Smooth start for Transitway detour in Hintonburg
Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 20, 2016 | Last Updated: January 20, 2016 9:51 AM EST
The relative ease of OC Transpo’s latest Transitway detour appears to have caught many, including some former critics, by pleasant surprise.
Starting Sunday, all eastbound buses have been diverted off the Transitway at Merton Street to new bus-only lanes on Scott and Albert streets. Westbound buses now enter the Transitway at Merton, where a new set of traffic signals has been installed.
The move, which is part of the conversion to light rail, has forced hundreds of buses onto Scott and Albert streets and was expected to delay riders travelling between the west end and downtown Ottawa by as much as three minutes.
But, two days in, it’s been smooth sailing.
“The detour is working much better than any of us expected,” Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper said Tuesday morning.
He feared a long line of buses, clogging Scott and Albert streets. He feared “dangerous interactions” between pedestrians, cyclists and buses, particularly at Merton Street, where the buses cross a popular east-west multi-use pathway. He feared congestion and traffic gridlock, causing some frustrated drivers to cut through Hintonburg’s side streets.
But none of this has come to pass.
“My worst fears about the detour have not borne out,” the councillor said.
Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney says she’s been paying close attention to pedestrians trying to get across Albert Street (at Preston) to catch Gatineau-bound buses. She successfully lobbied staff to install an advanced signal for pedestrians to give them a few more seconds to cross the road, which is six lanes wide at that spot.
On Tuesday, she drove through that stretch during morning rush hour and says there was plenty of capacity for cars heading downtown.
“I was encouraged by that,” McKenney said.
Neither her nor Leiper say their phones have been ringing off the hook this week with complaints.
“And when it’s done,” McKenney added, “we’ll have a train.”
It’s a refrain Mayor Jim Watson sings whenever he has a chance: Short-term pain for long-term train.
Besides a major hiccup during morning rush hour one morning last September, the section-by-section closure of the Transitway has been seamless — and seemingly well thought out.
The stretch of Transitway between Blair and Hurdman stations closed last June, and the stretch between Hurdman and Lees shut down before Christmas. Up next, at the end of April, is the section between Lees and Laurier, followed by the section between Merton and Tunney’s Pasture at the end of June.
At that point, this 12.5-kilometre section of the Transitway will not reopen until the Confederation LRT line begins service in 2018.
“The transition has gone very well,” said Stephen Blais, the chairman of the transit commission. The east-end councillor has said previously that ridership since June 2015 has not seen a dramatic decline, nor have reports of gridlock on highways 174 and 417 increased dramatically.
Pat Scrimgeour, OC Transpo’s head of transit planning, said initial reports suggest the delays due to the Merton-Empress detour are in line with what was expected.
At rush hour, riders may spend three extra minutes on the bus. But outside of rush hour, early indications — including Leiper’s and my own anecdotal experience — suggest the detour may in fact be quicker than the old route.
External factors — a dump of snow, a traffic jam on Scott Street, a back-up on Chaudière bridge — could still foul things up someday, Scrimgeour cautioned. But so far, so good.
Half of the section of the Transitway that is being converted to light rail in the first phase is already closed and the sky has not fallen, the city has not ground to a halt. Nice job, OC Transpo. Credit where credit is due.
UPDATE: Out of curiosity, I asked the city’s rail implementation office yesterday when we might begin to see construction activity on the now-closed stretch of Transitway between Merton and Empress. Here’s the information I was sent in an email on behalf of Steve Cripps, the office’s director.
Quote:
Construction on the Booth Street bridge in the West Segment of the O-Train Confederation Line will begin a new phase of construction this week when girders are installed over sections of the closed Transitway.
Construction activity is currently underway at the Booth Street Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel (CSST) construction site. In early February, a 3000 mm pipe will be installed across portions of the closed Transitway as part of this project.
Demolition of the existing Transitway bridge over the Trillium Line at Bayview Station will begin in early February. Construction will also begin at the future Pimisi Station in the coming months.
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my thoughts exactly...
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