O-Train Line 1/3 [Stage 2 | West Extension | Tunney's to Baseline/Moodie] | U/C

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by GoTrans

I agree!!! Why would we build a new station when there is one already roughed in? The plans as provided by the consortium should not have even been allowed. This is just a way to make more money for the contractors. Stick to the game plan Kiewit !!! Does anyone know if all the other bidders submitted similar proposals for the Baseline station??

This is using the roughed in station. The city always expected a southern entrance to the underground tunnel. I thought there already was a roughed in basement entrance into the ACCE as well

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Personally, simplifying the northern intersection at Navaho drive will be a boon to cars travelling down Woodroffe! It seems the BRT will terminate with a simple loop around the northern train entrance.

That would be a sensible option, but no... this is what they plan to do

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Has the City ever explained why they moved it?

Not that I know of.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I'd like to see the other submissions. Did these guys just royalty cheap out on the stations?

One can only hope.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

That would be a sensible option, but no... this is what they plan to do

Does.

No one.

In City Hall.

Ride.

A damn.

Bus?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

That would be a sensible option, but no... this is what they plan to do

Holly crap. That will add like 10 minutes to the trip, on a good day!

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Holly crap. That will add like 10 minutes to the trip, on a good day!

Exactly, it will completely negate any savings from the BRT's improvements on Baseline Road itself. It will also have an uncomfortable number of turns, and feel incredibly long if all you want to do is continue along Baseline on the 88.

I'm convinced the only reason people aren't more outraged about this is that they don't know its happening. The City has been hiding it in piecemeal fashion at the end of presentations and in appendices to the Baseline BRT functional design.

[Gat-Train]

Ah yes, we must applaud the sheer brilliance of the city planners that have decided to route bus RAPID transit on a road with speedbumps

[Ottawaresident]

Wow Ottawa, very bright! That is the smartest city I have seen! Just Kidding ... Why can't we have authorities who employ people with brains like every other city!!??

[Mikeed]

As alumni of Algonquin College and someone who lived in residence when I moved to Ottawa.

I think it's important that the 88 continues its routing through the centre of campus with stops at ACCE, the access road and Student Commons/Residence.

P/S Building is nearly a kilometre away from ACCE and half a kilometre away from E building.

Algonquin College is the most important node on the 88 and we should be making it transit focus campus.

Not focusing on reducing access for the effect of marginally faster service.

The future should have a better transit stop with access from both main East/West pedestrian walkways instead of a campus that has it's back turned to this.

And for the nearly 1,000 students a year who call residence their first home in Ottawa having a bus stop near your door is an important gateway to the city.

[Gat-Train]

I think that centering transit around the convenince of college students can lead to an overall detriment to the network (case in point, the current routing of the 95 through the University of Ottawa campus)

[J.OT13]

I think we could maintain both. Re-route the 88 to provide a more direct route down Baseline, with a loop around Baseline (Algonquin) station if need be and create a new route through the campus with a 15 minute frequency.

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

We need to remember that about a third of our expansion is a mostly a single track diesel train.

Toronto is getting royally screwed, no doubt about it. Vancouver's projects prices are on par considering the scope and quality of the stations. The Broadway subway will be just that, a subway. They are getting significantly more for their money compared to Toronto's Scarborough Subway.

With REM, Montreal (or should I say the Caisse) is getting a steal. Those are some large, mostly enclosed stations with platform screen doors, a few very complicated deep level subway stations connecting to the existing Metro and a direct airport to downtown line. We're getting decent value for money, but not REM good.

I'm puzzled as to why the REM offers so much more for the money, but still think we should go through with our project. If we have to save money, a few stations could be removed based on their projected ridership and how easily they could be wedged in at a later date:

Trim would be on my eliminate list, mostly to prevent that mess of a re-alignment for Trim Road and the lack of pedestrian bridge to the north end. If we can't afford the Trim grade separation and that extra ped bridge, maybe we can wait on the station. That said, it might not be possible considering that Trim and the Airport spur are part of that extra $130 million split between the Province and Feds that money could be at risk if the station is eliminated.

Orleans Boulevard and Iris would likely have the lowest ridership of the system, so those are easy cuts. I'm also questioning the need for Queensview.

I don't think it's necessary to have both Leitrim and Bowesville. One of them could easily be eliminated.

All together, it could save us a few hundred million of the total $700 million overrun.

Queensview was negotiated due to the tunneling nearby and houses that would have to be knocked down to accommodate.

[rocketphish]

City of Ottawa leaving it entirely up to other governments to fund future LRT projects

Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: February 26, 2019

The city is entirely banking on the other two levels of government to fulfill its long-term dream to extend LRT to Kanata and Barrhaven.

An updated long-range financial plan for the City of Ottawa’s transit program assumes that the federal and provincial governments will pay 100 per cent of future LRT projects. The plan, released last Friday along with the Stage 2 contract recommendations, accounts for transit spending through 2048, which means Kanata and Barrhaven transit customers hungry for LRT service to arrive much sooner than 2048 could be completely at the mercy of partisan politicking.

The feds and province are making major contributions to the first two stages of Ottawa’s LRT system, but with the city as a joint funding partner.

While the city is completing studies on extending LRT to the western and southern suburbs as an eventual Stage 3, it appears that, for now, it’s not including Stage 3 in its transit funding projections for the next 30 years, other than to say that other governments would need to pay the full freight.

The city by end of the afternoon Monday was unable to indicate why it’s so confident the upper governments would fund 100 per cent of the city’s future LRT projects.

There has been hope voiced by some councillors, such as Kanata North’s Jenna Sudds, that the city could advance LRT construction to Kanata much sooner than the current timeframe calls for. That timeframe is sometime after 2031.

Sudds wasn’t available Monday to discuss the implications of the city’s long-range financial plan for future LRT projects.

Councillors and staff, meanwhile, have a more immediate LRT matter on their hands: Stage 2.

The city has announced that the Stage 2 price tag has ballooned to $4.6 billion from $3.4 billion.

The city has built the new financial plan on the assumption that transit taxes will increase by three per cent annually, up a half of a percentage point from the last financial plan in 2017. (The city is actually proposing to raise the transit tax by 3.5 per cent in 2019, since there are other extra costs that need addressing, such as offsetting a partial-year fare freeze).

Development charge revenue goes toward LRT construction, too.

Gas tax revenue is another big component of the funding plan through transfers from the upper governments.

The city is counting on the province following through with past gas-tax pledges to fund Ottawa’s transit program. Specifically, the city is counting on the provincial Progressive Conservative government to stick with a plan made under the previous Liberal government to double gas-tax funding by 2022.

When it comes to Stage 2, the city would need to pay $2.4 billion of the $4.6-billion total cost, with the other levels of government covering almost all of the remaining costs.

While there’s no money committed from any level of government for a Stage 3, the city has already set its sights on LRT growth.

In fact, a major planning study on part of a Stage 3 expansion is already on the shelf. The Kanata LRT environmental assessment has plotted a route through the western suburb, looping south toward Stittsville at the Canadian Tire Centre. The construction cost is estimated at $1.85 billion.

The Barrhaven LRT study, which is an environmental assessment on extending tracks to the southern suburbs from the future LRT station at Algonquin College, is ongoing.

The third part of a Stage 3 project would be an interprovincial transit link with Gatineau via the Prince of Wales Bridge, a City of Ottawa-owned structure that’s currently out of commission.

Building those three Stage 3 components will fall on the shoulders of the federal and provincial governments under the city’s updated transit financial plan.

However, leaning on the upper governments for every nickel of LRT construction funding isn’t entirely crazy. Other cities have benefited from that kind of funding.

The province made 100 per cent funding commitments for LRT lines in Hamilton, Mississauga and Toronto. They were decisions met with furrowed eyebrows at Ottawa City Hall, which has already invested millions in municipal funds for our LRT.

[email protected]
twitter.com/JonathanWilling

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...-governments-to-fund-future-lrt-projects

[J.OT13]

If we can convince the Feds and Province to split Stage 3 estimates 50/50, after factoring in the cost overruns, we'll end up paying 1/3 for real this time! Solid plan!!

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Buggys

Queensview was negotiated due to the tunneling nearby and houses that would have to be knocked down to accommodate.

Only two houses that were expropriated years ago will be demolished for the Connaught Park tunnel, as opposed to 20-some homes with the Roman Avenue surface route proposed int he 2000s.

As for the settlement for the few years of construction disruptions, we could point to McKellar Park; years of consultations ended with an agreement to place Cleary Station underground on the north side of Richmond. That was thrown out the window with this final version that features a station in an open trench smack down in the middle of the park.

Which reminds me, anyone notice the cross beams along the top of the Cleary and Pinecrest Station trenches? None of the other trench stations have that, including Cleary's twin New Orchard. Are those to simplify an eventual decking over the stations?

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I think we could maintain both. Re-route the 88 to provide a more direct route down Baseline, with a loop around Baseline (Algonquin) station if need be and create a new route through the campus with a 15 minute frequency.

Re-routing the 88 down Baseline would be going in an extreme in the other direction - routing it away from a large portion of its ridership. It would also result in it reducing vehicle lanes at Woodroffe and Baseline - a major point of congestion in the area.

I would keep it on Navaho, but with no diversions. The problem is this is not possible unless Baseline (Algonquin) Station is moved northwards towards Navaho (which is why I'm still talking about this in the Stage 2 thread and not in the Baseline BRT thread).

Here is an update on my map. Yellow is the City's route and stops for #88, blue would be my preferred route and stops. Its even more clear how ridiculous the City's routing is with this map...

• the City (yellow) route would be 1500 m long, have 10 x 90 degree turns, and have 8 signalized intersection (if I'm reading the functional design plans right)... and they only manage to fit in 3 stations.
• My (blue) route would be only 850 m long, have 2 x 90 degree turns, have 4-5 signalized intersections, but I would propose 4 stations.

[Richard Eade]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

.
.
.
Which reminds me, anyone notice the cross beams along the top of the Cleary and Pinecrest Station trenches? None of the other trench stations have that, including Cleary's twin New Orchard. Are those to simplify an eventual decking over the stations?

They are there to reduce cost. A 'U' in the ground has to be strong enough to hold the sides vertical. If you add beams or a roof, then the sides need only be strong enough to not bend; since the top of the walls are already held apart.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

Re-routing the 88 down Baseline would be going in an extreme in the other direction - routing it away from a large portion of its ridership. It would also result in it reducing vehicle lanes at Woodroffe and Baseline - a major point of congestion in the area.

I would keep it on Navaho, but with no diversions. The problem is this is not possible unless Baseline (Algonquin) Station is moved northwards towards Navaho (which is why I'm still talking about this in the Stage 2 thread and not in the Baseline BRT thread).

Here is an update on my map. Yellow is the City's route and stops for #88, blue would be my preferred route and stops. Its even more clear how ridiculous the City's routing is with this map...

• the City (yellow) route would be 1500 m long, have 10 x 90 degree turns, and have 8 signalized intersection (if I'm reading the functional design plans right)... and they only manage to fit in 3 stations.
• My (blue) route would be only 850 m long, have 2 x 90 degree turns, have 4-5 signalized intersections, but I would propose 4 stations.

Just realized the City's route goes through the parking lot. WTF are they thinking? Your blue route would be far superior. Still don't understand why the City shifted Baseline Station south.

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

They are there to reduce cost. A 'U' in the ground has to be strong enough to hold the sides vertical. If you add beams or a roof, then the sides need only be strong enough to not bend; since the top of the walls are already held apart.

At first, that was one of my theories as well, but out of the dozen or so trench stations (not to mention kilometers of trenches in total), why just those two?

[Richard Eade]

The sad part is that the City originally thought to put bus facilities along Navaho. But, other divisions of the City wanted to leave the corner closer to Baseline for future development and OC Transpo 'needed' more room for bus loops and lay-ups. Also, the bus routing at the time went along College to hit a central station within the campus.

So, the plan changed to put the station on the south end of the tunnel. Algonquin also adjusted their plans and turned their building around so that it could more easily fit a bridge to the new transit station location.

Now the City is pretty much locked into having the station to the south of College. It is likely that, once Algonquin is finished with their construction, the bus routing will revert to traveling through the campus and the bus will, once again, travel along College to get to the station.

It is also possible that only buses that are coming from the south, or those terminating at Baseline (Algonquin) Station will use the bus loop. I am hopeful that OC Transpo will realize that having customers transfer in a Fare Paid Zone does not out weigh simply having the bus stay on College and stop at curb-side stops. (Of course, that means people crossing the road to get to the transit station - unless a pavillion is also built on the north side of College.) I think that Lincoln Fields Station should do the same, but it doesn't look as if that is going to happen. (Personally, I think that having a Fare Paid Zone is a lot of trouble - the way OC Transpo designs them - for very little benefit to the customer. I'd be fine with tapping again.)