Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[OtrainUser]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I think it's a function of the transition from buses to rail. Because a lot of people were used to jumping on a bus and arriving downtown, I think a tap on/tap off might have turned riders off. You're adding cost and a transfer at the same time.



Zoning only really works when you also price roads in some manner. If you don't price roads, all you're doing is making it more expensive to take transit instead of the car. This is why I've argued that there should be a congestion charge across the greenbelt. That could easily be combined with zoned fares. Two zones. Inside the greenbelt. Outside the greenbelt.

I agree with this as well

[Truenorth00]

Are there more wards inside the Greenbelt than outside?

To pass a zone fare and congestion charges is going to need almost unanimously support from inside the Greenbelt. Will be difficult for some councillors with wards on the edge of the greenbelt.

On a less tangential note, when's the next update?

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by passwordisnt123

I know this is getting a bit off topic from the Confederation Line but I think there's a great deal worth criticizing in the Greber plan (especially in terms of its implications for mass transit and facilitating an auto-dependent city) but I agree 100% about what you say about the Greenbelt. The greenbelt neither helps nor hinders suburban sprawl. One thing has nothing to do with the other. That doesn't mean the greenbelt is bad, it just means it's a different kind of thing.

Hard agree. There is plenty of sprawl even within the greenbelt—Hunt Club, Merivale, Baseline, etc. I would love nothing more than to bulldoze all the acres of strip malls and parking lots and replace them with mixed-use pedestrian-friendly developments and public parks.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Are there more wards inside the Greenbelt than outside?

To pass a zone fare and congestion charges is going to need almost unanimously support from inside the Greenbelt. Will be difficult for some councillors with wards on the edge of the greenbelt.

On a less tangential note, when's the next update?

The green belt would be a strange place to charge the toll? I would think it should be much closer to downtown. Of course this would make it politically even more difficult.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by Gat-Train

Hard agree. There is plenty of sprawl even within the greenbelt—Hunt Club, Merivale, Baseline, etc. I would love nothing more than to bulldoze all the acres of strip malls and parking lots and replace them with mixed-use pedestrian-friendly developments and public parks.

The thing is this seems to happen almost naturally as a city evolves, as long as there is a constraint of some sort. E.g Vancouver, which is now the 3rd densest city in North America, but it wasn't 30 years ago. With ocean on one side, mountains on another and a border on the third it started sprawling is way farther and farther down the fraser valley. But the inner city became denser and denser as many people decided to choose smaller homes rather than long commutes.

Closer to here, the GTA has become much denser as housing became more and more expensive. In the 80s an average family could still have the typical suburban lifestyle in places like Scarborough, Mississauga, etc, but now you have to be much, much farther out, so people are making the choice to downsize rather than have massive commutes.

Ottawa is also densifying relative to the 80s, even though we're still relatively small and don't have major geographic barriers. We may end up where those cities ended up faster and with less sprawl, but it's an over a generation kind of thing. You can't wave a wand and turn it that way overnight

[rocketphish]

Tunney's, Westboro, Dominion Transitway stations closed Sunday

Megan Gillis, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: March 28, 2019

OC Transpo’s Tunney’s Pasture, Westboro and Dominion Transitway stations will be closed from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday for LRT testing.

The service warns that it’s running a bus operations test at Tunney’s Pasture Station to prepare for O-Train Line 1 service. Routes 11, 16, 54, 61, 62, 63, 80, 86, 87, 89, 94, 95, 97, 98, and 153 will bypass Tunney’s Pasture, Westboro and Dominion stations and serve stops 3B and 4A on the local platform at Lincoln Fields Station.

Buses will serve all existing stops on an alternate route on Wellington Street and Richmond Road.

Timing the testing for early Sunday aims to affect as few customers as possible, OC Transpo said.

A complete list of stops that will be affected is here: http://www.octranspo.com/updates/news/232907

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...minion-transitway-stations-closed-sunday

[HighwayStar]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

OC Transpo’s Tunney’s Pasture, Westboro and Dominion Transitway stations will be closed from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday for LRT testing.

Can anyone explain exactly what type of LRT testing will be going on at Westboro and Dominion?

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by HighwayStar

Can anyone explain exactly what type of LRT testing will be going on at Westboro and Dominion?

Testing bus to train transferring and bus throughput in general. They did similar testing at Hurdman a few months ago.

[HighwayStar]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

Testing bus to train transferring and bus throughput in general. They did similar testing at Hurdman a few months ago.

For Tunneys, I get it... but there is no train at Westboro and Dominion. What am I missing?

[Horus]

Originally Posted by HighwayStar

For Tunneys, I get it... but there is no train at Westboro and Dominion. What am I missing?

Uninformed guess, but is it because the buses can't get out of the trench until Tunneys?

[JohnnyRenton]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

The thing is this seems to happen almost naturally as a city evolves, as long as there is a constraint of some sort. E.g Vancouver, which is now the 3rd densest city in North America, but it wasn't 30 years ago. With ocean on one side, mountains on another and a border on the third it started sprawling is way farther and farther down the fraser valley. But the inner city became denser and denser as many people decided to choose smaller homes rather than long commutes.

Closer to here, the GTA has become much denser as housing became more and more expensive. In the 80s an average family could still have the typical suburban lifestyle in places like Scarborough, Mississauga, etc, but now you have to be much, much farther out, so people are making the choice to downsize rather than have massive commutes.

Ottawa is also densifying relative to the 80s, even though we're still relatively small and don't have major geographic barriers. We may end up where those cities ended up faster and with less sprawl, but it's an over a generation kind of thing. You can't wave a wand and turn it that way overnight

You make several good points. Ottawa is becoming denser. There are positive trends, like increased infill, larger condo projects, and of course the C-Line, that will allow Ottawa to slow down some of the suburban sprawl.

But I also think that pricing people out of the suburbs is a terrible strategy. If you start tolling roads, and increasing the costs of living in the suburbs, you aren't going to push that many people into the city, you are only going to make their life more expensive, and a bit more unaffordable.

People like cities and they will gladly move to them. If you think about the urban growth in Toronto and Vancouver in the 80's and 90's, it happened in an anti-city climate. There was minimal investment in urban transit. There were few public investments to make urban areas more desirable. Toronto in the 80's, despite the rose colored memories hipsters and gen X'ers like to convey, was pretty blah, but people still moved back to its urban neighborhoods.

But, as Toronto and Vancouver also show, as more people move back, and the city become more desirable, it becomes more expensive. A lot more expensive. And that is the biggest barrier to a lot of people consider a move inwards. It isn't just that a 3 bedroom house or condo is going be 2/3 or even 1/2 the size of what they could get in Barrhaven. It's that its smaller, and more expensive. And in the case of condos, rare.

Fixing suburban sprawl will take time. The C-Line is an attempt to at least reduce some of the car use that originates from the inner greenbelt and satellite suburbs. But the last thing people need, no matter where they live, is for the cost of living to be artificially inflated solely for the purpose of trying to get them to live somewhere else. People today shouldn't be punished for the mistake that were made in previous generations. If you want to attract more people into the city, you have to find ways of making it more affordable. As an example, take Tunney's Pasture. It is a pretty substantial piece of land which is very underutilized. One day, it will be redeveloped. But what would happen if instead of being redeveloped along the lines of Lebreton, it was done with a focus on housing families, with urban townhomes, and mid-rise condos, and a large supply of 3 bedroom units. And what if a large number of those units were just 2/3 or half the size of what you get in Barrhaven or Orleans, but were actually the same price? I would be willing to bet that it would be one of the fastest selling developments in North America. Of course making something like that happen wouldn't be easy, but that is one way you could attract people to urban parts of the city without making life unnecessarily more expensive for the middle class.

[Ottawaresident]

Ottawa is very suburban. Changing this might take some 50 years at least.

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Horus

Uninformed guess, but is it because the buses can't get out of the trench until Tunneys?

Hundreds of buses will need to put through the transitway in order to empty all those FULL commuter trains leaving downtown. HUNDREDS. Starting from only Tunneys, and not spread along the line. Imagine taking normal transitway service and just stopping it at one spot, then starting it up again.

I posted this to Westsideaction last week:

I’ve been saying this for years now. I feel sad for the Kanata commuter, to go from a direct express bus from the stix, to the future of THREE transfers and a subway station maze exit. If the train was finished it would be FAR superior to busing. But…no such luck for now.

Picture this: The end of the day (3:30pm for those Federal employees). You walk down to your station heading west, then the 600 people in your train are quickly whisked away to Tunney’s Pasture. Replacing 10 buses on the street above is great for everyone downtown. But then…EVERYONE alights at the platform at Tunney’s, resulting in a foot-race, to get to your transfer bus that will take you to Kanata. This is at best 6 buses which happen to be waiting around, empty. HOWEVER not everyone is going to Kanata and the buses may be already half-full, so we’re talking probably 15-30 destination-specific buses coming at differing frequencies. This used to be spread out through the downtown, resulting in hundreds waiting at each individual transit station downtown, now concentrated at Tunney’s Pasture. A logistical nightmare.

Lets assume your transfer bus comes every 15 minutes. I’ll illustrate the min/max passengers waiting at Tunney’s:

At 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive. (600-to-1200 people waiting)

THEN, at 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive. (600-to-1800 people waiting)

Then at 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive (600-to-2400 people waiting!!!)

The trains can run at less than 3 minute frequency (not required yet, but possible). If this were the case, up to 3600 passengers can arrive in just 15 minutes.

Has Tunney’s been built with a multi-platform, huge area for buses to queue and wait for passengers? Hopefully so, but I haven’t been there lately.

You see where I’m going with this, right?

By 4:30pm, Tunney’s pasture is a madhouse, each and every day, until the train extension arrives, pushing the madhouse out to some godawful field 1km past Bayshore mall, negating the ability to shop while you wait for your transfer or the chaos to die down.

The solution (and what I think should happen?): Kanata express commuter buses continue to operate to the downtown core for the next 10-15 years to ease the chaos at Tunney’s until the train is sufficiently extended to reduce passenger load to manageable levels at the final Transfer station.

The reality: OC Transpo will lose 50% of it’s Kanata ridership due to commuting chaos going unchecked and unsolved until the train is finished.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Hundreds of buses will need to put through the transitway in order to empty all those FULL commuter trains leaving downtown. HUNDREDS. Starting from only Tunneys, and not spread along the line. Imagine taking normal transitway service and just stopping it at one spot, then starting it up again.

Aside from starting at Tunney's, how is that any different than today? Hundreds of buses use the Transitway daily all the time.

Has Tunney’s been built with a multi-platform, huge area for buses to queue and wait for passengers? Hopefully so, but I haven’t been there lately.

So you wrote a whole rant about this without even checking what's been done at Tunney's to address what your rant is about?
Here's the layout of Tunney's:


That big empty space in the middle of the bus loop is a layup area with spaces for 17 buses at a time. You can see the route breakdown by platform here too.

The reality: OC Transpo will lose 50% of it’s Kanata ridership due to commuting chaos going unchecked and unsolved until the train is finished.

And maybe that's why they're running this test on Sunday?

At least Kanata commuters don't need to walk all the way to platform G..

[Kitchissippi]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Has Tunney’s been built with a multi-platform, huge area for buses to queue and wait for passengers? Hopefully so, but I haven’t been there lately.

Yes it has, the bus loading area is huge with separate westbound and eastbound areas in a wide loop.

Tunney's Pasture will also have alternating platforms for departing trains, so if one side gets filled, people can go to the other one for the next train. It's all quite visible from the concourse so if you arrive at the station 30 seconds before a train leaves and it looks like it's packed, just go to the other one.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Hundreds of buses will need to put through the transitway in order to empty all those FULL commuter trains leaving downtown. HUNDREDS. Starting from only Tunneys, and not spread along the line. Imagine taking normal transitway service and just stopping it at one spot, then starting it up again.

I posted this to Westsideaction last week:

I’ve been saying this for years now. I feel sad for the Kanata commuter, to go from a direct express bus from the stix, to the future of THREE transfers and a subway station maze exit. If the train was finished it would be FAR superior to busing. But…no such luck for now.

Picture this: The end of the day (3:30pm for those Federal employees). You walk down to your station heading west, then the 600 people in your train are quickly whisked away to Tunney’s Pasture. Replacing 10 buses on the street above is great for everyone downtown. But then…EVERYONE alights at the platform at Tunney’s, resulting in a foot-race, to get to your transfer bus that will take you to Kanata. This is at best 6 buses which happen to be waiting around, empty. HOWEVER not everyone is going to Kanata and the buses may be already half-full, so we’re talking probably 15-30 destination-specific buses coming at differing frequencies. This used to be spread out through the downtown, resulting in hundreds waiting at each individual transit station downtown, now concentrated at Tunney’s Pasture. A logistical nightmare.

Lets assume your transfer bus comes every 15 minutes. I’ll illustrate the min/max passengers waiting at Tunney’s:

At 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive. (600-to-1200 people waiting)

THEN, at 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive. (600-to-1800 people waiting)

Then at 5 minutes into your wait, another 600 people arrive (600-to-2400 people waiting!!!)

The trains can run at less than 3 minute frequency (not required yet, but possible). If this were the case, up to 3600 passengers can arrive in just 15 minutes.

Has Tunney’s been built with a multi-platform, huge area for buses to queue and wait for passengers? Hopefully so, but I haven’t been there lately.

You see where I’m going with this, right?

By 4:30pm, Tunney’s pasture is a madhouse, each and every day, until the train extension arrives, pushing the madhouse out to some godawful field 1km past Bayshore mall, negating the ability to shop while you wait for your transfer or the chaos to die down.

The solution (and what I think should happen?): Kanata express commuter buses continue to operate to the downtown core for the next 10-15 years to ease the chaos at Tunney’s until the train is sufficiently extended to reduce passenger load to manageable levels at the final Transfer station.

The reality: OC Transpo will lose 50% of it’s Kanata ridership due to commuting chaos going unchecked and unsolved until the train is finished.

The bus terminal at Tunney's is enormous, far bigger than any previous station in Ottawa, so they did give it thought, but it still won't be pretty. But there is no painless option forward when converting existing rapid transit to a higher capacity one. In hindsight nobody thought what a nightmare the process would be. At the time people just thought "and the BRT can be converted when capacity demands. Perfect!"

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by JohnnyRenton

You make several good points. Ottawa is becoming denser. There are positive trends, like increased infill, larger condo projects, and of course the C-Line, that will allow Ottawa to slow down some of the suburban sprawl.

But I also think that pricing people out of the suburbs is a terrible strategy. If you start tolling roads, and increasing the costs of living in the suburbs, you aren't going to push that many people into the city, you are only going to make their life more expensive, and a bit more unaffordable.

People like cities and they will gladly move to them. If you think about the urban growth in Toronto and Vancouver in the 80's and 90's, it happened in an anti-city climate. There was minimal investment in urban transit. There were few public investments to make urban areas more desirable. Toronto in the 80's, despite the rose colored memories hipsters and gen X'ers like to convey, was pretty blah, but people still moved back to its urban neighborhoods.

But, as Toronto and Vancouver also show, as more people move back, and the city become more desirable, it becomes more expensive. A lot more expensive. And that is the biggest barrier to a lot of people consider a move inwards. It isn't just that a 3 bedroom house or condo is going be 2/3 or even 1/2 the size of what they could get in Barrhaven. It's that its smaller, and more expensive. And in the case of condos, rare.

Fixing suburban sprawl will take time. The C-Line is an attempt to at least reduce some of the car use that originates from the inner greenbelt and satellite suburbs. But the last thing people need, no matter where they live, is for the cost of living to be artificially inflated solely for the purpose of trying to get them to live somewhere else. People today shouldn't be punished for the mistake that were made in previous generations. If you want to attract more people into the city, you have to find ways of making it more affordable. As an example, take Tunney's Pasture. It is a pretty substantial piece of land which is very underutilized. One day, it will be redeveloped. But what would happen if instead of being redeveloped along the lines of Lebreton, it was done with a focus on housing families, with urban townhomes, and mid-rise condos, and a large supply of 3 bedroom units. And what if a large number of those units were just 2/3 or half the size of what you get in Barrhaven or Orleans, but were actually the same price? I would be willing to bet that it would be one of the fastest selling developments in North America. Of course making something like that happen wouldn't be easy, but that is one way you could attract people to urban parts of the city without making life unnecessarily more expensive for the middle class.

It is quite simple, if we artificially raise the price of suburban housing, urban prices will rise in tandem, making all housing less affordable.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

The green belt would be a strange place to charge the toll? I would think it should be much closer to downtown. Of course this would make it politically even more difficult.

European cities have had historical gates that made tolling central areas easy. That's difficult in more modern cities. The Greenbelt offers a natural control barrier with a few limited crossings they could be rolled.

[Gat-Train]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Hundreds of buses will need to put through the transitway in order to empty all those FULL commuter trains leaving downtown. HUNDREDS. Starting from only Tunneys, and not spread along the line. Imagine taking normal transitway service and just stopping it at one spot, then starting it up again.

OMG the world is ending!!!!1!

Have you ever taken the bus on Canada Day or Bluesfest? It's exactly what you described, except instead of going to a specific stop and waiting you have to watch the long line of buses, searching for the one that's yours, in the same fashion you watch for your suitcase at the airport baggage claim. Then, when you find your bus, you jostle through the crowds to pack onto the crush-loaded bus. So the idea that OC Transpo is going to lose half its commuters over an added transfer just doesn't hold water.

[McC]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

Has Tunney’s been built with a multi-platform, huge area for buses to queue and wait for passengers? Hopefully so, but I haven’t been there lately.

Interesting choice to bury a self destruct mechanism in the middle of your "analysis."