Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Beedok]

Would electric buses save ventilation prices? It seems like it would be fairly straightforward to get the main 90 lines fully electric and some sort of hybrid system for some of the others.

Obviously it's too late for that, but was it a plausible option?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Are you Andy Haydon? Haha!


This is what Bob Chiarelli was attempting to do, although he didn't address the downtown issue and that was his downfall.

----

When is the last time we heard anything about the Baseline busway? And the Montreal Road and Carling Avenue routes have either been permanently removed or indefinitely postponed.

The thing with Bob Chiarelli, we've seen it when he was Mayor and we see it now as Minister of Energy, he just does whatever he wants. Doesn't listen to the people or reasoning. The fact is, the Downtown Transitway is over capacity. Throwing in streetcars on Albert and Slater would have completely crippled the CBD.

I didn't oppose the Barrhaven to Bayview portion, but the Bayview to uOttawa was disaster in urban planning

As for the Carling/Montreal streetcars, I don't think that should ever even be considered. Streetcars and busses are the same damn thing. Same capacity (or just about), same frequency, same speed. Why spend a few hundred million for a mild improvements?

Originally Posted by Beedok

Would electric buses save ventilation prices? It seems like it would be fairly straightforward to get the main 90 lines fully electric and some sort of hybrid system for some of the others.

Obviously it's too late for that, but was it a plausible option?

Even with Electric/Hybrid/Hydrogen technology, a bus tunnel would have been used by OC managers and security driving their Crown Vics, the police, paramedics, possibly fire crews, tow trucks when buses breakdown... You build a bus tunnel, you'll take advantage of the fact that you can drive any vehicle on there. End of the day, you would always need the ventilation.

And even if somehow you could save on ventilation, the cost of these fancy vehicles using green technology would eventually outweigh the savings in ventilation.

We also have to remember that it's not only more expensive because of ventilation. It also has to be wider (4 lanes) than a rail tunnel.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I always find it funny when people whine that the city build along a cheaper route, but heaven forbid they raise your taxes to pay for that more expensive route.

I am not one of those people.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Sandy Hill has good access to Campus station, Centretown obviously has good access to the downtown stations, and Little Italy has good access to Carling station, plus Gladstone station is also in an urban area (honestly can't remember the neighbourhood name for that area! oopsies).

Yes, the routes are designed to hit the suburbs and many urban neighbourhoods are skipped or only served on their peripheries. But to say the network has no utility to urban areas is an overstatement.

Some of Sandy Hill and Centretown have good access.

Others are so far from the station entrnaces that there is no improvement to service vs the existing bus crappid transit, and, importantly no improvement to circulation within the old city itself.

Who said it has "no utility to urban areas"?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by silvergate

I'd say the Golden Triangle is better served by Campus honestly. The problem with Campus and Carling is that both stations are essentially at the edge of their built/buildable areas (South of Carling is Dows Lake, and Campus is right against Nicholas and the Canal). They're okay, but if Carling moved North a ways it would give much better access to all of Little Italy.

But poorer transfers to/from buses on Carling. Ottawa has a poor record of putting transit stations conveniently close to expected transfer points. (Cf. Stinkin' Fields.)

Little Italy will be better served when the O-Train line adds Gladstone Station, a couple hundred years from now.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Sandy Hill has good access to Campus station, Centretown obviously has good access to the downtown stations, and Little Italy has good access to Carling station, plus Gladstone station is also in an urban area (honestly can't remember the neighbourhood name for that area! oopsies).

Yes, the routes are designed to hit the suburbs and many urban neighbourhoods are skipped or only served on their peripheries. But to say the network has no utility to urban areas is an overstatement.

Gladstone station is the only true old-urban mass-transit station that is on the books, and it is still a long ways off.

It is a really pathetic situation.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Even with Electric/Hybrid/Hydrogen technology, a bus tunnel would have been used by OC managers and security driving their Crown Vics, the police, paramedics, possibly fire crews, tow trucks when buses breakdown... You build a bus tunnel, you'll take advantage of the fact that you can drive any vehicle on there. End of the day, you would always need the ventilation.

You could set up regulations to prevent that. To be honest that downtown bus tunnel would probably be more crowded than the roads above at many hours.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

And even if somehow you could save on ventilation, the cost of these fancy vehicles using green technology would eventually outweigh the savings in ventilation.

You'd have the added bonus of them being greener and save loads on changing the rest of the transitway to rail (I'm sure adding overhead wires would be relatively cheap by comparison).

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We also have to remember that it's not only more expensive because of ventilation. It also has to be wider (4 lanes) than a rail tunnel.

Why make it 4 lanes? I suppose there's a risk of a bus breaking down, but other than that buses rarely pass each other in the downtown area. If the rail can have effectively 2 lanes the whole way surely the buses could do 2 lanes for a small part? Are they that much more prone to breakdowns than trains? (I'm asking honestly.)

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

What kind of urban to urban routes would you have hoped would be improved? Given the short distances and larges share of bikers and walkers doesn't seem to make much sense to focuse on these routes. Let's put costs aside a Bank street subway would shorten the Glebe -Centretown transit commute from what 15 minutes to 12 for example?

Top priority: the Rideau-Montreal axis. Service to and from the near-east neighbourhoods is atrociously bottlenecked and deteriorating rapidly, partly due to ambient conditions, and partly due to political decisions made at Shitty Hall to cannibalize local service in that area to re-allocate resources to whiny suburbanites. There are a limited number of bridges over the Rideau River, and so limited options for surface transit. There is also an abundance of opportunity for redevelopment along that corridor, similar to what has already been happening in the near west end in reaction to the Transitway and in anticipation of LRT, but it is potential that simply cannot be unlocked with the crappy surface bus transit that is being permanently inflicted on the neighbourhood.

A morning peak commute by bus from Vanier or Overbrook to the downtown core very often has ZERO time advantage over walking. It is an appaling situation, but the city doesn't care, OC Transpo doesn't care, and not only have they done nothing to improve the situation, they have actually made it worse since the 2008 "optimization".

I am not a big fan of the Bank Street subway idea except in the distant future, but there are also improvements that could be made to local service on Bank that the city simply refuses to do. The left-turn trap at Wellington and Bank could be remediated with signals and a few hundred strategic ticketings of box-blocking moron drivers, but motorists rule the roost in Ottawa, and those things are politically untouchable as a consequence. The light sequencing on Bank is also very disruptive to smooth transit flow, esp. between Wellington and Somerset.

Even basic things like improving shelter conditions... Lansdowne could have been built with incidental shelter in mind; instead there are a handful of inadequate overhangs and one tiny stock-issue glass shelter at a very busy origin/destination for local 1/7 service. Just. Plain. Dumb. But par for the course in a city that simply does not care about transit customers in the core.

We. Don't. Count.

Never have.

Never will.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

What else are you going to use rapid transit for?

Rapid transit in Montreal and Toronto does a good job of connecting those city's older urban neighbourhoods to one another.

Ottawa's transit plans do not do this, and will not do this.

People who want to get around their own neighbourhood walk, bike or take a bus.

You missed my points about connecting older neighbourhoods TO ONE ANOTHER and to the larger city.

Ottawa's plan simply does not do this, except where incidental to the goal of serving suburbanites, the Rideau Centre, and the downtown offices. Virtually none of the stations are located in, or conveniently oriented to, older neighbourhoods. (A few, it is true, are INCONVENIENTLY oriented to them.)

And yes most of the users of rapid transit live in suburbs, but 80-90% of the city's population is in the suburbs

That is simply not true.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

As it stands, there is little money to improve the urban transit network inside the Greenbelt. We are bleeding it all off to the Confederation Line.

When is the last time we heard anything about the Baseline busway? And the Montreal Road and Carling Avenue routes have either been permanently removed or indefinitely postponed.

There is little truly urban transit network inside the Greenbelt, or at least not inside urban areas inside the Greenbelt (runningways on the Queensway or Parkway margins don't count) to improve in the first place.

The Baseline busway is likely going to happen before there is anything done on Carling, and certainly before anything is done on Montreal Road, which is going to happen never: the city and OC Transpo simply do not care about transit service in the core, and especially not in the east end of the core.

They simply don't.

Even the city councillors for the area don't care. The ones who barely cared stopped caring years ago when they scrapped nearly 1/5th of the capacity on the old route 2 in order to make suburbanites and the Westbourgeouis happy.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The Baseline busway is likely going to happen before there is anything done on Carling, and certainly before anything is done on Montreal Road, which is going to happen never: the city and OC Transpo simply do not care about transit service in the core, and especially not in the east end of the core.

Well Baselines does certainly need something done yesterday. The 118 is usually no where near the schedule and often packed to the gills.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

That is simply not true.

Centretown 21,536
Centretown West 12,022
Civic Hospital 3,656
Downtown 4,123
The Glebe 11,184
Hintonburg-Mechanicsville 9,041
LeBreton Flats 373
Lindenlea 1,701
Lower Town-ByWard Market 12,183
New Edinburgh 3,610
Ottawa East 5,110
Ottawa South-Rideau Gardens 8,462
Sandy Hill 12,451
Vanier 17,632
Westboro Village-Ottawa West 8,135


That's 130k, which is about 15% of the city population (877k).

BTW, that's 61% of urban residents with a nearby rapid transit station, even if it is inconveniently oriented.

[YOWflier]

With the exception of the Rideau-Montreal corridor needing a solution, isn't the prevailing argument (lack of inner-city service / neighborhood connectivity) in here a bit overblown?

When Phase 1 and especially Phase 2 are completed, there will be LRT/O-Train service connecting all of the following neighborhoods: CBD, By-Ward Market/Rideau Centre, Sandy Hill/UOttawa, Preston/Little Italy, Lebreton, Westboro, West Wellington/Hintonburg, etc. These are all either well established or up-and-coming neighborhoods where people (will) want to go/be. The train station will also be connected, as will the airport if we don't fcuk that up. Employment nodes will also be connected, both to each other and to these neighborhoods.

Granted the placement of many stations is el-cheapo, but whatever happened to the notion that development will be spawned (already planned or proposed in many cases) around these stations?

Originally Posted by acottawa

Central Ottawa has no train station, no full service hospital (or 1 depending on how you count), no theatre showing current movies, 1 (of 4) postsecondary institution, and a fairly limited selection of retail. Also, most jobs (including government jobs) are located outside the core. Transit to the suburbs or other urban areas is a pretty useful thing for urban residents.

Huh?

[JM1]

To say that sandy hill is serviced by campus is a real stretch.

Likewise for Little Italy being served by Bayview and Carling (although this is less of a stretch).

Originally Posted by ac888yow

With the exception of the Rideau-Montreal corridor needing a solution, isn't the prevailing argument (lack of inner-city service / neighborhood connectivity) in here a bit overblown?

When Phase 1 and especially Phase 2 are completed, there will be LRT/O-Train service connecting all of the following neighborhoods: CBD, By-Ward Market/Rideau Centre, Sandy Hill/UOttawa, Preston/Little Italy, Lebreton, Westboro, West Wellington/Hintonburg, etc. These are all either well established or up-and-coming neighborhoods where people (will) want to go/be. The train station will also be connected, as will the airport if we don't fcuk that up. Employment nodes will also be connected, both to each other and to these neighborhoods.

Granted the placement of many stations is el-cheapo, but whatever happened to the notion that development will be spawned (already planned or proposed in many cases) around these stations?

Huh?

[McC]

Originally Posted by JM1

Likewise for Little Italy being served by Bayview and Carling (although this is less of a stretch).

And Pimisi, and eventually Gladstone, the walkable circles around those four stations will cover most of Dalhousie-LilItaly-Chinatown-LilSaigon.

[McC]

Originally Posted by JM1

To say that sandy hill is serviced by campus is a real stretch.

I've never had any trouble accessing Sandy Hill via the existing Campus-uOttawa station, and the LRT station won't be much different. This is, of course, an ableist comment. it does suck that there is very little potential to link the station to local connections for persons with more limited mobility unless or until Ottawa brings in something like YVR's community circulators on accessible short buses. (Paris has a similar thing; little electric buses that continually loop through neighbourhoods out from metro stations)

[McC]

Originally Posted by ac888yow

With the exception of the Rideau-Montreal corridor needing a solution, isn't the prevailing argument (lack of inner-city service / neighborhood connectivity) in here a bit overblown?

When Phase 1 and especially Phase 2 are completed, there will be LRT/O-Train service connecting all of the following neighborhoods:
....

Don't forget the Golden Triangle, which might be even better connected by the uOttawa Station than Sandy Hill will be, because of the geometry of the area, the bridge, and the station access.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by McC

And Pimisi, and eventually Gladstone, the walkable circles around those four stations will cover most of Dalhousie-LilItaly-Chinatown-LilSaigon.

Chinatown? You are really pushing it.

Yes, I love those 800 m circles, as if everybody wants to walk that far on a routine basis.

[McC]

Yes, Chinatown, what else would you call the corner of Booth and Somerset? It's not that far a walk for an able bodied person from Booth to Albert St. And if you don't want to walk, take a 2, take your car, take your bike. I don't really care.

So many Eyores.

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Chinatown? You are really pushing it.

Yes, I love those 800 m circles, as if everybody wants to walk that far on a routine basis.

I walk 1 km to the grocery store almost every other day, same to do banking. These kinds of distances are pretty normal in an urban lifestyle. People who live car-less in downtown Montreal, Toronto or Manhattan end up walking up to 10 kilometres a day, it's keeps one healthy. Do people complain about the 1.5 km takes to walk through IKEA? Ah, but we live in a strange world where people drive to the gym to use a treadmill.