Future Transit System Ideas - Ottawa/Gatineau | Fantasy

[Buggys]

1) public transportation
I concur with many of our desires for more LRT.

2) highways
For an East-West route along the South of Ottawa parallel to the 417, I think the Hunt Club ROW is the more logical choice -- close enough to the city core to make stops for those who need to, and far enough from downtown for traffic to be a bit better during rush hour. If Hunt Club gets much busier though, agree that it can be turned more and more like a highway. Expand the # of lanes. Design the central lanes for express, and outer lanes as collectors.

3) inter-provincial transit
I would also really like to see at least 2 new bridges built across the Ottawa river between Ottawa and Gatineau, in places other than the existing downtown locations. These bridges should be where the Ottawa River is narrower, and reasonably aligned with the North-South portions of the 416 and 417 -- across Deschenes Rapids in the West, and Kettle Island in the East. This would finally allow traffic between Ottawa West and Alymer to not be forced through Downtown. And same goes between Ottawa East and Gatineau East.

*** # 1 & 2 might very well see progress within the next 20 years. # 3 could just be a pipe dream the way things are going now.

[Innsertnamehere]

Not quite Ottawa, but the 417 should be expanded to at least Renfrew, preferably Pettawawa.

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Not quite Ottawa, but the 417 should be expanded to at least Renfrew, preferably Pettawawa.

The Feds are apparently putting the pressure on the MTO to widen 17, if not to 400 series standards at least to a controlled access median 2x2 freeway, like highway 11 between Oro-Medonte and North Bay was finally upgraded to in 2011. The MTO East Region out of Ottawa has plans based on the stub lanes where 417 currently ends west of Arnprior, and the MTO North East Region has been working on picking a new route from the east of North Bay since the existing 17 can't be widened there. I don't know much about further west, but I believe a new bridge somewhere near the Sault is built for 4 lanes.

I think you will see 417/17 being expanded in bits and pieces, but based on how long it has taken them to upgrade 69 and 11 don't get your hopes up it will happen in any great distance for the next 50 years.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Hunt Club is a horrendous way to cross the city and will only get worse, because of the traffic and the number of traffic signals. I live in the south end, and it is generally faster to drive all the way downtown and use the Queensway to go across to the west end. Going to the east end will be easier once the Hunt Club interchange opens. The bad section of Hunt Club is between Bank and Merivale.

Of course it doesn't help that Hunt Club west of Uplands has essentially zero transit...

[Schattenjager]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Of course it doesn't help that Hunt Club west of Uplands has essentially zero transit...

I used to see buses at Hunt Club & Riverside all the time. According to Google Maps, the stop at that particular corner has the 116, 189 and 199. There's also the 147 but that one turns onto Paul Benoit Driveway. Once you pass the Hunt Club Bridge, there's no buses on West Hunt Club between Antares and Merivale and then nothing between Merivale and Woodroffe and so on.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by bradnixon

Of course it doesn't help that Hunt Club west of Uplands has essentially zero transit...

Wasn't that a 100% budget decision that is working against the TMP that suggests transit priority on Hunt Club? Of course, this will never happen if we don't even have a decent bus route on Hunt Club in order to build transit demand.

It really makes you wonder about long-term transit planning other than the standard suburb to downtown concept that is becoming more and more out of date every day as jobs move to the suburbs and congestion in the suburbs continues to increase.

[TransitZilla]

Originally Posted by Schattenjager

I used to see buses at Hunt Club & Riverside all the time. According to Google Maps, the stop at that particular corner has the 116, 189 and 199. There's also the 147 but that one turns onto Paul Benoit Driveway. Once you pass the Hunt Club Bridge, there's no buses on West Hunt Club between Antares and Merivale and then nothing between Merivale and Woodroffe and so on.

You're right, I was exaggerating a bit. But not much

At Riverside & Hunt Club, you've got:

-199: 2 trips in each peak period
-189: 5 trips in each peak period
-116: hourly service for most of the day

There is no route that connects the SW and SE Transitways along the Hunt Club corridor. There used to be, but the 116 was truncated to Merivale in 2011.

[Richard Eade]

I’m not so sure that Hunt Club Road is suitable to become a major west-east traffic conduit. It had great potential when it was first conceived, but it was poorly implemented and has been allowed to get worse since.

Poor Implementation:
Mostly, it looks as if there was no clear vision across the region of what the road was to be. Parts were built as limited access; parts were simply renamed streets with lots of existing side-streets. Also, part of the problem might have been a lack of funds to create a proper high-speed corridor (assuming that that was what was desired).

• The west end of West Hunt Club Road tees into a two-lane Richmond Road. (Yes, Richmond Road is being widened to four lanes now – er, rather next year because the City couldn't get its act together to do it while the gas line is being installed this fall - but only a limited stretch, between Hope Side Road and West Hunt Club Road. This makes for quite a detour south, crossing the Greenbelt, for anyone who wants to travel west of Richmond Road.)
  
• The section of West Hunt Club Road west of the 416 is only two lanes wide and passes through an area zoned EP (Environmental Protected). (This is, I presume, supposed to be widened to handle the additional vehicles from Hope Side Road.)
  
• The intersection of Knoxdale Road at West Hunt Club Road would need to be removed; although this will likely add traffic to Bateman Drive and Atkinson Gate.
  
• The curves east of Greenbank Road’s intersection of West Hunt Club Road could have their radii increased. As it stands now, vehicles traveling west can come around the curve to face a row of stopped cars; and braking on a curve can be dangerous in the winter.
  
• Also, the curve east of the intersection of Woodroffe Avenue and West Hunt Club Road could have larger radius. I understand that West Hunt Club Road crosses Woodroffe Avenue at an angle to keep the road away from the Confederation Education Centre, but it has the same issue as other curves; braking on a curve can be dangerous in winter.
  
• The pedestrian crossing east of Woodroffe Avenue will need to be grade separated.
  
• The curves between Woodroffe Avenue and Merivale Road could be smoothed by doing any widening of the West Hunt Club Road on the inside of the curves. I know that curves can slow traffic speeds, but there has already been one fatal crash because of the serpentine routing (and excessive speed).
  
• Seriously, what were they thinking when they designed the curves and overpass of the rail line, just west of Prince of Wales Drive? (Yes, I know; the City already owned Tank Road and it had developable land on both sides – but talk about a killer configuration for a high-speed roadway.)
  
• The distances between the 416, Greenbank Road, Woodroffe Avenue and Prince of Wales Drive are reasonable for a limited-access thorough-fare, but having intersections with both Prince of Wales Drive and Riverside Drive (only about 500 metres apart) creates too much localized congestion. I understand that the connections to the two (Prince of Wales Drive and Riverside Drive) north-south routes made for a better grid, but the two are just too close together. Personally, I would grade separate West Hunt Club Road over Prince of Wales Drive with no connection. A short overpass could connect from West Hunt Club Road to Colonnade Road South for those who need that access.
  
• Paul Anka Drive should been severed and not connected to Hunt Club Road. The same goes for McCarthy Road / Downpatrick Road, Mac Street, Daze Street / Bridle Path Drive, Mountain Crescent, Albion Road South, Dunston Terrace, Cahill Drive, Lorry Greenberg Drive / Sable Ridge Drive, Pike Street / Maple Park Private, Malak Street, Esson Street, and Blohm Drive. For Hunt Club Road to be a rapid cross-town route, it needed to have limited access.

Poor Allowed Uses:
The City has allowed far too many driveways and accesses to connect to Hunt Club Road.

An Alternative Route:
A possible alternative route is to stay outside of the Greenbelt. A straight extension of Hope Side Road and then an overpass of the aggregate extraction pits could bring the route south-east to join Fallowfield Road just west of Moodie Drive. This would have the traffic flow along Strandherd Drive and across the future Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge. There would be the need to close some existing intersections along Strandherd Drive and some reconfiguring of neighbourhood roadways. For example, Cedarview Road should be re-connected by a loop around the east of the park and over (or under) the rail line. Cedarview Road would have an intersection with Strandherd Drive, allowing neighbourhood access.

From where Earl Armstrong Road crosses Bowesville Road, it could curve north along the old rail-bed and then turn east to join Leitrim Road (which already passes under highway 417). Some expropriation may be required to run the new roadway between Quinn Road and Leitrim Road to finally meet with Leitrim Road west of Albion Road. Access to the 417 could be from Anderson Road or via a new interchange.

[BenTheGreat97]

Okay, so a lot of posts are talking about rebuilding Hunt club making it grade-separated in areas, some people suggesting a small express/collector system (a la A-520 in Montreal), others with the 415 idea and realigned 7. I think it should go a bit further north and be closer to the city so it can be more convenient as a bypass without the need to drive that far south along the 416. I'll put in list of what I think a bit later.

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by BenTheGreat97

Okay, so a lot of posts are talking about rebuilding Hunt club making it grade-separated in areas, some people suggesting a small express/collector system (a la A-520 in Montreal), others with the 415 idea and realigned 7. I think it should go a bit further north and be closer to the city so it can be more convenient as a bypass without the need to drive that far south along the 416. I'll put in list of what I think a bit later.

I think all of the talk about turning Hunt Club into a grade-separated freeway is absolutely crazy and never going to happen, and scares me as a cyclist and a driver. Hunt Club is only going to get more and more built up, and fail to see anywhere that says good city-building involves more highways through developed areas. This was the idea in the 50s and 60s, and a good example of how it would apply here is Bronson at Colonel By where the entrance/exit ramps make it incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians and pack 4 lanes of traffic down what is a largely residential area. Expanding Hunt Club would only make living in the distant suburbs that much easier and more appealing.

I think Hunt Club is well placed for eventual median BRT, since it is already at the terminus of the SE Transitway it would make a logical extension of it westwards. This would help support increased density in the Bank-Woodroffe area.

[BenTheGreat97]

Alright, so here are my thoughts on what's going to happen.

417 become 8 lanes from Anderson in the East all the way to the current terminus of Hwy 7 in the West (except where there are width constraints).

417 is 6 lanes from future Hunt Club Road to Limoges Road (Calypso) and 6 lanes from Hwy 7 to March Road (Almonte/Carp)

The 417 will be twinned all the way to Pembroke/Petawawa and by 2050 will be 6 lanes between Arnprior and Renfrew.

Here's my idea of what the Ottawa highway system will look like. The highway 7 realignment is more north, to avoid it being too southern to be useful, and made it up to 400-series standards and the new part redubbed "437" just to keep the 7 in the name. And current 7 (415) will be extended just east of Carp and go across the river and meet up with Boulevard des Allumettieres (Hwy 148) in Aylmer.


LRT will go from Place d'Orleans to CTC and O-Train will go down to to the Airport and then to Barrhaven/Riverside South (2040-2050).

Airport Parkway will be 4 lanes wide and separated in areas permitting and 80-100km/h in some areas.

The airport will become busy with more transatlantic service (Paris) and more domestic service. At least 10 additional gates and existing gates remodeled to accommodate larger aircraft. No new runways built (or needed yet).

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by Catenary

I think all of the talk about turning Hunt Club into a grade-separated freeway is absolutely crazy and never going to happen, and scares me as a cyclist and a driver. Hunt Club is only going to get more and more built up, and fail to see anywhere that says good city-building involves more highways through developed areas. This was the idea in the 50s and 60s, and a good example of how it would apply here is Bronson at Colonel By where the entrance/exit ramps make it incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians and pack 4 lanes of traffic down what is a largely residential area. Expanding Hunt Club would only make living in the distant suburbs that much easier and more appealing.

I think Hunt Club is well placed for eventual median BRT, since it is already at the terminus of the SE Transitway it would make a logical extension of it westwards. This would help support increased density in the Bank-Woodroffe area.

I'm thinking of something like the current Bronson in the middle for cars that're just passing through the city, with the outer lanes reserved for local traffic. These 2 different types of lanes can be separated by painted lines or barriers that only allow lane changes every few blocks (like between highway express and collectors lanes).

As for cyclists and pedestrians, their safety can be protected with the local nature of the outer lanes. Also, perhaps bike paths can be "lanes" separated from pedestrian portions of the pavement by painted lines, on an extra-wide pavement.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

This is what I'd like to ideally see in Ottawa sometime within the next 40 years.



Essentially, keep as much LRT as possible within the Greenbelt, have the Transitway/BRT/bus transit priority areas feed into the LRT system, and have an expanded O-Train and Interprovincial Commuter Rail systems connect to everything.

The idea is to change the way Ottawa thinks about transit and commutes. With the way Ottawa's Transitway is designed, it's essentially a commuter system that tries to be a comprehensive transit system, and we've now ended up with a system that is no faster than the average car commute.

Instead of expanding roads and suburbs, the idea is to compact it and expand as crucially necessary. With worse congestion, rapid and reliable transit with its own ROW sounds a lot more appealing. Orleans, with its higher transit share, population, and geographic isolation warrants LRT.

LRT is kept in the inner city and is made really accessible, and would improve transit use in the core, reducing the use of cars.

The remaining Transitway/BRT "feeds" into the LRT system and also connects with the O-Train routes and OTA commuter rail (henceforth referred to as OTA for Outaouais Transit Authority, and is/would be an interprovincial/federally mandated kind of GO Train) where LRT does not.

Money for roads and Transitway conversion are instead diverted to expanding the O-Train system. The O-Train routes become like a second Transitway, having a few more stops than the OTA trains, but being more reliable and less expensive to operate. With minimal investment, an affordable transit mode can be implemented that can move more people without having to worry about roads.

OTA crisscrosses Ontario and Quebec, and has fewer stops than the O-Train, although it shares the same track. This isn't exactly "necessary" to Ottawa's transit development, but could be used in conjunction with the above to alleviate Ottawa's traffic woes without having to spend so much on roads, and instead of sprawling suburbs and exurbs, it could focus development into particular areas, and open new job opportunities for Ottawa and other municipalities in the region.

LRT routes:

- Carling Line (streetcar line that runs along Carling from Bayshore to Bronson, tunnel under Bronson, connecting with Queen St. tunnel and ending at Rideau. Replaces Route 85)

- Confederation Line (Subdivided into A and B lines, with A running from Bayshore to Blair, and B running from Baseline to Blair)

- River Line (almost entirely underground line. Runs from either western end of Westboro or Bayshore east under Richmond/Wellington/Somerset until Bank St. tunnel, where it turns north up to the Queen St. tunnel and then east underground and along Rideau/Montreal out to the old airbase)

- Ottawa Line (almost entirely underground line. Runs under Bank St. from Billings Bridge until the Queen St. tunnel, then turns east where it runs under Rideau/Montreal until St. Laurent where it turns south and runs until the St. Laurent shopping centre)


O-Train routes (in order of implementation):

Hull-Riverside South/Strandherd (basically a modified version of the current O-Train plans)

Kanata North-Via Rail (Tremblay)

Barrhaven-Via Rail (Tremblay)

Kanata-Via Rail (Tremblay)

Via Rail (Tremblay)-Orleans


OTA routes:

Bristol, QC - Maxville, ON

Arnprior, ON - Montebello, QC

La Peche (Wakefield), QC - Smith Falls, ON

Possible expansions to Pembroke, Maniwaki, Alexandria, Perth, and Brockville so long as they warrant expansion.

[McC]

I think the River line west of Bank is a little too redundant to warrant the cost -- froma City-building perspective, we *should* have made the choice to use that corridor 50, or 100 years ago (Holt-Bennett Plan!), but we didn't, and so I think that we are stuck with the Scott-Albert-Queen alignment for the next 50-100 years. Suggest just continuing your Carling line east of Rideau, and divide the savings from scrapping the western leg of the River line to add additional select grade separations to the Carling Line, add a Confederation Line station at Island Park, and to extend your Ottawa line further south: lots of re-development potential on Bank south of Billings Bridge to take advantage of, and why not run all the way to the airport?

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

Originally Posted by McC

I think the River line west of Bank is a little too redundant to warrant the cost -- froma City-building perspective, we *should* have made the choice to use that corridor 50, or 100 years ago (Holt-Bennett Plan!), but we didn't, and so I think that we are stuck with the Scott-Albert-Queen alignment for the next 50-100 years.

While I agree that we should have made the choice a generation ago, I don't think we're still stuck with Scott Street. First off, development and retail is prevalent along Richmond/Wellington/Somerset and sees heavy traffic, be it pedestrian, automobile, buses, and bikes. We haven't seen such a development along Scott Street except for token employment centres adjacent to the stations. This line IS an exercise in city-building and would be able to bring in and support more people in the inner city.

Suggest just continuing your Carling line east of Rideau, and divide the savings from scrapping the western leg of the River line to add additional select grade separations to the Carling line and to extend your Ottawa line further south: lots of re-development potential on Bank south of Billings Bridge to take advantage of, and why not run all the way to the airport?

The Ottawa Line would be expanded south along Bank St. as long as development warranted it. In other words, more density. For how expensive a subway-like system would be to initially build, I only see it going as far south as Billings in the next 40 years because it's a fairly high density area, and is/would be a major transit destination and hub.

As for not running all the way to the airport, that would be insanely expensive for Ottawa and our population base, even 40 years from now. The Airport is already served by an O-Train at this point, and the most likely plan on the table would be to convert the SE Transitway to LRT and extend that to the airport eliminating the need for a transfer.

[White Pine]

Ideally, if I were in charge and I had a money orchard, I would try to establish Commuter rail by using two terminus stations; Bayview for the Quebec lines, and Via for those coming from Ontario. It's not that Quebec should be treated differently, rather that commuter rail would wreak havoc with the O-train if they shared the line with the current setup. Maybe double-tracking the line would make it possible, but I think it's easier just to end the line at bayview to protect O-train capacity.

I think Commuter rail could work in Pembroke, but I would seriously deliberate between using the Beachburg sub (via Bristol), and connecting the Ottawa-Arnprior track to the Pembroke-Smiths Falls track (or corridor, remember, I've got money trees), as that would connect Pembroke, Cobden, Renfrew and Arnprior (not that that would do much good without a car), and at any rate would be a better draw to Ottawa than just Pembroke and Beachburg. These tracks also intersect near pembroke, and if a little more effort it would be possible to choose between downtown or other location for a station. However, grade separations may prove an issue on this line.

Then Smiths Falls and Casselman could get rail. Something should be worked out in Limoges if anyone wants to use that line for a Calypso trip.

I'd like to see an airport alignment for the o-train (not a spur), and rapid transit to at least one of the major hospitals.

I do believe that, after having travelled a bit, an essential role of Transit is not only to get people to work, but to provide a way for people (residents and tourists) to get to points of interest and attractions. That's why I'm happy that the current plan serves many downtown hotels, four major malls, two universities, Algonquin College, the Gee Gees and Baseball stadiums, and the Via rail station. but we need to get rail to the airport, and something to the CTC before suburbia chokes the place off (and also something for Landsdowne). who cares if the traffic is irregular. it just means the system won't be dead outside of Rush hour, and actually frees up capacity to make it work.

[Aylmer]

Click for BIG

An updated LRT map for Gatineau, taking into account the new development going on on the Domtar Lands and the challenges of split frequency as I've proposed earlier.

So the first change is the removal of a good number of redundant stations to improve speed and reduce costs. At about 40-60 seconds and several millions for a basic station, they don't come cheap!

Secondly, I'd be very excited about the possibility of running LRT through the Windmill development south of Laurier (Hull): After passing either under or south of the EB Eddy building, tracks would weave through the development in a Vauban sort of way and pass on the old RR RoW under the Portage Bridge and continue along until just before the Museum, giving access to the country's busiest museum (I believe) two major centres of employment, three historical axes, City Hall and a new, mixed-use neighbourhood.

The connection between the POW bridge and the Confederation line was a bit of a stumbling block, but the City seems to have left just enough room in its new Bayview plans for tracks to swing east from the north or the south onto a parallel platform, permitting a direct Downtown-to-Downtown link and a possible airport connection.



A Downtown Line would permit a more efficient use of resources on both sides of the river: instead of having too many trains leaving low-density Orleans and Bayshore yet too few Downtown for reliable service in the dense core, a Downtown line would give a lot more flexibility for having high frequencies throughout the day.
It also solves the problem of split frequency that would occur if trains leaving for the Plateau or Aylmer only left one terminus half the time.

[Urbanarchit]

At first I was always for the idea of running transit on the Prince of Wales bridge, but much like what was said prior, it would be better to run it through Domtar lands development. Instead, I'd like to see the PoW bridge turned into something like Manhattan's High Line park (it sort of is that now, unofficially). It would be interesting to fix it up and turn it into a destination that offers great views of downtown, Parliament, and Hull.

It could be one attraction to a revamped Bayview Yards neighbourhood.

[JM1]

I don't understand the proposed Bayview map. Would the O-Train and the Gatineau regional share an East West platform that does not connect to an East West line? That doesn't make sense to me. Why not have the O-Train continue across the bridge as the regional train. Then the platform could retain its north south alignment and could move passengers from Gatineau down towards Confederation station (by the way, now that we have a "confederation" line, I think the station should be renamed -- too much confusion).

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Click for BIG

An updated LRT map for Gatineau, taking into account the new development going on on the Domtar Lands and the challenges of split frequency as I've proposed earlier.

So the first change is the removal of a good number of redundant stations to improve speed and reduce costs. At about 40-60 seconds and several millions for a basic station, they don't come cheap!

Secondly, I'd be very excited about the possibility of running LRT through the Windmill development south of Laurier (Hull): After passing either under or south of the EB Eddy building, tracks would weave through the development in a Vauban sort of way and pass on the old RR RoW under the Portage Bridge and continue along until just before the Museum, giving access to the country's busiest museum (I believe) two major centres of employment, three historical axes, City Hall and a new, mixed-use neighbourhood.

The connection between the POW bridge and the Confederation line was a bit of a stumbling block, but the City seems to have left just enough room in its new Bayview plans for tracks to swing east from the north or the south onto a parallel platform, permitting a direct Downtown-to-Downtown link and a possible airport connection.



A Downtown Line would permit a more efficient use of resources on both sides of the river: instead of having too many trains leaving low-density Orleans and Bayshore yet too few Downtown for reliable service in the dense core, a Downtown line would give a lot more flexibility for having high frequencies throughout the day.
It also solves the problem of split frequency that would occur if trains leaving for the Plateau or Aylmer only left one terminus half the time.

[Aylmer]

It would indeed connect with the E-W Bayview station, but it's just that the current placement of the station prohibits a turn north or south. The problem with having the O-Train running across the bridge to connect with Gatineau is that it imposes a double transfer on a large number of commuters: anyone coming from Gatineau would need to take a minimum of three trains to get downtown, which I personally find a little excessive for such a popular route.