Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Malls may not be doing as well as they did. But they remain trip generators. And more to the point in the case of Ottawa, that malls in the east end are all transit hubs. Moving the bus terminal up from St. Laurent would add another $100 million. And if this wasn't done, we'd still have hundreds of buses per hour going through the core, along with 🞵🞵🞵🞵 ridership on a Montreal LRT corridor.

Why would we still have hundreds of buses going through the core if the eastern leg of the main transit line had been run using the Montreal Road route - as was proposed back in the 1970s?

In the long run too, I think the Transitway offers much more TOD potential than Montreal. People act like Montreal is some dense street. It's a rather suburban avenue. Heck, most of Rideau looks like a suburban avenue in Scarborough.

Montreal Road in Vanier runs through one of the densest areas of the city.

If we are not going to start thinking about transit solutions along that corridor, beyond stupid tinkering with bus stops and the current reconstruction plan that will actually SLOW DOWN bus movements... where do we start thinking about them?

Ottawa is turning the core into a suburb of itself. It needs to stop.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Tunnelling costs at last $300M/km. Extending the tunnel from Nicholas/Rideau to Montreal and St.Laurent would add ~ 4 km of tunnels. I am curious where you think $1.2 billion would come from.

From not building the SHITT would be a start.

Putting the city on a road diet would help.

I am fully aware of the fact that - thanks to the suburban-dominated city council helping itself to the transit capital budget for the rest of the century - there is not going to be any more mass transit in the core for our lives or those of our grandchildren. But for ()*^*@)%@ sake, we need to start doing SOMETHING about the god-awful state of transit WITHIN the core.

We cannot afford to keep leaning on the inner city to subsidize the suburbs in transit, roads, water and sewer, or the impending life-cycle replacement of a lot of the infrastructure in the auto-dependent suburbs of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, whose bills are about to start coming due with a vengeance.

What solutions are the suburbanites who now run things willing to offer the central city? If the solutions are little better than status quo, then this is a recipe for city-planning and political disaster.

Especially given that ridership would be absolutely 🞵🞵🞵🞵 for such a line and Ottawa would still be forced to maintain and operate hundreds of buses through the downtown core during peak.

Huh? What's the connection?

It's amazing how many people forget that the limitations of the Transitway, both on capacity (through the core) and cost (1 driver per 75 pax average) were major drivers for the current LRT plan. That was the whole sales pitch for the downtown tunnel. What's the defence for any LRT plan that does not drastically reduce reliance on buses and bus traffic through the core?

How would building the eastern leg of the LRT under Montreal Road, as once envisioned, not resulted in reduced reliance on buses and bus traffic in the core? Instead of commuters from the east travelling next to the Queensway, they'd be travelling in the same direction, just on a different RoW.

How would implementing some form of better transit on that corridor, now that the main LRT line east is way south of Montreal Road, somehow cause bus traffic in the core?

If your expectation of urban transit is a multi-billion dollar LRT to your front-door, than you're right, you should expect and deserve to be disappointed.

My expectation of urban transit is that at some point the 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 system should reach the URBAN part of the city, not just the suburbs and the CBD. But this is not the Ottawa plan.

Transit decisions are and should always be driven by one overwhelming factor: ridership. And there is no evidence at all to suggest that any corridor other than the existing Transitway would deliver the ridership that it does.

The transitway conversion, just as the transitway routing itself, wasn't chosen on ridership. It was chosen as the path of financial, political, and physical least resistance, because Ottawans are cheap. It continues to be the preferred route because Ottawa is now politically owned by its suburbs, which is why there will not be urban transit in the urban part of the urban area any time this century, beyond what is currently on offer to make it easier to shuttle suburbanites in and out of their downtown offices morning and evening.

Baseline-Heron-Walkley is the boundary of the inner urban area as per the City's definition:

Yup. The boundary. So the Baseline BRT will serve the very fringe of the inner urban area, not the "middle of the city". That's my point exactly.

I do hope they do something on Carling. BRT would work great there.

I hope they do something on Rideau, Montreal, and Bank. But Ottawans are cheap and, insofar as anything east of the Rideau Centre goes, disgustingly classist.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Providing transit service to institutions isn't a bad thing.

Indeed: that's why it's good that the current and about-to-open LRT have direct access to major ones. Institutional uses are very high drivers of transit use.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

In the west it isn't a bad location, maybe a bit too far north, but it is reasonable with lots of TOD potential.

And yet the BRT experiment failed miserable at inducing much development along the Transitway, even in the locations, like around Tunney's and Westboro, where there was ample opportunity. It was only a good 20 years into the BRT era when you finally saw some TOD investment in those areas, after significant political fights against the NIMBYist powers that be, and only after conversion to LRT was already on the near-term radar.

BRT is garbage at generating city-building.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don't think there are. There are mixed traffic streetcars (which really isn't any better than a bus), dedicated surface transit infrastructure - bus or streetcar -
(which requires 5ish metres of right of way plus platforms), grade separation - underground or elevated (which requires big money) and transit-only streets (which would be politically impossible for either Bank or Montreal).

Transit-only Bank and Montreal-Rideau are no-gos, absolutely.

Transit-priority, on the other hand, is eminently possible, but have already been abandoned in both the Bank Street reconstruction of a decade ago, and has been abandoned in the Montreal Road plan.

So, to summarize, these two major urban arteries:

- can't have higher-order mass transit
- can't have middle-order public transit, like streetcars
- can't have improved basic bus transit, with greater priority for buses at the expense of cars

So.... I guess we're done.

The core just gets the satisifaction of paying for LRT to the suburbs, suburban buses to feed the LRT... and that's it. Nothing more.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Ottawa has no neighbourhoods dense enough to support mass transit on their own.

Which would be an excellent rebuttal to anyone arguing that it does.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Why would we still have hundreds of buses going through the core if the eastern leg of the main transit line had been run using the Montreal Road route - as was proposed back in the 1970s?

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

How would building the eastern leg of the LRT under Montreal Road, as once envisioned, not resulted in reduced reliance on buses and bus traffic in the core? Instead of commuters from the east travelling next to the Queensway, they'd be travelling in the same direction, just on a different RoW.

Are you seriously going to suggest that nothing has changed in 40 years?

They should have built BRT/LRT on Montreal 40 years ago. This I agree with. Arguing that the same plan makes sense today is ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Montreal Road in Vanier runs through one of the densest areas of the city.

Which isn't saying much because Ottawa is not that dense and Vanier is really not that big a neighbourhood.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

From not building the SHITT would be a start.

I would sincerely like to hear you explain how you plan on pushing through 10000+ (and moving to 20000+ eventually) pphpd through the core without a tunnel.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Putting the city on a road diet would help.

This is about as ridiculous as Rob Ford's "gravy train". Cutting a few roads will not the save the billion bucks necessary to build a subway under Montreal Rd.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I am fully aware of the fact that - thanks to the suburban-dominated city council helping itself to the transit capital budget for the rest of the century - there is not going to be any more mass transit in the core for our lives or those of our grandchildren. But for ()*^*@)%@ sake, we need to start doing SOMETHING about the god-awful state of transit WITHIN the core.

I wouldn't worry about the kids at all. They are all flocking to 50 storey condos being built in the core or the condos that will pop-up along the LRT. Give it 10 years and Montreal Rd will be full of seniors. No young person will want to live there.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

We cannot afford to keep leaning on the inner city to subsidize the suburbs in transit, roads, water and sewer, or the impending life-cycle replacement of a lot of the infrastructure in the auto-dependent suburbs of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, whose bills are about to start coming due with a vengeance.

Which is why I routinely argue that the LRT should have never left the greenbelt. But this still does not explain why we should have built LRT along Montreal Rd, instead of the Transitway, today.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

What solutions are the suburbanites who now run things willing to offer the central city? If the solutions are little better than status quo, then this is a recipe for city-planning and political disaster.

Most of Ottawa's "urban area" (a laughable notion since they'd be firmly suburban elsewhere) would do just fine with regular bus service. Maybe some signal priority and bus lanes in a few spots. Nothing more is required because there's not enough ridership to justify more.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Huh? What's the connection?

An LRT on Montreal Road today would not result in the closure of the Transitway. There's no way the city would leave that infrastructure unused. And the public would absolutely demand the continuation of their one-seat bus service. So we'd see OC Transpo continuing to run buses, and half empty LRTs running under Montreal and Rideau.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

How would implementing some form of better transit on that corridor, now that the main LRT line east is way south of Montreal Road, somehow cause bus traffic in the core?

I never said implementing some form of better transit would cause bus traffic through the core. I said building LRT on Montreal instead of the Transitway would see the continuation of high levels of bus traffic through the core.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

It continues to be the preferred route because Ottawa is now politically owned by its suburbs, which is why there will not be urban transit in the urban part of the urban area any time this century, beyond what is currently on offer to make it easier to shuttle suburbanites in and out of their downtown offices morning and evening.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

My expectation of urban transit is that at some point the 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 system should reach the URBAN part of the city, not just the suburbs and the CBD. But this is not the Ottawa plan.

Using the City of Ottawa's definitions, the Confederation Line is going to and through the urban area. And more than just the CBD. You are just bitter because it's not going to your favourite part of the urban area.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The transitway conversion, just as the transitway routing itself, wasn't chosen on ridership.

Given that it will have a spectacular 10 000 pphpd on day one, I'd like you to show me any study that can demonstrate that an alternative like Rideau/Montreal would have generated more.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

It was chosen as the path of financial, political, and physical least resistance, because Ottawans are cheap.

Cheap and prudent. Spending an extra billion just to please a handful of people like yourself is an utterly unjustifiable and ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars and would have done nothing to improve the broader network or overall mobility in the city.

Not to mention, such a proposal would have tanked support from higher levels of government.

In a world of plenty where there's tens of billions to go around every "inner urban" area can get their own subway. But in the reality we live in, the massive opportunity cost of spending an extra billion on Montreal simply has no sensible justification.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Yup. The boundary. So the Baseline BRT will serve the very fringe of the inner urban area, not the "middle of the city". That's my point exactly.

Which is till part of the "inner urban area". You don't get to make up definitions to suit your convenience.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

I hope they do something on Rideau, Montreal, and Bank. But Ottawans are cheap and, insofar as anything east of the Rideau Centre goes, disgustingly classist.

There is nothing classist about not building billions of dollars worth of transit on corridors which don't have ridership to justify the spending.

Montreal Rd does not have the ridership to justify anything more than bus lanes and signal priority. Simple as that.

To even justify in-median LRT, as is being built in Toronto, you need at least 2000 pphpd. That's completely filling up 13-15 articulated per hour at peak in just one direction. I don't see Montreal Rd. generating enough riders to fill up an articulated bus every 4-5 minutes, for a very long time.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Indeed: that's why it's good that the current and about-to-open LRT have direct access to major ones. Institutional uses are very high drivers of transit use.

Institutions with regular traffic are high drivers of transit. Like hospitals, universities, etc. As acottawa rightly pointed out, much of the insitutional occupants on Montreal Rd are not the sort that generate high traffic.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

And yet the BRT experiment failed miserable at inducing much development along the Transitway, even in the locations, like around Tunney's and Westboro, where there was ample opportunity. It was only a good 20 years into the BRT era when you finally saw some TOD investment in those areas, after significant political fights against the NIMBYist powers that be, and only after conversion to LRT was already on the near-term radar.

BRT is garbage at generating city-building.

Development policies have to go hand-in-hand with transit policy. That wasn't the case for a lot of the BRT era. And not just that, BRT was built during an era when suburban McMansion living was in vogue. The urban condo boom is proof that we are now past that phase.

I will add too, that what is often ignored on this board is that TOD needs mixed use and commercial traffic to really be successful. Planners, a few decades ago really didn't get that part. We're finally seeing some change in thinking.

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Transit-only Bank and Montreal-Rideau are no-gos, absolutely.

Transit-priority, on the other hand, is eminently possible, but have already been abandoned in both the Bank Street reconstruction of a decade ago, and has been abandoned in the Montreal Road plan.

So, to summarize, these two major urban arteries:

- can't have higher-order mass transit
- can't have middle-order public transit, like streetcars
- can't have improved basic bus transit, with greater priority for buses at the expense of cars

So.... I guess we're done.

The core just gets the satisifaction of paying for LRT to the suburbs, suburban buses to feed the LRT... and that's it. Nothing more.

And instead of arguing about the need for LRT on Montreal, this is the discussion that should be had. Convince the pols that Montreal Rd needs transit priority. And convince all those businesses in Vanier that they'd be better off without parking on Montreal.

[Truenorth00]

Metrolinx has a great primer on transit technologies:

http://www.metrolinx.com/thebigmove/Docs/big_move/RTP_Backgrounder_Transit_Technologies.pdf

It provides a solid idea at the amount of ridership it takes to make various forms of higher order transit feasible.

Most notable is this part:

Cost per kilometre:
• A kilometre of AGT/ALRT costs approximately $150M (assuming elevated guideway and including stations)
• A kilometre of LRT track costs approximately $35 – 40M, $150M underground.
• A kilometre of busway costs approximately $25 – 50M

Note: Add about 40% to the numbers for 10 years of inflation.

So, does Montreal Rd have enough ridership to justify $200+M per km on rail transit? I don't think so. But if anybody else does, I'd love to see your evidence.

I do think Montreal Rd needs transit improvements. What it needs is this:

Overlap: In some cases, conventional buses can come close to Rapid Transit such as BRT or LRT when improvements are brought to operations, such as signal priority that allows the operator to extend a green light, or queue jump lanes that allows buses to bypass stopped traffic at an intersection.

And that would achieve the high end of this:

Capacity: The capacity of conventional buses ranges between 2,000 and 5,000 passengers per hour (in the peak hour, per peak direction).

To justify a move to streetcars or rail based transit, you'd need numbers closer to this:

Capacity: Up to 10,000 passengers per hour (in the peak hour, per direction)

I'm not even sure that all the bus routes on Montreal/Rideau today would add up today 2000 pphpd at peak. And you'd need to be at least at 2000 and moving to 3000-4000 pphpd to even justify a streetcar. Let alone an LRT.

[lrt's friend]

Yes. And those plans are already lined up. Electrification and twin tracking of Trillium. Baseline-Heron-Walkley BRT. And probably a Hunt Club BRT. We also need to address crossing the river. There's plenty to do that should be a priority ahead of a streetcar on Montreal.

Good grief, Hunt Club as a priority! Look at that road, it is like railways of the past with most development backing away from it and what does face it is the ultimate in being car-centric and anti-transit.

I am not specifically advocating building Montreal Road in the near future, but we need to consider building transit serving our main commercial streets. There is certainly more potential for intensification on Montreal Road, Bank Street and Carling Avenue, than along Baseline and Hunt Club. I do understand the importance of Baseline as a connecting link.

There is a bit of problem when we start talking that all future rapid transit will be serving only very suburban areas and the only way into downtown is on only one route.

I guess Calgary, which is planning its third line running through downtown got it all wrong.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Good grief, Hunt Club as a priority! Look at that road, it is like railways of the past with most development backing away from it and what does face it is the ultimate in being car-centric and anti-transit.

A city that uses transit. Or lots of higher order transit in the core. Pick one. You are not going to get both.

If you want Ottawa as a whole to reduce car dependency, you have to build higher order transit everywhere. Corridors like Baseline and Hunt Club are relatively cheaper to build and make it possible for the virtually everyone inside the Greenbelt to reduce car dependency.

Real life has trade-offs. In reality you and Uhuniau are willing to see families on the edge of the urban area, living near the Greenbelt, continue having two cars so that somebody on Montreal gets a slightly more comfortable or slightly faster ride. That's ridiculous. I want to see transit that enables everyone inside the Greenbelt to live without a car. Or, at minimum, reduce car dependency to the point where most families only have one car that they don't use very much.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I am not specifically advocating building Montreal Road in the near future, but we need to consider building transit serving our main commercial streets. There is certainly more potential for intensification on Montreal Road, Bank Street and Carling Avenue, than along Baseline and Hunt Club. I do understand the importance of Baseline as a connecting link.

More intensification? Sure. I fail to see what that intensification has to do with higher order transit investment. Again, what do they need that curbside bus lanes, queue jumps and signal priority won't provide?

If that intensification generate enough ridership to outstrip the capacity of bus service improvements, we can talk about putting in tramlines.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

There is a bit of problem when we start talking that all future rapid transit will be serving only very suburban areas and the only way into downtown is on only one route.

Saying there's only one route into downtown is very misleading. This ignores the fact that downtown is flanked on its approached by the Southeast Transitway on one side and the Trillium Line on the other.

And an ultimately this is a futile talking point. There's no mathematical formula for how many lines should go into downtown. All that matters is that riders bound for the core can be moved through efficiently. In some case they'll come by LRT. And in some cases, they'll come by bus.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I guess Calgary, which is planning its third line running through downtown got it all wrong.

Different cities have different contexts. I don't see what Calgary running a third line into downtown has to do with Ottawa's transit planning.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Transit-only Bank and Montreal-Rideau are no-gos, absolutely.

Transit-priority, on the other hand, is eminently possible, but have already been abandoned in both the Bank Street reconstruction of a decade ago, and has been abandoned in the Montreal Road plan.

So, to summarize, these two major urban arteries:

- can't have higher-order mass transit
- can't have middle-order public transit, like streetcars
- can't have improved basic bus transit, with greater priority for buses at the expense of cars

So.... I guess we're done.

The core just gets the satisifaction of paying for LRT to the suburbs, suburban buses to feed the LRT... and that's it. Nothing more.

I totally agree with you on the transit priority.

[OtrainUser]

Different cities have different contexts. I don't see what Calgary running a third line into downtown has to do with Ottawa's transit planning.[/QUOTE]


Because Calgary is similar in size to Ottawa and they focus their transit priorities correctly by serving urban residents like a transit system should do. I even talked to some visitors from Calgary and they think our transit system is a joke and should be more like what they have.

I checked all the densities in Kanata and compared them to Vanier and the rest of Montreal Road and the are either similar or exactly the same so they shouldn't get priority over urban residents. A proper system start with the urban areas first then spreads out later but obviously you don't think think urban residents deserve reliable transit and apparently the City agrees with that which is a shame

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Ottawa is turning the core into a suburb of itself. It needs to stop.

Most of Ottawa's "core" is pretty suburban (single detached homes, large yards, plenty of car space, single level commercial buildings surrounded by parking lots, hardly anything taller than 3 floors).

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by OtrainUser

Because Calgary is similar in size to Ottawa

Similar in size. Not distribution.

87% of Calgary's population is suburban. And that's according to their City planner:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgar...+strike+right+balance/8880991/story.html

Originally Posted by OtrainUser

and they focus their transit priorities correctly by serving urban residents like a transit system should do.

And yet Ottawa does better on modal share:

http://humantransit.org/2010/10/request-for-information-canadian-ridership.html

http://www.livablecities.org/blog/ottawa-planning-story

Almost two decades into this new approach, the results are visible. Ottawa has achieved a 23% transit modal share, the highest of any North American city without a subway. Since 2005, the share of new housing starts inside the Greenbelt (in the urban and older suburban neighbourhoods closest to downtown) has increased from 24% to 31%, and the trend is accelerating. In 2015, 40% of new dwellings were built in Intensification Target Areas. This amounts to about 2,000-3,000 units per year – a considerable amount for a city of Ottawa’s size.

Originally Posted by OtrainUser

I even talked to some visitors from Calgary and they think our transit system is a joke and should be more like what they have.

So they have more transit lines, and mostly service the suburbs, but stats say they don't use them as much. Again, repeating the above:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_No...ia/File:NorthAmericanPublicTransport.png

Originally Posted by OtrainUser

I checked all the densities in Kanata and compared them to Vanier and the rest of Montreal Road and the are either similar or exactly the same so they shouldn't get priority over urban residents. A proper system start with the urban areas first then spreads out later but obviously you don't think think urban residents deserve reliable transit and apparently the City agrees with that which is a shame

Again. These are ridiculous strawman arguments which equate with arguing against an LRT on Montreal Rd with "you don't think think urban residents deserve reliable transit". Utter 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵.

The Confederation Line corridor is in the urban area. Let's start with that. So stop with this 🞵🞵🞵🞵 about the urban area not being serviced. Its being served. Just not the way you think it should be served.

Next, there's absolutely zero evidence presented so far that Montreal Rd has enough ridership to support rail-based higher order transit on its own. Heck, look the schedule for the #12 bus. If the corridor really was that busy, you'd see an articulated #12 bus every 5 minutes and high off-peak frequency too. That's not the case.

Montreal Rd. does need some improvements. It needs better bus service, queue jump lanes, signal priority, etc. But I'd like to see someone present the ridership case for why Montreal Rd needs hundreds of millions invested on a streetcar or billions on LRT.

Can we stick to facts and not feelings? Nobody invest billions based on feelings.

[OtrainUser]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Similar in size. Not distribution.

87% of Calgary's population is suburban. And that's according to their City planner:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgar...+strike+right+balance/8880991/story.html



And yet Ottawa does better on modal share:

http://humantransit.org/2010/10/request-for-information-canadian-ridership.html

http://www.livablecities.org/blog/ottawa-planning-story





So they have more transit lines but stats say they don't use them as much. Again, repeating the above:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_No...ia/File:NorthAmericanPublicTransport.png



Again. These are ridiculous strawman arguments which equate with arguing against an LRT on Montreal Rd with "you don't think think urban residents deserve reliable transit". Utter 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵.

The Confederation Line corridor is in the urban area. Let's start with that. So stop with this 🞵🞵🞵🞵 about the urban area not being serviced. Its being served. Just not the way you think it should be served.

Next, there's absolutely zero evidence presented so far that Montreal Rd has enough ridership to support rail-based higher order transit on its own. Heck, look the schedule for the #12 bus. If the corridor really was that busy, you'd see an articulated #12 bus every 5 minutes and high off-peak frequency too. That's not the case.

Montreal Rd. does need some improvements. It needs better bus service, queue jump lanes, signal priority, etc. But I'd like to see someone present the ridership case for why Montreal Rd needs hundreds of millions invested on a streetcar or billions on LRT.

Can we stick to facts and not feelings? Nobody invest billions based on feelings.

Montreal Road has enough density to warrant better service which would increase ridership but the city of Ottawa focuses more on suburbs.
I have already shown enough proof, you just choose to ignore it.

It is you who is focused on feelings not me, you have not proved that Montreal Road or Bank Street shouldn't get LRT. The real reason they don't get LRT is political not common sense.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Are you seriously going to suggest that nothing has changed in 40 years?

They should have built BRT/LRT on Montreal 40 years ago. This I agree with. Arguing that the same plan makes sense today is ridiculous.

Again, an excellent rebuttal to whoever is making that argument.

Which isn't saying much because Ottawa is not that dense and Vanier is really not that big a neighbourhood.

Neither are many of the neighbourhoods that we are exentding LRT to, but the east side of town, along the Rideau-Montreal corridor, is a hell of a lot more supportive of transit, if we ever build it, than the auto-centred suburbs that we're extending higher-order transit to, at the expense of urban areas.

I would sincerely like to hear you explain how you plan on pushing through 10000+ (and moving to 20000+ eventually) pphpd through the core without a tunnel.

I would sincerely like to hear why you think I'm "planning" that.

This is about as ridiculous as Rob Ford's "gravy train". Cutting a few roads will not the save the billion bucks necessary to build a subway under Montreal Rd.

The cost of SHITT is on the same order of magnitude as bringing higher-order transit to the actual urban part of Ottawa.

I wouldn't worry about the kids at all. They are all flocking to 50 storey condos being built in the core or the condos that will pop-up along the LRT. Give it 10 years and Montreal Rd will be full of seniors. No young person will want to live there.

Good ol' Ottawa classism and anti-Vanierism at its finest.

Which is why I routinely argue that the LRT should have never left the greenbelt. But this still does not explain why we should have built LRT along Montreal Rd, instead of the Transitway, today.

Again, a sound rebuttal to whoever is suggesting that.

Most of Ottawa's "urban area" (a laughable notion since they'd be firmly suburban elsewhere) would do just fine with regular bus service.

Except that things are not fine, and there are absolutely no plans to make things fine. When it takes twice as long to bus it downtown from an inner urban or inner suburban neighbourhood that is four or five km from the Peace Tower, as compared to busing it from Orleans or Barrhaven or Kanata, something is very, very, unfine. And making things even less fine is the total lack of concern about this situation by anyone on City Council, including half the councillors from those inner areas.

Maybe some signal priority and bus lanes in a few spots. Nothing more is required because there's not enough ridership to justify more.

What ridership levels would justify it? I ask because some of these trunk routes like the 12 and 7 have very, very high riderships.

An LRT on Montreal Road today would not result in the closure of the Transitway. There's no way the city would leave that infrastructure unused. And the public would absolutely demand the continuation of their one-seat bus service. So we'd see OC Transpo continuing to run buses, and half empty LRTs running under Montreal and Rideau.

Those cushy-assed suburban people are gonna be in for an awful surprise later this year when they learn that the will have to transfer at Blair, Hurdperson, or Tunney's, then.

I never said implementing some form of better transit would cause bus traffic through the core. I said building LRT on Montreal instead of the Transitway would see the continuation of high levels of bus traffic through the core.

Why would it have done that?

Using the City of Ottawa's definitions, the Confederation Line is going to and through the urban area. And more than just the CBD. You are just bitter because it's not going to your favourite part of the urban area.

No, I'm "bitter" because sound transit solutions for people who actually live in the older, denser, more use- and economically-diverse parts of the city have been punted to the next century, while we are forced to pay for economically and urbanism-dubious LRT extensions to auto-centred suburbs.

Given that it will have a spectacular 10 000 pphpd on day one, I'd like you to show me any study that can demonstrate that an alternative like Rideau/Montreal would have generated more.

If the main higher-order line east out of downtown had been under the Rideau-Montreal corridor, then those 10,000 pphpd would have been riding that route, not the path of least resistance along the Queensway.

Cheap and prudent. Spending an extra billion just to please a handful of people like yourself is an utterly unjustifiable and ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars and would have done nothing to improve the broader network or overall mobility in the city.

The mobility and network would have been the same - just closer to where more people live and work, instead of along the margins of a freeway.

Not to mention, such a proposal would have tanked support from higher levels of government.

Given that Ontario has historically been bored by any thought of building mass transit in Ottawa, that is true of any route.

In a world of plenty where there's tens of billions to go around every "inner urban" area can get their own subway. But in the reality we live in, the massive opportunity cost of spending an extra billion on Montreal simply has no sensible justification.

The reality we live in is that we are building a suburban transit system, paid for in large part by the property taxes of the urban area which is not going to benefit in any meaningful way from it, and which will not see any improvement in transit performance because the capital budget is reserved for the suburban transit user, and the inner city roads are reserved for the suburban car driver.

Which is till part of the "inner urban area". You don't get to make up definitions to suit your convenience.

The city's definition of "urban" is largely 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵, and a Baseline BRT is still not going to benefit the urban part of Ottawa very much.

There is nothing classist about not building billions of dollars worth of transit on corridors which don't have ridership to justify the spending.

There is everything classist about the Ottawa attitude towards its inner areas, especially the economically disadvantage ones.

Montreal Rd does not have the ridership to justify anything more than bus lanes and signal priority. Simple as that.

All together now! Route! 12! Has the highest! Ridership! Of any! Non-Transitway! Route!

To even justify in-median LRT, as is being built in Toronto, you need at least 2000 pphpd. That's completely filling up 13-15 articulated per hour at peak in just one direction. I don't see Montreal Rd. generating enough riders to fill up an articulated bus every 4-5 minutes, for a very long time.

That is in part because OC Transpo has driven Montreal Road transit so firmly into the ground in the past decade that many would-be riders have simply given up: the former route 2 along Rideau-Montreal used to average one artic every 7-8 minutes from about 6:30 in the morning to midnight. After the route was split - sorry, "optimized" - OC Transpo slashed the number of runs by more than 15%, and further slashed capacity by reducing the number of those runs running on artics. The resulting damage to the schedule, and the crush-loading, forced a lot of people off the route.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Convince the pols that Montreal Rd needs transit priority. And convince all those businesses in Vanier that they'd be better off without parking on Montreal.

The pols - Fleury and Nussbaum - have jumped up and down with glee over the Montreal Road reconstruction project which prioritizes cycling over transit.

Same thing that they did on Beechwood.

So that's two once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to actually improve transit on the east side of the inner city, in the span of less than two years, that have been completely bungled by "the pols" in order to satisfy a vocal, affluent, and well-connected cycle lobby.

The "pols" are not allies in this, and as much glee as it would give me to see both Fleury and Nussbaum tossed to the curb in the next election, it's not going to change the setup of the only two roads that connect the east side to the core in the urban area: the train has left the station. Except it's not a train, not a station, and isn't even half-decent bus service.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Real life has trade-offs. In reality you and Uhuniau are willing to see families on the edge of the urban area, living near the Greenbelt, continue having two cars so that somebody on Montreal gets a slightly more comfortable or slightly faster ride.

"Slightly faster ride"?

It can take an HOUR to bus the 4/5 km from Vanier to Bank Street.

So, no, it's not a "slightly faster ride" that's required.

More intensification? Sure. I fail to see what that intensification has to do with higher order transit investment. Again, what do they need that curbside bus lanes, queue jumps and signal priority won't provide?

All of those things have been taken off the table on Montreal Road in order to make space and time on the road for a cycle track and a cycle lane.

There's a limited peak-period wesbound lane planned for Montreal.

There is NOT transit priority planned in the eastbound direction.

If that intensification generate enough ridership to outstrip the capacity of bus service improvements, we can talk about putting in tramlines.

We are making intensification dependent on transit invesment. We are also making transit investment dependent on intensification. There is a huge opportunity to increase the tax base of the city by stimulating redevelopment on the near east side of the city, which could certainly use that investment, but it won't happen unless someone can short-circuit this chicken-and-egg scenario.

That someone is not the current council or OC Transpo management, with their openly classist let-them-eat-crappy-bus-service attitude.

[acottawa]

Can I make a suggestion that people number their points so we don't have 50 quotes in each post?