Future Transit System Fantasy Ideas

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I would totally freak out (in the best of ways) if they made a similar ad for Ottawa What would our slogan be? "Il fait beau dans l'train léger" doesn't quite roll off the tongue as nicely.

That actually raises an important issue: What are they going to call our new LRT system? The name Confederation Line is easily translatable, but LRT isn't... 'train leger' just sounds stupid. They could have the O-Train be the overall system name with 'Confederation Line' being one line and a new similarly bilingual-friendly name for the existing O-Train line.

Weren't they supposed to decide this last summer?

[swimmer_spe]

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zJh1JiVkvThc.kIJgRS-h0P7A

Red, future highway

Yellow, future bridges

Dark Green, Confederation LRT
Light Green, O-Train
Light Blue, Rapidbus
Black, Dedicated Transitways
Blue, future LRT

Orange, Commuter rail, existing line(possibly removed and a trail now)
Brown, future rail

Basically I started with what exists. And then I extrapolated from there.

Highways:

416 gets extended to the Prince of Wales Bridge, which gets replaced by a bridge that would carry 6+lanes of freeway and 2 rail tracks.

The A-50 would get extended to the bridge.

A-450, would create a Ring Road north of Gatineau. It would connect to a bridge that would cross east of Aylmer. It would turn into 429.

429 would go east and south of Ottawa to Cumberland, creating the other part of the Ring Road. It would go near the edge of the Greenbelt.

174 would be 4 laned to 429

431 would replace the Airport Parkway, and then connect to Bank St to the end of A-5 The part north of The Queensway would be tunneled.

LRT/O-Train

All transitways would be turned into LRT.

O-Train would cross over the Prince of Wales Bridge to connect to Rapidbus, that would be converted to rail.

The LRT would extend to the Airport. It would also extend out to the Canadian Tire Centre. There would be an extension to Gloucester.

In Gatineau, it would extend to Aylmer.

Commuter Rail:

One line would go to Renfrew and Armprior.

Another would go to Smith Falls. This line could have 2 branches, one to Perth, one to Carleton Place.

A new line would need to be built to cover Orleans towards Hawkesbury.

Another new line would connect Cornwall to the line at Cassellman.

As far is in Quebec, there appears to be no active lines east of Gatineau. It has all be converted to a trail. It would have to end up being rebuilt.

West of Gatineau, a line to Thurso.

It is very ambitious, but, if built, it could keep up with expansion, and not be dogged by extreme congestion.

[Aylmer]

Nice!

Note that the rail line in Gatineau is still there and actually continues until Montreal via Lachute.
Have you considered some LRT for downtown Gatineau? Especially with some of the projects going on there (Windmill!), we could hope that LRT could help make it more of a destination.

[McC]

Can we move this to the Fantasies thread? The Forum has too many different transit threads already.

Hail Mods!

[Urbanarchit]

Something I thought was really cool when I saw the film Pina was Wuppertal Schwebebahn, a suspension railway they have that transports people around the city. It was built in 1901.

I think it would be interesting if we had something like this in Ottawa, maybe as interprovincial transit?

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by defishel

Something I thought was really cool when I saw the film Pina was Wuppertal Schwebebahn, a suspension railway they have that transports people around the city. It was built in 1901.

I think it would be interesting if we had something like this in Ottawa, maybe as interprovincial transit?

It would definitely be interesting, but there is a huge list of reasons why it's a terrible idea, including and not limited to:

- No commonality with anywhere else in the world, except Wuppertal. If you build a normal Monorail you can go to Bombardier and order a standard car that fits standard Disney World/Vegas tracks and is built on the well known ALWEG design.

- Expensive overhead support structure requires massive supports.

- No guarantee of future availability. More train cars will always be available.

If suspended transit is required, cables are the way to go.

[Multi-modal]

Hello everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster...

I'm always very impressed with some of your transit ideas, and just thought I'd share some of my own. This was part of my 4th year engineering project. We (read I) did the planning and design of three commuter rail lines for the City of Ottawa. The lines were envisioned to use DMUs (specifically the LINT 81s to compliment the newly acquired O-train rolling stock). Anyway, here they are, hopefully these images aren't too big or too small because I've never posted in a forum before.







For the possible downtown extension the another station would be created at the intersection of the Arnprior Line and Woodroffe and the Arnprior Line would not serve Baseline Station (this is not made clear in the map). The downtown extension would use travel underneath the old Union station and along the old rail corridor over the Alexandria bridge, but there would only be a regular station at Union rather than a large staging area. The end-of-line station for the final build-out in the third map would be Bayview. In the final build-out all lines travel through downtown before arriving at Bayview.

Rockland would obviously be the most expensive to build and might not be feasible past Orleans. Our group had actually include a line to Smiths Falls for most of the project, but eventually dropped it as we didn't want to deal with VIA rail coordination in our detailed design. All the lines would have been single track with sidings (except for within the downtown loop).

It was imagined that the first phase of the project would be commuter rail that connected only to the existing rail network, with the downtown extension being implemented as a phase 2.

P.S. Images are too small, I tried using ImageShack, does anyone know a better website that will allow for larger image links?

[Multi-modal]

Also the forum is saying I do not have permission to edit my own post. Anyone know why this might be?

[Aylmer]

Hm... Have you confirmed your account by following the link sent to your email?

Great-looking plan BTW! Can't wait to see the big picture to get some more detail!

[Multi-modal]

Yay I got it working...







Heres an example of some of the detailed auto-cad work. This specific section is of the Tremblay area pre-downtown extension. Its a little faded from the pdf program converting it in to jpeg but you get the idea.

[Aylmer]

I'd love to see more of that AutoCAD detail for the downtown portion. Can you put it up?

As for the plan, I'm going to go ahead and assume that the downtown portion is tunnelled and, following that assumption, that the trains will be EMU/DMU hybrids (I know that you can have diesel tunnels like in Auckland or the Öresund/Ǿresund crossing, but it's much less complex/costly with electric traction). I think that you could be a lot more ambitious with your station spacing, considering the fast acceleration and deceleration EMUs (and even DMUs) allow.

I think that you could add stations in Nepean (perhaps Merrivale, Baseline and Greenbank, then displace Bells Coner further west) and Gatineau (I'd drop La Gappe ― there's nothing there ― and add Taché/UQO, Casino, Promenades, La Cité, Cheval-Blanc and Aéroparc). With these additional stations, the high ridership could justify all-day, frequent service along at least part of the lines, very much similar to S-Bahn systems for which your proposed vehicles were designed for.


I'm a little sceptical of the rails through Hull - the linear park it would run on is one of the precious few highlights of the city and I don't think the fight would be worth the meagre gains in connectivity (there's only low-density residential along it). I think Gatineau would be much better served by a new rail terminus at Chaudière or perhaps even Portage via a shallow tunnel beside Laurier. I would, however, be in favour of using the Alexandra Bridge for a LRT connection between the two cores.

But all in all, a solid plan! You seem to have put a lot of thought into it — is it for a project?

[DEWLine]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I just finished up the streetcar map, for which I also took some liberties, notably by extending the Vanier line into Lowertown and extending the Preston line into the new Chaudière islands and Montcalm developments.



I'm personally a little sceptical of streetcars, since they don't provide any more mobility than a bus (though there are many other arguments). I would want it to have reserved lanes wherever possible (like on Vanier, parts of King Edward and Bronson).

But from a quality and attractiveness perspective, a streetcar would be lovely

Intriguing concept for the restoration of such vehicles to the core neighbourhoods of the city, in any case.

[Mikeed]

Imgur,
Imgur is the only image hosting site,

[Mikeed]

Fantastic professionalism in the commuter rail line plan, I know the city owns the ROWs (at least the one heading to Arnprior. Did you do a cost analysis?

(Also I think illustrates what Ottawa lacks after the 1960s Gerber Plan to decentralized the regional rail station- a centralized rail station to act as a hub.)

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

Multi-Modal, my only quip would be the following:

Rather than have a sharp spur north to Baseline Station, simply extend the Transitway/LRT south to intersect the Arnprior Line.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I think that you could add stations in Nepean (perhaps Merrivale, Baseline and Greenbank, then displace Bells Coner further west) and Gatineau (I'd drop La Gappe ― there's nothing there ― ?

I'd keep La Gappe. There is a park and ride there, it's adjacent to a shopping centre that is big boxy but could be repurposed into something nicer (like Dix30?) and has a high amount of walk-up transit user traffic from the adjacent residential areas along Avenue des Flandres and the neighbourhood of Touraine. (Perhaps the highest such traffic of any Rapibus station.)

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd keep La Gappe. There is a park and ride there, it's adjacent to a shopping centre that is big boxy but could be repurposed into something nicer (like Dix30?) and has a high amount of walk-up transit user traffic from the adjacent residential areas along Avenue des Flandres and the neighbourhood of Touraine. (Perhaps the highest such traffic of any Rapibus station.)

I grew up on rue des Flandres; one of those nice, walkable, post-war neighborhoods. I was extremely disappointed with what they build in our empty field. Considering its proximity/views of Ottawa and the Rapibus station, they could have built something significantly better. Dix 30 is a good example.

[Multi-modal]

But all in all, a solid plan! You seem to have put a lot of thought into it — is it for a project?

Ya, as I mentioned before, this was for a 4th year engineering project at Carleton. There was 6 members in the group... but I did all the rail planning and design, the others were varying levels of unhelpful.

As for the plan, I'm going to go ahead and assume that the downtown portion is tunnelled and, following that assumption, that the trains will be EMU/DMU hybrids (I know that you can have diesel tunnels like in Auckland or the Öresund/Ǿresund crossing, but it's much less complex/costly with electric traction). I think that you could be a lot more ambitious with your station spacing, considering the fast acceleration and deceleration EMUs (and even DMUs) allow.

Yeah the majority of the downtown portion would be tunnelled (at least the portion under the highway, next to the canal and under Union). We were planning to use Alstom LINT 81 DMUs, but a EMU/DMU hybrid might be more practical with the tunnel, agreed.

I'd love to see more of that AutoCAD detail for the downtown portion. Can you put it up?

Unfortunately, with learning AutoCAD Civil 3d I only had time to finish the three outer-portions of the lines. The downtown extension is obviously much more complicated and the scope of the project was very large already.

I think that you could add stations in Nepean (perhaps Merrivale, Baseline and Greenbank, then displace Bells Coner further west) and Gatineau (I'd drop La Gappe ― there's nothing there ― and add Taché/UQO, Casino, Promenades, La Cité, Cheval-Blanc and Aéroparc). With these additional stations, the high ridership could justify all-day, frequent service along at least part of the lines, very much similar to S-Bahn systems for which your proposed vehicles were designed for.

Agreed for the most part... the lack of stations shows the influence of our professor, who was more interested in a pure commuter system, whereas I would have preferred an all-day service as you suggest. At the very least a frequent service in the inner city and suburbs with occasional trips to the outer stations. Our analysis showed that the vast majority of ridership for the lines was coming from Orleans, Kanata/Bells Corners and Inner Gatineau, (and Barrhaven for the scrapped Smiths Falls Line) so it would make sense to prioritize frequent service to those locations. In fact, ridership was so high, the Arnprior and Rockland lines had to run at 10 minute headways during peak periods anyway. Ridership estimates were based off the Trans data and a utility mode choice model. The mode choice model was outdated but it was all my professor would provide and I couldn't find anything else.

I think you're correct to add at least a couple more stations on each line. A Trim station in Orleans perhaps? For the Gatineau line I was concerned with duplicated Rapibus service, and chose stations that shared bus transfer and park-and-ride facilities.

I'm a little sceptical of the rails through Hull - the linear park it would run on is one of the precious few highlights of the city and I don't think the fight would be worth the meagre gains in connectivity (there's only low-density residential along it).

That is a really nice park, and I agree it would never happen. I was envisioning something along the lines of the O-train in the Preston area, with multiple pedestrian bridges to support connectivity. I'd probably have a better chance if I just ran it parallel to Allumiettieres. The Laurier option would also be attractive but seems expensive and might be difficult to accommodate proper turning radii.

Fantastic professionalism in the commuter rail line plan, I know the city owns the ROWs (at least the one heading to Arnprior. Did you do a cost analysis?

We pegged the initial three lines (without downtown extension) at 890 million. I wouldn't put a lot of faith in that number though, I'm not really sure how another group member arrived at it.

Multi-Modal, my only quip would be the following:

Rather than have a sharp spur north to Baseline Station, simply extend the Transitway/LRT south to intersect the Arnprior Line.

Agreed.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

Ya, as I mentioned before, this was for a 4th year engineering project at Carleton. There was 6 members in the group... but I did all the rail planning and design, the others were varying levels of unhelpful.

Agreed

Perhaps it would also be worthwhile to extend the Bayshore LRT to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital to connect with the rail.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Perhaps it would also be worthwhile to extend the Bayshore LRT to the Queensway-Carleton Hospital to connect with the rail.

That would be a good idea, not only because of its usefulness as a connector point but also because its a major destination.