Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[J.OT13]

They should have built a pocket track at Hurdman (now planned as part of Stage 2) and Tunney's to short turn an additional train and increase frequency in the central area. Blair to Hurdman is well served by 13 trains, but Hurdman to Tunney's requires additional service.

[J.OT13]

They should bring the 95 and 96 back from the dead to offer an alternative to those who don't work on Line 1 and they should have a (or multiple) bus line(s) that goes direct from the east end to DND on Moodie Drive. No use in forcing people who don't need to be on Line 1 onto the train.

[lrt's friend]

I have taken an unpopular stand on the design of the Confederation Line, but my fears are coming true. Actually, they are worse than I feared. I hope they can fix this, because people will quickly find other means of transportation. This has happened in Washington DC when a lack of maintenance caused serious delays on their subway network and a collapse of ridership. OC Transpo can suffer serious long-term damage if we regularly have 1 hour delays. People are going to lose confidence.

I questioned the lack of redundancy both short-term and long-term. If these door problems persist, we will need to consider some sort of parallel bus service at least until these problems are resolved once and for all. I don't know how anybody can tolerate this situation if your destination is not downtown. We have cancelled a number of cross-town bus routes that are affected by the C-Line mess as well. Unless you live in the south, you cannot bypass the C-Line for the vast majority of trips.

It also seems these trains cannot handle heavy passenger loads without problems. We were not experiencing most of these problems until this week when the trains are crowded. So, there are clearly design problems and some of those problems can be solved by extending dwell times. But that introduces more problems, because trains will run more slowly extending trip times and reducing the capacity of the whole system. In other words, trains will be even more crowded.

We cannot say that the trains are not full, when as described trains do not pick up passengers at certain stations, particularly Hurdman. I don't know how this is tolerable. More trains need to be in service. I think the first thing that might need to happen is to extend all Hurdman bus routes back into downtown at least temporarily. Also, Tunney's was designed to be a failure point. Half the city is feeding into that one station. It is too many people for one station, at least, the way we have designed this system. At least some of the buses terminating at Tunney's need to resume service to downtown until rail service is proven reliable.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Right next to the sticker that says "THIS BUTTON DOESN'T DO ANYTHING STOP PUSHING IT"

How do you train people to do this when Line 2 requires the pushing of a similar button? It is no different than saying not to push the door when it is closing on you. All our lives, we push the door on elevators to hold them open. It is OK to post a sign like this but people are going to do things automatically out of habit.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

They should have built a pocket track at Hurdman (now planned as part of Stage 2) and Tunney's to short turn an additional train and increase frequency in the central area. Blair to Hurdman is well served by 13 trains, but Hurdman to Tunney's requires additional service.

We needed to save money, so we didn't do this.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

Those "lazy bum" trips should be a public policy goal: i.e., it should be easy and cheap to incorporate quick transit trips into your day-to-day life for all kinds of purposes... not just getting to and from a 9-to-5 white-collar job.

The new configuration of downtown transit takes a lot of those "lazy bum" type trips off the table of convenient things to do with a lunch hour: the LRT is great for what it was designed for, but the time penalties of descent/ascent and larger walk distances due to fewer stations come at the expense of, among other things, the lazy bum trips.

If we want to build a transit culture in this city beyond getting muddle managers to and from Transport Canada on weekdays, we have to consider us lazy bums, too. That's another reason why the disjointed kerfluckery that is the new downtown local bus route configuration is so infuriating. It makes it that much harder for residents of the old city of Ottawa to do regular everyday things by transit in the very part of the city that would, with the right transit tools, be the most amenable part of the city to transit-oriented living.

The 'lazy bum' trips are the bread and butter of Toronto's streetcars. If people have a monthly pass, we should expect them to take short trips when it makes sense to them. We shouldn't be complaining about this. Ottawa is failing to make short trips convenient in the old urban parts of the city. Our planners need to learn that frequency and convenience will in the long-term generate more riders and revenue.

[Hybrid247]

Delete

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I have taken an unpopular stand on the design of the Confederation Line, but my fears are coming true.

Your stance is unpopular, because you've essentially argued the line should not have been built!

The concept is sound. Their execution is lacking. They've made some poor design choices (like LRT over HRT/metro), launching with too few trains, cutting too much bus service at launch, etc. Some of that will get ameliorated in due course. Doesn't invalidate the concept of the line.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The 'lazy bum' trips are the bread and butter of Toronto's streetcars. If people have a monthly pass, we should expect them to take short trips when it makes sense to them. We shouldn't be complaining about this. Ottawa is failing to make short trips convenient in the old urban parts of the city. Our planners need to learn that frequency and convenience will in the long-term generate more riders and revenue.

Except by catering to short trips you make it less convenient for long trips. Its more important to accommodate long trips.

[Ninox]

Hello, long time lurker here, thought I’d chime in.

Even on Monday without the door issue, my train left Tunney’s Pasture pretty much crush loaded with a large number of people left waiting on the platform. Only about two dozen or so people were transferring from the Trillium Line to the Confederation Line, and it seemed like they managed to squeeze on, but there is no way that Bayview can serve as a transfer point for South End commuters to connect downtown without adding more Confederation Line trains.

Transferring to the Trillium Line- of course it was packed to the gills with riders being left on the platform at both Bayview and Carling stations. This was at about 8:05am. It doesn’t help that students tend to leave their backpacks on...

Passengers who were only travelling a couple of stops out from Tunney’s seem very reluctant to move away from the doors. It’s hard to entirely blame them- I was only going one stop and I barely got out in time thanks to the narrow aisles (I had moved well into the train and yes, I had started moving towards the door well before the train approached the platform).

Overall the Confederation Line is a great addition to the city and does represent an improvement to the quality of life in Ottawa, but (as others have said) they really need to get more trains online ASAP.

Cheers!

[Radster]

For a morning chuckle.

https://www.thebeaverton.com/2019/10/oc-...commuters-leave-for-work-a-week-earlier/


OC Transpo recommends Ottawa commuters leave for work a week earlier

by Alex Huntley(@ajhuntley)

   
OTTAWA – Ottawa’s public transit service is advising that area commuters should arrive at any bus or LRT stop a week in advance as a precaution to avoid being late for work.

“We are still making the transition to incorporate the LRT into the system so please leave your homes no later than 144 hours in advance,” said an OC Transpo official. “Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

An unexpected gentle breeze caused doors to malfunction, and contact with sunlight somehow caused OC Transpo officials to prematurely cancel bus routes leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

“We hope that during this chaos, two single people will have their meet cute moment and find true love,” added the official trying to look at the benefits of a frustrating situation.

In addition to departing a week early, transit officials say that passengers will be stacked on top of each other to avoid congestion on platforms to improve efficiency and safety.

When asked by a journalist about how the LRT will perform in snow, the spokesperson appeared to be horrified.

“Oh, no,” said the spokesperson widening his eyes while loosening his tie. “We’ve never thought that snow was a possibility in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.”

At press time, passengers were told to get out and push the 50 ton trains if they wanted to get anywhere.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by CityTech

I don't think that would have helped. The system was running completely fine during the 3 week transition period; the current issues stem from high load. A partial service in the east wouldn't have had that problem.

I think human user error is at least partially to blame. I haven't been on trains at peak yet but I can just picture Ottawidiots (TM) doing dumb shit like standing at the doors and blocking passenger access while the aisles are half-empty.

It sounds like they actually had staff on board trains this morning to tell people off for stuff like this. If they can keep that up for a week or two it'll help.

That's true, but I also think over the course of 6 months or a year somebody would have pushed on the door and they would have discovered that pushing on a door (differently from any other transit system I have ever been on) causes a huge disruption.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by CityTech

I don't think that would have helped. The system was running completely fine during the 3 week transition period; the current issues stem from high load. A partial service in the east wouldn't have had that problem.

I think human user error is at least partially to blame. I haven't been on trains at peak yet but I can just picture Ottawidiots (TM) doing dumb shit like standing at the doors and blocking passenger access while the aisles are half-empty.

It sounds like they actually had staff on board trains this morning to tell people off for stuff like this. If they can keep that up for a week or two it'll help.

This is just wrong. If people are repeatedly making the same mistake, you have a human factors engineering problem, not a user problem. In this case, it's pretty damn obvious that dwell times at key downtown stations are insufficient, leading to users getting stuck in doors and then getting the doors jammed. What do you want riders to do, simply skip their stop? At that point, this system is unusable and people will stop taking transit.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Except by catering to short trips you make it less convenient for long trips. Its more important to accommodate long trips.

We should be able to accommodate both effectively.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

(Smirks and pulls out a monthly pass.)

Yeah, you see this behaviour thanks to the uPass - U of O students who live just a few blocks from campus who will stupidly wait 5s and 10s of minutes for an already packed #19 (possibly the #16, too, but I rarely see that route during peaks) which then takes 5s of minutes to crawl 10 blocks, and then multiple minutes of unnecessary dwell time to disgorge those same lazy people who would have been better off, time-wise, just walking.

Definitely a problem with monthly passes. I'd advocate for moving towards a capped pass: Every tap of your presto costs $3.50 (and maybe $1 off-peak) until you hit $120, after which each additional ride is free until the end of the month.

There's a great little video about it here (not youtube, so I can't emed).

This way, it doesn't increase costs for regular transit riders (in fact, it offers the possibility for costs to be reduced), but still disincentivizes most walk/bike-replaceable trips and allows for anti-crowding peak pricing. The result is a system which costs less to ride, doesn't crowd as much, and runs more reliably. It's a bit of a cliché, but smart pricing really is a win-win all around.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Your stance is unpopular, because you've essentially argued the line should not have been built!

The concept is sound. Their execution is lacking. They've made some poor design choices (like LRT over HRT/metro), launching with too few trains, cutting too much bus service at launch, etc. Some of that will get ameliorated in due course. Doesn't invalidate the concept of the line.

That wasn't my position. I had a couple of concepts (which all included rail east-west and a tunnel) that I knew wouldn't be built and only mentioned it a few times here years ago because of that. My main objections were of the details. Some of the early ideas I liked better but were eliminated because of cost cutting. That is also a reality.

I did think that our efforts to eliminate as many buses out of downtown as possible was an unnecessary luxury and a poor priority. Sure, we had to eliminate a majority of buses, but I have also spoken about running only one transit route through downtown was risky.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Definitely a problem with monthly passes. I'd advocate for moving towards a capped pass: Every tap of your presto costs $3.50 (and maybe $1 off-peak) until you hit $120, after which each additional ride is free until the end of the month.

There's a great little video about it here (not youtube, so I can't emed).

This way, it doesn't increase costs for regular transit riders (in fact, it offers the possibility for costs to be reduced), but still disincentivizes most walk/bike-replaceable trips and allows for anti-crowding peak pricing. The result is a system which costs less to ride, doesn't crowd as much, and runs more reliably. It's a bit of a cliché, but smart pricing really is a win-win all around.

This is poor economic analysis. Marginal utility. Econ 101. The pass becomes more valuable because it enables shorter, more discretionary trips. It's not folks who occasionally use transit, taking the LRT two stops or the bus a few blocks. It's people with a monthly pass. Whether you charge and cap (which is done on some GTA systems with Presto) or have a flat pass fare, makes little difference to this behaviour. Indeed, the entire point of charge and cap is to actually encourage transit usage by effectively giving "free" rides beyond normal commuting usage that pays for the pass.

What transit has a problem with is not general usage, but usage at specific time periods. The normal solution to this is to charge a premium at peak. But that can only work if you have road tolls as well. Otherwise, you get substitution. Commuters will drive instead of taking the train. Have peak road tolls and transit fares and then your peak demand curve will actually get flattened.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

This is just wrong. If people are repeatedly making the same mistake, you have a human factors engineering problem, not a user problem. In this case, it's pretty damn obvious that dwell times at key downtown stations are insufficient, leading to users getting stuck in doors and then getting the doors jammed. What do you want riders to do, simply skip their stop? At that point, this system is unusable and people will stop taking transit.

Riders blocking doors by not distributing throughout the train and people not getting up to walk to the doors ahead of their stop would both slow down flow massively. People in other cities don't have a problem with spreading out and getting up in advance, so there's no reason why these should be a problem here past some initial training periods.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

We should be able to accommodate both effectively.

Agreed, but if push comes to shove and one has to be picked over the other, long trips need to be put first.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I did think that our efforts to eliminate as many buses out of downtown as possible was an unnecessary luxury and a poor priority. Sure, we had to eliminate a majority of buses, but I have also spoken about running only one transit route through downtown was risky.

Not risky if properly executed. Small and medium sized cities don't always have multiple routes through their downtown cores.

In this particular case, you're have reliability issues as a result of very specific operational decisions that Council and senior city and OC Transpo staff made. Namely, they launched with fewer trains. I'll bet if they 15-16 trains on the track and service running every three minutes with the dwell times sorted out, you'll see far fewer issues.

Maybe they also need to consider a second operator on each train, as a guard/conductor, controlling the doors.