are batshit crazy too?.

Actually the LRT in downtown Calgary is slow and the stations have been rebuilt since their original construction date. The length of trains is limited by the length of the blocks and they have had several accidents with vehicles including buses. After the western LRT is constructed the next construction will be the SE LRT at which time one of the lines is supposed to be put into a tunnel.
If one looks at Edmonton, the LRT tunnel downtown is performing well even though one might argue that it delayed additional development which is now on course to have the same mileage as Calgary in a few years.
Bus tunnels will be more expensive than LRT tunnels due to more expense in handling diesel exhaust, increased fire hazards to passengers and having to build the tunnel wider if you want buses being able to bypass other buses loading.
Let's do it once and do it right! No starter line is going to be absolutely perfect and please everybody. The main thing about the tunnel is it serves the primary shopping, entertainment, business and government offices downtown with weatherproof stations which will lead to greater system reliability and passenger comfort.

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

BRT is going to die in central Ottawa for a simple reason: the marginal cost between a BRT tunnel and the LRT is too small to justify keeping vehicles that burn diesel and require a high driver to passenger ratio. There is no way to change that fundamental fact about buses.

I'm not sure this is true, especially if all conversion costs are taken into account (i.e., not just Blair to Tunney's Pasture, but also Tunney's Pasture to Baseline, the N/S Line and the dreamed about extensions to the suburbs and Gatineau).

[MalcolmTucker]

^ You also have to take into account the massive capital discount the city gets vs none for operational costs.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

Actually the LRT in downtown Calgary is slow and the stations have been rebuilt since their original construction date. The length of trains is limited by the length of the blocks and they have had several accidents with vehicles including buses. After the western LRT is constructed the next construction will be the SE LRT at which time one of the lines is supposed to be put into a tunnel.
If one looks at Edmonton, the LRT tunnel downtown is performing well even though one might argue that it delayed additional development which is now on course to have the same mileage as Calgary in a few years.
Bus tunnels will be more expensive than LRT tunnels due to more expense in handling diesel exhaust, increased fire hazards to passengers and having to build the tunnel wider if you want buses being able to bypass other buses loading.
Let's do it once and do it right! No starter line is going to be absolutely perfect and please everybody. The main thing about the tunnel is it serves the primary shopping, entertainment, business and government offices downtown with weatherproof stations which will lead to greater system reliability and passenger comfort.

While Calgary will eventually build a downtown tunnel, there is no firm plan for when this will occur. Even then, there will be no consideration for ripping up their surface line. Basically, a subway will only be built when the surface route is exhausted, a last resort. This is totally different than Ottawa's plan which calls for the ripping up of the surface route and very little build out of track to the suburbs.

Regarding Edmonton, after a generation of stagnation they are finally moving forward with LRT expansion. Their plans will exceed the capacity and suitablity of the current tunnel so a new downtown circulator line will be built ....................... on the surface and this will bring a number of new lines from the suburbs into downtown. Edmonton realizes that a fast expansion of LRT is not compatible with funding downtown tunnels. They also realize that the existing tunnel can only handle two interlined routes, while still providing the level of service expected for trunk transit routes.

There is a major problem with the economics of tunnels in mid-sized cities. The tax base is not large enough.

So we have a choice, build a tunnel and likely we won't be able finance much more for a long time, or build a lot of surface track between downtown and the suburbs. We have a choice. A mid-sized city cannot easily finance both.

Vancouver was able to do it because they have twice the tax base of Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton, and because they were hosting world class events, when two of the three lines were built. The third line did not require any downtown tunneling.

[MalcolmTucker]

Edmonton's tunnel could handle all the routes, it is just people are in love in low floor LRT beyond the point of rationality. Edmonton thankfully has no money to build any of its LRT pipe dreams beyond the current legacy network projects (they are already on the third approved plan, route, and technology choice for rapid transit to West Edmonton Mall and the projects usually die right around this project phase, during open houses which stir up opposition).

As for Vancouver, they reused an old tunnel which saved them a lot for the downtown skytrain back in the 80s, allowed them to go longer than otherwise. They did not get extra money from anyone to build mass transit due to the games or expo.

Calgary fortunately has been planning its system since the 60s so can comfortably use a phased approached. The timeline for the tunnels will be easier to see when the big study is done (the city allocated just under $8 million a couple of years ago to map all the utilities, do geologic sampling, and model all the possible route combinations for the planned 3 underground corridors), as then the city will understand how much it will cost. Up to now Calgary has been working with back of envelop estimates.

Ottawa due to a comedy of errors over the same period of time cannot, just a bunch of small mistakes compounding over time.

Going over the surface downtown does not fix any problem in Ottawa. You still will not end up with any additional capacity - the system would strain to carry much more than 10,000 ppdph. Calgary's system is jam packed at 7,255 ppdph right now, and will go up to just under 10k ppdph once four car trains are on all lines. I don't see how Ottawa's experience would be any better, especially when there isn't a street that wouldn't require at least some mixed operation except for Sparks (and that is a no go politically for some reason).

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Edmonton's tunnel could handle all the routes, it is just people are in love in low floor LRT beyond the point of rationality. Edmonton thankfully has no money to build any of its LRT pipe dreams beyond the current legacy network projects (they are already on the third approved plan, route, and technology choice for rapid transit to West Edmonton Mall and the projects usually die right around this project phase, during open houses which stir up opposition).

As for Vancouver, they reused an old tunnel which saved them a lot for the downtown skytrain back in the 80s, allowed them to go longer than otherwise. They did not get extra money from anyone to build mass transit due to the games or expo.

Calgary fortunately has been planning its system since the 60s so can comfortably use a phased approached. The timeline for the tunnels will be easier to see when the big study is done (the city allocated just under $8 million a couple of years ago to map all the utilities, do geologic sampling, and model all the possible route combinations for the planned 3 underground corridors), as then the city will understand how much it will cost. Up to now Calgary has been working with back of envelop estimates.

Ottawa due to a comedy of errors over the same period of time cannot, just a bunch of small mistakes compounding over time.

Going over the surface downtown does not fix any problem in Ottawa. You still will not end up with any additional capacity - the system would strain to carry much more than 10,000 ppdph. Calgary's system is jam packed at 7,255 ppdph right now, and will go up to just under 10k ppdph once four car trains are on all lines. I don't see how Ottawa's experience would be any better, especially when there isn't a street that wouldn't require at least some mixed operation except for Sparks (and that is a no go politically for some reason).

The best solution, if possible, from both approaches might be a "hybrid" - a cut-and-cover tunnel under Albert and/or Slater, combined with a surface alignment over the Mackenzie King Bridge - entirely converted to transit use - and the existing Transitway (although it will likely require an 350m long elevated structure over what is now Laurier Station). That would require 1.6 km of tunnel, which could be entirely cut-and-cover (except perhaps for a short approach from LeBreton to Bay) and would emerge just east of Elgin Street. The approved plan has a tunnel length of nearly 4 km.

I personally think such in the end would save over $1 billion (if not more), and that money could be used for the western extension.

[MalcolmTucker]

A billion is close to the entire cost of the tunnel, you wouldn't save that much. Unless your going to delete some stations you wouldn't even save half that.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Going over the surface downtown does not fix any problem in Ottawa. You still will not end up with any additional capacity - the system would strain to carry much more than 10,000 ppdph. Calgary's system is jam packed at 7,255 ppdph right now, and will go up to just under 10k ppdph once four car trains are on all lines.

Calgary has to be A LOT higher than 7,255 pphpd today. That figure is from 2005 when total transit system ridership was 82M. In 2008 it was at 95M and I have seen articles in the Calgary Herald that claimed that ridership growth was disproportionately towards the C-Train. The total system ridership is similar to Ottawa's and transit use in Calgary is even more downtown-oriented than Ottawa* and we're already at 10k pphpd**. That also doesn't take into account the fact that C-Train ridership on 7th is unbalanced due to the NE and South lines coming in from one direction compared to the NW line from the other. There's basically no way that 7th isn't currently handling upwards of 10k pphpd from the NE+South lines in the morning. Either that or there's no way we are. The two systems are simply too similar in the volumes they are handling for their peak hour throughputs to be dramatically different, with the edge likely going to Calgary, not Ottawa, for the reasons above.

Calgary Transit just hasn't updated their website on LRT stats to reflect what is now taking place.

*Post secondary institutions make up a larger share of Ottawa's ridership than in Calgary, so Ottawa's ridership is more dispersed both in time and space.
**Ottawa's peak ridership point is in the inbound direction on the East Transitway between Lees and Campus stations - in other words it's actually outside of downtown since a number of students get off at Campus & Laurier stations before the system hits the downtown street network. Calgary's peak point will likely be at the junction of the NE and South lines at the east end of the transit mall.

[MalcolmTucker]

The number of trains heading through downtown has not grown, the peak in Calgary is pretty broad compared to what I experience in Toronto for a variety of reasons, including encouragement from the city.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

The number of trains heading through downtown has not grown, the peak in Calgary is pretty broad compared to what I experience in Toronto for a variety of reasons, including encouragement from the city.

This seems reasonable. Edmonton has been appealing to residents to not travel during the peak hour and it would make sense that this has also happened in Calgary. Basically, the frequency of trains on 7th Avenue has been maxed out during peak periods. LRT ridership growth will be dependent on the new Western LRT route which will be a continuation of the Northeast line and the expansion of LRT stations to accomodate 4 car trains from the current 3 car platforms. Both are in progress.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

This seems reasonable. Edmonton has been appealing to residents to not travel during the peak hour and it would make sense that this has also happened in Calgary. Basically, the frequency of trains on 7th Avenue has been maxed out during peak periods. LRT ridership growth will be dependent on the new Western LRT route which will be a continuation of the Northeast line and the expansion of LRT stations to accomodate 4 car trains from the current 3 car platforms. Both are in progress.

Hopefully Ottawa will not do the idiotic decision of building half stations and extending them later. It is costing Vancouver 1G$ to extend their stations and again an astronomical cost in Calgary and Edmonton.

There is absolutely no logical or economical advantages to reduce have reduce platfrom length. You build for your planned ridership for the next 50 years, not the immediate one.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Franky

Guess Calgary Transit (and the rest of the world) are batshit crazy too?

Not entirely, but mainly because Calgary and the rest of the world, unlike this provincial hick town, can actually get things done.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Vancouver was able to do it because they have twice the tax base of Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton

How much larger is the Vancouver tax base, adjusted for population?

The third line did not require any downtown tunneling.

That's funny; I could have sworn that the third line, the Canada Line, travelled under peninsular Vancouver in a tunnel the last time I rode it. Maybe it was an elevated section, but I was hanging upside down in the car.