Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[adam-machiavelli]

I have a request:

I've developed a fantasy transit map that expands on the existing plan by applying the best of former mayor Chiarelli's proposal and some personal ideas. I am looking for someone with some experience with Illustrator who could take the raw data from the kml files and turn them into an aesthetically pleasing thematic map that I can turn into a high-res poster for my wall. Anyone have a bit of free time to help me out?

[Cre47]

Some candidate in Rockland is dreaming to have the O-Train extended there saying that Ottawa would be more warm in the idea of extending the O-Train there rather then the 174 because of being more costly to maintain and widen/reconstruct (and realign too I guess) the 174.

Sorry the article is coming from le Droit so it is in French only.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-droit/dossi...rpresse_B9_actualites_98069_section_POS1

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Cre47

Some candidate in Rockland is dreaming to have the O-Train extended there saying that Ottawa would be more warm in the idea of extending the O-Train there rather then the 174 because of being more costly to maintain and widen/reconstruct (and realign too I guess) the 174.

Sorry the article is coming from le Droit so it is in French only.

http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-droit/dossi...rpresse_B9_actualites_98069_section_POS1

I really don't know how we could justify this kind of extension for the forseeable future. It would be horrendously expensive. With the current plan, I wonder whether I will see LRT reach Orleans in my life time.

A town of 10,000 cannot support LRT quality of service and even commuter rail is not practical with no active rail line anywhere near Rockland. I even doubt that any of the former rail corridors to Rockland are intact anymore. Isn't the 174 roadbed between Orleans and Rockland actually laid right on top of the old CNR right of way?

[Dado]

With all the talk of twinning 174 and the attendant difficulty of actually doing that, perhaps the solution is to build a new expressway further to the south (perhaps a 2+1) to bypass all the shoreline development and return the current 174 alignment back to rail. When you look at it, it's surprising just how easy that would be to carry out. Issues that pose a real problem for twinning to some kind of expressway or freeway, like minor road crossings, cease to be a problem with a rail line. O-Train vehicles would be well suited to this kind of work.

Clearly Old Montreal Rd would take on a more significant role for travel to Cumberland and local access beyond that.


East of Rockland, the old rail corridor has been very well erased from the face of the Earth but I was able to track it all the way to L'Orignal, which is still rail-served. It basically leaves the Hwy 17 corridor at Jessups Falls where the piers can still be seen crossing the Nation River. A hint is that it goes through Treadwell. Any rail extensions east of Rockland (say to Hawkesbury) would probably be on a new alignment because the original rail alignment misses a lot. In fact, what one would probably do is follow County Roads 17 and then 26 to Plantagenet and then follow the old M&O alignment as far as Vankleek Hill where a connection to the existing Vankleek Hill Subdivision could be made for the final run into Hawkesbury.

Anyway, that's just pie-in-the-sky talk. At least doing this to Rockland would be feasible assuming that some kind of money is going to be spent on roadworks anyway.

[lrt's friend]

An interesting comment from Calgary which supports my concern about our current plan.

"Calgary comes up a lot because of their really integrated transit/city development. At the same time they focused more on getting transit out there rather than building expensive subways just in downtown:"


There are a lot of interesting comments explaining why transit ridership is higher in Canada than in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand

http://www.humantransit.org/2010/10/requ...ign=Feed%3A+HumanTransit+(Human+Transit)

[MalcolmTucker]

^ The problem is surface LRT won't give any extra capacity for Ottawa.

[lrt's friend]

As Clive Doucet pointed out, you run LRT down Laurier, and you have doubled your capacity. A short tunnel will be needed at the west end of Laurier but nothing like we are currently proposing.

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by Dado

With all the talk of twinning 174 and the attendant difficulty of actually doing that, perhaps the solution is to build a new expressway further to the south (perhaps a 2+1) to bypass all the shoreline development and return the current 174 alignment back to rail. When you look at it, it's surprising just how easy that would be to carry out. Issues that pose a real problem for twinning to some kind of expressway or freeway, like minor road crossings, cease to be a problem with a rail line. O-Train vehicles would be well suited to this kind of work.

Clearly Old Montreal Rd would take on a more significant role for travel to Cumberland and local access beyond that.


East of Rockland, the old rail corridor has been very well erased from the face of the Earth but I was able to track it all the way to L'Orignal, which is still rail-served. It basically leaves the Hwy 17 corridor at Jessups Falls where the piers can still be seen crossing the Nation River. A hint is that it goes through Treadwell. Any rail extensions east of Rockland (say to Hawkesbury) would probably be on a new alignment because the original rail alignment misses a lot. In fact, what one would probably do is follow County Roads 17 and then 26 to Plantagenet and then follow the old M&O alignment as far as Vankleek Hill where a connection to the existing Vankleek Hill Subdivision could be made for the final run into Hawkesbury.

Anyway, that's just pie-in-the-sky talk. At least doing this to Rockland would be feasible assuming that some kind of money is going to be spent on roadworks anyway.

You are correct that twinning 174 is not a solution, the best scenario is to link 174 to Innes and continue Innes beyond Dunning (where it currently ends) all the way to south Rockland and beyond.

Even if they twin the existing 174, it will run out of capacity after 10 years with urban expansion beyond 2020 and the anticipated doubling of Rockland's population. There is no way to convert the existing alignment to a grade separated road, all you will get in 10-20 years is a 60km/hr route with traffic lights and some residential and commercial all the way to Cumberland and into Rockland (as it already is along 17 in Rockland). Also, access to Rockland village would be best served by a south entrance, the current Laurier (Main) street is over capacity at Hwy 17.


Something like this:

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

As Clive Doucet pointed out, you run LRT down Laurier, and you have doubled your capacity. A short tunnel will be needed at the west end of Laurier but nothing like we are currently proposing.

My geography may be a bit off, but I think Laurier basically ends at a cliff - this is one of the reasons why the LRT plan is so deep downtown - to avoid having to climb the large hill on which downtown is built, so Doucet's "short tunnel" would have to drop from street level on Laurier to street level on Scott/Albert in a very short amount of space. Doucet also doesn't really explain what happens at the other end of Laurier, where there is a vague idea about sharing the transitway with buses, but not a lot of specifics.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by acottawa

My geography may be a bit off, but I think Laurier basically ends at a cliff - this is one of the reasons why the LRT plan is so deep downtown - to avoid having to climb the large hill on which downtown is built, so Doucet's "short tunnel" would have to drop from street level on Laurier to street level on Scott/Albert in a very short amount of space. Doucet also doesn't really explain what happens at the other end of Laurier, where there is a vague idea about sharing the transitway with buses, but not a lot of specifics.

The hill is not the reason why the LRT tunnel is so deep. After all, the cancelled plan would have run on the surface and would have climbed that hill and certainly was feasible. The main reason for the depth of the tunnel is because we chose a cross country route that has to get under all those underground parking garages plus the sewer under the canal.

To me, you would exit downtown to the east along Nicholas Street and across the Rideau River using the Alta Vista Parkway corridor. No sharing with the Transitway.

[McC]

Originally Posted by acottawa

My geography may be a bit off, but I think Laurier basically ends at a cliff - this is one of the reasons why the LRT plan is so deep downtown - to avoid having to climb the large hill on which downtown is built, so Doucet's "short tunnel" would have to drop from street level on Laurier to street level on Scott/Albert in a very short amount of space. Doucet also doesn't really explain what happens at the other end of Laurier, where there is a vague idea about sharing the transitway with buses, but not a lot of specifics.

Laurier rises significantly west of Bay (Nanny Goat Hill) before ending at the escarpment west of Bronson. There was a plan for a short "Laurier Tunnel" in the old Holt Plan for the Capital that would have cut from around Bay to Empress, give or take. That still doesn't make it any clearer to me how LRT gets from smoothly there to Carling though...

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by McC

Laurier rises significantly west of Bay (Nanny Goat Hill) before ending at the escarpment west of Bronson. There was a plan for a short "Laurier Tunnel" in the old Holt Plan for the Capital that would have cut from around Bay to Empress, give or take. That still doesn't make it any clearer to me how LRT gets from smoothly there to Carling though...

The tunnel would curve to Lebreton Flats. From there to Bayview and along the O-Train route to Carling.

[McC]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The tunnel would curve to Lebreton Flats. From there to Bayview and along the O-Train route to Carling.

The route is not without it's complications, do you tunnel under Slater-Albert and the aqueduct and trench under Booth? Or go with level crossings and new bridge over the aqueduct parallel to the existing transitway alignment? Or rip up the transitway so it can handle rail and buses (nice little disruption, nothing like in the approved plan, of course, but a nice little disruption nonetheless)

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by McC

The route is not without it's complications, do you tunnel under Slater-Albert and the aqueduct and trench under Booth? Or go with level crossings and new bridge over the aqueduct parallel to the existing transitway alignment? Or rip up the transitway so it can handle rail and buses (nice little disruption, nothing like in the approved plan, of course, but a nice little disruption nonetheless)

I think those alternatives will have to be assessed based on a cost/benefit analysis. It would not be desireable to have the Transitway shared by both trains and buses as this would limit the capacity. I also doubt that you would want a level crossing on Albert and Slater with all the buses using it.

[McC]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I think those alternatives will have to be assessed based on a cost/benefit analysis. It would not be desireable to have the Transitway shared by both trains and buses as this would limit the capacity. I also doubt that you would want a level crossing on Albert and Slater with all the buses using it.

exactly, so it brings Doucet's plan to same the problem with the Transitway thus far and the old rail plan: we pay extra to build nice grade seperated tunnels/trenches in low-density/undeveloped parts of town, while we cheap-out with at-grade through the busy congestion downtown!

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by McC

exactly, so it brings Doucet's plan to same the problem with the Transitway thus far and the old rail plan: we pay extra to build nice grade seperated tunnels/trenches in low-density/undeveloped parts of town, while we cheap-out with at-grade through the busy congestion downtown!

So explain why Calgary has had such success with that approach? It is called getting the most bang for your buck. If we find a cheaper way to address the capacity issue downtown, why not use it? As it stands, we are going to spend a ton of money addressing a 10 block section of downtown (from Bronson to Laurier). The rest of it is simply providing a minimal system that is useable. It doesn't provide any extra value to the transit rider. I actually took the figures from the city's Business Case document and the average time saving for each trip will be about 1 minute according to their experts. If costs exceed estimates, it can actually delay other transit improvements across the city for years.

I also did an interesting speed comparison between Calgary and Edmonton LRT with a downtown tunnel and found that both operated at almost an identical average speed.

[McC]

[QUOTE=lrt's friend;5016013]So explain why Calgary has had such success with that approach? It is called getting the most bang for your buck. QUOTE]

It doesn't sound to me like grade separating everywhere but in the congested downtown gets us the most bang for our buck, and from the very little I've know of Calgary's LRT, I don't believe that is Calgary's approach, either. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood their system is largely at grade everywhere. Ours is grade separated everywhere except:
1) where it's busiest; or
2) where we skipped sections because they were complicated (western leg) or unfinished (Lebreton)

What you and I have been talking about involves completing the grade separation through Lebreton (expensive, and how much bang for the buck?)so that we can move at surface through downtown on different route from Albert and Slater (which I acknowledge does have value)

[lrt's friend]

[QUOTE=McC;5016930]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

So explain why Calgary has had such success with that approach? It is called getting the most bang for your buck. QUOTE]

It doesn't sound to me like grade separating everywhere but in the congested downtown gets us the most bang for our buck, and from the very little I've know of Calgary's LRT, I don't believe that is Calgary's approach, either. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood their system is largely at grade everywhere. Ours is grade separated everywhere except:
1) where it's busiest; or
2) where we skipped sections because they were complicated (western leg) or unfinished (Lebreton)

What you and I have been talking about involves completing the grade separation through Lebreton (expensive, and how much bang for the buck?)so that we can move at surface through downtown on different route from Albert and Slater (which I acknowledge does have value)

I have used Calgary's system a few times. Calgary's LRT is much like our Transitways. It is grade separated except downtown.

I am not totally opposed to a tunnel, however, I have liked Calgary's approach in that they have been emphasizing getting track in place so that the most people can benefit from the system. I agree that Calgary's approach is not ideal downtown but they recognize that there is a trade-off. You either build LRT to where people live or build the tunnel. There is not money to do both. Calgary is preparing to build a tunnel some day as we should but their plans will only be put in place when it becomes absolutely necessary simply because of the very high cost. Unless you build LRT to where people live, you will not get the ridership. In our case, we already have transit infrastructure to the suburbs so we will get the ridership. The downside for us, is that we are using exactly the same corridors that already have rapid transit. I don't know how this is going to generate new ridership and revenue from our expenditure other than what we would have got anyways. It is pretty lame to say that we are going to save money because we will be running fewer buses. I have no objections to saving money but it should not be the driving force behind spending billions on rapid transit. What should be the driving force is providing better service which will make transit more attractive to more people. My 1 minute calculation based on the business case document suggests that our investment is not going to deliver on what most people are expecting. Because the tunnel is not going to deliver much other than increase downtown capacity, we should at least consider a lower cost alternative (if one exists) so that more track can be laid sooner.

[eternallyme]

[QUOTE=lrt's friend;5016980]

Originally Posted by McC

I have used Calgary's system a few times. Calgary's LRT is much like our Transitways. It is grade separated except downtown.

I am not totally opposed to a tunnel, however, I have liked Calgary's approach in that they have been emphasizing getting track in place so that the most people can benefit from the system. I agree that Calgary's approach is not ideal downtown but they recognize that there is a trade-off. You either build LRT to where people live or build the tunnel. There is not money to do both. Calgary is preparing to build a tunnel some day as we should but their plans will only be put in place when it becomes absolutely necessary simply because of the very high cost. Unless you build LRT to where people live, you will not get the ridership. In our case, we already have transit infrastructure to the suburbs so we will get the ridership. The downside for us, is that we are using exactly the same corridors that already have rapid transit. I don't know how this is going to generate new ridership and revenue from our expenditure other than what we would have got anyways. It is pretty lame to say that we are going to save money because we will be running fewer buses. I have no objections to saving money but it should not be the driving force behind spending billions on rapid transit. What should be the driving force is providing better service which will make transit more attractive to more people. My 1 minute calculation based on the business case document suggests that our investment is not going to deliver on what most people are expecting. Because the tunnel is not going to deliver much other than increase downtown capacity, we should at least consider a lower cost alternative (if one exists) so that more track can be laid sooner.

What would be the cost savings if it were shallow (i.e. 1 story below the surface) cut and cover tunnels under Albert and/or Slater, re-use the existing Mackenzie King Bridge and build an elevated section over Waller and Laurier before returning to grade before Campus Station?

The blocks are too small for effective surface LRT operation in the downtown core, especially the Lyon-Bay block.

[KHOOLE]

[QUOTE=eternallyme;5017577]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

What would be the cost savings if it were shallow (i.e. 1 story below the surface) cut and cover tunnels under Albert and/or Slater, re-use the existing Mackenzie King Bridge and build an elevated section over Waller and Laurier before returning to grade before Campus Station?

The blocks are too small for effective surface LRT operation in the downtown core, especially the Lyon-Bay block.

My vision is to have an east-west LRT that would complement the present Transitway and avoid digging a tunnel in the downtown core.
From ScotiaBank Place, I would have a rapid transit LRT with one or two stops in Kanata and then travel down Corkstown Rd, the old Hgy 17 (near Nortel) and Carling Ave to Lincoln Fields where it would meet the Transitway.
Following its route along Carling to the O-Train station, it would then cut northward to the Queensway in the Rochester-NRCAN area. Following that, it would follow the 417 along Catherine St. and manoeuvre somehow through the interchanges east of the Canal toward the train station where it would meet again with the Transitway. After that, it would replace the Transitway and make its way to Orléans.
As for Downtown, I believe that congestion would be alleviated by cutting and covering both Albert and Slater Streets to allow unhindered bus travel at a lower grade from Metcalfe St. to Bay St.
This is my vision. I’m not an engineer so there may a lot wrong with this concept. Objective criticism gladly accepted.