Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
Part of that might be the challenges of the Phase 1. Things that come to my mine about Ottawa's new LRT is:
the problems running in snow,
The sinkhole at Rideau Centre,
The derailments over lack of maintenance,
Etc.
At no time do I think of how transformative it is and will be, unless I look at what they are doing and where it goes.
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The media only reports when things go bad. You never hear anything when things go well.
The issue in snow was during the testing phase when they left a train parked on the line and tried to move it after a snow storm, without clearing the snow first. The train excelled in snow storms last winter, which is even more obvious when contrasting to the poor performance of cars and buses in those same snow storms.
The sink hole caused major delays to the line's construction, and lawsuits relating to this, directly or not (the builder has accepted responsibility for the sinkhole, but is suing the City for delay related non-payments).
Derailments were egregious at the time however, maintenance and performance seem have taken a turn for the better over the last 6 months.
Quote:
Originally Posted by casper
At this point it is clear they should have picked the same technology as Vancouver Expor and Millenium line but some low floor tram sales rep was just extremely skilled. Now it is to late late. Ottawa will just have to learn how to make due.
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Vancouver's Skytrain is infamously terrible in any minor snow event, which is not a huge deal on the west coast, but would be disastrous in Ottawa. That said, high-floor light-rail like Edmonton and Calgary, or REM technology would have been far superior to our low-floor trams, granted.
The reason Ottawa went with low-floor trams are two fold; at the time, they were planning on surface running rail in some areas, and the City had an obsession with "light-rail" since they build the original O-Train called "lrt" (though it never was) and planned the first north-south line, and could not fathom any other technology.
For better or worse, Ottawa is not the only City that has fallen into the low-floor tram acting like a subway trap. It's a trend. A dumb trend, but a trend none-the-less. Hoping the REM and Ontario Line change this going forward.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamincan
A lot of the sections of Phase 2 actually are new rapid transit including a number of infill stations, extensions of the Trillium line, a new section of RT along Byron east of Lincoln Fields and no more mixed operations on highways or streets.
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Precisely. And at this point, the majority of stations, current or phase 2, have TOD projects u/c or proposed. These would never have materialized had it not been for the conversion.
Upgrading the old Transitway was needed due to the congested central Transitway. we could have built a $1B tunnel (about double the cost of the rail tunnel for buses), but that would not have done all that much for overall capacity.
At the time, the conversion to rail made sense. It may even make sense to extend to Kanata and Barrhaven, but maybe not quite as deep into those suburbs as proposed. At this point, I think we should place more focus on rapid transit to serve dense urban areas where transit could be an option at all times instead of the commuter focused system Stage 3 will bring.
As
casper nearly ever city has had challenges with new systems or new rolling stocks (looking at you, Toronto Rocket and Montreal Azure), but once things get rolling and become more reliable, those challenges are forgotten.