Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Admiral Nelson]

417 Widening and Scott/Albert Bus Detour should both be green by now. Belfast Yard is also substantially complete.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Are any of the pieces listed as "in progress" on the website considered "Complete"? http://www.ligneconfederationline.ca/

Maybe the 417 Widening... the Scott Bus Detour? Are there still things to be finished on those sites?

The roadheaders haven't moved from their spots on the map in months, either. JawBreaker should be at Parliament and Chewrocka should be under or past Metcalfe by now. They are behind in updating their web graphics, it's one of the things keeping them from being ahead of schedule

[Kitchissippi]

I think you can see the hint of the escalator in this view. This is starting to remind me of the Canada Line stations in Vancouver — sort of drab, grey and cold.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

Original Hurdman looked like this. Wonder why they ditched island platform design. Isn't it cheaper and better in general?

That design certainly would have been a better passenger experience than the current design.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

There will almost certainly be escalators (building code requirement), they're just not in the render for some reason.

Escalators are a requirement?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Escalators are a requirement?

I'm pretty sure. I know that new subway stations in Toronto have to be built with escalators because of building code requirements. I also know that such requirements did not apply to our Transitway stations. My guess is that our LRT stations will probably fall in whatever category the Toronto subway stations fell in for this issue.

[mykl]

Seriously, is all the wood being taken out and now everything is just concrete? I guess we should have seen this coming.

[eemy]

I think you might be confusing the initial renderings that were produced prior to proposals with the ones that the Rideau Transit Group submitted as part of their bid. As great as those initial renders the city produced are, I don't think they were ever on the table as part of any proposal.

[McC]

No, and I never understood why the city spent so much time and money on them.

[HighwayStar]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Maybe the 417 Widening... the Scott Bus Detour? Are there still things to be finished on those sites?

I suppose technically the 417 Widening won't be complete until it is open for vehicle traffic. Right now it is in a "temporary" configuration to accommodate buses during LRT construction.

And the Scott bus detour still has another phase to go.... At some point it must be extended past Tunneys Pasture so the Bayview-Tunneys section can be LRT`d.

[citydwlr]

Originally Posted by mykl

Seriously, is all the wood being taken out and now everything is just concrete? I guess we should have seen this coming.

I've been rummaging through the photos on the confederation line site, and with the new renders it certainly looks like they have removed the small patches of wood they promised would be used on the interiors. Although, they still have the old renderings up that show the wood on the ceilings, for example. I wonder if the trees they cut down due to the emerald ash borer yielded little-to-no usable wood?

Also, it seems like the angular design of the underside of the roofs have been simplified greatly and made flat now. It's more evident in the last rendering posted (above, by Kitchissipi) .Too bad!

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by citydwlr

I wonder if the trees they cut down due to the emerald ash borer yielded little-to-no usable wood?

I thought the thing to do was to use the wood that had to be cut down because of the emerald ash borer, as a memory of those trees. Sort of how they built the Richmond Olympic Oval with the excessive amount of lumber from trees killed by the pine beetle. I think the emerald ash borer damages mainly the part beneath the bark, which is the tree's main circulatory system. There should be a lot of useable lumber, especially if it is just for bits of non-structural cladding.

There were a few articles on this:
Beetles could provide wood for LRT station roofs

[emannigol]

Originally Posted by citydwlr

I've been rummaging through the photos on the confederation line site, and with the new renders it certainly looks like they have removed the small patches of wood they promised would be used on the interiors. Although, they still have the old renderings up that show the wood on the ceilings, for example. I wonder if the trees they cut down due to the emerald ash borer yielded little-to-no usable wood?

Also, it seems like the angular design of the underside of the roofs have been simplified greatly and made flat now. It's more evident in the last rendering posted (above, by Kitchissipi) .Too bad!

The new renders for cyrville still show angular undersides to the roof, and the new renders for tremblay still show wood. I'm optimistic we'll get something close to RTGs original renders.

[emannigol]

http://ottawastart.com/tremblay-station-construction-on-o-train-confederation-line-on-track/

This article, speaking about Tremblay stn, references in-floor heat tracing to prevent ice/snow buildup. Anybody know if this is a planned feature of all the above ground stations?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by emannigol

http://ottawastart.com/tremblay-station-construction-on-o-train-confederation-line-on-track/

This article, speaking about Tremblay stn, references in-floor heat tracing to prevent ice/snow buildup. Anybody know if this is a planned feature of all the above ground stations?

It probably is. RTG is responsible for financing both construction and all maintenance for 30 years. The extra cost of building heated surfaces is more than paid back in reduced snow clearing costs for 30 years, so it makes sense that RTG would build them on every surface that is exposed to the elements.

This is yet another benefit of the P3 contracting model. If the city was building this, I doubt they would think that far ahead.

[Dundas]

I wonder how much money RTG is going to ask the city every year for this 30year maintenance contract? There's no money to be made for this contract by RTG thats forsure. The city just wants to contract out its work and start laying off people at OC.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by mykl

Seriously, is all the wood being taken out and now everything is just concrete? I guess we should have seen this coming.

I don't care about wood or no wood; where is the sufficient passenger shelter in ANY construction medium?

Do any of these people use public transportation? Ever?

[Dundas]

Audi or bus? Hummm

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Dundas

I wonder how much money RTG is going to ask the city every year for this 30year maintenance contract? There's no money to be made for this contract by RTG thats forsure. The city just wants to contract out its work and start laying off people at OC.

The amount has already been fixed. RTG and the City agreed to an annual maintenance charge when they signed the construction contract. The amount goes up every year to account for inflation but other than that, it's fixed.

That's the beauty of it. RTG can't change the fees. There are of course service standards RTG must meet that prevent them from cutting services to reduce costs. This means the only way for them to maximize their profits is to maximize efficiency. And as they're also in charge of station design, it means they'll design stations that are easy to maintain, considering possible operational savings when deciding the capital budget. If it costs them $10M* to install heated floors in a station, but doing so saves them $500k* a year on snowclearing--thus saving $15M over 30 years--they'll do it. If the city was in charge of everything, they probably would cut that $10M from the project "to save on costs" and not really care about the maintenance implications. Or you'd have a union of snowclearers create a public hooplah and force the city to leave them out, or some such.

That may also be the reason why we've seen the loss of wood from the design. Wood is probably less efficient from a maintenance perspective, so unless the city actually required it in the text of the contract (which they probably didn't), RTG is free to get rid of it, which they've now done.

*I invented these numbers to demonstrate my point, have no idea what the actual costs of heated floors and snow clearing are.

[Dundas]

I feel like this maintenance deal was added at the end of negotiations since you know how Jim Watson likes to save money. RTG really doesn't want to clean and maintain this.

We will see what will happen. Anything can happen in 30years you know. Lets just say in 10years the cost of maintaining the stations, the trains and so on is more than what RTGs getting from the city. This can only go on for a short period of time until the maintenance company RTG chose backs out since they're loosing too much cash. Then what? If we have no bidders to take this money loosing maintenance contract then the city OC Transpo has no choice but to take it.

The bus shelters cleaning and maintenance was contracted out before and the company couldn't continue since they were going towards bankruptcy. So they backed out of it and the city couldn't find a replacement company so now city workers take care of it. I guess they forgot that teenagers like to smash the Windows of these shelters on a weekly basis.