Confederation Line West LRT Extension (Stage 2) [Tunney's to Baseline/Moodie] | U/C

[Richard Eade]

I think that it is so sad when things like this plan get locked in too early. As soon as there is a possible solution, which gets preliminary approval, there is rarely any real change to it despite new information and changes that happen elsewhere.

The Cleary Station is an excellent example of this. The position of the station was hammered out by City and NCC staff during the 100-day process. Both the NCC Board and the City Council agreed on the ideas within the basic functional framework that emerged. With regard to the Cleary Station, this meant putting the station mostly under NCC land with the tracks continuing to the west under the Unitarian Church’s land.

Since that time, the City has acquiesced to the Unitarian Church and moved the westward tracks south, passing under Richmond Road sooner and, because of a large sewer, running under the linear park south of the road; instead of under the roadway.

Such a change opened up possibilities to improve the position of the Cleary Station. It could now be constructed as a central platform station spanning under Richmond Road, with an access on each side of the street. The station’s original design put one station head-house on the north-east corner of the Richmond/Cleary intersection and a second building, housing ventilation and emergency egress stairs, at the other end of the station, within NCC land. This ‘auxiliary’ building on the NCC land would not generally be used by the public but it would need maintenance access and snow clearing. By moving the station to under Richmond Road, there could still be an access in the north-east of the intersection, but there could also be a usable access in the south-west quadrant of that intersection; removing most of the need for transit customers to cross Richmond Road at grade.

Although such a change would be easy now, while the plans are at an early stage and only on paper, moving the station was not an idea that City staff was interested in entertaining. Their reasoning was that the location of the station had been previously agreed to by the NCC and the City and no adjustments could be considered. When I suggested that the NCC would likely not complain if the City was to use less of this land, I was told that the 100-day process had been finalized and there was no way that either side would want to open up that issue again.

So, despite alignment changes happening right beside the Cleary Station, there can be no improvements to the station itself – even if it makes for a more accessible, user-friendly, yet less expensive station. City staff might even see merit in repositioning the Cleary Station, but their hands are tied by chains forged in the fire of politics.

[waterloowarrior]

I'm not sure how close we are to the final design, but I do remember some significant changes between the functional design for the Confederation Line and the final version, such as the Queen Street alignment. The location for Lyon station and some of the other station designs also changed through the RFP process. Hopefully the RFP will be flexible enough to allow the various firms to propose alternative locations.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by waterloowarrior

I'm not sure how close we are to the final design, but I do remember some significant changes between the functional design for the Confederation Line and the final version, such as the Queen Street alignment. The location for Lyon station and some of the other station designs also changed through the RFP process. Hopefully the RFP will be flexible enough to allow the various firms to propose alternative locations.

Those weren't on NCC land though so the city didn't need to negotiate changes with highly bureaucratic organization when changing those designs.

[rocketphish]

Report on plans for Phase 2 of LRT pushed back
Expected to have been made public Monday evening, report now not expected until Feb. 17

By Joanne Chianello, CBC News
Posted: Feb 06, 2017 5:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Feb 06, 2017 7:38 AM ET

A report on the plans for the second phase of LRT scheduled to be made public Monday will be delayed by almost two weeks.

City council's finance and economic development committee was to meet on Feb. 13, meaning that the agenda, and its related reports, would be posted to the city's website one week earlier, as per provincial rules.

However, on Friday, city officials confirmed the meeting would be pushed back to Feb. 24, which means the report on Phase 2 of LRT won't be made public until Feb. 17.

The report is expected to be quite hefty, outlining the procurement procedure for the $3-billion project — which will have to be approved shortly by full council — and will contain details on how the financing, tendering and contracting will work.

One of the key factors to be discussed is how the bidding process can be formulated to get the best deal for taxpayers without unfairly favouring the consortium currently building Confederation Line, the Rideau Transit Group, or its member corporations.

Mayor Jim Watson chairs the finance committee, and officially he is the one to decide whether a committee can be moved.

According to an email from his spokesperson, Livia Belcea, the meeting is being delayed to account for proposed changes to the provincial gas tax revenues announced recently by the Liberal government.

Late last month, the province promised eventually to double the amount of gas tax revenues given to cities, from 2 to 4 cents per litre of gas sold.

But the increase won't begin to take effect until 2019, after the next provincial election.

Still, the finance committee report includes a long-range financial plan that "considers the entire transit picture from now until 2048, not only Stage 2 LRT," wrote Belcea.

She added that city staff "wanted some more time to do additional due diligence" on the transit affordability plan in light of the province's announcement.

The finance committee has not met since Dec. 6.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...ayed-1.3966540

[DarthVader_1961]

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-for-16-months

[White Pine]

Wow. It's stupid that the o-train will be closed for over a year and not be double tracked at the end.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by White Pine

Wow. It's stupid that the o-train will be closed for over a year and not be double tracked at the end.

I told you so. And if they ever do get around to fully double tracking, how many more years will it have to be shut down?

And look, they are rehabilitating the Rideau River bridge, but probably won't rebuild it for double tracking.

The biggest white elephant will be spur to the airport. Two transfers is two transfers too many if you want business travellers and most tourists to use it. If you are pulling luggage, who wants to have to cross platforms and go up and down escalators twice? The escalators will probably be broken half the time.

If I am still around in 2021, I will be protesting at the opening ceremony. "20 years and still not double tracked"

[rocketphish]

Originally Posted by DarthVader_1961

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-for-16-months

Second phase of LRT to cost additional $600M, O-Train to be shut down for 16 months

Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Jon Willing, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: February 16, 2017 | Last Updated: February 16, 2017 6:47 PM EST

The cost of expanding Ottawa’s light-rail transit system has increased to $3.6 billion and completing the ambitious project will force the O-Train’s Trillium Line to be shut down for at least 16 months, the Citizen has learned.

This is the first major public reveal of plans for the second phase of LRT since summer 2015. Information trickling down from the Stage 2 office ahead of a presentation at city hall on Friday indicates the rail expansion will be completed in three stages.

Extending the Trillium Line south to Bowesville Road in Riverside South and building a spur to the Ottawa International Airport would be first, with a target completion date of 2021.

The eastern arm to Trim Road would be completed by 2022.

And the western extensions to Bayshore Shopping Centre and Algonquin College would be finished by 2023.

Prioritizing the southern extension of the Trillium Line to reach the fast-growing communities of Riverside South, Findlay Creek and Leitrim, which some hope will reduce congestion on the Airport Parkway and lessen the need for the city to widen that road, would be a big win for those communities.

A massive new park-and-ride lot at the Bowesville station, possibly with washrooms, will have enough space for 3,500 vehicles.

Rail service to the airport and the EY Centre would be provided by spur off the Trillium Line at South Keys.

That means arriving or departing airline passengers will have to change trains at South Keys, as opposed to having a seamless ride between the airport and stations in the core. People coming from or going to downtown would have to change trains twice — once to switch from the Confederation to Trillium Line at Bayview station and again at South Keys to catch the airport-bound trains.

But extending the Trillium Line won’t be possible without shutting it down for more than a year.

As soon as exams at Carleton University are over in April 2020, the eight-kilometre line that runs between Bayview and Greenboro stations would close until September 2021. The city will be adding stations at Gladstone, Walkley and South Keys, plus extending passing tracks. There is also some repair work expected in the train tunnel under Dow’s Lake.

The replacement Route 107 bus, which typically goes into service whenever the Trillium Line is closed, currently travels along Preston, Carling, Bronson and Heron. But traffic congestion on Preston may force it onto different north-south roads between Bayview station and Carling, such as Bayswater Avenue and Sherwood Drive.

The second phase of LRT was initially estimated in 2013 to cost $3 billion, but the price is now estimated at $3.6 billion.

The cost includes laying track, building 22 new stations, buying new buses and trains, and widening the city-owned Highway 174.

The city is also looking at throwing in other infrastructure projects, such as rehabilitating a bridge over the Rideau River at Carleton University.

However, widening Highway 174 at the same time the city intends to run LRT down the median could generate some pushback from councillors who fear such a move could hurt transit ridership and push other road projects off the priority list.

How the city proposes to contract the next phase of LRT work while the Rideau Transit Group continues to build the first phase, due to open next year, is a key question to be answered Friday when the Stage 2 report is released.

RTG is poised to maintain the entire transit network once it’s fully built, but the consortium has apparently agreed to not bid on constructing either of the eastern or western LRT extensions. There will be nothing to restrict RTG from bidding on the Trillium Line extension.

The city believes there will be options in the market to use trains on the Trillium Line that are compatible with the existing Alstom Coradia Lint diesel trains.

The Stage 2 report is also expected to outline what detours buses may need to take once the Transitway west of Tunney’s Pasture closes for rail conversion.

It was a single line in a large staff report recommending the construction of the Confederation Line that revealed 2,500 buses would be redirected onto Scott and Albert streets, so it’s anticipated that councillors will go through this report with a fine-tooth comb in search of ways the massive project might affect their wards.

The finance and economic development committee will debate and vote on the plan on Feb. 24. A council vote on March 8 would kickstart the procurement process.

At the same time, the city is still waiting to hear from the federal government about funding the Stage 2 blueprint. The province has signalled its commitment to pay for one-third of the city’s base Stage 2 plan, plus half the cost of the connections to the airport and Trim Road.

The city isn’t likely to start a request for proposals process until it nails down the federal funding.

Stage 2 rail expansion by the numbers:

$3.6 billion: Projected cost for Stage 2 rail and related infrastructure work
2021: Trillium Line extension projected completion year
2022: Eastern LRT extension projected completion year
2023: Western LRT extension projected completion year
22: New stations in plan
36: New kilometres of rail to be built
16: Estimated months Trillium Line will need to close for upgrade
38: New vehicles to be purchased for expanded rail network

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twitter.com/mpearson78

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twitter.com/jonathanwilling

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-for-16-months

[rocketphish]

New $3.6B cost for Ottawa's rail plans makes provincial funding deal urgent

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: February 16, 2017 | Last Updated: February 16, 2017 6:27 PM EST

The rush is on to get the provincial government to sign up to Ottawa’s rail plan before a 2018 election that could send Ontario’s transit-funding promises higgledy-piggledy.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her Liberals are big fans of infrastructure spending. They’ve promised they’ll be here with $1-billion-plus that the city is counting on for the set of light-rail expansions it’s calling Stage 2, to follow the first phase of construction done in 2018. But until there’s a minister’s signature on a contribution agreement, that promise’s force is only political, not legal.

The provincial election is more than a year away yet, but there’s a meaningful chance that after that vote, the city will be dealing with Premier Patrick Brown, whose commitment to the Liberals’ $160-billion infrastructure program certainly cannot be assumed.

More than that, now that the estimated price of Stage 2 has crept up from about $3 billion to $3.6 billion, Ottawa will really, really want extra money from the provincial gas tax Wynne has promised to cities across the province as a substitute for letting Toronto put toll gates on its highways. Even though that transfer — about $35 million now, but set to double by 2021 according to that weeks-old promise — originates with the province, it’s treated as the city’s money and it’s essential to covering the city’s one-third share of the rail bill.

The $3.6-billion number, to be formally revealed Friday but reported Thursday by the Citizen’s Matthew Pearson and Jon Willing, is meant to be as complete as can be. As Mayor Jim Watson said last fall: “The good thing about Phase 2 is that we have the lessons learned from Phase 1 and I think that has been an eye-opener.”

Everyone assumes that any big public construction effort will go way over budget but that’s only sort of true: that happens, but the more frequent problem is the budget presented in public at the beginning leaves out important things. It’s not wrong, exactly, just incomplete.

Arranging bus detours for the first phase of Ottawa’s rail construction was one of those hidden expenses. Those detours have been a $30-million expense, which is not peanuts. They just don’t go into a construction contract so it’s easy to leave them out of the construction estimates. Springing such things on city councillors (and taxpayers) does not bolster confidence in the city or its plans.

Now, to be clear, city council approved the master plan that decided what rail lines to build where back in 2013 and all the cost estimates were in 2013 dollars, so some increase was to be expected. That plan figured we’d spend just shy of $3 billion — $2.995 billion, to be exact — on a panoply of transit, from rail to busways to adding bus lanes to existing roads. Rail was the biggest part, at nearly $2.5 billion. Again, all in 2013 dollars.

When the treasury department ran the numbers to figure out how to pay for the rail portion of the plan, it accounted for inflation up to when construction would reasonably be expected to begin. The result was an estimate that the rail portion of the plan would cost $2.925 billion in total dollars-out-the-door.

Both those numbers are close to $3 billion but they don’t measure the same things. One includes non-rail projects but leaves out inflation; the other includes inflation but leaves out non-rail projects.

The $3.6-billion figure is new again. It covers inflation and adds an extra-long extension to Trim Road in Orléans and a spur to the airport. It adds bus detours and other tack-on costs. It fixes a leaky O-Train tunnel and a bridge.

When treasurer Marian Simulik did the math in 2013 to determine that $2.925 billion was a rail price the city could afford if it were spread out over enough years, she used some cautious assumptions that are now helping a lot. This is much better than what’s done in, say, Toronto, where they approve plans with no idea how to pay for them and then fool around with them for years because it doesn’t matter anyway.

One of Simulik’s cautious assumptions was that the federal government’s distribution of gas-tax money to cities would stay constant, never increasing or decreasing. At the time, the federal Conservatives were talking about letting the transfer increase with inflation. The city assumed it wouldn’t happen, but it has, so a $50-million annual payment from the feds then has risen to $54 million this year and an expected $56 million next year.

The city assumed the province would make some favourable changes to the development charges the city levies on new construction, which it did in 2015.

And, of course, the Liberals have promised to double the province’s gas-tax transfer, which nobody expected in 2013. That will turn out to be a big relief for the planners here — assuming it happens.

[email protected]
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...ng-deal-urgent

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I told you so. And if they ever do get around to fully double tracking, how many more years will it have to be shut down?

And look, they are rehabilitating the Rideau River bridge, but probably won't rebuild it for double tracking.

The biggest white elephant will be spur to the airport. Two transfers is two transfers too many if you want business travellers and most tourists to use it. If you are pulling luggage, who wants to have to cross platforms and go up and down escalators twice? The escalators will probably be broken half the time.

If I am still around in 2021, I will be protesting at the opening ceremony. "20 years and still not double tracked"

I have always pushed for the airport to be included going back to the 2006 plan, but this spur doesn't make sense and as you say won't be used by anyone who needs to make 2 transfers.

[1overcosc]

City's being lazy as per usual. If they got creative they could easily find a way to keep the Trillium open throughout the construction period; or at least, limit closures to weekends and evenings.

[Athens]

Well isn't this magic. The airport spur will be a hunk of junk.

[capital_urbanite]

Originally Posted by Athens

Well isn't this magic. The airport spur will be a hunk of junk.

Not ideal but would still be faster than the bus. Maybe 30-40 minutes by train (assuming current Otrain trillium frequency) vs. 50-60 minutes on the 97.

I'd also be wary about the reporter's assertion that passengers would have to transfer at South Keys to continue North to Bayview. The way it's written sounds like he might be drawing a conclusion without having read the full report. I'd wait for another source to confirm.

The environmental assessment report suggest that most of the time there would indeed be through service from Bayview to the airport (OMCIA):
"Thus, the preferred operating model for train service on the Trillium Line is a “mixed operating model” which adjusts the destination of through train service depending on time of day to match greatest demand. Under this model, it is suggested that during weekday morning and afternoon peak periods through trains would operate between Bayview and Bowesville, with the airport link operated as a shuttle service from South Keys Station. At other times of day, and on weekends, through trains would operate between Bayview and OMCIA, with service to Bowesville operated as a shuttle from South Keys."

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by capital_urbanite

The environmental assessment report suggest that most of the time there would indeed be through service from Bayview to the airport (OMCIA):
"Thus, the preferred operating model for train service on the Trillium Line is a “mixed operating model” which adjusts the destination of through train service depending on time of day to match greatest demand. Under this model, it is suggested that during weekday morning and afternoon peak periods through trains would operate between Bayview and Bowesville, with the airport link operated as a shuttle service from South Keys Station. At other times of day, and on weekends, through trains would operate between Bayview and OMCIA, with service to Bowesville operated as a shuttle from South Keys."

The problem is that when the third transfer is necessary (the morning and afternoon rush hour) is when most of the flights arrive and there would be the most incentive to take transit (because the aviation parkway is congested).

I can't see any way that this is a good idea. If they're not willing to double track the trillium line, they would be better off building a proper bus connection between the transitway and the aviation parkway and running a shuttle to Hurdman. They could have special airport branding for the bus (as Dublin does) with luggage racks, etc.

[ortelius]

Extension is going to Moodie, beyond Bayshore. Announced just now.

[adam-machiavelli]

Any links to updated maps, plans, or drawings?

[Aylmer]

Wait... Moodie? What advantage would that provide over Bayshore? My initial reaction is that an extension past Bayshore would only really make sense if it made its way at least to Eagleson.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Wait... Moodie? What advantage would that provide over Bayshore? My initial reaction is that an extension past Bayshore would only really make sense if it made its way at least to Eagleson.

Bus transfers should be easier at Moodie than Bayshore IMO. Plus possibilities of parking for commuters.

[passwordisnt123]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I told you so. And if they ever do get around to fully double tracking, how many more years will it have to be shut down?

And look, they are rehabilitating the Rideau River bridge, but probably won't rebuild it for double tracking.

The biggest white elephant will be spur to the airport. Two transfers is two transfers too many if you want business travellers and most tourists to use it. If you are pulling luggage, who wants to have to cross platforms and go up and down escalators twice? The escalators will probably be broken half the time.

If I am still around in 2021, I will be protesting at the opening ceremony. "20 years and still not double tracked"

What LRT's Friend said

Why the hell wouldn't we interline the Trilium Line going south after Southkeys so that 1/2 of it goes to the airport and 1/2 of it goes to Leitrum, Riverside South, etc.? An airport spur is just absurd and the fact that they wouldn't take this opportunity to double track at least all of it outside of the Dow's Lake tunnel is insanity.

[GoTrans]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

City's being lazy as per usual. If they got creative they could easily find a way to keep the Trillium open throughout the construction period; or at least, limit closures to weekends and evenings.

You are absolutely correct except for tunnel rehabilitation and station construction and even then only depending upon the design. The City, being the city will probably be cheap on the design meaning the Trillium line stations will continue to allow users to experience the great outdoors in winter taking away any excuse for a shutdown.

The city obviously does not believe in doing it once and doing it right. Having worked on CN out west in the summers as a student, we worked on sites where double track was being installed along with the necessary roadbed construction without a shut down of the line. Sure there are times where there are delays or brief shut downs to install things like switches and signalling but as a rule the trains kept rolling.