Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[Uhuniau]

That crowd was something.

[rocketphish]

Transpo manager acknowledges LRT social communications breakdown, pledges improvement

Staff Reporter, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: September 28, 2019

OC Transpo management says it will “continue to work to improve our communications and ensure alerts are communicated to customers as soon as possible,” after some LRT customers complained they were stranded at Tunney’s Pasture Station for up to an hour Thursday without a clue as to the problem.

“(Thursday), between 3 and 4 pm, some customers may have experienced longer commute times on Line 1, ranging from 5 to 20 minute, depending on the location they boarded the train,” said Pat Scrimgeour, director of transit customer systems and planning, in a communiqué issued by the city.

Scrimgeour said the service had planned “external alerts” for its website and social media regarding delays on O-Train Line 1.

“However, we recognize that in this instance there was a delay in issuing the (social media) alerts …

“Staff can confirm that in-station and on-train updates were provided on Line 1 with the most up-to-date information.”

Several people, including Sarah Wright-Gilbert, one of five citizen commissioners, on the city’s 12-member transit commission, tweeted about the lack of information about the delays .

Wright-Gilbert said Friday she was pleased that Scrimgeour acknowledged the problem and with his explanation of the breakdown.

“I would like to see OC Transpo be more transparent and proactive with their communication to customers, as this has been a long-standing issue,” Wright-Gilbert said in a statement.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...unications-breakdown-pledges-improvement

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by ars

Singapore is an extreme example, both Japan and Korea have food stalls/vending machines, and sometimes full blown sit down restaurants, in their stations and every single station in those countries remain sparkling clean. It all depends on how well the crowds and the city maintain the cleanliness of the stations.

Agreed. Singapore has also banned durian's from their transit system.


This photo of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) is courtesy of TripAdvisor

[J.OT13]

This is my first day working since Line 1 opened. We drove in and parked at Place de Ville as per our regular routine.

I didn't see much action at the station entrances today as I would have expected. I understand that in the morning, people coming out of the station will come in waves, so it might just be that our driving in and walking out timing did not coincide with a train leaving the station.

I got back out to the PdV concourse at around 11:15 to drop a parking pass and walked through Lyon's PdV concourse, up to the Podium entrance and around the block in front of Delta and I saw, maybe, 2 people entering the station. Surprised at how empty it was.

Went at my office's meeting room window (facing PdV) a few times and saw little to no traffic coming in or out of the station.

It's still early and we have one more week of parallel bus service, but so far it seems the line is only used at rush hour, as was (is) the bus system. The only exception of course was last Friday's climate strike, when the trains were packed.

My partner and I will be testing out the system over the next few months to see it's reliability and how busy it gets (crush load or enough space to breath). If all goes well, we could make the switch to transit by early January. Giving up that sweet PdV parking pass will be hard though. Very convenient, especially for appointments and errands.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

This is my first day working since Line 1 opened. We drove in and parked at Place de Ville as per our regular routine.

I didn't see much action at the station entrances today as I would have expected. I understand that in the morning, people coming out of the station will come in waves, so it might just be that our driving in and walking out timing did not coincide with a train leaving the station.

I got back out to the PdV concourse at around 11:15 to drop a parking pass and walked through Lyon's PdV concourse, up to the Podium entrance and around the block in front of Delta and I saw, maybe, 2 people entering the station. Surprised at how empty it was.

Went at my office's meeting room window (facing PdV) a few times and saw little to no traffic coming in or out of the station.

It's still early and we have one more week of parallel bus service, but so far it seems the line is only used at rush hour, as was (is) the bus system. The only exception of course was last Friday's climate strike, when the trains were packed.

My partner and I will be testing out the system over the next few months to see it's reliability and how busy it gets (crush load or enough space to breath). If all goes well, we could make the switch to transit by early January. Giving up that sweet PdV parking pass will be hard though. Very convenient, especially for appointments and errands.

That pass must be quite expensive, no?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That pass must be quite expensive, no?

Cheaper than 2 transit passes, sadly. About $20 cheaper by October 1. That's one of the reasons we opted for driving instead.

Of course, when you consider time off (say three weeks vacation in September), we could have opted for single ride fares for those 2 weeks of working and saved a bundle on parking.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

This is my first day working since Line 1 opened. We drove in and parked at Place de Ville as per our regular routine.

I didn't see much action at the station entrances today as I would have expected. I understand that in the morning, people coming out of the station will come in waves, so it might just be that our driving in and walking out timing did not coincide with a train leaving the station.

I got back out to the PdV concourse at around 11:15 to drop a parking pass and walked through Lyon's PdV concourse, up to the Podium entrance and around the block in front of Delta and I saw, maybe, 2 people entering the station. Surprised at how empty it was.

Went at my office's meeting room window (facing PdV) a few times and saw little to no traffic coming in or out of the station.

It's still early and we have one more week of parallel bus service, but so far it seems the line is only used at rush hour, as was (is) the bus system. The only exception of course was last Friday's climate strike, when the trains were packed.

My partner and I will be testing out the system over the next few months to see it's reliability and how busy it gets (crush load or enough space to breath). If all goes well, we could make the switch to transit by early January. Giving up that sweet PdV parking pass will be hard though. Very convenient, especially for appointments and errands.

I got on the train at 9 this morning at Hurdman to get to work at World Exchange. I was surprised it was easy to get a seat. We've got a long way to go it seems before we're using up capacity, but we'll see next week how it changes things one there's no parallel buses.

[lrt's friend]

If your bus goes directly downtown, there is little incentive for transferring to the train until next week. Likewise, the return trip. I used the train one day last week figuring it to be faster going inbound. My outbound trip was a shorter walk to the bus stop so that is what I did. It was likely no faster by train. Slater Street was not that congested at 4:30 pm and we passed the train at U Ottawa and despite the bus detours, we got to the stop at Hurdman before the train passengers. The time delays at each station make the train slower. Of course, if there was a bus jam, the reverse would be true. I was surprised how fast the bus moved across downtown at the peak of rush hour.

The city has already suggested that the speed of the train will be about the same as the former bus system. Whether that statement was made with or without the bus detours is another matter.

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

we passed the train at U Ottawa and despite the bus detours, we got to the stop at Hurdman before the train passengers. The time delays at each station make the train slower.

Only comment on your statement is the bus detour is much slower in the inbound direction, which makes transferring inbound more worth it.

[le calmar]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Cheaper than 2 transit passes, sadly. About $20 cheaper by October 1. That's one of the reasons we opted for driving instead.

Of course, when you consider time off (say three weeks vacation in September), we could have opted for single ride fares for those 2 weeks of working and saved a bundle on parking.

Is there a waitlist for parking passes at PdV? If so, I understand why you would be reluctant to give it up. Otherwise it's not a big issue to get a new one down the road if needs be.

[kmcamp]

Originally Posted by Multi-modal

Only comment on your statement is the bus detour is much slower in the inbound direction, which makes transferring inbound more worth it.

I guess it depends, going east and south usually my outbound commute was the hard one. The train seems much more pleasant on my commute today than the bus. The buses seem way emptier though, so maybe that's why they are moving faster this week. The downtown dwell times for the train seem a bit long, I think they should shorten them a bit

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by le calmar

Is there a waitlist for parking passes at PdV? If so, I understand why you would be reluctant to give it up. Otherwise it's not a big issue to get a new one down the road if needs be.

Took nearly 2 years to get a spot.

[orleans_man]

Originally Posted by kmcamp

I guess it depends, going east and south usually my outbound commute was the hard one. The train seems much more pleasant on my commute today than the bus. The buses seem way emptier though, so maybe that's why they are moving faster this week. The downtown dwell times for the train seem a bit long, I think they should shorten them a bit

I think things have settled since the first week for sure. Buses and train have both been really good since mid last week in my experience.

Having parallel bus service improves downtown efficiency certainly. Buses are moving quickly though the core and the train has plenty of room too!

We will what next week brings. I think we will miss having virtual double capacity through the core though... we won't have that capacity again for a long time

[TheMatth69]

This article is the biggest scandalmonger I've ever read about the Confederation Line. This journalist has nothing else to give but negativity & dishonesty. It's the same guy that wrote an article about how unnecessary the downtown tunnel was (I believe) ...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawas-new-lrt-is-it-good-enough/

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by TheMatth69

This article is the biggest scandalmonger I've ever read about the Confederation Line. This journalist has nothing else to give but negativity & dishonesty. It's the same guy that wrote an article about how unnecessary the downtown tunnel was (I believe) ...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawas-new-lrt-is-it-good-enough/

It's an article from an architecture critic, and it couldn't be more true, IMO.

Ottawa’s new LRT: Is it good enough?

Alex Bozikovic, Architecture Critic
The Globe and Mail
Published September 27, 2019

The LRT has arrived. Ottawa’s Confederation Line began service this month and was welcomed by many as a sign of the capital’s evolution. Next stop: big-city status.

In a sense, this is great news. Ottawa’s collective aspiration to be a more transit-oriented region is laudable. But the line itself is far from perfect: The experience for riders is indifferent, and there are serious flaws in the planning of the system and how it might transform the city.

On the smallest scale, it works. The public art along the line is fantastic. Jim Verburg’s subtle installation at Rideau station and Jyhling Lee’s at Hurdman both enliven the passenger experience. At Tunney’s Pasture station in the west, Derek Root’s Gradient Spaces combines a skylight and glass-tile mosaics into richly coloured compositions.

This may be enough to distract people from the architecture and landscape, which are grey and mediocre. The 13 stations, four of them underground, show a consistent vocabulary of exposed concrete, grey ceramic tile and silver aluminum, with the odd piece of wood. Downtown, the entrance pavilions are ungainly glass boxes; outside the downtown, they’re mostly big, open structures with butterfly roofs. There are echoes of the British High-Tech tradition and architects such as Nicholas Grimshaw.

The problem is that this design is very subtle and demands great workmanship and fine materials. You don’t find those in Canadian public-works projects these days. The Confederation Line has plenty of poorly finished concrete and cheap ceramic tile.

Such architecture also ought to be rigorous in both concept and execution. Here, it is not. The team of architects – including Ottawa’s BBB, the transit-design team at Toronto’s IBI Group and Toronto’s Adamson Associates – have achieved quantity but not quality. There is a general sloppiness to the architecture that, in the big Canadian offices of the 1960s, would have sent people back to their drawing boards.

The average rider is not going to notice much of this. What they will notice is the indifference with which bus lines, which carry the bulk of Ottawa transit passengers, are treated. I visited two of the busiest interchanges, at the government compound of Tunney’s Pasture and at Hurdman station. In each place, riders have long walks from the train to the bus stops, where they’re forced to wait on bare concrete with minimal shelter and limited seating. There’s no shade, since the few trees are sad-sack saplings. I wouldn’t want to be there in February – or in July.

Who made these specific decisions? It’s hard to say, because the $2.1-billion project was procured through a DBFM P3. In English, that’s a long-term contract with a private consortium to design, build, finance and maintain the system over a multiyear period. That consortium, Rideau Transit Group, includes construction giant EllisDon, ACS Infrastructures and SNC-Lavalin.

Even before SNC’s recent implosion, there were reasons to question this arrangement. P3 arrangements have been widely criticized over the past decade; their promised benefits of insurance against delays and cost overruns don’t always materialize. The Confederation Line was more than a year overdue.

Another issue is design quality. Such deals are highly complex and inevitably involve armies of litigators and bankers. Design always suffers, as it has on the Confederation Line.

But, having said all of that, what’s most important about any transit project is how it remakes the city. The Confederation Line gets middling marks on this score. It follows an existing bus rapid transit route, doing little to connect new places. There has even been rumbling from suburban commuters (and their councillors) whose trips are, after a reconfiguration of the bus system, actually longer. Such upheaval is necessary, though difficult, in the process of building a comprehensive transit network. And the city is already planning to extend LRT further into the suburbs – the Confederation Line east and west, and the existing Trillium line south.

lf those lines are well planned, they will encourage dense development right around their stations, gathering people who will become habitual transit riders. Ottawa’s planners are working on such transit-oriented development plans. But several of the stops opened this month aren’t well placed to serve this goal. You want a transit station to be in the centre of a neighbourhood, where people can walk to it. The Lees stop is next to a Highway 417 cloverleaf.

This Confederation Line project is the result of more than a decade of political debate and compromise. It’s not perfect, and in any city, that’s inevitable. But if Ottawa is committed to transforming itself into a transit-oriented city, it can’t afford to lock itself into a system that only works halfway well and a land-use plan that’s less than ideal. The new LRT is good for the city, but that’s not good enough.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawas-new-lrt-is-it-good-enough/

[Multi-modal]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

It's an article from an architecture critic, and it couldn't be more true, IMO.

Agreed. He brings up a lot of good, valid points. The Confederation Line is pretty good IMO, but its not beyond criticism.

The design of Hurdman's bus interchange is particularly aggravating. Pretty much everyone who is transferring from a bus (which is pretty much everyone) uses the west staircases while the east staircases / escalators go almost unused. This overloads the west side of the platform and passengers have to consciously spread out. It would have been an easy fix to shift the platform and staircases westward to better centre them around the bus platforms. I'm not even going to get into the fact that OC Transpo had the gall to build platforms at the other side of the bus loop (SW corner of the station). Let's all hope those stops are never put in to service.

[zzptichka]

Originally Posted by TheMatth69

This article is the biggest scandalmonger I've ever read about the Confederation Line. This journalist has nothing else to give but negativity & dishonesty. It's the same guy that wrote an article about how unnecessary the downtown tunnel was (I believe) ...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ottawas-new-lrt-is-it-good-enough/

It's the same guy who liked Chateau Laurier addition. He's great.

[Acajack]

I recently rode the Confederation Line for the first time.

Overall I thought it was great as far as the ride and stations were concerned.

I do get where the writer is coming from a little bit, as there are segments of the ride where you get the impression that it's kind of a "train to nowhere". These segments make up perhaps the majority of the ride when you're above ground: I am thinking between Bayview and just east of LeBreton, on both sides of Hurdman and from Cyrville to Blair. It's almost as if you're riding a train through a new city that's yet to be built yet. The post-construction landscape with lots of crushed stone and such doesn't help matters I guess. (If some of it is returned to greenspace it might improve things.

BTW I know enough about Ottawa's history and the history of the Transitway to be aware of why these areas are like this, but still... I strongly got that impression and so did my wife.

[J.OT13]

I find the landscape and architecture quite good. More investment could have been placed in material and covering at least some of the bare concrete, however.

The downtown station entrances are integrated in existing and future buildings, which limits us to small glass boxes. Integrated entrances are a feature, not a flaw. Only the Parliament elevator entrance is stand alone and we want to limit the size in order to preserve sidewalk space.

Not sure how we can criticize the origami (or "butterfly" as he calls it) design of the outdoor stations. Though the flat roofed Stage 2 station are a different story. At least add green roofs to those structures.

The architecture of both above and underground stations are fine. The execution and cheaper materials is what results in a lesser design. Hardly the architects' fault. As for his 1960s comment, the Confederation Line is far superior than Toronto's 60s stations and more accessible than Montréal's, well, all their stations.

As for the bus loops, Tunney's is (I hope) temporary, so no point in building a grand structures like those that have existed for decades in Toronto. Some improvements could have been made (steel canopy all around that could be recycled later, wider sidewalks...) but the design can be forgiven. Blair's bus loop will see volumes drop however, will remain a transfer hub for the old east-end so more could have been done. Hurdman will remain a major transfer hub for decades to come, so yes, the bus loop should have been built with more permanent structures. As for the distance between the O-Train stations and bus stops, not much we can do considering the high volume of bus lines coming in and out. All we can do is efficiently distribute the bus lines with all day routes near the entrance and rush hour routes farther out.

We could argue about P3 for ages. Fixed price could mean that the consortium will cheap out on labour, design and materials however, the maintenance contract could push them to build on a higher standard. It's a gamble really. The year delay would have happened regardless. As for the price, we will likely have to pay the additional bus detours: the City should have requested higher penalties for lateness and I don't believe the bus detours were part of the contract, however we might save a whole lot of money by passing the responsibility for the sink holes to the consortium.

It's true that the Confederation Line does little to serve new areas of the city and is very suburban centric. Other than the additional two stations along Richmond, no new areas are served. Potential for TOD however is high. Developers are more inclined to build around rail than bus. Tunney's, City Centre, LeBreton are all ripe for redevelopment. Lees might be at a highway interchange, but serves a high student population in both residential towers and university infrastructure. Hurdman will eventually re-develop. Tremblay serves VIA Rail, hotels and the baseball stadium and could welcome more development. St-Laurent and lands south of the Queensway will be re-developed. Blair is already seeing hundreds of new units. Stage 2 also has plenty of potential along Scott, Richmond and near Algonquin. To the east, Montréal, Place d'Orleans and Trim have TOD potential.

In the south end, new density will likely be near the original O-Train Line, the one most neglected in the plans...

The O-Train is not perfect, but still far superior than many other systems. It will undoubtedly transform Ottawa doe the better in due time.

[lrt's friend]

One of the points made in the article is that the stations built next to the Queensway are not ideal for TOD because the locations are less desirable. TOD may come eventually but may take some time to take place. In this respect, the stations west of downtown will have much more potential until we reach Lincoln Fields. Beyond that, we see the same problems as east of downtown.