Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[kmcamp]

On a completely unrelated topic, apparently Winners is being linked into Parliament station. Went in there today and the construction to open up the wall at the bottom of the escalators was well underway

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

On a completely unrelated topic, apparently Winners is being linked into Lyon station. Went in there today and the construction to open up the wall at the bottom of the escalators was well underway

You mean Parliament station.

Thanks for posting. I've seen the doors down the stairs of the Queen/O'Connor entrance but never any indication of a connection from inside the Winners. That's good news.

Would be cool if they could somehow make the Sparks entrance to Winners an official entrance to the station with the signage and "O" beacon.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Yet. With Stage 2 we are.



They build what’s profitable. Not necessarily what the market wants. Just look at shoebox condos in the downtown cores of any city. There’s active criticism elsewhere that this is a direct result of developer insisting that every floor of a condo net $2-3 million instead of $1-2 million.

I get it now. You’re a boomer who really doesn’t think about climate change at all. It’s why you think that it’s a god given right to have a two storey house on 0.1 acres for a quarter million. There’s no way to have compact, livable cities that are half decent for the planet and low density suburban homes for cheap. It’s one or the other. And quite frankly, I don’t want to live in the Boomer’s fucked up paradise where they call mind-numbingly boring auto parks “residential neighbhourhoods”.



So you’re saying the rich snobs in Westboro and the Glebe would leave and make room for working class families who would regularly walk and use transit? I fail to see the downside here.

So YOU don't want low density suburban homes for cheap. Fine. Nowhere has totally eliminated that. Even Europe has lots of people fleeing to small surrounding towns. Problem one we live in a democracy and most people want that type of housing. OK you are dictator. You what ban any greenfield housing or add a $400,000 fee or whatever. Sure the old suburbs will densify. But all housing will be much more expensive and your generation will be priced out or at least those making an average income. So your fantasy Ottawa has cut it's emissions by about 30 seconds of the growth in Carbon output in China. Great. Congrats! Too bad everyone lives in Gatineau except those too poor to move or rich enough to stay.

[lrt's friend]

I presume we are still starting service with 13 trains instead of 15.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

You mean Parliament station.

Thanks for posting. I've seen the doors down the stairs of the Queen/O'Connor entrance but never any indication of a connection from inside the Winners. That's good news.

Would be cool if they could somehow make the Sparks entrance to Winners an official entrance to the station with the signage and "O" beacon.

Fixed my post. It'll be an unofficial entrance anyway, along the lines of any of the PdV ones or Sunlife Centre. I assume 3rd parties might start putting up `O` signage similar to how lots of places in Montreal highlight their link to the metro, but I think the beacon (like in Montreal) will only be at direct station entrances.

This is very recent, even a few weeks ago there was no sign of a potential opening, but I peeked behind the curtain they had up today and the hallway to the station is very apparent now. I don't think they'll have it ready in time for opening though, but I might be wrong.

[Badyouken]

So, I took Line 2 yesterday from Bayview. It was nice to go through the new station

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I don't see the economics working that way, unless we are letting those neighbourhoods decline into rot. As it stands, we are building expensive condos particularly in Westboro, which will move the area further away from affordability. Increasingly, working class families have to live in the suburbs.

You miss the part where these working class “suburbs” would be a lot closer if Ottawa was denser. Places like Westboro and Glebe being denser both sets the tenor for less exclusive neighbourhoods being denser and adds to the population inside the greenbelt.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The alternative is substandard housing in rundown old buildings.

You can’t be serious. The choice is not between slum and suburb.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We will not see a lot of low rent community housing built next to the Confederation Line. The land is too valuable for housing that will not generate a profit for a developer.

The land is valuable. That means you build more units to keep the land portion of development costs the same per unit. Land being more valuable doesn’t automatically equate to more expensive housing. Density has a huge factor in determining price. A 5 million dollar plot of land can hold 5 million dollar lots, or 50 condos where the land cost attributed to each one is hundred thousand dollars.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

You build what the market wants, which goes hand and hand with profitability. Developers need both. They are not building a 50 storey luxury condo in Orleans, if buyers are not interested in buying at that location.

No. They build what let’s them maximize profits. If the city jacked up development costs on single family homes by $100k and made them $0 on high-rises, what do you think would happen?

You shouldn’t be asking why there are no 50 storey luxury condos in Orleans. You should be asking why there are quarter acre lots in Rockland. Or why we keep building massive subdivisions in Stittsville and Barrhaven. How the hell are we supposed to build a transit system that keeps up when for every km that rail moves towards them, they add 3km of sprawl away.

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We see how much TOD is built based on an hourly bus service, typical in suburbs.

Cyrville is very suburban, in many ways, the worst of surburban for the most part. It is very fortunate that it is in line with the Confederation Line. If that was replaced with the low frequency Pineview bus route, there would be little incentive to consider plans to intensify the area.

The bulk of both residences and commercial office space, on Cyrville is within a 10 min walk of the station. And Cyrville specifically proves your thesis that all TOD is expensive to be wrong. Within that 10 min walk, there’s condos and reasonable to rent apartments. Moreover, places like Cyrville are undermined by sprawl. Why buy a condo at Cyrville, when you can get a house at Trim and drive or simply campaign to have rail brought to you, along with a gigantic park n ride?

If you don’t care about climate change and its impacts, or about the financial impacts of sprawl, the idea that anybody should be able to buy what they want is perfectly logical. Consider all the externalities of sprawl and it’s far less so.

What’s striking in our discussions, is that you never mention climate change once. I wonder why that is.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

So YOU don't want low density suburban homes for cheap. Fine. Nowhere has totally eliminated that. Even Europe has lots of people fleeing to small surrounding towns. Problem one we live in a democracy and most people want that type of housing. OK you are dictator. You what ban any greenfield housing or add a $400,000 fee or whatever. Sure the old suburbs will densify. But all housing will be much more expensive and your generation will be priced out or at least those making an average income. So your fantasy Ottawa has cut it's emissions by about 30 seconds of the growth in Carbon output in China. Great. Congrats! Too bad everyone lives in Gatineau except those too poor to move or rich enough to stay.

Eliminate? NO. Even I’m not crazy enough to believe that would happen. I do want their externalities priced in. What do you think would happen if suburban homes accurately reflected the cost of building rail, roads, water mains, sewers, etc to them? For one, I’m sure a lot more folks would suddenly become far more amenable to 3-storey towns as the default SFH. And you’d see far more cycling of older folks into condos, freeing up those homes for younger families. As it stands, we have boomers hanging on to homes inside the greenbelt and making folks with kids spend 2 hrs per day in their cars from Stittsville and Rockland.

We’re a city of a million on this side of the river, and we’re fast heading for GTA-like traffic conditions, with no significant room to grow our road network into the core. What are you going to say when Carp, Cumberland and Manotick want LRT extended to them because those exurbs are now becoming suburbs? What are you going to tell people in Barrhaven and Kanata and Orleans, when the highways are jammed up at 6am and 3pm, with peak going to 3 hrs each, thanks to sprawl?

Your reaction does show the likely outcome though. Nobody in Ottawa is going to discuss this until a good chunk of the public is losing 3-4 hrs a day on the Queensway.

[Corvulpes]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I presume we are still starting service with 13 trains instead of 15.

Yep. Looks like for at least until December.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

And you’d see far more cycling of older folks into condos, freeing up those homes for younger families. As it stands, we have boomers hanging on to homes inside the greenbelt and making folks with kids spend 2 hrs per day in their cars from Stittsville and Rockland.

This is a big issue. And current public policy is trying to do the opposite.. look at all the spending/emphasis on programs designed to encourage seniors to "stay at home" as long as possible. We should be doing exactly the opposite, trying to get people to downside to condos or retirement homes as soon as possible. I think we need more "mature adult" housing; developments that are designed for an active lifestyle for people who are old enough to not need an SFH anymore but too young to move into an old folks home (say people aged 60 to 75). Not only would that free up housing in mature neighbourhoods for younger families, it would probably be better for the older people's physical and mental health as well.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by CityTech

This is a big issue. And current public policy is trying to do the opposite.. look at all the spending/emphasis on programs designed to encourage seniors to "stay at home" as long as possible. We should be doing exactly the opposite, trying to get people to downside to condos or retirement homes as soon as possible. I think we need more "mature adult" housing; developments that are designed for an active lifestyle for people who are old enough to not need an SFH anymore but too young to move into an old folks home (say people aged 60 to 75). Not only would that free up housing in mature neighbourhoods for younger families, it would probably be better for the older people's physical and mental health as well.

Our current planning framework is absolutely ridiculous and indefensible. And now that the city is growing like mad, the flaws are going to become abundantly clear. Traffic, for example, is not going to budge one iota after Stage 2. And even if we build Stage 3, we'll have people living in what were previously exurbs driving and whining about traffic.

People complain about how restrictive it would be to shape housing demand through policy. Yet apparently, they don't seem to be mind the environmental or financial consequences at all. Let say you are a Boomer who doesn't give a shit about climate change like most of the folks here. I still don't get why you want to see financially unsustainable sprawl and insane traffic levels. Keep up the current path and five digit tax bills will be the norm in a decade, as both service growth pressures at the edge of sprawl and infrastructure renewal demands hit. We can join the club of sprawling 905 municipalities with high property taxes and bumper-to-bumper traffic on all major avenues for 6 hrs per day.

On the transit front, this is going to have some disastrous consequences. Building LRT to and through low-density suburbs means a very high cost for every rider. And that means no funds to build lines inside the Greenbelt. Bank St. subway? Rideau-Montreal LRT? Double tracked Trillium? Forget it. We need to pay for extensions to Carp, Manotick and Cumberland.

[Mikeed]

Originally Posted by OtrainUser

On the transit front, this is going to have some disastrous consequences. Building LRT to and through low-density suburbs means a very high cost for every rider. And that means no funds to build lines inside the Greenbelt. Bank St. subway? Rideau-Montreal LRT? Double tracked Trillium? Forget it. We need to pay for extensions to Carp, Manotick and Cumberland.

Arguably Phase 3 should be scaled back and more emphasis placed on suburban and urban BRT and transitways.

But I'm also fundamentally of the opinion that in the long term, Ottawa should aim to have the Trillium line converted to the confed. Line specs, but in doing so consume the Southeast transitway south of Heron. North of Heron stretch of transitway remains in use for urban brt connections. And the airport rail link can be accomplished with light heavy rail commuter service, and can terminate at the rail station- it's still a 1 transfer ride to dt. This can form the basis of some kind of Ontario northland regional rail service. "GO Ottawa Valley.

The needs of travel are always regional in nature.

BRT I think is still the future of urban transit at a large scale. Especially as we will start to see the examples of 'autonomous-electric' brt.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Corvulpes

Yep. Looks like for at least until December.

Are the issues that prevent running 15 trains considered minor defects?

[TheMatth69]

Question or Opinion ...
Do you guys think that Lyon Station will bring life back, and even a new development chapter inside the Place De Ville mall ?
Considering the flow of people that will be going in and out of the mall we may see a development similar to Montreal's ''Montreal Souterrain''. I really don't see the mall staying branded as ''Ottawa's dead mall''. Plus I think that we are really missing a big mall in the downtown core (CBD).

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by TheMatth69

Question or Opinion ...
Do you guys think that Lyon Station will bring life back, and even a new development chapter inside the Place De Ville mall ?
Considering the flow of people that will be going in and out of the mall we may see a development similar to Montreal's ''Montreal Souterrain''. I really don't see the mall staying branded as ''Ottawa's dead mall''. Plus I think that we are really missing a big mall in the downtown core (CBD).

At this point in time, I'm not too confident. Brookfield had 5 years to prepare for the opening of the Line knowing they would get the absolute best connection, and all they did was re-build the plaza between Tower C and Podium, almost finish replacing the escalators at PdV I, removed the fountain at PdV I (arguably the best PdV outdoor feature), and started work on maybe re-opening a corridor for who-knows what. The rest of the mall is still stuck in its 80s glory. No new retail. Abandoned cinema, still abandoned. Surface parking lot re-built with much more permenancy than before.

With all the hype in 2008 about the exciting opportunities a subway would bring, once it became reality, developers shied away from any sort of underground development.

At least Morgard, Cadillac Fairview and Bentall Kennedy jumped at the chance of offering a fresh new face to subway riders, but Brookfield's efforts have been quite disappointing.

So no, I'm not very confident Ottawa will ever get anything resembling the RESO or PATH. Or anything beyond the status quo, quite frankly. That is unless the City ensured future direct connections to other nearby buildings thanks to the ever elusive knock-out panels we no longer hear about.

Claridge Moon, we now know, will not be connected. It's possible Morguard and the City have made an arrangement to one day connect the Hilton Complex, but that is dependent on the deal struck with PdV, which we are not privy to at this point in time.

At Parliament, one would hope, we will one day see an indoor connection to the World Exchange Plaza (WEP). Sooner, rather than later possibly, since Parliament might not have enough access points (elevators and escalators) from street level.

Rideau is extremely deep, and I don't see how any other connections could be made, nor needed quite honestly, unless further underground transit is built in the future (connection to an eventual second east-west line or underground Gatineau line terminating at Rideau).

If I had any sort of influence, I would like to see the following. All underground. Any new entrance would include double escalators, double elevators and stairs:

Lyon Underground Complex

• Tunnel between the Marriott and C.D. Howe (2021);
• Direct connection from Lyon Station to the Hilton Complex (2025);
• Path from PdV, south to Constitution Square (2025) and Minto (2028) and east from Minto to Jean Edmonds and Standard Life (Morguard Block, by 2030);
• Tunnel from Constitution Square west to former Alterna site (2032);
• PdV I to future PdV III to the east and C.D. to future PdV III (2035)

Parliament Underground Complex

• New entrance inside the WEP (2024);
• Tunnel between WEP and SunLife ((2030) maybe impossible due to WEP parking ramp);
• Hardy Arcade becomes entrance from both Queen and Sparks (2035)

Rideau Complex

• New 5 star hotel encasing the old Registrar's Office on Nicholas, plugged into the Rideau Centre (2023)
• Tunnel system connecting the Convention Centre with Union Station future use, Château Laurier (tunnel already exists) and NAC (2025);
• Mixed condo and office tower plugged into Rideau Centre where parking garage sits today (2030);
• Connection to redeveloped HBC/Chapters/Plaza Building, with HBC and Plaza structure and heritage features fully retained and resorted (2035).

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

At this point in time, I'm not too confident. Brookfield had 5 years to prepare for the opening of the Line knowing they would get the absolute best connection, and all they did was re-build the plaza between Tower C and Podium, almost finish replacing the escalators at PdV I, removed the fountain at PdV I (arguably the best PdV outdoor feature), and started work on maybe re-opening a corridor for who-knows what. The rest of the mall is still stuck in its 80s glory. No new retail. Abandoned cinema, still abandoned. Surface parking lot re-built with much more permenancy than before.

With all the hype in 2008 about the exciting opportunities a subway would bring, once it became reality, developers shied away from any sort of underground development.

At least Morgard, Cadillac Fairview and Bentall Kennedy jumped at the chance of offering a fresh new face to subway riders, but Brookfield's efforts have been quite disappointing.

So no, I'm not very confident Ottawa will ever get anything resembling the RESO or PATH. Or anything beyond the status quo, quite frankly. That is unless the City ensured future direct connections to other nearby buildings thanks to the ever elusive knock-out panels we no longer hear about.

Claridge Moon, we now know, will not be connected. It's possible Morguard and the City have made an arrangement to one day connect the Hilton Complex, but that is dependent on the deal struck with PdV, which we are not privy to at this point in time.

At Parliament, one would hope, we will one day see an indoor connection to the World Exchange Plaza (WEP). Sooner, rather than later possibly, since Parliament might not have enough access points (elevators and escalators) from street level.

Rideau is extremely deep, and I don't see how any other connections could be made, nor needed quite honestly, unless further underground transit is built in the future (connection to an eventual second east-west line or underground Gatineau line terminating at Rideau).

If I had any sort of influence, I would like to see the following. All underground. Any new entrance would include double escalators, double elevators and stairs:

Lyon Underground Complex

• Tunnel between the Marriott and C.D. Howe (2021);
• Direct connection from Lyon Station to the Hilton Complex (2025);
• Path from PdV, south to Constitution Square (2025) and Minto (2028) and east from Minto to Jean Edmonds and Standard Life (Morguard Block, by 2030);
• Tunnel from Constitution Square west to former Alterna site (2032);
• PdV I to future PdV III to the east and C.D. to future PdV III (2035)

Parliament Underground Complex

• New entrance inside the WEP (2024);
• Tunnel between WEP and SunLife ((2030) maybe impossible due to WEP parking ramp);
• Hardy Arcade becomes entrance from both Queen and Sparks (2035)

Rideau Complex

• New 5 star hotel encasing the old Registrar's Office on Nicholas, plugged into the Rideau Centre (2023)
• Tunnel system connecting the Convention Centre with Union Station future use, Château Laurier (tunnel already exists) and NAC (2025);
• Mixed condo and office tower plugged into Rideau Centre where parking garage sits today (2030);
• Connection to redeveloped HBC/Chapters/Plaza Building, with HBC and Plaza structure and heritage features fully retained and resorted (2035).

I work at WEP, it's not really feasible to have a direct connection given the underground structure and the location of the underground loading area taking the entire north side. It was designed for a skybridge connection to the north, but that's not possible now so that vestibule is now an odd stadium like seating area off the food court. An underground pedestrian route would have to come from the Sheraton to the South, maybe via a diagonal crossing under O'Conner and Albert to Sunlife. Construction of this sort might be possible during the rebuild of Albert. Being a condo building, I don't see Claridge moon not having a direct indoor connection much of a loss. All the ground level retail would be accessed via the street anyway.

I definitely could see linkages to Constitution square and Minto being built when Albert and Slater are redone. Until the buses come off it's too critical a transportation link to dig up for tunnels. In fact there is a work area in Pdv that branches off to the north, I wondered if that is prep work for a future link. It's good for PdV's retail concourse if those complexes to the South funnel their commuters through PdV.


I think linkages might develop organically, which is the way it should be. An explicit building program might not work out, you may end up with Edmonton's pedway system, rather then something like Reso. Edmonton's pedway is a lifeless set of tunnels, sometimes of questionable safety.

https://citymuseumedmonton.ca/2016/08/16/edmonton-and-its-pedway/

[pattherat]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Are the issues that prevent running 15 trains considered minor defects?

He probably doesn’t know, since he’s probably just a guy who listens on the radio frequency. I would say Ken Woods on Twitter would be a better source. (Has a picture of his ERO badge on his feed so you know he is actually on the tracks in the vehicles)

[Horus]

Originally Posted by TheMatth69

Question or Opinion ...
Do you guys think that Lyon Station will bring life back, and even a new development chapter inside the Place De Ville mall ?
Considering the flow of people that will be going in and out of the mall we may see a development similar to Montreal's ''Montreal Souterrain''. I really don't see the mall staying branded as ''Ottawa's dead mall''. Plus I think that we are really missing a big mall in the downtown core (CBD).

So is the Rideau Centre not downtown enough, or not big enough as a mall?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

I work at WEP, it's not really feasible to have a direct connection given the underground structure and the location of the underground loading area taking the entire north side. It was designed for a skybridge connection to the north, but that's not possible now so that vestibule is now an odd stadium like seating area off the food court. An underground pedestrian route would have to come from the Sheraton to the South, maybe via a diagonal crossing under O'Conner and Albert to Sunlife. Construction of this sort might be possible during the rebuild of Albert. Being a condo building, I don't see Claridge moon not having a direct indoor connection much of a loss. All the ground level retail would be accessed via the street anyway.

I definitely could see linkages to Constitution square and Minto being built when Albert and Slater are redone. Until the buses come off it's too critical a transportation link to dig up for tunnels. In fact there is a work area in Pdv that branches off to the north, I wondered if that is prep work for a future link. It's good for PdV's retail concourse if those complexes to the South funnel their commuters through PdV.


I think linkages might develop organically, which is the way it should be. An explicit building program might not work out, you may end up with Edmonton's pedway system, rather then something like Reso. Edmonton's pedway is a lifeless set of tunnels, sometimes of questionable safety.

https://citymuseumedmonton.ca/2016/08/16/edmonton-and-its-pedway/

Based on the original plans for the WEP, the complex might have been built with the idea of an underground connection to a transit line under Albert, where the bus tunnel was planned at the time (twin tunnels under Albert and Slater). I did not know the receiving area is along the north side.

I think an entrance at the WEP might be possible because ground level on the Albert side is below ground on the Queen side, so if a tunnel pertruding from that level, north under the sidewalk and vertical circulation was built under the sidewalk, it could work. Parliament is the station most likely to need an additional entrance, and that's the only spot I could imagine it, unless it was a pure sidewalk entrance as original planned on the WEP corner of Queen and O'Connor.

For Claridge Moon, unless they had a hotel component, I agree it's not a massive loss.

For Constitution Square, I'm not quite sure how it would work due to the way the parking garage is laid out. They could give up a few parking spots, however, we would end up with a PdV-CS and CS-Minto connections, but that tunnel could not be continuous.

It will be much harder to build this type of underground infrastructure in Ottawa since the vast majority of our downtown is already built-up. Montreal, Toronto and even Edmonton and Winnipeg were developed in unison with the modern towers.

[PHrenetic]

Good Day. Spotter report on Belfast.

Passed there at 06:15 this morning, and they were launching doubles from both launch tracks, with at least one more lined up waiting in the loops behind off to the east side.
(I cannot really see back into the loops from Belfast with the additional short barrier wall at the southeast corner of the MSF bldg).

And, the 4 new LRVs....are still at the very back of the barns at the extreme west end, untouched since July.
They still have open top roofline structures, and protective blue film on the sides of the noses.

EnJoy!