Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Beedok]

What's the point of the Barrhaven Centre stop anyway?

[Dado]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

^ The story above says $5M, not $12M.

Sorry, you're right. $12M is the cost of the entire thing to Greenbank.

I think the big issue on Chapman Mills Dr was that the intersections were Stop signs that were confusing and unsafe with the huge median. So there was a need to rebuild the intersections anyway to add signals. I think they figured that if they needed to rebuild the intersections, it made sense to add the planned transit facilities at the same time.

Hmm, could be.


I'm not even going to bother to ask why the buildings fronting this 40+ m wide corridor are all of three storeys in height.

Originally Posted by Beedok

What's the point of the Barrhaven Centre stop anyway?

It's where they turn the buses around at the moment, so it doesn't 'cost' them anything to put one there.

[MountainView]

Originally Posted by Beedok

What's the point of the Barrhaven Centre stop anyway?

Is there actually a 'stop' there? I've never seen anyone go past Marketplace Station and vice-versa the bus is always empty upon arrival into Marketplace Station when starting the route.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by MountainView

Is there actually a 'stop' there? I've never seen anyone go past Marketplace Station and vice-versa the bus is always empty upon arrival into Marketplace Station when starting the route.

I've often wondered this myself. The one time I tried staying on the bus past Marketplace to test it out, the bus driver shooed me off at Marketplace saying 'end of the line'.

[S-Man]

View Post
What's the point of the Barrhaven Centre stop anyway?

I'm sure it's for future use (or future build-up). The south side of the mall is supposed to be homes at some point.

[Dado]

There is something vaguely amusing about a "Barrhaven Centre" stop that's surrounded on 3 sides with fields in various states of use or disuse. Arguably it's good planning in the long term, but still amusing in the present.

As it happens, I'm not fond of the way the City has designed the intersection between the Southwest Transitway and this [nameless] median busway: the Southwest Transitway just comes to a stop at a T-junction, turns onto the median busway and then resumes southbound in the median on Greenbank.

On the grounds that any transitway should be designed for conversion to light rail, I'd love to know how they plan on converting a pair of right angle turns.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

To me, the main use of the 99 corridor at this point in time is for cross-town commuting. For someone in Riverside South, the new 99 corridor is a much faster way to commute to Algonquin College or Kanata than the old way of going all the way downtown via the SE Transitway and the all the way west.

It also lays the foundation for an extensive crosstown route in the future. The 99 could easily be extended west to the new development at Fallowfield/416, then even further to Kanata.

Though, I doubt the project was needed now. Was congestion really slowing down the 99 that much? IMO we should have held it in reserve until traffic was actually a bigger problem.

Agreed it is a valuable crosstown connection that has been created, and opens new connections that do not require going downtown. One of the big weaknesses in the OC Transpo system is for travel to important non-downtown locations. Crosstown links east-west across the Rideau River outside of downtown are few and far between. Only a handful of other routes run between the Southeast and Southwest Transitways: 101 via Carling and Catherine/Chamberlain, 111 via Meadowlands (excluding the Carleton spur) and 118 via Baseline. Combining the 116 and 156 would re-connect South Keys to Baseline (cut in 2011, one of the worst cuts that year) and add new connections for many residents as well.

Congestion was never a big issue for the 99, but given the low cost and the fact land was already there I think it was worth adding in.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by Dado

There is something vaguely amusing about a "Barrhaven Centre" stop that's surrounded on 3 sides with fields in various states of use or disuse. Arguably it's good planning in the long term, but still amusing in the present.

As it happens, I'm not fond of the way the City has designed the intersection between the Southwest Transitway and this [nameless] median busway: the Southwest Transitway just comes to a stop at a T-junction, turns onto the median busway and then resumes southbound in the median on Greenbank.

On the grounds that any transitway should be designed for conversion to light rail, I'd love to know how they plan on converting a pair of right angle turns.

If they extended LRT beyond Barrhaven Centre (unlikely anytime in the next 30 years, although an extension to Barrhaven Centre I could see in 12-15 years in the following TMP), they would likely need to tunnel that part to avoid the right hand turns. Otherwise the train vehicles would have to enter the traffic lanes for much of the turning.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

I've often wondered this myself. The one time I tried staying on the bus past Marketplace to test it out, the bus driver shooed me off at Marketplace saying 'end of the line'.

Yes there is a stop there. Wide sidewalks exist and a pathway to Greenbank, but no benches or shelters. A few houses on Greenbank south of Jockvale Road are about the only trip generators at this time, so virtually no one would use it.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

One of the big weaknesses in the OC Transpo system is for travel to important non-downtown locations. .. Combining the 116 and 156 would re-connect South Keys to Baseline (cut in 2011, one of the worst cuts that year) and add new connections for many residents as well.

Totally agreed regarding the impact of the 2011 cuts on route 116 and cross-town travel on the Hunt Club corridor.

I suggested at the time at route 116 and 156 be combined; the feedback was that this would result is the loss of a direct connection between the Medhurst/Woodfield area and the Merivale Mall, which was important to many of the residents in that area.

I think that the 116 should be re-extended to Baseline, at least at peak periods, even if route 156 is kept as-is.

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

I've often wondered this myself. The one time I tried staying on the bus past Marketplace to test it out, the bus driver shooed me off at Marketplace saying 'end of the line'.

Exact same thing happened to me.

[Dado]

Streetmix is such a cool tool!

I turned its capabilities towards a favourite bugbear of mine, light rail on Carling Ave.

Numerous people (ahem, Ken the Gray, ahem) seem to think you can just take out a lane of traffic from each direction of Carling Ave and shove light rail down the middle.

But that's really not the case, as you can see below. This is what you get within the current 30 m RoW:

It's not just the transit lanes one has to worry about. It's also the space for the platforms and the left turn lanes (I assume far side platforms, so the same space can serve as left turn lanes on the near side). Then there are other elements, like adding wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

When I add in two more lanes AND switch to a single 4.0 m median platform, I get to 34.6 m total RoW. If you just add in two more lanes it gets you up to 36.4 m. We can probably cut that down a bit by shaving the bike lanes a tad, and in the latter maybe removing the sidewalk tree buffer when there's a platform in the cross section (so the lanes would "squiggle" around transit platforms) but the basic point is that whatever you do, you end up well above the current 30 m RoW if you want to maintain 4 full lanes of traffic.

I actually kind of like the idea of taking out 2 lanes of traffic in each direction, but I'm sure that would go over like a lead balloon in many quarters.

[Urbanarchit]

Originally Posted by Dado

Streetmix is such a cool tool!

I turned its capabilities towards a favourite bugbear of mine, light rail on Carling Ave.

Numerous people (ahem, Ken the Gray, ahem) seem to think you can just take out a lane of traffic from each direction of Carling Ave and shove light rail down the middle.

But that's really not the case, as you can see below. This is what you get within the current 30 m RoW:

It's not just the transit lanes one has to worry about. It's also the space for the platforms and the left turn lanes (I assume far side platforms, so the same space can serve as left turn lanes on the near side). Then there are other elements, like adding wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

When I add in two more lanes AND switch to a single 4.0 m median platform, I get to 34.6 m total RoW. If you just add in two more lanes it gets you up to 36.4 m. We can probably cut that down a bit by shaving the bike lanes a tad, and in the latter maybe removing the sidewalk tree buffer when there's a platform in the cross section (so the lanes would "squiggle" around transit platforms) but the basic point is that whatever you do, you end up well above the current 30 m RoW if you want to maintain 4 full lanes of traffic.

I actually kind of like the idea of taking out 2 lanes of traffic in each direction, but I'm sure that would go over like a lead balloon in many quarters.

Fun tool, though I'm sure with barriers, trees and lights we could work something out so they don't take up as much room. But Carling definitely might not be the best for at-grade transit unless we remove a few more driving lanes. It might be possible, and something with trying eventually with something like a streetcar or something. On Streetmix you can control the width of everything

Here's my try.

[eemy]

Here's my attempt. I take some of the ROW widths they provide with a grain of salt, specifically the LRT ones.

[Dado]

I had started drawing up a side-aligned setup as well. I'm not sure where your inbound LRT platform ends up going, though. Are you going to "shuffle" the LRT tracks and switch the platform from the outbound side to the inbound side?

I do think side aligned is the way to go (both Calgary and Edmonton have used that arrangement on their most recent LRT extensions). One reason is that you can kind of "cheat" on the transit platform on one side by just swapping out the sidewalk for it - it's less of a problem for LRT than for buses since the platform itself is so long. Another real world "cheat" is to acquire a small piece of adjacent property (e.g. its setback, if it has one) to use for diverting the sidewalk onto.

As to RoW requirements, 3 m is getting a little tight for LRT. LRVs are generally in the 2.6-2.7 m range and you also need to account for supports for the overhead wiring. 3.2 m is probably about as low as you want to go for LRT lanes.

For driving lanes, if there are more than one per direction, 3 m is acceptable, though barely. But if you drop to just one lane (as I did) then that single lane needs a bit more width for large vehicles like trucks. Snow furrows also have to be accommodated somewhere.

Similarly for bike lanes, I stuck with their default of 1.8 m, but 1.5 m seems fine to me, especially if there's a second bike lane and they're separated from all else.

Right now I've got a side-aligned arrangement at 32 m, but I want to show what it looks like at intersections as well, so I'll post them together when I'm done.

[ACmodels]

I think Carling Ave is more of a Streetcar area but with some elevated spots

[ACmodels]

This could even happen with Rideau/Montreal Roads for LRT or Streetcar

[acottawa]

Cool diagrams

A few things that may help with widths

Sussex (fitting 4 driving lanes, 2 cycling lanes and sidewalks into 20m)
http://http://ottawa.ca/en/major-project...adwork/public-open-house-1-april-12-2012

Queen's Quay (driving, MUP, sidewalk, streetcar)
www.waterfrontoronto.ca/uploads/documents/community_update_meeting_2___queens_quay_1.pdf

[eemy]

I was looking for something that would indicate general ROW requirements in Ontario. The Waterfront link helps - they seem much greater than I realized. Similar diagrams for St. Clair or Spadina would be handy. I used 3m for the LRT, as I found a figure for the LRT there of 2.5m for the vehicle and so 3m seemed reasonable to me, but I really have no idea.

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Cool diagrams

That first link is incorrectly formed:
http://ottawa.ca/en/major-projects/const...adwork/public-open-house-1-april-12-2012