Confederation Line (Stage 1) | In Service 1.0

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by NOWINYOW

Which somewhat defends my position that LRT should not be built until all the pieces are in place. The BRT routes, from the beginning, should have been built. Including the downtown tunnel and the section from LeBreton to Lincoln Fields area. Once complete it would have been one or two years of traffic hell as buses are removed and tracks laid down. But just one or two years.

No single extension of a BRT route would have impeded buses from using existing BRT while portions were built out.

As it stands now, portions of the BRT will be shut for buses for track addition from Campus to Blair. Then the process will need to be repeated again for Lincoln Fields to Baseline, Baseline to Barrhaven, Queensway/Woodroffe to Bayshore, Bayshore to Kanata, Blair to Orleans and Hurdman to South Keys.

Moot point. Now the city will be experiencing construction/reconstruction upheaval in sections for decades. Transit users will be doing multiple transfers between buses/trains unnecessarily.

There is almost no chance for a full Hurdman to South Keys segment due to transfer issues and ridership (any line on the SE Transitway would require a transfer at Hurdman). That is what makes the Bank Street subway more attractive, in addition to the fact that it provides a new downtown access and serves areas not served by rapid transit presently (in addition, ridership is fairly low in the stations between Billings Bridge and Hurdman where transfers would be necessary to go downtown). Although the southern part of the SE Transitway (from Walkley Road southward) may be useful as part of that route.

My recommended plan for the SE Transitway:

Hurdman to Heron - Remain as BRT, connect to east-west line on Baseline Road (transfer to LRT at Billings Bridge)
Heron to Walkley - Remove corridor completely, grade it out to nature (section still served by O-Train)
Walkley to South Keys (and beyond?) - Convert to LRT as part of the Bank Street subway

In addition, some of the outer segments are parallel to major roads so would be done with little loss in service, or are parts of local route patterns so they would be kept anyway (for example, the Queensway-Bayshore section would just be the 96 before the Transitway there was built in 2010). The Baseline-Lincoln Fields section would have significant issues though, requiring more buses on Woodroffe Avenue - at least the 95s would have to run on it (perhaps express buses could shift to the 416/417 en route to the temporary Transitway connection, but would lose service to Baseline and require use of the 95 and local routes, or a transfer at Lincoln Fields).

For that reason (partially), I do NOT recommend any new Transitway construction on the ultimate LRT routing unless they run into new terrain and provide a significant advantage over the existing road network (for example, the Barrhaven local Transitway). BRT should be built, however, in new corridors not slated for LRT extensions (i.e. Baseline Road, Kanata crosstown).

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Edmonton opened their LRT line in 1978 for the Commonwealth Games. Calgary opened the C-Train in 1981. Oil Royalties during the late 1970s oil boom funded the two projects.

Ottawa was punished for their decision in 2006 and this is why the funding arrangement for Ottawa is less favourable than in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo. So, it really cost us more than the $100 million in direct costs lost. It is telling how our local Conservative MPs have given no more than luke warm support.

They didn't give us a better deal for N/S either. Both the Feds and the Province gave us less than 1/3 each for the original plan. It's not a punishment, they just like to play favourites.

If I remember correctly, it was Baird that replied all or nothing for the N/S without the downtown segment, not McGuinty.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

There is almost no chance for a full Hurdman to South Keys segment due to transfer issues and ridership (any line on the SE Transitway would require a transfer at Hurdman). That is what makes the Bank Street subway more attractive, in addition to the fact that it provides a new downtown access and serves areas not served by rapid transit presently (in addition, ridership is fairly low in the stations between Billings Bridge and Hurdman where transfers would be necessary to go downtown). Although the southern part of the SE Transitway (from Walkley Road southward) may be useful as part of that route.

My recommended plan for the SE Transitway:

Hurdman to Heron - Remain as BRT, connect to east-west line on Baseline Road (transfer to LRT at Billings Bridge)
Heron to Walkley - Remove corridor completely, grade it out to nature (section still served by O-Train)
Walkley to South Keys (and beyond?) - Convert to LRT as part of the Bank Street subway

Hurdman to Heron - I agree that the S/E Transitway should not be converted. The ridership is not there and likely never will be.
Heron to Walkley - Again, totally agree that it shoul be removed. But I would opt for selling it to developers as opposed to making another strip of green space.
Walkley to South Keys . I would even go as far as selling the right of way to South Keys. I think the Bank Street subway should have its terminus at Billings Bridge, although it could go further south where we might have more room for the subway yards.

[S-Man]

Holy Christ, can the proverbial horse be dug up and flogged more in this thread?

Like Groundhog Day around here.

Yes, Ottawa is behind the times. Yes, there should have been a tunnel build long ago. Yes, we should have followed Calgary and Edmonton's lead. Yes, the N-S LRT was a blow and possibly a bad idea to begin with. No, building a small section of that plan wouldn't have flown with the feds, province or frankly, the people of Ottawa.

Yes, the 1/3 funding from prov/feds degraded in worth between 2006 and 2013 - imagine that! Yes, Tories are baby-eaters who want you dead. Yes, Toronto gets gold-plated toilet paper paid for by you.

And so forth and so on...

Hey, as an aside, when will real digging begin on the actual subject of this thread?

[Beedok]

Ottawa is still running better than Hamilton on the transit front. Hamilton can barely agree to build a glorified streetcar.

[NOWINYOW]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Hurdman to Heron - I agree that the S/E Transitway should not be converted. The ridership is not there and likely never will be.
Heron to Walkley - Again, totally agree that it shoul be removed. But I would opt for selling it to developers as opposed to making another strip of green space.
Walkley to South Keys . I would even go as far as selling the right of way to South Keys. I think the Bank Street subway should have its terminus at Billings Bridge, although it could go further south where we might have more room for the subway yards.

Insofar as Hurdman-Heron, I'd suggest it would be the best option to get LRT to the airport, extending from Heron.

Bank street subway? That's decades and decades away, if ever.

The city is highly in debt now. New number released just this past week. While still manageable (??) it's going to put a hamper on any new radical transit extensions - like Bank street subway.

In sim city, that might play out well. The reality is, once the western LRT (LeBreton to Lincoln Fields area) gets built, there won't be the money for massive tunneling through Centre town south. The day of debt reckoning will come.

[1overcosc]

That's why I'm hopeful that the new 1% transit sales tax is given the green light by the province. It would have to be implemented province-wide thanks to the HST agreement, and every indication from Wynne & Murray is that if that happens, all municipalities will get money. In Ottawa that would mean something like $6 to $7 billion over 25 years--just in provincial funding! With the $3.1 billion of municipal money plus a few billion from the feds, we could build practically all of our pipe dream transit projects, like the entire ultimate LRT network in the master plan plus a Bank St subway and a shitton of crosstown and suburban BRTs.

As for the issue of sales tax going up from 13% to 14%, I personally say BRING IT ON. Sales tax was 15% only a few years ago. Much better transit and all the great things it creates are worth paying an extra 1% on everything I buy.

[NOWINYOW]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

As for the issue of sales tax going up from 13% to 14%, I personally say BRING IT ON. Sales tax was 15% only a few years ago. Much better transit and all the great things it creates are worth paying an extra 1% on everything I buy.

I wish I shared your optimism.

The city can't build a transit based on "maybe" a tax revenue. I'm all for transit, but it needs to be sustainable.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by OTSkyline

2) Kitcher/Waterloo (with a combined population of 477,000) will also have its own LRT system! The first phase will be 15km and host 18 stations. Construction is bound to start in 2014 and finish in 2017.

I am not overly impressed with the KW LRT plan myself.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by NOWINYOW

It's going to be well over a decade before the LRT is sufficient for the needs of people west of the downtown core. Local bus transfer onto to BRT transfer onto LRT to get downtown VS one express bus now.

Or east of it, for that matter. The inner-city neighbourhoods east of downtown will still be dependent on inadequate bus transit - not even rapid - and have shitty access to the LRT, just as there is currently shitty access to B"R"T.

The tunnel should have been built 20 years ago,

Yes...

even if it was (at the time) for BRT.

... but no. A BRT tunnel would have been much more expensive than going with LRT from the start. BRT anything is more expensive, in the mid- to long-term, than going with LRT from the start, as Winnipeg and Gatineau will learn in about 30 years.

Also: abolish the NCC.

[1overcosc]

<rant>The Rapibus is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. They're building BRT... RIGHT NEXT TO A FRIGGEN RAILWAY TRACK.

And they're not having Ottawa-style express routes either, they're making people transfer onto buses that go right and up down the Rapibus corridor. How is that any better than a metro/LRT doing the exact same thing... They should have created a tram-train system of LRT on the railway then running directly onto streets in downtown Hull & Ottawa. Actually, ideally Gatineau service would be a line on an Ottawa metro system but of course Gatineau wants to be all Quebecois pride and do their own thing all the time</rant>

Back on track, what's the status of Confederation Line construction? I haven't been downtown in a while so I haven't seen anything. They started digging on the east tunnel portal yet?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

<rant>The Rapibus is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. They're building BRT... RIGHT NEXT TO A FRIGGEN RAILWAY TRACK.

And they're not having Ottawa-style express routes either, they're making people transfer onto buses that go right and up down the Rapibus corridor. How is that any better than a metro/LRT doing the exact same thing... They should have created a tram-train system of LRT on the railway then running directly onto streets in downtown Hull & Ottawa. Actually, ideally Gatineau service would be a line on an Ottawa metro system but of course Gatineau wants to be all Quebecois pride and do their own thing all the time</rant>

Back on track, what's the status of Confederation Line construction? I haven't been downtown in a while so I haven't seen anything. They started digging on the east tunnel portal yet?

To be fair to Gatineau, they could not have used the existing track as is unless it was for GO Transit style commuter rail which is great for far flung suburbs but not to serve an area that's practically Downtown. I still think that they should have built "classic" LRT and once in Hull split between a route across the POW (we might have been able to keep it single track) to Bayview and another along Laurier to the Museum of Civilization, maybe across to Ottawa and the Rideau centre area (station behind Hudson Bay/Freiman's). Thirty years down the road, the rail line could be upgraded to rapid transit if needed.

Three things are currently happening with the Confederation Line; 1. prep work to start digging the western portal of the downtown subway (steel walls to hold up dirt while digging), 2. they are digging the eastern portal in the Waller at Nicholas area and 3., the demolition of commercial and industrial properties for the Belfast Yards is well under way.

Bank Street Subway; I realize it probably won't happen for decades if ever. I still think it's needed due to major developments on Bank and Rideau and would be a huge catalyst for redevelopment in other areas such as Billings and Montreal Road.

[NOWINYOW]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Bank Street Subway; I realize it probably won't happen for decades if ever. I still think it's needed due to major developments on Bank and Rideau and would be a huge catalyst for redevelopment in other areas such as Billings and Montreal Road.

Decades at least, if ever. Nice idea but too expensive for little return.

To make it even somewhat viable, it would have to start at the Confederation line and continue down to Walkley or Heron. Maybe South Keys area.

[NOWINYOW]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

<rant>The Rapibus is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. They're building BRT... RIGHT NEXT TO A FRIGGEN RAILWAY TRACK.

And they're not having Ottawa-style express routes either, they're making people transfer onto buses that go right and up down the Rapibus corridor. How is that any better than a metro/LRT doing the exact same thing... They should have created a tram-train system of LRT on the railway then running directly onto streets in downtown Hull & Ottawa. Actually, ideally Gatineau service would be a line on an Ottawa metro system but of course Gatineau wants to be all Quebecois pride and do their own thing all the time</rant>

Back on track, what's the status of Confederation Line construction? I haven't been downtown in a while so I haven't seen anything. They started digging on the east tunnel portal yet?

Gatineau is doing what they can afford to do, with the resources they have. They're not over extending themselves.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by NOWINYOW

Gatineau is doing what they can afford to do, with the resources they have. They're not over extending themselves.

Unless the Federal Government (and by that I don't mean the NCC, but Parliament) decide to come up with some big vision for metropolitan wide transit system as they did in 1910s (Holt-Bennett, never built because of the war and burning of the Centre Block) and 1960s (Hammer Report, canceled due to underestimation of population growth), we likely won't ever see the Bank-Rideau-Montreal subway or any sot of seamless interprovincial service and maps.

I agree, Gatineau is doing what they thought was the best option both financially and service wise partly based on Ottawa's flip flopping last decade.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by NOWINYOW

Gatineau is doing what they can afford to do, with the resources they have. They're not over extending themselves.

Maybe not, but I really wish municipalities would get a bit more comfortable with how willing they are to "extend", rather than ending up building a transit system twice, which is what will happen.

[eemy]

There's not much so far, but the folks over at transitottawa.ca put up some photos of the construction progress.

http://www.transitottawa.ca/2013/07/confederation-line-tunnel-construction.html

[rocketphish]

‘Richmond Underground’ LRT credited with long-planned Tunney’s Pasture construction

By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN August 12, 2013 8:02 PM

OTTAWA — The western extension of the light-rail system the city favours will spur the redevelopment of Tunney’s Pasture the federal government is planning, according to calculations released by the city in support of its plans, but it wouldn’t happen at all if the city built a rail line along Carling Avenue instead.

The assumption is built into a rough assessment by city treasurer Marian Simulik of the new development a western LRT line can be expected to spark and how much money the city would make from that development in construction charges and new taxes. She did a similar job in the spring on a hypothetical $2-billion-plus rail line along Carling to Lincoln Fields, which found that the extra development a new rail line would promote there isn’t enough to make a Carling line make more sense than the $1-billion western line the city’s experts say is best. That would run west through the existing Transitway trench and then get to Lincoln Fields using a stretch of land close to the Ottawa River and then a tunnel under Richmond Road.

Deputy city manager Nancy Schepers sent the document to Underground Solution, a community group demanding that the whole planned line along the river be buried. It’s billed as “an addendum to the Carling Ave LRT analysis” but hasn’t been added to the Carling analysis, which is posted to the city website.

“Please note that these projections include planned development at Tunney’s Pasture but exclude Bayview and Lincoln Fields stations as they are the same for both routes,” Schepers wrote.

For both routes, the city’s urban-planning department went over all the properties within 600 metres of a potential station, which is how far the planners consider it reasonable to expect people to walk to catch a train. They looked for all the vacant lots and the ones crying out for intensification — the strip malls, parking lots and low-density uses, which would be a whole lot more valuable with train service. Along Carling, they found 125 such properties; along the Richmond Underground, 105.

But the land they spotted that would benefit from the Richmond Underground includes the biggest government complex in Ottawa. Tunney’s Pasture and its massive office campus are getting a new light-rail station in the first phase of rail construction, which is underway now, and the federal government has been planning a redevelopment there for years. Its consultants offered two visions for the future of Tunney’s Pasture last fall, one of them with nearly four million square feet of new office space and one with nearly five million.

(Place Bell, Ottawa’s single biggest office building, has slightly under a million square feet of space.)

In Simulik’s assessment, the Richmond Underground gets credit for 5.4 million square feet of new office space, bringing with it almost $15 million a year in new property taxes for the city. A Carling line gets credit for just 1.15 million square feet of offices, worth $3.1 million a year. Each line also gets credit for one-time development charges.

The document is genuine, city spokesman Michael FitzPatrick confirmed Monday. Nobody could explain by the end of the day why the Tunney’s Pasture construction only counts in favour of one of the lines.

At “build-out,” decades from now, the two lines would be roughly equal in how much residential and retail development they’d promote, according to the city. It’s office space that’s the big difference. Adding the federal government’s planned new space at Tunney’s Pasture to Simulik’s tally for Carling Avenue makes the development potential of the two hypothetical lines almost exactly the same.

That doesn’t turn the debate over the two lines upside-down, or wouldn’t have if the figures had been released before city council nailed down the Richmond Underground as its choice for a western rail route in July. Besides costing twice as much to build (mostly because it would have to be elevated over the major north-south roads that intersect with Carling), a Carling line would be significantly slower for commuters heading into and out of downtown and would leave Tunney’s Pasture hanging out on a one-station stub of a line west of Bayview station.

Neither line comes anywhere close to paying for itself just by promoting new development close to its stations, at least not within the 30-year life of the loans Simulik assumed the city would take out to pay for whatever it builds. Even juiced with the Tunney’s Pasture project, the Richmond Underground only covers 11.3 per cent of its costs when measured that way. Without the Tunney’s Pasture development, a Carling line would cover about 3.5 per cent of its costs; even with all that development included, the figure is still in the single digits.

Nobody is talking about starting to build the new line before 2018, when the first round of LRT construction is supposed to be finished. The National Capital Commission hasn’t yet agreed to let the city use riverfront land the commission owns and the city needs for the Richmond Underground, but both sides have said publicly they think they can get to a deal.

[email protected]

ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Ri...h+long+planned+Tunney/8780274/story.html

[J.OT13]

That reminds me, after CBC finished talking about the 1870s water main being replaced under Queen Street (they don't make em' like they used to), he said they will start digging the PdV access shaft for the subway next summer.

[cr872190]

Since this thread continually goes so far off topic is there any chance we could start another thread with JUST construction/development updates?

In fact I find it very strange that the city of Ottawa has not created a site/portal with weekly or periodic updates. In fact the www.ottawalightrail.com site has not changed a bit since that presentation was uploaded in december/january. Very disappointing. I think webcams at the tunnel entrances and train yards depot would be a very nice touch.