Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Which is why the ask shouldn't be a dollar amount. It should be a formula. If the city is prepared to spend X on a transit project, it should be predictable that the province and feds will contribute P(X) and F(X) towards that project.

There's also the chicken-and-egg problem of funding for "shovel-ready" projects. Projects can't get to the "shovel-ready" stage until the city knows whether, and how much, upper-tier goverment funding contributions will be available. If those contributions aren't available until the projec is "shovel-ready", then transit development inertia.

Ottawa, and other major cities in Ontario and Canada, can't build transit systems this way.

No politician will agree to a formula without a dollar figure attached. It is like handing over a blank cheque. This is not being fiscally prudent no matter what party you may support.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

If we had three cross town bus lines using articulated vehicles every 30 seconds as opposed to a miss mash of 40-50+ routes using standard, articulated and double deckers, the system would a little more efficient. We would still need the rail tunnel, but the wait would be a little more bearable.

I have said before that an afternoon hub and spoke system may be beneficial but flexibility in the morning inbound makes more sense as long as we have BRT running through downtown. It makes no sense to transfer a full local bus onto a Transitway bus. This creates no benefit for anybody and delays passengers getting to their destination.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I do not see the logic in any of this. The only issue that we have with our BRT is that it has reached capacity downtown. Otherwise, it has accomplished what it set out to do, that is to make transit more attractive to those living in the suburbs.

At the expense of life and transit in the urbs. Yet another in a long line of pro-suburban, anti-urban decisions that the "City" of Ottawa and its enablers have made over the decades, institutionalizing the power of the suburbs, and making it virtually impossible for Ottawa to re-urbanize in the way other large metropolitan regions are starting to do.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

No politician will agree to a formula without a dollar figure attached. It is like handing over a blank cheque. This is not being fiscally prudent no matter what party you may support.

Not really. Cities are already cash-strapped, largely due to their own stupid financial decisions. (Sprawl driving up expenses, conservative municipal politicians pandering to taxophobia.)

If, however, a city decides it can afford to spend X on a major transit project, then the upper tiers should be in for their own share according to a simple, predictable, and consistent formula. And I'm not even saying 1/3-1/3-1/3. The proportions may be assymetrical.

It's not as if cities have the ability to go nuts here. They don't. But if they can afford their municipal share of a given project, the other levels of government can, too.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I have said before that an afternoon hub and spoke system may be beneficial but flexibility in the morning inbound makes more sense as long as we have BRT running through downtown. It makes no sense to transfer a full local bus onto a Transitway bus. This creates no benefit for anybody and delays passengers getting to their destination.

At least get rid of the PM expresses, then.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

This was a follow-up on a rail bias comment from another discussion elsewhere in Skyscraper. The point was that it isn't rail that will attract passengers, but fast and frequent service.

That's fairly common pro-BRT refrain, but it doesn't seem to be borne out in reality.

From my understanding, the reason the O-Train beat the ridership estimates was because those ridership estimates had been estimated based on the only model OC Transpo and the City knew: a bus-based one.

Several years ago I also had the opportunity to speak to some City of Calgary transit planners and you find the same thing there: corridor ridership tends to improve with light rail and even light rail extensions. The numbers for their new West LRT will be quite interesting to compare to the ridership of the direct-to-downtown bus routes (what we tend to call "express" routes) it replaced.

I lived in Sunnyside, Calgary for a year (aih, the basement apartment I lived in was flooded this June) and I took the CTrain every day. It was so predictable that I could time the walk to the station within half a minute (at my walking pace of 100 m a minute)... so I never had to wait for the train in any meaningful sense. Here in Ottawa, I live near Westboro Station. I do not know the bus schedules and even if I did, they never arrive on time anyway. "Bunching" is the norm. I always have to wait for the bus. The upshot is I'm getting CTrain levels of frequency without the schedule reliability and passenger comfort of the CTrain.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We need to look at the overall picture of the quality of service. The vast majority are not going to live along the Confederation Line even with maximum intensification. What about everybody else? If we let the bus network 'go to pot', which is what has happened in American cities, we will not gain ridership as anticipated. We need to make getting around the city by transit easier thinking beyond just that one corridor. I worry when we say that only cheap measures are needed for the 90% of the population not living within walking distance of our one LRT line. My experience with the implementation of rapid transit in general, is that service away from rapid transit into local neighbourhoods and local business areas has and continues to deteriorate. I do not think that this is a good trend.

If you look at cities like Toronto and Montreal, the quality of bus and streetcar service away from the subways is far better than what we are offering.

Which is hardly surprising since our buses are frequently stuck in a 2 km traffic jam downtown. If we're paying drivers to be stuck in a bus jam, then they and their buses are not available for service elsewhere.

The first 12.5 km of the Confederation Line will probably have about twenty trains operating along it at peak periods. Those twenty trains will be replacing scores of buses, likely into the low hundreds. So long as we redistribute a decent proportion of them to the rest of the city, the overall result should be an improvement in service city-wide.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by matty14

The problem with doing that is that it eliminates one of the major selling points for BRT over LRT and that is its so called "flexibility", i.e. local buses can operate on small sections of transitway to service major trip generators, express buses can cover a residential neighbourhood and then boot it downtown,

I think that was his point, given what he went on to write in his second paragraph...:

Originally Posted by matty14

and small sections of transitway can be used while new sections are being built (whereas for light rail you have to wait until the entire line is complete to even use it).

If we were going to operate a hub-and-spoke system we might as well have gone with LRT in the first place. The savings in operation costs and future conversion would almost offset the extra capital investment required for LRT over BRT.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The "flexibility" of Bus Crappid Transit is also its fatal flaw: everyone expects their bus to pick them up outside their house and deposit them downtown, then repeat, in reverse, in the evening.

But it's more than that.

The "flexibility" also sows the seeds of its own demise. If the concept of "flexibility" (i.e. direct-to-downtown routes) is successful, it will eventually clog the system up with buses, bringing about recourse to a hub-and-spoke model. And here's the rub: when that comes about, the first routes to get axed are the worst performing ones, which are arguably where the "direct-to-downtown" rides are "needed" the most from an attracting ridership perspective. The very rationale used to justify the "flexible" BRT model ends up getting tossed aside in favour of hub-and-spoke.

And once you've gone to hub-and-spoke, there's little to favour BRT over LRT unless you've got a scaled-back transit system (e.g. local mini-buses offloading onto articulated line haul buses).

[waterloowarrior]

Unanimous approval for the Western LRT extension at Council today
http://app05.ottawa.ca/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=6098&doctype=agenda&itemid=302838

[1overcosc]

Ah, the age of 24-0 council votes under Watson. I remember the time when nothing was approved by a big margin...

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Dado

That's fairly common pro-BRT refrain, but it doesn't seem to be borne out in reality.

From my understanding, the reason the O-Train beat the ridership estimates was because those ridership estimates had been estimated based on the only model OC Transpo and the City knew: a bus-based one.

Several years ago I also had the opportunity to speak to some City of Calgary transit planners and you find the same thing there: corridor ridership tends to improve with light rail and even light rail extensions. The numbers for their new West LRT will be quite interesting to compare to the ridership of the direct-to-downtown bus routes (what we tend to call "express" routes) it replaced.

I lived in Sunnyside, Calgary for a year (aih, the basement apartment I lived in was flooded this June) and I took the CTrain every day. It was so predictable that I could time the walk to the station within half a minute (at my walking pace of 100 m a minute)... so I never had to wait for the train in any meaningful sense. Here in Ottawa, I live near Westboro Station. I do not know the bus schedules and even if I did, they never arrive on time anyway. "Bunching" is the norm. I always have to wait for the bus. The upshot is I'm getting CTrain levels of frequency without the schedule reliability and passenger comfort of the CTrain.




Which is hardly surprising since our buses are frequently stuck in a 2 km traffic jam downtown. If we're paying drivers to be stuck in a bus jam, then they and their buses are not available for service elsewhere.

The first 12.5 km of the Confederation Line will probably have about twenty trains operating along it at peak periods. Those twenty trains will be replacing scores of buses, likely into the low hundreds. So long as we redistribute a decent proportion of them to the rest of the city, the overall result should be an improvement in service city-wide.

I do not disagree with anything that you say. However, OC Transpo's overall service has been more effective than Calgary Transit and has very high transit modal share compared to other cities including Calgary. This is despite of Calgary's planning efforts to more centrally locate employment downtown compared to Ottawa. The focus on the C-Train in Calgary means that most neighbourhoods only have a shuttle service to the closest C-Train station. This makes it difficult to use transit if your destination is not on the C-Train corridor. If you work in the numerous industrial or office parks around Calgary, you almost certainly drive to work, even more so than here in Ottawa.

Also, to compare express buses running in mixed traffic corridors with the C-Train is not the same as what we are doing here. I believe that what is most important is getting transit onto more exclusive right of ways as a means to speeding up service. On an ongoing basis, I don't care if I am on a bus or a train. I just want to get to my destination quickly.

The success of the O-Train (I was a big supporter of its inception) was the result of delivering new service on a corridor that could not be served effectively by bus. I believe that what delivers its success is the fact that it only takes 12 minutes to go from Greenboro to Bayview and it services a major transit destination on its route. If that was built as a busway, it would still take 12 minutes from end to end and would have been equally successful. I am not advocating that this should have happened.

Now, what was driving my original comments was another comment that suggested that we mostly ignore speeding up transit away from the Confederation Line corridor. Ottawa's transit success arose because it considered the transit needs of the growing suburbs. In the short term, we cannot afford to extend rail transit to the suburbs so cheaper alternatives need to be considered. If we move away from trying to provide fast transit to the suburbs, our investments in expensive rail systems will not deliver on its promise.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

At the expense of life and transit in the urbs. Yet another in a long line of pro-suburban, anti-urban decisions that the "City" of Ottawa and its enablers have made over the decades, institutionalizing the power of the suburbs, and making it virtually impossible for Ottawa to re-urbanize in the way other large metropolitan regions are starting to do.

Hmmm. I do not understand comments like this. Our city has grown dramatically. Ottawa has at least 4 times the population that it did in 1950. I believe that suburban design can be much better but not delivering fast transit service is not the answer to the problem. All that will mean is that we will create an even more sprawling city with more and more roads, which will inevitably have to lead downtown with the destruction that this will inflict. If we had attempted to re-urbanize Ottawa and strictly control growth of the city, we would have self destructed every older neighbourhood in the city. The price of housing would have skyrocketed and I can just imagine the number of gloomy concrete high rises that would have gone up. Look at some of the buildings that went up in the 60s and 70s that have become slums. Not everybody wants to live in a high rise including myself. Ottawa has a high quality of life because we preserved green space throughout the city, and we have wide choice of housing types at affordable prices. We have also decided to connect the suburbs by Transitways instead of by expressways for the most part. It is far from perfect but it is whole lot better than what has been achieved in most cities.

[rocketphish]

Council approves $980 million western LRT route despite NCC’s objections

By Derek Spalding, OTTAWA CITIZEN July 17, 2013 7:04 PM

OTTAWA — Council unanimously approved its proposed route for the western leg of Ottawa’s light-rail line Wednesday even though the National Capital Commission refused to endorse the plan in its current form.

Commission board members have twice rejected the city’s designs for the $980-million Richmond Underground line that would cut through more than a kilometre of NCC land along the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway near Rochester Field.

The main issue is a 500-metre stretch of track that will run through an open trench between Dominion station in the east over to Skead Street in the west. The NCC has said it would not approve this design because it obstructs public access to its federal land, a sentiment echoed by the commission’s CEO Jean-Francois Trepanier.

“It’s a real impediment,” he said in an interview following council’s decision Wednesday. “It doesn’t meet the criteria of unimpeded, continuous access.”

The city’s latest proposal calls for the construction of a 1.2-km trench between Dominion station and Cleary station with a 700-metre portion of the trench partially covered. A 500-metre stretch just west of Dominion over to Skead Street will be open. Trepanier questions why the city has not proposed covering the trench like it has for the 700-metre section of the line that runs along Skead Street before going completely underground at Cleary station.

“We’re asking them for details about why they didn’t consider this for the remaining 500 metres,” he said.

The NCC reminded council in a news release that board members insist on “minimal visual impact” and “unimpeded continuous access” to its lands and the shoreline of the Ottawa River.

City staff have said covering the entire 1.2 km of trench would increase the $980-million price tag, but Mayor Jim Watson offered a different take in a letter to NCC board chairman Russell Mills on Wednesday.

“With your clear feedback regarding unimpeded continuous access and minimal visual impact, I feel very comfortable that we will be able to amply and flexibly meet these requirements within our identified budget,” Watson wrote.

The mayor’s letter is a diplomatic shift from the tone of last month’s transportation committee meeting when councillors said they will not simply cave to the NCC’s demands. They suggested moving ahead with the proposed western route while continuing talks with the commission.

Construction of the western LRT proposal is not expected to start until 2017 or 2018, which is why staff believe they have enough time to hammer out a deal with the NCC in order to move ahead with the track that will stretch from Bayview station to Baseline station. When complete, the Richmond Underground will connect to the 12.5-kilometre Confederation Line now being built through the downtown.

[email protected]

twitter.com/Derek_Spalding
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Counci...te+despite+objections/8671631/story.html

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Hmmm. I do not understand comments like this. Our city has grown dramatically. Ottawa has at least 4 times the population that it did in 1950. I believe that suburban design can be much better but not delivering fast transit service is not the answer to the problem. All that will mean is that we will create an even more sprawling city with more and more roads, which will inevitably have to lead downtown with the destruction that this will inflict. If we had attempted to re-urbanize Ottawa and strictly control growth of the city, we would have self destructed every older neighbourhood in the city. The price of housing would have skyrocketed and I can just imagine the number of gloomy concrete high rises that would have gone up. Look at some of the buildings that went up in the 60s and 70s that have become slums. Not everybody wants to live in a high rise including myself. Ottawa has a high quality of life because we preserved green space throughout the city, and we have wide choice of housing types at affordable prices. We have also decided to connect the suburbs by Transitways instead of by expressways for the most part. It is far from perfect but it is whole lot better than what has been achieved in most cities.

I would like to hear your dream transit plan. I'm having a little trouble trying to visualize it.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Hmmm. I do not understand comments like this. Our city has grown dramatically. Ottawa has at least 4 times the population that it did in 1950. I believe that suburban design can be much better but not delivering fast transit service is not the answer to the problem.

The transit would be better if the built form were better, too. It could be a virtuous cycle, but instead we have a vicious one, by design, which we have no political will to break.

If we had attempted to re-urbanize Ottawa and strictly control growth of the city, we would have self destructed every older neighbourhood in the city.

Re-urbanizing isn't something you do.

It's something you let.

We don't let it.

The price of housing would have skyrocketed and I can just imagine the number of gloomy concrete high rises that would have gone up.

There are other ways to build things besides concrete highrises... and the gloomiest of those are in the 1970s suburban belt anyway, not in any truly urban area.

Ottawa has a high quality of life because we preserved green space throughout the city,

No, Ottawa has a high quality of life despite the expensive, sprawl-inducing, pollution-generating green space.

Ottawa has too much green space. It's bad for the human environment, and it's bad for the natural environment.

We have also decided to connect the suburbs by Transitways instead of by expressways for the most part.

I'd prefer working towards a city where there aren't such far-flung, low-density, monoculture suburbs to be connected in the first place.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I would like to hear your dream transit plan. I'm having a little trouble trying to visualize it.

Fair enough. But please realize that I understand that everything has now changed and it cannot possibly be implemented.

My whole idea was to invest as much money that directly improves service instead of rebuilding existing rapid transit. Rebuilding existing rapid transit is very expensive and delivers very limited service improvements for the dollar spent.

I have always supported the N-S plan as an affordable way to deliver LRT to all the southern suburbs. It was going affect the design of the suburbs and move us to at least a somewhat less car centric community design. I believe that this is now a lost opportunity and I expect Riverside South to simply turn into another big box dominated sprawl community. Standing alone, there would be a problem downtown, but in tandem with other ideas, this could have been the beginning of a true urban rail network that also solves the downtown problem.

I have thought and thought and thought about the downtown congestion issue and I have concluded that the most effective way to leverage our Transitway investment was to build a bus tunnel. The cost of conversion to rail is going to be enormous and conversion incomplete for decades to come. The Transitways act much like a commuter rail system offering direct service to downtown from the suburbs. Conversion, which will not be complete for decades, will create a hybrid, neither ideal for commuters or providing the best location for urban service.

A combination of a surface downtown rail line and a bus tunnel would have solved the downtown congestion issue.

The cost of these two projects would have been covered by our current $2.1 billion investment and would have delivered immediate service improvements to most everybody who uses transit to go downtown and to deliver better service to all the southern suburbs. Service improvements southward have now been deferred indefinitely.

All future money could then be allocated to expanding the rail network via Carling Avenue, Rideau-Montreal and via the Alta Vista Parkway corridor and on to the Innes Road and Orleans South Corridor.

In addition we could have invested in improvements to the cross-town rail line and use it for diesel rail service between the Kanata Business Park and the Via Rail Station. Service would be much like the O-Train. This would provide a fast cross-town connection that our current network lacks.

What this does is maintains and expands the cross city connectivity that the Transitways have created. The Confederation Line is taking us backwards in that we can no longer take transit directly from Orleans or Kanata or Barrhaven or even South Keys to downtown without having to transfer. I am talking about trunk line service. The coverage area that we are creating in 2018 will shrink dramatically and this will make downtown events a little less accessible by transit to those living beyond the coverage area. My ideas would have maintained and expanded the coverage area directly linked to downtown and would have created a more extensive rapid transit network faster.

[S-Man]

Let me see if I understand LRT's friend:

The cost of conversion to rail is prohibitive.

But tunneling a bus expressway underground isn't.

And surface streets will still have the joy of traffic, local bus routes and LRT vehicles all mingling in traffic. And the LRT only goes to Barrhaven.

But rail would also go down Carling? Sparing Westboro, I guess, and being really, really expensive. But Westboro will still have the bus transitway running onto the parkway.

Sounds like the Bob Chiarelli plan, with a hint of Andy Haydon and elements of a certain licensed blogger's online soapboxing.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The transit would be better if the built form were better, too. It could be a virtuous cycle, but instead we have a vicious one, by design, which we have no political will to break.



Re-urbanizing isn't something you do.

It's something you let.

We don't let it.



There are other ways to build things besides concrete highrises... and the gloomiest of those are in the 1970s suburban belt anyway, not in any truly urban area.



No, Ottawa has a high quality of life despite the expensive, sprawl-inducing, pollution-generating green space.

Ottawa has too much green space. It's bad for the human environment, and it's bad for the natural environment.



I'd prefer working towards a city where there aren't such far-flung, low-density, monoculture suburbs to be connected in the first place.

Exactly how do achieve any of what you say? Taking away people's housing choices? Taking away even more private property rights?

I think some of those gloomy high rises are right in the centre of the city. Look at some of those high rises on Lees Avenue, or Bell Street or even the west end of Laurier Avenue. Many of these places have not aged well. Some are thankfully being refurbished. Look at what has gone up on Lebreton Flats so far.

So, you would have blown away the green space along the rivers and the canal and eliminated the bike trails and places to walk your dogs. And built highrises in the flood plains creating a multitude of disasters for our government to bail out. And, it is funny now what is constituted as the suburban belt. It seems to me that anything built after World War II is now the suburban belt by your standard. The suburban wasteland outside of the boundaries of Holland, Carling, and the Rideau River. Frankly, we cannot roll back the clock. We cannot also change history as housing and community design is a reflection of the time in which they were built. The 'suburban belt' is a reflection of a society that often was first generation removed from the farm when land was cheap and people wanted a bit of lawn to maintain.

Regardless of 'letting' re-urbanization, the effect is the same. We would have destroyed our older neighbourhoods and replaced them with a sea of asphalt and concrete, likely with housing of very mediocre design. The vast majority of the population cannot afford to live in $1M condominiums, whether low rise or high rise.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by S-Man

Let me see if I understand LRT's friend:

The cost of conversion to rail is prohibitive.

But tunneling a bus expressway underground isn't.

And surface streets will still have the joy of traffic, local bus routes and LRT vehicles all mingling in traffic. And the LRT only goes to Barrhaven.

But rail would also go down Carling? Sparing Westboro, I guess, and being really, really expensive. But Westboro will still have the bus transitway running onto the parkway.

Sounds like the Bob Chiarelli plan, with a hint of Andy Haydon and elements of a certain licensed blogger's online soapboxing.

Exactly, the cost of conversion is indeed prohibitive and will prevent other transit improvements from taking place.

It is funny how a bus tunnel is awful and unaffordable but a truck tunnel is the solution to the truck problem on King Edward and is affordable.

You will note that the Carling route would be for urban service and therefore would not require extensive grade separation. As I have said, instead of spending billions replacing the Transitways, spend only what you need to correct the problem. A bus tunnel in combination with a Calgary-like surface rail line would give us enough capacity for decades. And as the urban rail network expanded, the number of local buses downtown would decline.

My idea will allow us to create more new rapid transit and rail lines that what we are planning today for the same money.

Yes, it only initially serves Barrhaven and Riverside South, but the Confederation Line's Phase 1 only goes to Blair Road. 29km versus 12km. Plus you get a tunnel that takes most of the remaining buses off of downtown streets and resolves the bus jamming as well. Remember, even the first phase of LRT will eliminate some buses and some local buses would not use the tunnel. Therefore the number of buses now using Albert and Slater would be reduced to a reasonable level when moved to the tunnel allowing for proper flow of buses.

Is there a reason why modern LRT cannot be integrated into Albert and Slater without the competing buses?

It indeed takes elements from the Chiarelli plan and Andy Haydon's ideas and some from those who wanted to use existing rail lines. I feel it would deliver more bang for our bucks.

There is an additional benefit in that it becomes realistic to directly connect a rail service from Gatineau via the Prince of Wales Bridge.

Of course, most of this can no longer happen. And for those who are living and dying with the Confederation Line, this is probably a good thing.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Exactly, the cost of conversion is indeed prohibitive and will prevent other transit improvements from taking place.

The cost of conversion is not prohibitive. If it was we would not be construction the system now. Conversion of the transitway is only a small part of the cost, the tunnel is a large portion of which you are prepared to spend even more for a BRT tunnel. It is only prohibitive in your mind.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

It is funny how a bus tunnel is awful and unaffordable but a truck tunnel is the solution to the truck problem on King Edward and is affordable.

Let's stick to the topic, a truck tunnel has nothing to do with LRT and since the tunnel is an interprovincial structure the federal government would be more obliged to commit funds to it than LRT or your favourite BRT. The cost of an LRT tunnel should be less than a BRT tunnel just due to the increased ventilation and fire suppresion systems required running diesel vehicles vs electric rail vehicles.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You will note that the Carling route would be for urban service and therefore would not require extensive grade separation. As I have said, instead of spending billions replacing the Transitways, spend only what you need to correct the problem. A bus tunnel in combination with a Calgary-like surface rail line would give us enough capacity for decades.

A bus tunnel does not change the clogging of buses during peak periods. The clogging is more due to the time taken to load and unload rather than delays caused by traffic lights. Unless you are going to make the tunnel much wider than the LRT tunnel there will not be enough room for buses to pass one another at stations so we are not better off spending a billion dollars so you can keep your BRT.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

And as the urban rail network expanded, the number of local buses downtown would decline.

So if we are going to reduce the number of buses downtown then what are we going to use to move people through the core? How about using LRT?

I think it is time that you started to accept reality. Whether you like it or not the LRT is going ahead and yes it is not perfect but it will be much better in the long run. All your complaints about LRT are not going to change anything at this point. Maybe when it is finished you can still keep on riding the bus if you wish while the rest of us ride the LRT.

[Hybrid247]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Exactly, the cost of conversion is indeed prohibitive and will prevent other transit improvements from taking place.

The transit improvements that we need the most are being addressed by converting to LRT. I have to say, Ottawa's transit system has been great for the city up until about a decade ago or more, but it has reached its breaking point. That breaking point is the capacity the system is able to handle in the downtown core during rush hour. It's currently at full capacity and if you haven't been downtown during rush hour recently then you haven't seen the transit nightmare that takes place. It can take a bus up to 20 minutes just to go from Lebreton to Mackenzie King.

That is why I'm also happy that the N-S LRT didn't get built because it would have been a major failure for the downtown portion. They wanted to add trains on the same streets that are currently at full capacity with buses.

A bus tunnel was addressed as a possibility, but it would quickly reach capacity within a few years due to the rapid growth of transit usage and the need for more buses to service that growth. Not to mention that ventilating the tunnel with all those buses would be quite a challenge.

LRT is a proven form of rapid transit that can handle large volumes of people for many decades to come. It's also a smart move given the everlasting rise in gas prices and it's clearly better for the environment. Yes, The 1st phase will result in the need for more transfers, but this is more about the final product. Once extensions are built to reach other parts of the city, Ottawa will have a strong backbone for its transit system that is fast and effective.