Ottawa Bypass Corridor

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by daud

well, lets redirect this and hopefully it will underscore my point. Is there any employment node in the city that justifies 100 thousand people living in Barrhaven?

There probably isn't (Airport, Algonquin, RCMP, some businesses on Hunt Club is probably about it). But there wouldn't be that many people there if more homeowners had decided they did not want long commutes.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The great S route that so many ridiculed was actually very effective in bringing rail within walking distance of a good portion of the population. No need for cumbersome bus transfers and park n ride for many people. The fact of the matter is that the S route would have reduced transfers to a reasonable level and that is what people want even if the overall trip was 5 minutes longer. More gained by that than waiting 15 minutes for a bus transfers.

I don't think much density was ever planned near the stations. Earl Armstrong and Strandheard are mostly detached homes and row houses on either side. The retail on both sides of the river is all the big box variety. It would have been pretty dependent on park and ride.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don't think much density was ever planned near the stations. Earl Armstrong and Strandheard are mostly detached homes and row houses on either side. The retail on both sides of the river is all the big box variety. It would have been pretty dependent on park and ride.

I think there is a lot of attached housing along the corridor. It is certainly more dense than most 1950s and 1960s suburbs. In any event, you cannot expect anything different if you are not building transit that is worth using.

And the bolded comment is not true if you could walk to a station and that was the plan.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Is it? I checked and once Stage 2 LRT is complete, the distance from Market Square (arguably the centre of Barrhaven, which has the vast majority of the population in the south) to Bank St downtown (arguably the centre of downtown) is under 22 km. Using the old LRT route, the same commute is 27.5 km (about 25% further). Now even after Stage 2, some of that will be by bus, but the reality is most people in the suburbs will have to take a bus to the LRT station as they aren't within walking distance of one.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the long expensive route to Orleans is only 21.5 km from Banks St. all the way to Trim Rd. Shorter even than it is to even Earl Armstrong Drive and River Rd in Riverside South on the old LRT route (23.5 km).

The old plan was great for Riverside South, but it wasn't good for Barrhaven, so if you insist that they are one big southern region, overall it was worse for it.

And when will LRT reach Market Square? And at what cost?

The distance isn't that different and for each station moving east the benefit of your preferred route declines rapidly. Let's face it, both routes serve different parts of Barrhaven.

The ideal situation is that both routes be built as they service substantially different parts of the city and provide more connectivity.

Your comments are all about downtown orientation and the original comment that started this conversation was not about reaching downtown. It was about general traffic conditions that face the south end.

So what is the answer to this problem?

And you cannot stop building. That was decided decades ago.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I think there is a lot of attached housing along the corridor. It is certainly more dense than most 1950s and 1960s suburbs. In any event, you cannot expect anything different if you are not building transit that is worth using.

And the bolded comment is not true if you could walk to a station and that was the plan.

So maybe a few hundred houses within walking distance of each station? Even if Riverside South had unusually high levels of transit ridership (say 25%) there would be maybe 100 transit users walking to each station over the course of a rush hour and the walkers would only fill a fraction of each vehicle.

This is one of the problems with that plan, proponents said the communities were "transit-oriented" but they were designed the same as any 21st century suburb: low density, car-oriented, with no employment and retail concentrated in big box plazas. If the communities had been built with Glebe densities (4k per sq km) or even Westboro densities (2500 per sq km) then that strategy might have been viable.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by acottawa

So maybe a few hundred houses within walking distance of each station? Even if Riverside South had unusually high levels of transit ridership (say 25%) there would be maybe 100 transit users walking to each station over the course of a rush hour and the walkers would only fill a fraction of each vehicle.

This is one of the problems with that plan, proponents said the communities were "transit-oriented" but they were designed the same as any 21st century suburb: low density, car-oriented, with no employment and retail concentrated in big box plazas. If the communities had been built with Glebe densities (4k per sq km) or even Westboro densities (2500 per sq km) then that strategy might have been viable.

So then you build park and rides and run local feeder routes.

Which provides good peak period transit service but doesn't address the fact that your city has a rapidly growing off-peak and weekend road congestion problem, nor does it allow transit to contribute to alleviating it in any significant way.

[Kitchissippi]

One possibility a highway bypass could make sense is if it was used to increase industrial activity and/or to free some industrial lands in the central area for redevelopment (i.e., Colonnade or St-Laurent. Ottawa doesn't have much of highway-accessible medium industry property typical of the outskirts Montreal or Toronto, which makes it hard for the city to diversify its economy. If they combined it with a freight rail bypass, and allow the inner railyards to be redeveloped, it could potentially be woven into a smart-growth strategy

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Acajack

So then you build park and rides and run local feeder routes.

Which provides good peak period transit service but doesn't address the fact that your city has a rapidly growing off-peak and weekend road congestion problem, nor does it allow transit to contribute to alleviating it in any significant way.

I know people want to live in low-density suburban neighbourhoods with backyards and wide streets and big box stores AND have a transit system that resembles the centre of a high density European city, but those things are not compatible. The city cannot afford to spend tens of millions per km to build trams on arterial roads all over the city to run mostly-empty trams.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I know people want to live in low-density suburban neighbourhoods with backyards and wide streets and big box stores AND have a transit system that resembles the centre of a high density European city, but those things are not compatible. The city cannot afford to spend tens of millions per km to build trams on arterial roads all over the city to run mostly-empty trams.

So the solution is to spend tens of millions on roads and to continue with the status quo as far as suburban design, which is the inevitable result. Of course, that is not sustainable and the end result is increasingly bad congestion. That is where we are heading.

How do we change this if we just keep on basing our communities almost entirely around cars for most trips. At some point, we need to try something different.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

So the solution is to spend tens of millions on roads and to continue with the status quo as far as suburban design, which is the inevitable result. Of course, that is not sustainable and the end result is increasingly bad congestion. That is where we are heading.

How do we change this if we just keep on basing our communities almost entirely around cars for most trips. At some point, we need to try something different.

Unless developers start building with a density and urban form conducive to rapid transit that is pretty much what is available.

If the city had narrowed earl armstrong to 2 lanes and developers had built 6 story buildings to the property line with retail on the ground floor, and if they had built high rise buildings next to the actual stations, and if the housing further back was stacked townhouses with limited parking, and instead of a few hundred people in walking distance there were thousands then I think the justification for the project would have been there.

The problem is that even if the developers and city were willing (doubtful) people who want that type of lifestyle are a pretty niche market in Ottawa and they will tend to self select to live close to downtown.

[silvergate]

I think it's time the city started thinking about self-driving cars in its overall transportation strategy. They have the potential to significantly improve commutes. I think that self-driving cars would be an excellent replacement for local bus routes, and could carry passengers between rapid transit stations and work or home.
Some estimates say they could knock more than 60% of our current road traffic off the roads. Even being conservative, if in 2030 there are suddenly 30% less cars on the road, can we really justify building a major highway in the 2020s?

[Buggys]

Originally Posted by silvergate

I think it's time the city started thinking about self-driving cars in its overall transportation strategy. They have the potential to significantly improve commutes. I think that self-driving cars would be an excellent replacement for local bus routes, and could carry passengers between rapid transit stations and work or home.
Some estimates say they could knock more than 60% of our current road traffic off the roads. Even being conservative, if in 2030 there are suddenly 30% less cars on the road, can we really justify building a major highway in the 2020s?

Are you thinking of self-driving cars as public transportation or privately owned by individuals?

Why would someone opt for a public transportation self-driving car when it's not really faster than their own car (self-driving or not). Plus, with their own car, they have more flexibility in where & when to go somewhere (errands in the city, road trips, etc).

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Buggys

Are you thinking of self-driving cars as public transportation or privately owned by individuals?

Self-driving cars will probably ultimately evolve into a mix of both.

Originally Posted by Buggys

Why would someone opt for a public transportation self-driving car when it's not really faster than their own car (self-driving or not). Plus, with their own car, they have more flexibility in where & when to go somewhere (errands in the city, road trips, etc).

Cost. If you think about it, most cars spend 95% of their time parked and not in use. If you could make money by letting your car act as a public transit vehicle while you're at work all day, you'll probably choose to do that. In the end it will be far cheaper to just request a self-driving car everytime you want to go out than it will be to own your own car. A fair number of people probably will choose to keep their own cars, but a good number will switch over to just requesting self-driving cars from a car sharing network.

Because of sheer volumes, a shared network of self-driving cars like this probably can't replace rapid transit, but it could easily replace local buses.

In any case, self-driving cars are a long way off, IMO. Barring some eureka moment in AI technology, we're talking at least 20 years before this sort of thing will happen.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Unless developers start building with a density and urban form conducive to rapid transit that is pretty much what is available.

If the city had narrowed earl armstrong to 2 lanes and developers had built 6 story buildings to the property line with retail on the ground floor, and if they had built high rise buildings next to the actual stations, and if the housing further back was stacked townhouses with limited parking, and instead of a few hundred people in walking distance there were thousands then I think the justification for the project would have been there.

The problem is that even if the developers and city were willing (doubtful) people who want that type of lifestyle are a pretty niche market in Ottawa and they will tend to self select to live close to downtown.

Based on these conditions, we shouldn't be building the Confederation Line. Or at least the line shouldn't extend beyond the downtown area to meet the density requirements. Of course, a rail line from Lyon Street station to the University of Ottawa would be useless.

We need to consider not just density along the route, but also catchment population, passengers arriving by walking, by bus transfer and through Park n Ride lots.

If we can justify building LRT to Orleans and Kanata, there is equal justification to build to Riverside South and Barrhaven.

You are right that there is not a big market in Ottawa for high density living so it unrealistic to expect 6 storey development in the suburbs when that can be built closer to downtown where there are more public amenities. However, it is also chicken and eggs issue. You don't build rapid transit and therefore you cannot build density (because even wide boulevards cannot support it) but then if you don't build density then you cannot build rapid transit. We cannot make progress if we look at it this way. The Confederation Line will likely be the busiest LRT route in North America on opening day and that is without 6 storey development at every station on Day One. However, the Confederation Line will allow us to rethink what we do around stations. This can happen on extended Trillium Line but to a degree, we are already too late as we have already allowed car based development to take place at key locations especially Barrhaven Town Centre. There is still time in Riverside South to limit big box development but time is running out. But this same issue also applies to Confederation Line extensions to Kanata and Orleans where most development is already completed and is low density and car based.

Obviously, based on the original comments, we are at a cross roads in the south end. Either we start building roads big time or we build rapid transit. We do not need 250,000 riders per day to have a successful LRT line. Don't kid yourself, even Confederation Line trains will be half empty in many time periods. That is the case in most cities.

[acottawa]

I'm not a big fan of extending the LRT outside of the greenbelt, the existing bus infrastructure is nowhere near capacity and there isn't enough traffic outside of rush hour to justify a reasonable frequency. That being said, I would certainly put Orleans (pop 108k) ahead of riverside south (pop 15k).

I understand that riverside south people were promised an lrt and are pissed off it was taken away, but lrt was massive overkill. The transit needs of the community are being provided with a ten minute frequency bus in rush hour and a 30 minute frequency bus outside of rush hour. I couldn't imagine any city in the world would build an lrt to replace a 30 minute bus service. Yes lrt is better at attracting riders than a bus, but it doesn't lead to exponential growth in transit use and with a low density, car oriented design of the community there was little room for transit growth

[silvergate]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Because of sheer volumes, a shared network of self-driving cars like this probably can't replace rapid transit, but it could easily replace local buses.

In any case, self-driving cars are a long way off, IMO. Barring some eureka moment in AI technology, we're talking at least 20 years before this sort of thing will happen.

20 years isn't that long for a planning horizon. Isn't the TMP a 20 year blueprint? If they don't start exploring it now, we are going to be in a big old mess when self-driving cars become a reality.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Not really, since traffic on the highways outside Ottawa are not particularly high - none of the main roads leading in and out have an AADT higher than 25,000 once outside the immediate commuter zone. Even most of that traffic is destined for Ottawa. An outer ring road wouldn't benefit very many.

I was talking mostly about intra-regional traffic. People going from Orleans to Barrhaven and such.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I know people want to live in low-density suburban neighbourhoods with backyards and wide streets and big box stores AND have a transit system that resembles the centre of a high density European city, but those things are not compatible. The city cannot afford to spend tens of millions per km to build trams on arterial roads all over the city to run mostly-empty trams.

Well, they can't have it all but they can have SFHs with (small) backyards* and still make it transit-friendly if they build the neighbourhoods like Parkdale in Toronto, for example.

*Most new home backyards in Ottawa suburbs are tiny anyway these days.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

At some point, we need to try something different.

No, at some point we need to REQUIRE something different.

Our official plan keeps calling for something better. Developers keep proposing the same kind of crap they've been building since the 1950s. City Hall keeps rubber-stamping it.

They could stop doing that tomorrow. They - we, collectively - choose not to.

[DubberDom]

Originally Posted by daud

When you break it down in actual starts, South End is #2 + #4=1029
Ottawa city is 810
West is #3 +#6=607
East is #4=186

Thank it not correct, there is a large number of new construction happening in the "Gloucester" portion of Orleans - eg. Trailsedge, Eastboro etc...