Rural Commuter Rail

[Truenorth00]

It's insane that they want to build commuter rail to towns with substantially less than 5000 residents. Fitzroy had ~4400 in the last census. Limoges had 2050. Most of these towns could not fill a GO bus in the morning into the city.

At least, Mr. Potvin had a harebrained scheme to sell real estate in those towns to fund his choo-choo.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by jchilds72

I was wondering about some of the routing of Doucet's proposed regional rail, if anybody has opinions.

1) Greenboro - Is the station moving or will it be in the same place and be on a little spur that all three routes would have to enter/exit in both directions?

2) The rail bridge across the Rideau river east of Colonnade Rd. - Is that a single track bridge? Which would have all three routes travelling in both directions across it plus all Via trains to/from Toronto?

3) Routing - Stittsville to Kinburn? Navan to Vars? Is there existing tracks connecting those locations?

That's another one. The rail line through Stittsville was removed probably decades ago. Just like Navan and Chelsea, it's a MUP now.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Doucet also makes a good point when he says “When you’re building roads — you look at the roads here. They’re widening the 417, they’re widening this road, they’re widening that road, they’re building the Alta Vista Expressway. No one gets their knickers in a twist about how are you going to do that. They just keep rolling out asphalt like sand. Well, it should be like that in transit. We should have the liberty to roll out our system in an incremental way,”

This isn't even that great of a point... road projects like this require EAs and years of planning before they happen. Especially the Alta Vista Corridor, which EVERYONE gets their "knickers in a twist about".

A little off-topic, but every single candidate (as far as I'm aware) running in Capital Ward promises to cancel any new road construction in the Alta Vista Corridor. I would like someone to be a little more progressive and promise to support the connection of a paired-down two-lane road to Conroy along the Alta Vista Corridor - while at the same time studying how we can pair the added connection with lane reductions or transit priority on Heron, Walkley, St. Laurent, Smyth, Bank, etc... But no, we get nothing but political pandering and road=bad mentality for Capital Ward.

[zzptichka]

This is what Doucet should've gone with IMO (in addition to all existing plans). 30kms of existing tracks serving Kanata North, Bells Corners, Centerpointe, Merivale, Riverside, Sheffield rd.
Mostly a matter of building a few simple stations, sidings and political will to negotiate with VIA and NIMBYs. Extend to Anrprior and Limoges if it makes sense.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We do not have the level of supporting bus service that exists in Toronto or Montreal.

Nor do we have the density or ridership in most of this city that they do. But yes, I hope we move past 30 min bus service for most of the city, for most of the day eventually.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You say it is not a concern to you, if people have to wait for more than one train to pass. Why is that? Because you are not directly affected?

Really? You have to resort to this kind of insinuation?

It's not a concern to me because transfers at Bayview work exactly the same as they do elsewhere in the world. You are acting as though this is something novel that Ottawa has discovered. And you're acting as though some dude in a basement conjured this up and there was no modelling or flow analysis involved when they planned the transfer and the network.

It's just not an issue. In real life, the arriving train has a certain discharge capacity, limited by the number of doors. 500 people don't just jump off one train and pop up on the second floor of the station instantaneously. The first of the riders to get off will get the immediate connection, the rest will catch the next train. There will also be some split of riders too. So not 100% going eastbound. And then there's room freed up from the eastbound Confederation Line by those heading south on the Trillium Line. As long as they've mapped out the capacities into the station this will be fine.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Regarding the Bayview transfer, every city has different issues. I did point out that some people will be going in the opposite direction. It is reasonable to expect that once the Trillium Line is extended to serve normal commuters (as opposed to mostly students at the present time), those heading towards downtown will increase in numbers and proportionally. If the Trillium Line is to be the trunk line for the south end of the city, people heading downtown will expect efficient transfers at Bayview.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

This is exactly replicating the problems at Bloor and Yonge.

If you dumb it down like this then every transfer point in the world is going to be Bloor and Yonge to you and no city should ever build transfers, because according to you, clearing out riders is always going to be an issue unless you can unload a full train directly into a completely empty train. This is exactly how your viewpoint comes across.

Bloor and Yonge is a specific problem because the Bloor platform is specifically rate limited to the number of trains per minute, which limits how quickly it can clear riders arriving on the Yonge platform. Trains also arrive at Bloor relatively full, which really limits the onboarding of passengers arriving from Yonge.

This is absolutely not the case at Bayview. The ratio of trains between the Confederation Line and Trillium Line is 17:8 per hour. And each Confederation Line train has more total capacity than a Trillium Line train. I would be far more worried about transfers at Hurdman and that becoming a Yonge-Bloor scenario where a train that's pretty full after St. Laurent is arriving at a massive transfer hub.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Perhaps on a smaller scale as far as numbers of people inconvenienced, but still people may be waiting multiple trains to reach their destination.

At most, depending on when you get off the train, you'll get up the stairs to see a train leave and wait for the next one.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

This also extends out travel times and affects reliability of the overall service, the supposed selling point of rail service.

Nobody was trying to "sell rail" in Ottawa. The Confederation Line was built to relieve bus congestion in the core. Simple as that.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

So you add another 4 minutes, on top of the delays caused by slow operating trains on the Trillium Line that has already added 5 minutes north of Greenboro. That is close 10 minutes extra time being added on trip times that now take 20 minutes to go from Greenboro to downtown today. If we are building very expensive rail lines, they need to provide the same speed of service at a very minimum.

Again, the Confederation Line was built not to provide Cadillac Service to anyone but to solve a very real overload in the core of the network. That's the design driver, not how long it takes a particular rider to get downtown. Heck, it's very possible with the bus to LRT transfer that some riders might actually see a longer ride in the east-end depending on their destination.

Next, if you expect a zero minute transfer, it's not going to happen. You're better off driving. Generally, planners budget anywhere from 5-10 minutes for a transfer based on how long it will take for people to get up the stairs and across platforms.

Lastly, I fail to see how the transfer at Bayview will be any worse than what is there today for Trillium Line riders. Do you consider Bayview to be like Bloor and Yonge today because we're discharging a full Trillium train on to a BRT clearing out on buses that carry 50-100 riders?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by jchilds72

I was wondering about some of the routing of Doucet's proposed regional rail, if anybody has opinions.

1) Greenboro - Is the station moving or will it be in the same place and be on a little spur that all three routes would have to enter/exit in both directions?

2) The rail bridge across the Rideau river east of Colonnade Rd. - Is that a single track bridge? Which would have all three routes travelling in both directions across it plus all Via trains to/from Toronto?

3) Routing - Stittsville to Kinburn? Navan to Vars? Is there existing tracks connecting those locations?

Not sure of the value of cross-examining a map that's as realistic, viable, and likely to ever see the light of day as any of the fantasy maps we post to skyscraper page dot com, but those are good questions.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

This isn't even that great of a point... road projects like this require EAs and years of planning before they happen. Especially the Alta Vista Corridor, which EVERYONE gets their "knickers in a twist about".

A little off-topic, but every single candidate (as far as I'm aware) running in Capital Ward promises to cancel any new road construction in the Alta Vista Corridor. I would like someone to be a little more progressive and promise to support the connection of a paired-down two-lane road to Conroy along the Alta Vista Corridor - while at the same time studying how we can pair the added connection with lane reductions or transit priority on Heron, Walkley, St. Laurent, Smyth, Bank, etc... But no, we get nothing but political pandering and road=bad mentality for Capital Ward.

I remember when they were proposing to build a Transitway along that corridor. I had no idea they decided to build an expressway until I saw a thread for it on here when it was almost complete. I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of the population has no idea this is even a thing. Major transit projects on the other hand are well publicized, the city consults the population to death, they are all over the news and come up from top to bottom (from Councillors to the Prime Minister) every single election.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I remember when they were proposing to build a Transitway along that corridor. I had no idea they decided to build an expressway until I saw a thread for it on here when it was almost complete. I'm pretty confident that the vast majority of the population has no idea this is even a thing. Major transit projects on the other hand are well publicized, the city consults the population to death, they are all over the news and come up from top to bottom (from Councillors to the Prime Minister) every single election.

The Alta Vista Corridor was proposed to be many things by many people. It was a road link in transportation master plans going back many, many years... It was once considered as the corridor for the Southeast Transitway, and more recently as a transit corridor north of the Hospital before reverting back to a road corridor in the latest transportation master plan.

Major transportation projects ARE well publicized. A better comparison with LRT (in the billions of dollars vs millions for the Alta Vista Corridor) would be the Kettle Island Bridge / the new Sandy Hill Truck Tunnel proposal. You're telling me those didn't get adequate news coverage?

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Nor do we have the density or ridership in most of this city that they do. But yes, I hope we move past 30 min bus service for most of the city, for most of the day eventually.



Really? You have to resort to this kind of insinuation?

It's not a concern to me because transfers at Bayview work exactly the same as they do elsewhere in the world. You are acting as though this is something novel that Ottawa has discovered. And you're acting as though some dude in a basement conjured this up and there was no modelling or flow analysis involved when they planned the transfer and the network.

It's just not an issue. In real life, the arriving train has a certain discharge capacity, limited by the number of doors. 500 people don't just jump off one train and pop up on the second floor of the station instantaneously. The first of the riders to get off will get the immediate connection, the rest will catch the next train. There will also be some split of riders too. So not 100% going eastbound. And then there's room freed up from the eastbound Confederation Line by those heading south on the Trillium Line. As long as they've mapped out the capacities into the station this will be fine.





If you dumb it down like this then every transfer point in the world is going to be Bloor and Yonge to you and no city should ever build transfers, because according to you, clearing out riders is always going to be an issue unless you can unload a full train directly into a completely empty train. This is exactly how your viewpoint comes across.

Bloor and Yonge is a specific problem because the Bloor platform is specifically rate limited to the number of trains per minute, which limits how quickly it can clear riders arriving on the Yonge platform. Trains also arrive at Bloor relatively full, which really limits the onboarding of passengers arriving from Yonge.

This is absolutely not the case at Bayview. The ratio of trains between the Confederation Line and Trillium Line is 17:8 per hour. And each Confederation Line train has more total capacity than a Trillium Line train. I would be far more worried about transfers at Hurdman and that becoming a Yonge-Bloor scenario where a train that's pretty full after St. Laurent is arriving at a massive transfer hub.



At most, depending on when you get off the train, you'll get up the stairs to see a train leave and wait for the next one.



Nobody was trying to "sell rail" in Ottawa. The Confederation Line was built to relieve bus congestion in the core. Simple as that.



Again, the Confederation Line was built not to provide Cadillac Service to anyone but to solve a very real overload in the core of the network. That's the design driver, not how long it takes a particular rider to get downtown. Heck, it's very possible with the bus to LRT transfer that some riders might actually see a longer ride in the east-end depending on their destination.

Next, if you expect a zero minute transfer, it's not going to happen. You're better off driving. Generally, planners budget anywhere from 5-10 minutes for a transfer based on how long it will take for people to get up the stairs and across platforms.

Lastly, I fail to see how the transfer at Bayview will be any worse than what is there today for Trillium Line riders. Do you consider Bayview to be like Bloor and Yonge today because we're discharging a full Trillium train on to a BRT clearing out on buses that carry 50-100 riders?

If you read back at all my posts, I am not talking about today, I am talking about 10 to 20 years from now, as the Trillium Line gradually becomes less student dominated. We are planning rail for 25 or 50 years. We need to consider this aspect for the same planning period.


I do not expect zero minute transfers. No where did I say that. I expect an efficient transfer that does not routinely mean waiting multiple trains.


Transfers are not supposed to be designed to do this. When they do, there is a congestion issue. Normally transfers work with the first transit vehicle arriving whether it is a bus or train. This is a reasonable goal. It is not normal to have passengers backing up at transfers. This is the situation in Toronto and is why the DRL is such an important issue.


Please stop putting words in my mouth just to support your viewpoint.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by zzptichka

This is what Doucet should've gone with IMO (in addition to all existing plans). 30kms of existing tracks serving Kanata North, Bells Corners, Centerpointe, Merivale, Riverside, Sheffield rd.
Mostly a matter of building a few simple stations, sidings and political will to negotiate with VIA and NIMBYs. Extend to Anrprior and Limoges if it makes sense.

This routing is sort of bringing back ideas from the Chiarelli and similar plans from the past, when the cross-town tracks were to be used.

I like the idea of having a DMU service along this corridor as an alternative to the Confederation Line in order to cross the city. I doubt that it could support more than 15 minute frequency but would be whole lot faster than existing bus routes. I understand that almost all our money is needed to complete the Confederation Line.


I know friends who really struggled with commutes to Kanata (from the southeast) and transit was just way too inefficient and indirect. There was no reasonable alternatives but to drive but congestion was routine on the few roads that cross the Rideau and the city.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

He's peddling all the irrational fears of the Confederation Line, like being "worried that the tunnel under downtown and the Rideau Canal will leak". Its irresponsible.

Shades of Jim Watson, 2010, musing about the proximity of the tunnel to PMO and Parliament Hill.

Or the Simpsons monorail episode.

No, Clive, we aren't afraid the tracks might bend.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

The Alta Vista Corridor was proposed to be many things by many people. It was a road link in transportation master plans going back many, many years... It was once considered as the corridor for the Southeast Transitway, and more recently as a transit corridor north of the Hospital before reverting back to a road corridor in the latest transportation master plan.

Major transportation projects ARE well publicized. A better comparison with LRT (in the billions of dollars vs millions for the Alta Vista Corridor) would be the Kettle Island Bridge / the new Sandy Hill Truck Tunnel proposal. You're telling me those didn't get adequate news coverage?

The Alta Vista Parkway corridor was expropriated as part of the Greber plan back in the 50s. It was originally planned to connect to the railway station that at first was planned to be located south of Walkley near Conroy. The road was never completed (the first phase was built in Riverview) but then the station was relocated to Tremblay Road. This stopped momentum on building the road connection. This is a perfect example of building a neighbourhood around a transportation corridor and then the local residents take ownership of it (figuratively) over longstanding regional plans. At this point, neighbours wouldn't even accept a busway through here. Save our children!

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Shades of Jim Watson, 2010, musing about the proximity of the tunnel to PMO and Parliament Hill.

Or the Simpsons monorail episode.

No, Clive, we aren't afraid the tracks might bend.

Seriously, that was an issue last September when I rode the train between New York and Montreal. The train had to slow down to 15 mph because of the heat and effect it might have on the track.


I presume this was because it was old track. I would hope that they can mitigate against this with modern technology.

[OTSkyline]

I imagine transit projects get a lot more media attention than roads because of the sheer costs involved. The Confed Line is what, over $1B?

How much does the hospital ring road cost? A small fraction I'm sure...


Also, I don't understand this obsession with "Regional Rail" in Ottawa. As others have mentioned, the towns around Ottawa are very small compared to the cities that are around Toronto (Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Hamilton, Brampton, Hamilton, etc). It just doesn't make sense for Ottawa, there's not enough population to support it. Plus, real estate is still pretty affordable, hence people don't NEED to move 40-50km away from Ottawa and commute back and forth everyday, if they choose to do so, it's their decision but we shouldn't be paying millions to subsidize their decision and provide them with rail transit options.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Please stop putting words in my mouth just to support your viewpoint.

Hardly. This all based on your viewpoint.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I do not expect zero minute transfers. No where did I say that. I expect an efficient transfer that does not routinely mean waiting multiple trains.

Unless you have an empty train waiting on the platform when you get up the stairs, there will never be a 100% guarantee that you won't be waiting for a train to pass. This is reality. So if that's what you expect, then yes, you are assuming a perfect transfer.

As I said earlier, in reality those who get out first will probably transfer first. This means you could end up waiting for one train. That would be normal anywhere else in the world. But apparently to you this is a travesty at Bayview.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Transfers are not supposed to be designed to do this. When they do, there is a congestion issue. Normally transfers work with the first transit vehicle arriving whether it is a bus or train. This is a reasonable goal. It is not normal to have passengers backing up at transfers. This is the situation in Toronto and is why the DRL is such an important issue.

Unless you have an absolutely coordinated train schedule, transfers will always involve waiting. And since most high frequency lines run on fixed headways not fixed schedules, this will always be the case.

At this point, it's pretty clear that you think any transfer is unacceptable. It's why you keep bringing up the strawman of Yonge/Bloor. It's not at all a valid comparison because there's zero evidence of a lack of capacity on the Confederation Line at Bayview. Nor is there any evidence that we'll see on in 20 or 30 years. If you have evidence to back up your assertion, please post it.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

If you read back at all my posts, I am not talking about today, I am talking about 10 to 20 years from now, as the Trillium Line gradually becomes less student dominated. We are planning rail for 25 or 50 years. We need to consider this aspect for the same planning period.

It's as though you think engineers and planners are totally clueless and will plan an upgrade of the Trillium Line without at all considering capacity issues and transfer flows at Bayview.

Why don't you send the City of Ottawa your resume and offer to share your wisdom with them?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by OTSkyline

I imagine transit projects get a lot more media attention than roads because of the sheer costs involved. The Confed Line is what, over $1B?

How much does the hospital ring road cost? A small fraction I'm sure...


Also, I don't understand this obsession with "Regional Rail" in Ottawa. As others have mentioned, the towns around Ottawa are very small compared to the cities that are around Toronto (Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Hamilton, Brampton, Hamilton, etc). It just doesn't make sense for Ottawa, there's not enough population to support it. Plus, real estate is still pretty affordable, hence people don't NEED to move 40-50km away from Ottawa and commute back and forth everyday, if they choose to do so, it's their decision but we shouldn't be paying millions to subsidize their decision and provide them with rail transit options.

Exactly. It's beyond ridiculous. And it's not just millions. Depending on track fees, construction costs, acquisition of rolling stock, etc. this regional rail plan could be hundreds of millions. We're talking about investing thousands per resident of these towns. And it won't provide them service as frequent as a bus. If you lived in Limoges would you rather get a hourly bus or 3-4 trains per day?

[FFX-ME]

That plan doesn't even service the largest towns in the region. What's the point in even sending a train to Vars (pop. 1.4k), Limoges (pop 2k) and Navan (pop 3.5 k).

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That's another one. The rail line through Stittsville was removed probably decades ago. Just like Navan and Chelsea, it's a MUP now.

The point is the old line to Stittsville didn't go to Kinburn and the old line to Navan didn't go to Vars and Limoges. It is a clear case of blatant deception by Doucet renaming stations on his map to fool the public into thinking that their community will get rail service when he has no intention of doing so.

If you want to talk about track that has been removed, the track on the Beachburg Subdivison (dark blue on his map) was also torn up west of the junction with the Renfrew Subdivision (between the Kanata and Bells Corners stations) about 4 years ago (see End of the line for Beachburg Subdivision).

[OCCheetos]

Key Costs
40-50 million to repair the Prince of Wales bridge.

His estimate is even lower than MOOSE's (~$60 million). Both are significantly lower than the city's guess (~$200 million+?).

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by roger1818

The point is the old line to Stittsville didn't go to Kinburn and the old line to Navan didn't go to Vars and Limoges. It is a clear case of blatant deception by Doucet renaming stations on his map to fool the public into thinking that their community will get rail service when he has no intention of doing so.

That's not even the most offensive part. Look at the interview with Reevely. He handwaves away demand for details and insists that the calls for details is unfair because nobody would ask the same for road construction. Seriously?

Never thought I'd see the Trump/Ford narcissist playbook run at the municipal level in Ottawa.