Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by Dado

The population argument has never made sense: Ottawa-proper was Canada's 4th city at the time. Its workforce, being civil service, was overwhelmingly concentrated in a few districts. Ottawa was practically tailor-made for light rail.
.

It's sort of interesting that history is repeating itself a bit elsewhere in Canada. Winnipeg is about the same size Ottawa was 30 years ago, and right now they're building transitways modelled after our own 30 years ago. Maybe in 30 years they will be building their equivalent of the confederation line.

[Norman Bates]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

It's sort of interesting that history is repeating itself a bit elsewhere in Canada. Winnipeg is about the same size Ottawa was 30 years ago, and right now they're building transitways modelled after our own 30 years ago. Maybe in 30 years they will be building their equivalent of the confederation line.

Winnipeg, filled with lovely people, incredible food and music, suffers from astoundingly poor transportation infrastructure.

While they have no greenbelt to contend with - they do have two major rivers to deal with and many railroad crossings.

Winnipeg has no Queensway equivalent. No way to cross town, neither north-south nor east-west. They have a provincial highway ring road built miles out and around a city that was expected to reach three million people. But it can never seem to break 600,000. So getting anywhere is the Ottawa equivalent of everyone taking carling/Rideau/Montreal or bank/Bronson. It is slow. It is painful. And it forces people to stay within their neighbourhoods.

In the 1960s there was a proposal to build a monorail, in a similar circular fashion. But it never seemed to go anywhere after Mayor Juba made his exit and the city's growth stalled during the 1980 recession.

BRT for Winnipeg today will be a enormous step forward into the 1980s from their current 1960s situation.

[acottawa]

Winnipeg is also the headquarters of a large bus company.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Love how they have obliterated almost every building west of the canal and south of Parliament Hill. Kinda like the ultimate NCC-Greenspace-Metcalfe Boulevard fantasy. Look how vibrant it is! such space many green amaze!

LOL. True. The way it is pictured, it is a great station for bears and raccoons. It would be funny if it wasn't actually true for some of the proposed stations in stage 2 and 3 (including Leitrum, Bowesville, and Wesley Acres).

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Love how they have obliterated almost every building west of the canal and south of Parliament Hill. Kinda like the ultimate NCC-Greenspace-Metcalfe Boulevard fantasy. Look how vibrant it is! such space many green amaze!

It's probably just easier to render trees instead of those specific buildings outside of the LRT station. Plus, it puts focus on the station, since it's the only building there.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

LOL. True. The way it is pictured, it is a great station for bears and raccoons. It would be funny if it wasn't actually true for some of the proposed stations in stage 2 and 3 (including Leitrum, Bowesville, and Wesley Acres).

So many people in Ottawa have as their esthetic and urban-planning platonic ideal, this concept of beautiful, sleek, modern rail transit vehicles running through.... nothing.

Transit lines and stations surrounded by grass and trees and gardens, instead of city. It's baffling.

Can we move these green freaks to the Annapolis Valley or something, and get more people who think and feel and know that urban places should be urban, with, like, buildings and people and so forth in them?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Buggys

It's probably just easier to render trees instead of those specific buildings outside of the LRT station. Plus, it puts focus on the station, since it's the only building there.

Focus? It put my focus on wondering where in hell my old apartment building in the Golden Triangle disappeared to!

If only there were some way of digitally capturing background images that could then be used in realistic architectural or illustrative renderings.

Oh well. Some day.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Buggys

It's probably just easier to render trees instead of those specific buildings outside of the LRT station. Plus, it puts focus on the station, since it's the only building there.

The problem is the surroundings affect what looks good and what doesn't. It needs to work well with its surroundings. By plunking trees that aren't there and omitting the buildings that are, it is harder to tell if it will complement or clash.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by roger1818

The problem is the surroundings affect what looks good and what doesn't. It needs to work well with its surroundings. By plunking trees that aren't there and omitting the buildings that are, it is harder to tell if it will complement or clash.

The truth of the matter is that a lot of the stations are not where people live. So quite often, there is a lot of trees around the stations. This will be even more the case in the future because it is easier (and cheaper) to plunk a station in the middle of nowhere. Think Trim, Moodie, Leitrim, and Bowesville.

[bikegypsy]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

So many people in Ottawa have as their esthetic and urban-planning platonic ideal, this concept of beautiful, sleek, modern rail transit vehicles running through.... nothing.

Transit lines and stations surrounded by grass and trees and gardens, instead of city. It's baffling.

Can we move these green freaks to the Annapolis Valley or something, and get more people who think and feel and know that urban places should be urban, with, like, buildings and people and so forth in them?

We can hardly blame the people of Ottawa for this as it's due to generations of conditioning by the NCC -- ironically made up in most part from people outside the city -- which has for one of its mandates to make the capital a 'good place for all canadians' with a crap ton of parks, 100 trees per citizen and massive canadian flags plastered on buildings. The tragedy with Ottawa -- contrary to Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver-- is that it doesn't belong to itself.

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Focus? It put my focus on wondering where in hell my old apartment building in the Golden Triangle disappeared to!

If only there were some way of digitally capturing background images that could then be used in realistic architectural or illustrative renderings.

Oh well. Some day.

Lol

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

So many people in Ottawa have as their esthetic and urban-planning platonic ideal, this concept of beautiful, sleek, modern rail transit vehicles running through.... nothing.

Transit lines and stations surrounded by grass and trees and gardens, instead of city. It's baffling.

I don't think they have even that as their ideal: the one place where something like this was proposed - along Richmond/Byron and along the SJAM - the local NIMBY brigade went nuts, demanding a tunnel. The City caved on the former with scarcely a whimper and the NCC insisted on the latter.

So we'll end up with transit in a tunnel. No transit surrounded by trees and gardens, nor trees and gardens visible from the station platforms... nevermind anything urban.

It's vaguely amusing that periodically someone associated with light rail in Ottawa (be it the City, a consultant, a supplier, etc) will use light rail imagery from elsewhere of it being in an urban setting of some kind (be it developed or landscaped), yet it never will be in either in Ottawa. I suspect the graphic artists doing this are from elsewhere as well where light rail isn't some kind of bogeyman to be buried.

I saw a sad (as in depressing) set of tweets a few weeks back of a 12 yr old girl making a case for transit to be buried for the sake of the wildlife. Somehow she got the idea from somewhere or someone that LRT is some kind of nasty threat to wildlife.

To some extent, I'm tempted to blame this on Ottawa officialdom's decades-long love affair with BRT: BRT is unfriendly to its surroundings. It is highway engineering applied to transit design. People don't want it anywhere near them, because it is essentially a two-lane highway. With people so used to that as rapid transit, it's perhaps understandable they'll think of LRT the same way. And the consultants are happy enough to go along with it, since tunnels, trenches and bridges bring in more consulting fees.

[Harley613]

I noticed in the artwork on the last page that they are keeping elements of the old station and mixing them with the new at Blair. It looks terrible now as construction goes on and it will look even more terrible when it is complete. I'm all for saving money but that station is turning into Frankenstein's monster and the juxtaposition of architectural styles is going to be garish.

[Admiral Nelson]

Could this be our first glimpse of the interior of a completed train?

Context is the federal funding announcement for Phase 2 at Belfast Yard yesterday 2017/06/16. Photos from the Twitter feeds of Jim Watson and Justin Trudeau.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Dado

I don't think they have even that as their ideal: the one place where something like this was proposed - along Richmond/Byron and along the SJAM - the local NIMBY brigade went nuts, demanding a tunnel. The City caved on the former with scarcely a whimper and the NCC insisted on the latter.

So we'll end up with transit in a tunnel. No transit surrounded by trees and gardens, nor trees and gardens visible from the station platforms... nevermind anything urban.

It's vaguely amusing that periodically someone associated with light rail in Ottawa (be it the City, a consultant, a supplier, etc) will use light rail imagery from elsewhere of it being in an urban setting of some kind (be it developed or landscaped), yet it never will be in either in Ottawa. I suspect the graphic artists doing this are from elsewhere as well where light rail isn't some kind of bogeyman to be buried.

I saw a sad (as in depressing) set of tweets a few weeks back of a 12 yr old girl making a case for transit to be buried for the sake of the wildlife. Somehow she got the idea from somewhere or someone that LRT is some kind of nasty threat to wildlife.

To some extent, I'm tempted to blame this on Ottawa officialdom's decades-long love affair with BRT: BRT is unfriendly to its surroundings. It is highway engineering applied to transit design. People don't want it anywhere near them, because it is essentially a two-lane highway. With people so used to that as rapid transit, it's perhaps understandable they'll think of LRT the same way. And the consultants are happy enough to go along with it, since tunnels, trenches and bridges bring in more consulting fees.

To be fair, this isn't being run like a genteel European tram going 20-30 kph down a cobblestone street. It is being used as a high speed commuter train. It will be fully fenced and fully grade separated. Except for the lack of pollution it won't be much more pleasant for neighbours than the transitway.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by acottawa

To be fair, this isn't being run like a genteel European tram going 20-30 kph down a cobblestone street. It is being used as a high speed commuter train. It will be fully fenced and fully grade separated. Except for the lack of pollution it won't be much more pleasant for neighbours than the transitway.

Except for the fact that it will be significantly quieter and won't have the smelly fumes.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Except for the fact that it will be significantly quieter and won't have the smelly fumes.

Which is why I said lack of pollution.

A tram is a different kind of noise, although I am not sure it is quieter or less irritating.

A tram in Strasbourg for example:

https://youtu.be/cWGvnlsMLAU

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

To be fair, this isn't being run like a genteel European tram going 20-30 kph down a cobblestone street. It is being used as a high speed commuter train. It will be fully fenced and fully grade separated. Except for the lack of pollution it won't be much more pleasant for neighbours than the transitway.

Frequent-flying Ottawa LRT criticism A: "It's just a tram/streetcar."

Frequent-flying Ottawa LRT criticism B: "It's just a commuter train."

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Which is why I said lack of pollution.

A tram is a different kind of noise, although I am not sure it is quieter or less irritating.

A tram in Strasbourg for example:

https://youtu.be/cWGvnlsMLAU

I'm finding it hard to be offended by that "noise". ("Noise" seems to be like "traffic"; a thing that someone else makes.)

Given that almost every inch of the current Phase I will be running either in a tunnel, a trench, or a barren, unpopulated path of least resistance, this "noise" does not worry me at all. However, without a doubt, people who live many hundreds of metres away from the source of this "noise" will still feel entitled to write snotty letters to the editor of the Citizen about it.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Which is why I said lack of pollution.

Sorry. I missed that.

A tram is a different kind of noise, although I am not sure it is quieter or less irritating.

You are right, it is certainly different. Electric motors are much quieter, but steel on steel wheels can produce noises that rubber on pavement doesn't.

Probably the biggest complaint comes from the squealing at sharp corners. Keeping the corners more gradual will minimize that though.

The other major source of noise is the clacking at points. Those are few and far between though and keeping them far from residences will help.

By contrast, buses are noisiest when accelerating and travelling fast. Under those conditions, LRT is quiet.

I still stand by my argument that a well designed LRT will be quieter than buses. It remains to be seen how well designed the Confederation line will be.