Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Anyone ever heard the old saying that it's the cows who laid out the streets in Ottawa?

Nope. But it's udder nonsense.

With the exception of Beechwood, the only organic street in Ottawa, almost everything else follows one of three rules:

- it derives from the 18th-century division of Upper Canada into counties, townships, and lots;

- it derives from the original layout of Bytown and the logical progression/extension of that grid as the 19th- and pre-war 20th-century town and city expanded; or

- it is a suburban street laid out during the brief Garden City phase (Lindenlea, Rockcliffe, a few other pockets), or during the ongoing post-war cookie-cutter suburb phase.

In fact, there are very few cities in Canada that have wonderful "cow path" organic street layouts. Pre-war St. John's, Newfoundland, and a few parts of Old Montreal and Old Quebec, are pretty well it for large urban areas. (Many smaller communities, especially on the east coast, are deliciously organic in their street layouts.)

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The solution to buses running in mixed traffic is to paint more diamonds on the road, which is billions of dollars cheaper than a subway. The problem is the BIA Lobby and the Bicycle Lobby are stronger than the transit lobby, and transit advocates are too consumed with pipe dreams about subways to focus on the diamond-painting project.

Give me the paint, and I'll draw some diamonds myself.

Ottawa's particular problem is that areas of higher density (particularly on the east side) are isolated and not associated with any particular corridor. If Ottawa had 10 Vanier-density neighbourhoods along the Montreal road corridor (the way say Montreal does) then there might be 150k people withing walking distance of the corridor and you could reasonably justify a subway. The problem is that east of Vanier density of Montreal Road alternates between higher density pockets and basically zero density (because of all the former convents, cemeteries, car dealers, institutional land etc), hence there are hundreds of transit users every hour during rush hour instead of the thousands or tens of thousands necessary to make a mass transit system look reasonably full.

And that creates a chicken-and-egg problem: crappy transit makes redevelopment less feasible; lack of new development justifies continued crappy transit.

And yet: Wesborichmondburg is redeveloping, and fast, and before the LRT even exists.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

And yet: Wesborichmondburg is redeveloping, and fast, and before the LRT even exists.

It is helped by being a continuous, mostly pre-war, urban area. And also helped by having an available railway ROW where they could stick the transitway (and later LRT).

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It is helped by being a continuous, mostly pre-war, urban area. And also helped by having an available railway ROW where they could stick the transitway (and later LRT).

Yip.

The Rideau-Montreal corridor, west of St. Laurent, is also continuous (apart from the Rideau River) and mostly pre-war. It has similar land-use mixtures and densities to what you see a similar distance to the west of downtown It doesn't have a continuous right of way for some kind of surface mass transit, unfortunately, which is why it's all the more important to get surface regular transit right and to preserve every future opportunity to go underground, if and when there is ever the political will and cash to do so, two or three centuries from now.

But there is absolutely zero will, and zero resources, being put into that goal. None. Nothing. Not one kilometre-hour of road space is being re-allocated from private auto to even crappy bus transit.

Meanwhile, Mayor Dithers and Councillor Useless are fantasizing about building the SHITT tunnel. That's their big vision for everything east of downtown and west of Orleans. And just watch as SHITT will close off any possibility of ever putting a transit line under Rideau-Montreal (without going another 100 feet deeper to make way for SHITT.)

The lack of vision at city hall for the east side is really astounding. So much potential. So little clout. Zero benefit to being part of the City of Kanatahaven.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by acottawa

It is helped by being a continuous, mostly pre-war, urban area. And also helped by having an available railway ROW where they could stick the transitway (and later LRT).

It also helps that it is a trendy neighbourhood that people are willing to pay big bucks to buy luxury condos in. That's what attracts investors.

Rideau-Montreal corridor, west of St. Laurent, while having potential, first must overcome its bad reputation before becoming a trendy, chique neighbourhood like Westboro. What it needs is an investor with deep pockets and a penchant for taking risks to come along and buy up a huge swath of land and build some condos. With some good marketing it could be very profitable, but it also could be an abysmal failure. Most investors would rather go for the sure thing.

[PHrenetic]

Good Day, all.
Recent announcements, To get back on track ,,,

per RailTechnology.com - Otis Elevators (of United Technologies) will supply 44 + 10 elevators :
http://www.railway-technology.com/news/n...-system-to-use-54-otis-elevators-5698113

and as a separate item ...... something we might REALLlY want in on ;
Confidential Close Call Reporting System run by NASA :
http://www.rtands.com/index.php/passenge...lose-call-reporting-system.html?channel=

methinks a really GOOD idea !

Enjoy!

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Rideau-Montreal corridor, west of St. Laurent, while having potential, first must overcome its bad reputation before becoming a trendy, chique neighbourhood like Westboro. What it needs is an investor with deep pockets and a penchant for taking risks to come along and buy up a huge swath of land and build some condos.

The investor-developers are one step ahead of you: in the past few years, Vanier has already seen the Landry site redevelopment, the Kavanaugh (Beechwood side), and soon the big redevelopment at Montreal and the Vanier Parkway. There's also a project or two coming down the line on the east end of Rideau.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Yip.

The Rideau-Montreal corridor, west of St. Laurent, is also continuous (apart from the Rideau River) and mostly pre-war. It has similar land-use mixtures and densities to what you see a similar distance to the west of downtown...

I'm not sure about that. If you look at the 1928 aerial photos, the last building on the south side of montreal is at bégin and on the north side at ste anne and development doesn't go more than a few blocks back from Montreal. The area more resembles a handful of rural villages than a built up urban area and there was no streetcar. On the other side of town, development went at least as far as Roosevelt and the streetcar tracks go as least that far (that is the edge of the area where photos are available). There was a more developed area on the east side, but it was in the New Edinburgh area, not near Montreal Road.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by roger1818

It also helps that it is a trendy neighbourhood that people are willing to pay big bucks to buy luxury condos in. That's what attracts investors.

That's a fairly recent phenomenon.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I'm not sure about that. If you look at the 1928 aerial photos, the last building on the south side of montreal is at bégin and on the north side at ste anne and development doesn't go more than a few blocks back from Montreal. The area more resembles a handful of rural villages than a built up urban area and there was no streetcar. On the other side of town, development went at least as far as Roosevelt and the streetcar tracks go as least that far (that is the edge of the area where photos are available). There was a more developed area on the east side, but it was in the New Edinburgh area, not near Montreal Road.

Yes, but development even in the old Eastview was still well established before the war, as is reflected in the street layout (more urban than post-war suburban), and my statement re current conditions still stand.

Either way, it's frustrating as hell that in matters connected to transit and just about all other city-planning and city-building exercises, the eastern neighbourhoods from Overbrook north to Beechwood are getting ignored and bypassed.

[lrt's friend]

The only reason why a streetcar line did not run on Montreal Road was a dispute with Eastview town council over 5 cent fares. It had been proposed to run streetcars as far as Notre Dame Cemetery in the 1920s. This was part of a streetcar expansion plan that also extended service into Ottawa East and Lindenlea off of Beechwood.

[pico]

Originally Posted by roger1818

It also helps that it is a trendy neighbourhood that people are willing to pay big bucks to buy luxury condos in. That's what attracts investors.

Rideau-Montreal corridor, west of St. Laurent, while having potential, first must overcome its bad reputation before becoming a trendy, chique neighbourhood like Westboro. What it needs is an investor with deep pockets and a penchant for taking risks to come along and buy up a huge swath of land and build some condos. With some good marketing it could be very profitable, but it also could be an abysmal failure. Most investors would rather go for the sure thing.

Most trendy neighbourhoods became trendy because of a mix of affordable housing and access to fast transit, and later attracted luxury condos and developers. There are several examples in Montreal where dominantly low-income neighbourhoods were first invaded by artists and students (e.g., Plateau 15 years ago, Rosemont, and now Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Mile Ex, among others) because the housing was cheap and relatively close to other interesting neighbourhoods and with fast access to downtown and universities. Rents and housing are cheap in Vanier, but the difference is the lack of efficient transit. Except for Line 5 that snakes around Vanier and is very inefficient for, e.g., students, there is no direct line to U. Ottawa, which is within 30-40 minute walking distance. Hintonburg was in a similar situation recently, but is better located with respect to bus lines and transitway. The absence of investment in transit essentially condemns Vanier to remain an under-served, low-income neighbourhood with a bad reputation. In my opinion you don't build a trendy neighbourhood with condos, it grows with time and effective city-building infrastructure.

[lrt's friend]

When I referred to a transit grid, I did not mean a literal grid but a network of interconnected transit routes that allow more people to get to more places in the city easily and quickly. This does not need to be restricted to only rail routes.

With regards to the 'last mile' problem, again this is not to be taken literally. It is common terminology used to refer to a major problem with transit systems which don't allow the user to make their entire trip easily on transit. Of course, it is impossible to eliminate the 'last mile' problem entirely but it should be a goal to reduce this problem, so that more can make transit trips more easily to a wider variety of destinations. This is the key to improving modal share. It is defeatist if we feel that we shouldn't even bother to try to reduce this problem.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Either way, it's frustrating as hell that in matters connected to transit and just about all other city-planning and city-building exercises, the eastern neighbourhoods from Overbrook north to Beechwood are getting ignored and bypassed.

It's very obvious but I wonder why that is? Could it be that few people who live there have roots in the area? (Think back to who lived in the area 20-30 years ago and who lives there now.)

Or maybe it's a highly transient population?

So most people are not firmly rooted in the area or organized at a community level?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The only reason why a streetcar line did not run on Montreal Road was a dispute with Eastview town council over 5 cent fares. It had been proposed to run streetcars as far as Notre Dame Cemetery in the 1920s. This was part of a streetcar expansion plan that also extended service into Ottawa East and Lindenlea off of Beechwood.

Damn. Streetcar funerals would have put the FUN into funeral!

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Acajack

It's very obvious but I wonder why that is? Could it be that few people who live there have roots in the area? (Think back to who lived in the area 20-30 years ago and who lives there now.)

Or maybe it's a highly transient population?

So most people are not firmly rooted in the area or organized at a community level?

I think it's partly pure classism, if not something worse. The pre-2008 debate, such as it was, about splitting the former Route 2, was HEAVILY couched in terms of Westboro People Don't Like Sharing *Their* Bus With Vanier language. Then, once the split was made, guess which end of the former route saw its service frequency cut (and capacity cut, too, with 40-footers taking over trips from artics.)

It's partially the legacy of separate municipalities and the different economic positions of those former municipalities. This is partly why, for example, many residential side streets in Vanier don't have sidewalks, where comparable blocks in Ottawa do.

I don't think it's got much to do with the lack of "community organization". If anything, that should help make it easier to redevelop properties in the area; there is simply not the well-oiled NIMBY-and-outrage machine that you'll find in every other neighbourhood within 4000 meters of the Peace Tower.

All that being said, despite the utter indifference on the part of the municipal government, there does seem to be more and more awareness on the part of developers that the east side of town, from Beechwood Avenue (and even a few pockets north of it), through Vanier, south into Overbrook, is the last big redevelopment opportunity left in Ottawa. Pretty well every other close-to-the-centre neighbourhood has already seen either organized urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s (most of it terrible) or spontaneous gentrification. Unless there is an appetite to start retrofitting post-war suburbs, there is nowhere left for house-flippers and infillers to go to work on any kind of a large scale.

If only that awareness were matched by some vision at city hall, and some political will to spend political capital and public treasure investing east of the Rideau River. So far, the record is not very good. The Somerset-Donald ped bridge is a start, but the fact it took half a century shows what kind of mindset the east side is up against.

[Badlands]

Is this thread no longer about the Confederation Line?

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Badlands

Is this thread no longer about the Confederation Line?

It is, but it has now become a "why the route of the Confederation line is wrong and how it will make everything even more worse than it already is" Thread.

Go get some popcorn and just watch the drama play out.

[rocketphish]

Back on topic...

It wasn't us, city says of the Rideau Street sinkhole

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 22, 2016 | Last Updated: December 22, 2016 12:57 PM EST

No failure by the city government was to blame for last June’s massive sinkhole on Rideau Street, city solicitor Rick O’Connor reported Thursday, but experts aren’t sure why it happened and the public can’t see their report.

The sinkhole was “a complex event,” O’Connor wrote in a memo to city council. And right after it happened, contractors began pouring 3,000 cubic metres of concrete into the pit by the Rideau Centre just east of Sussex Drive, which made investigating the cause challenging.

“In light of these circumstances, the city’s external technical experts were unable to pinpoint a singular cause of the event, but are confident, based on their analysis of all the available evidence, that the sinkhole was not precipitated by a failure of city infrastructure,” O’Connor wrote.

The sinkhole opened at about 10:30 a.m. on June 8 and grew fast, eventually spanning the full width of the road and eating a minivan. Crews working for the Rideau Transit Group, the consortium building Ottawa’s new-light rail line, were tunnelling underneath and working on a deep shaft nearby that’ll be an entrance to an underground station.

Sinkholes are often caused by leaky pipes: Water trickles out and gradually washes away soil and rocks underground until what’s left isn’t strong enough to support whatever’s on the surface and it collapses. Another possibility is that the tunnelling work destabilized the ground overhead.

Broken pipes stuck out of the sides of the sinkhole; one spewed water into the pit until the city cut off the supply. But it wasn’t clear at the time whether a pipe break caused the sinkhole or the sinkhole broke the pipe.

What conjectures the investigators might have won’t be made public, the city lawyer wrote, because of all the legal claims over the incident, which are being turned over to the insurance company covering the light-rail project. Thirty-one business and property owners have filed claims against the city, the city itself has $1.5 million in costs it wants covered, and Rideau Transit Group will have a claim of its own. The deductible on the policy is $500,000, O’Connor wrote.

When the sinkhole opened, diggers were working on the last 50 metres of rock and earth, expecting soon to have a big staged event where one of Rideau Transit Group’s “roadheader” digging machines would break through a wall and join up two segments of tunnel. They’re down to about 10 metres of digging yet to do, suggesting that the work has become much more painstaking.

“Despite the challenges posed by the June 2016 sinkhole event, the combined efforts of the city and RTG mean that the project remains on track for revenue service in 2018,” O’Connor wrote — the light-rail line is still on schedule overall, in other words. Rideau Transit Group has worked overtime since June to stabilize the ground under Rideau Street, continue tunnelling, and catch up as much as possible, he wrote. The city and the consortium agreed to freeze the timeline milestones Rideau Transit Group was supposed to hit and are working on a new schedule of targets.

The tunnel suffered an earlier cave-in at Waller Street and Laurier Avenue in 2014, when unexpectedly loose soil in an undetected old construction pit came down. This past November, one worker was slightly hurt when some rebar forming part of the tunnel wall came loose and fell in about the same area.

[email protected]
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/it-wasnt-us-city-says-of-the-rideau-street-sinkhole

[Uhuniau]

City off the hook, City says?

Have a sneaky suspicion the Rideau cave-in is going to haunt us for a while longer yet.