The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

It's also more significantly more expensive to operate a system like that. Having to transfer to a train that's coming every 3 minutes, although certainly a deterrent, is not a significant hardship. Phase 2 is critical though.

It is the outgoing trip when transfers become a problem.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Has the Confederation Line's planned frequency been released? I couldn't find it on google.

I believe it is 3 minutes and 15 seconds during peak periods, 5 minutes during midday, 10 minutes in the evening and weekends, maybe 15 minutes late at night.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I believe it is 3 minutes and 15 seconds during peak periods, 5 minutes during midday, 10 minutes in the evening and weekends, maybe 15 minutes late at night.

That's actually really good. I've never been to Ottawa so I'm not gonna pretend I know anything, but I have to transfer from a bus to the Skytrain on my daily commute. The time it takes to transfer (with 3.5 minute frequencies) greatly compensates for traffic and lights and stuff like that. Obviously it's different in Ottawa because you have a transitway that goes downtown so it's not the same, but I'd imagine that even if it doesn't produce significant time savings, it can't make a commute significantly longer either.

[caltrane74]

UPX Locomotive

Under Construction at the Nippon Sharyo Plant in Japan



http://canadianrailwayobservations.com/RESTRICTED/2014/January/amtgo.php

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

It is the outgoing trip when transfers become a problem.

How so? The long chaotic wait for the right bus to come along in the jam downtown will be replaced with a more relaxed transfer point in one of the outer stations.

One of the key factors in the BRT vs LRT comparison that is often overlooked is the ratio of drivers and vehicle maintenance costs per passenger. OC Transpo has massive health care and pension commitments well into the future for its legion of bus drivers and mechanics.

I'm not jumping up and down because of some "shiny new train". I'm happy because we are finally slaying the dragon that is the downtown bus jam. The pollution and squandered energy of hundreds of idling busses are finally going to be addressed, to focus on a more liveable and pedestrian-friendly city. It's not just about transit.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

That's actually really good. I've never been to Ottawa so I'm not gonna pretend I know anything, but I have to transfer from a bus to the Skytrain on my daily commute. The time it takes to transfer (with 3.5 minute frequencies) greatly compensates for traffic and lights and stuff like that. Obviously it's different in Ottawa because you have a transitway that goes downtown so it's not the same, but I'd imagine that even if it doesn't produce significant time savings, it can't make a commute significantly longer either.

No, it's not different. The "Transitway" downtown is actually just bus lanes running along side all other forms of transportation. 300 buses per hour per direction (Transitway alone, we probably have 150 to 200 more phpd on Wellington and Queen) have to cross 12 intersections between LeBreton and uOttawa.

Furthermore, the Central Transitway carries around 40 bus lines. Everyday, it's a challenge finding your bus amongst a line up of a few dozens.

That's another huge advantage of rail transit; every train is your train. Worst case scenario, the tunnel might eventually have 3 lines going through it.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The backlash will come when the Confederation Line opens. But Ottawans have already had a taste of it with the botched opening of Rapidbus across the river based on a hub and spoke model that replaced express buses with transfers that instead of saving time, has actually increased travel time significantly. This after spending hundreds of millions of dollars that was supposed to speed up bus service but has not. The STO in Gatineau is being forced by the backlash to reassess the design of the Rapidbus system (which has also had many accidents because of awkward intersection designs). Fortunately, it is a busway so there is some flexibility that the Confederation Line will not feature.

At this point, everything regarding the Confederation Line is still theoretical however when transit detours start reality will begin to set in. There have been ridiculous comments of 15 minute time savings, which I believe are unachievable and will quickly be offset by time lost waiting for transfers. There is no doubt that there is a serious transit congestion problem in downtown Ottawa, which is now compromising service levels and reliability especially during bad weather. A downtown tunnel is absolutely necessary.

But when the choices were examined, the idea of a bus tunnel was dismissed very quickly. I have been of the opinion that the choice that we made is the most costly possible requiring our existing rapid transit infrastructure to be completely replaced with all the disruption involved. The bus tunnel was dismissed because it was felt that it would not have the capacity to handle the passenger traffic. This did ignore the possibility of continuing to use surface streets for some of the traffic.

We will have to wait until the 2018 opening to see the real impact of the Confederation Line but it will depend on the design of the new bus system and whether it will be effective. I have my doubts based on one proposal that was released that also would extend walking distances. It seems that the Confederation Line is being implemented with the idea of cost savings rather than service improvement. I have had other concerns about what will happen. Currently, the Transitways are used for trunk line bus service, express service and also cross-town service. The loss of the latter will reduce the connectivity of the transit system and will make transit less competitive in non-downtown locations.

Other faulty aspects of the rail plan includes the lack of full integration with the existing O-Train that potentially makes it a two transfer trip between the southern suburbs and downtown, now a direct trip.

The other issue was today's announcement that a possible future Conservative government may not fund the critical Phase 2 of the Confederation Line leaving Ottawa with an incomplete rail line.

There is general excitement from Ottawa posters about the shiny new train. I have been the skeptic in the group. I am expecting no savings in travel times for the vast majority of transit riders and I won't be surprised that the loss of express buses will result in longer travel times. This after spending $2.1 billion.

There is a significant difference between the RapiBus and the Confederation Line. The RapiBus crosses nearly all the same intersections as al other forms of transportation. With the design of it, a roadway running parallel to another roadway, the intersection have an incredibly idiotic design causing multiple accidents every month.



Furthermore, the RapiBus doesn't even extend to downtown, the only place where buses were ever suck in traffic.

The Confederation Line however, is fully grade separated from any other traffic therefore, a lot of the problems plaguing Gatineau won't be an issue in Ottawa. And once Stage 2 is completed (don't think Hudak is getting in: he's constantly shooting himself in the foot like the PQ did a few months back), transfers will be made much easier by having them closer or in suburbia.

[ssiguy]

I appreciate what you are saying about liveability but whether the underground portion is for trains or buses, the liveability and pedestrian friendly aspect of getting rid of all the buses will be the same no matter what the technology.

As far as having to many different buses well that can be solved by just having fewer express buses but extending the Transitway. A lot of the problems with the buses in Ottawa isn't so much the number of buses but the true lack of Transit-only routes {like Calgary}, not proper PPP which makes boardings much longer, and of course Ottawa winters. A downtown bus tunnel would negate all those things as easily as an LRT tunnel.

The tunnel downtown whether LRT or bus would probably cost the same but the difference outside the tunnel is where there is so much extra money being spent for what I see of little value. LRT won't be any faster than the buses and due to express customers know having to transfer, it could be significantly longer. People don't mind of transit but they hate transfers and this has added many transfers to the system.

I think those hundreds of millions being used to change the bus lanes over to LRT would be better spent expanding the Transitway bringing more rapid transit to more people and more destinations. The LRT seems to be bringing less rapid transit and less riders to fewer locations.

The downtown tunnel is a must and thank god it's proceeding but I really question the wisdom of transferring the system over to LRT. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see how this will do anything for transit riders.

[Aylmer]

The problem is that there are too many buses. When you have too high a vehicle density, no matter how few intersections it might have, any one person tapping even slightly on the breaks causes a traffic jam. God know that highways have traffic, despite being perfectly grade-separated.

Now combine that with the fact that buses need not only tap on the breaks, but make a full stop at stations and a long boarding/alighting time because of overcrowded platforms of people fighting their way to their specific bus and you've got just slightly less of a crisis on your hands in the short term.

Buses are inherently more prone to jamming in areas of high frequency because you need 6x more vehicles to transport the same number of people than LRT. Allowing multiple routes only exacerbates the problem by making crowding the platforms and significantly increasing boarding time.

This cannot be fixed, and god knows we've tried. There's only so much lipstick we can put on our pig.

[Innsertnamehere]

The Confederation line doesn't go far enough in the west, but if phase 2 is built it will be fine.

Ottawa is making the shift from a direct to downtown system to one of transfers to higher modes, which is the standard for larger cities across the globe. Its awkward at first but is required to deal with capacity demands and ultimately is preferable.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I believe it is 3 minutes and 15 seconds during peak periods, 5 minutes during midday, 10 minutes in the evening and weekends, maybe 15 minutes late at night.

Nope. It's planned for exactly 3 minutes at rush hour (not 3:15). Midday service will at 5 minutes, but so will evening service and Saturday midday service. Only late evening (past 9pm), Saturday morning, and Sunday service will be at 10 minutes.

[1overcosc]

Direct to downtown service from literally every neighbourhood in the city (which is practically what Ottawa has now) is just not feasible once a city gets big enough.

I'm convinced the transit experience for existing direct service suburban commuters will be improved overall.

In the morning, they have to make a very quick, very comfortable transfer that involves simply walking across a platform. At the absolute worst they'll lose 4 minutes (1 minute to cross platform, 3 minutes waiting if they're unlucky enough to get there just as the train leaves). They'll gain about 10 minutes of travel time, due to both the removal of bus jams as well as the faster trip--the whole Transitway segment leading to downtown will be faster as well--and then lose about 3 minutes in having to exit the station. So all in all, a net gain of about 3 minutes, but a big improvement in experience, comfort, and reliability. Travel time will be almost always exactly the same regardless of weather now, whereas before the trip could be massively lengthened by accidents or bad weather.

In the afternoon, instead of spending 10-15 minutes waiting at the overcrowded downtown BRT platforms and craning their necks constantly to figure out if THEIR specific bus (among over 20 possible options!) is here yet, and then running to the correct one when it does show up, they'll be wisked down to the tunnel, where they get on the first train that comes, waiting no more than 3 minutes, then have a nice, climate controlled, comfortable wait at the transfer station for their bus, which will be much better organized as they'll know what specific bus bay THEIR bus will come to and can just wait by it.

Rapibus in Gatineau failed because of two things:
1) The feeder routes only run every half hour even at peak making for a really long wait in the PM. The Confederation Line's feeder routes will have the same frequency that the former expresses they're replacing will have, about 10-15 minutes.
2) The trip is really slow because of the very circuitous route it takes to get downtown, plus it uses on-street lanes downtown which means slow trips. The Confederation Line is fast, direct, and congestion-free.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

The Confederation line doesn't go far enough in the west, but if phase 2 is built it will be fine.

Ottawa is making the shift from a direct to downtown system to one of transfers to higher modes, which is the standard for larger cities across the globe. Its awkward at first but is required to deal with capacity demands and ultimately is preferable.

Accurate assessment. Imagine if Toronto had direct-to-downtown bus service from every single neighbourhood in the city PLUS every single neighbourhood in the 905s!!! Even with a bus tunnel that would be horrific.

[Doady]

A truly comprehensive system has both the hub-and-spoke routes and the grid routes.

Toronto for example has both GO and TTC. GO is hub-and-spoke system and TTC is almost a pure grid.

Sometimes it's just more efficient to give people a direct ride. Sometimes transfers is better. But most likely you will need both.

[OTSkyline]

I understand where you are coming from when you say that other than the downtown tunnel, the switch to LRT from buses won't bring significant improvement with such a high cost, but what you need to understand is that this is the begining of a new transit system in Ottawa. Obviously we need to build our first metro line but after that we will just be expanding and adding new lines to it.

It's okay if Ottawa would've just built the downtown tunnel for buses and that would've been fine for the very short term but that wouldn't help in 5, 10 or 20 years.. Ottawa is a growing city and we can't expect to become a city of 1.5 or 2 million people with only a bus system.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

.

Sorry ssiguy, but I am not letting you get away on this one this time.

You always cower away after you have been proven wrong and never admit it and will post the same incorrect facts again as soon as this conversation has been buried deep within the thread.

Admit you were wrong about the Canada Line.

Admit that the stations were never promised at 60 meters, that the 50 meter stations do accommodate future 3 car trains, and that the build out capacity is still 15 000 pphpd, not the 13 000 you said.

If you do not believe that (which many forum members have corrected you on over and over again) then please post some links / sources to documents supporting your position.

You are always posting incorrect information about Vancouver / BC on here, and I am tired of it. not letting you go this time.

[ssiguy]

If you "can't let it go", then you need a life.

[Nouvellecosse]

Sorry but I'm going to have to agree with metro on this one. There have been numerous occasions when you've made statements that have been proven false and you just keep posting the same thing over again later.

If you're sure that your assertion is correct then all you need is to back it up. If you're not sure, then don't keep making the claims. That's the real "letting it go" that needs to happen.

[Metro-One]

Thank you Nouvellecosse.

Thats the thing ssiguy, you never admit / acknowledge that you have been corrected. I am more than sure that you will post the same incorrect facts again on this thread or another similar thread (probably in the international section).

Myself, Left Coaster, Jlousa, giallo, etc... have corrected you countless times, but you never reply to the corrections and you will make the same statements again.

It has just become increasinhly annoying and finally I have had it. I am calling you on it.

Now answer to what we have said in relation to your Canada Line claims.

You said they promised 60 meter platforms.

The truth, that never happened.

You claimed 50 meter platforms can not accommodate 3 cars trains

That is incorrect, the 50 meters has been designed specifically for 3 car trains.

You have claimed that build out ridership was downgraded to 13 000 pphpd.

Again, not true, it is 15 000 pphph as always planned.

So either admit you are wrong or supply documents to your claims.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

The tunnel downtown whether LRT or bus would probably cost the same

Actually, it would have been nearly twice the cost. A bus tunnel would have been built twice as wide to accommodate 4 lanes. Furthermore, a more complex exhaust system would have been needed. I know a lot of people say that it would not be necessary with dual mode buses, but I don't think it's that simple. Besides, none of our buses our more than 10 years old, so buying new ones would be a waste.