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Originally Posted by lrt's friend
You compare this to the original $900M project that was going to reach Barrhaven Town Centre and included the Vimy Bridge and double tracking from downtown to Bowesville, you have to wonder. Of course, a good portion of the additional costs are going towards grade separating every road along the route including along the airport spur.
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If they were to take the N-S LRT plans and just limit themselves to it with a single unelectrified track, they'd save a fortune. But that would be too easy.
Reading the report is just a head shaker.
Essentially, they want to grade separate just about everything but do it in a way that it can be used for grade separated electrified double track in the future. Sort of. Some of the time. Maybe. Well for the airport link anyway.
So one thing they're going to build is a MUP crossing of Hunt Club parallel to the tracks in full knowledge of planning to move it later. I only point this out because, well, you'll see.
They're going to build a single track rail-over-road structure at Lester. So any railcars being tested at the NRC will be pushed up and over this bridge then the brakes applied on the other side to get them into the NRC... and when they're returned the locos will have to throttle up from a standing start on the other side. Unless we build more tail track for them. But in the future, they might lay an industrial spur for the NRC with a grade crossing of Lester if they build electric LRT. Or they might leave the industrial spur on the bridge and build a new double track crossing for LRT instead. The parallel MUP will get its own bridge over Lester (
), and yes, it too will be moved in the future as well... because, you know, they don't know if structures for one or two tracks will be placed to the east of their initial structure in the future.
Down at Leitrim, they're going to build a road-over-rail structure. But when and if the Airport builds its future runway on the Leitrim alignment, well that structure will be dismantled, which would be after about 20 years of service ensuring that the favoured form of transport in Ottawa, cars, never have to stop for a train. The railway will stay where it is once the new runway is built (I guess it won't extend that far) and presumably another structure will be built further south along the line for the realigned Leitrim to once again carry cars over the Trillium Line without delay.
Between Lester and Leitrim, btw, is the Airport's emergency services road crossing of the railway. It, somehow or another, will be left as a controlled at-grade crossing, thus earning it the distinction of being the only non-railway grade crossing of the Trillium Line.
The report doesn't indicate how it will cross Earl Armstrong as that was a recent change. At that point it's still in the old Prescott Sub corridor. Topographically, taking Earl Armstrong over the tracks makes the most sense as the land slopes up somewhat to the east where an embankment would go, but I imagine they'll do whatever assigns the most costs to the rail system at the time of construction - in car-centric Ottawa, it's best to build a rail bridge with extra spans for a future divided roadway than wait until the roadway is widened to build a second grade separation... gotta keep the costs of those future road projects down, after all.
The real money, though, seems to be for the Airport spur. It will naturally fly over the Airport Parkway, with provision for the latter's widening (see above about keeping future road widening costs down). And then it will remain up in the air on an embankment to arrive at the E&Y Centre (Uplands Station) on its north side where an elevated two-track, two-platform station will be built, which will serve as a passing siding. The alignment then remains elevated heading west over Uplands and then swinging south incorporating a half kilometre single track viaduct for the final run over Paul Benoit Driveway into the Airport, where it will be placed, UP-and-SkyTrain-style, between the airport building and its parkade*. So any possibility of extending the line south beneath the runway is gone. It will forever be a terminus.
*The depiction on geoOttawa, however, has the station tucking in to the west of the terminal building at Convair Pvt rather than running between the terminal and its parkade. Since geoOttawa has been updated for the Earl Armstrong extension, this may be the more current plan. Can't tell from geoOttawa at what elevation it would be.
To avoid saving any money on Walkey Station in the interim configuration, the station will be built on the south side of Walkley, east side of the tracks, thus requiring its own stairs and an elevator rather than making use of those found in the northbound Transitway platform if they were to build it on the north side of Walkley, west of the track. The N-S LRT location of that station, btw, was on the north side of Walkley as an island platform station to the east of the existing track with another track to be built further east still. Access would have been at-grade across the tracks to the existing northbound Transitway platform and to Westvalley Pvt to the east. Knowing the City, they'll probably prevent any ability to access the station directly from the adjacent Mariott Inn, thus nullifying any benefit from that location.
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The end result is going to be a system that is subject to failure because of all the track switching that trains need to accomplish along the entire route and scheduling problems.
One question remains unclear, is the Ellwood diamond going to separated as part of this project?
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It's not in the description and the diagrams (which don't resolve on zoom-in) don't suggest it. The old N-S LRT had a roller coaster overpass here, but DMUs can't do that kind of gradient while taking the line under VIA's Beachburg Sub would involve reworking the Southeast Transitway and the Sawmill Creek crossing and/or reworking the Beachburg's crossings of the Airport Parkway and Heron Road.
If they ever want to grade separate the Ellwood Diamond for future LRT, the smartest thing to do would be to convert the Southeast Transitway from that point southwards, allowing the LRT to pass under the Beachburg just to the southwest of the current diamond. That would also save them some unnecessary palaver at Hunt Club - they can leave that MUP bridge wherever they build it by just using the existing Southeast Transitway overpass. The Southeast Transitway itself could be looped back to Heron on the east side, allowing it to become a functional extension of the Baseline BRT. Since they're going to move Confederation Station to the north side of Heron, transfers between the Trillium LRT and the Baseline BRT/Southeast Twy would take place there. The portion of the Trillium Line south of Ellwood to/from the airport can then travel up the Beachburg Sub to Hurdman & Tremblay instead.
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If the airport spur will not be interlined in the forseeable future, why don't we buy a few standard streetcars for the spur. That is likely all that we will need to meet the demand.
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Oh, but you're not thinking like they do! You see, the airport spur won't necessarily be a 'spur' at all times. Sometimes the trains from Riverside South will be the through-running train to Bayview with shuttle service to the airport at South Keys, but at other times the train from the airport will through-run to Bayview with the train to Riverside South being on a shuttle service. So while the plans are not for it to be interlined
per se, they will run trains from the airport on the line north of South Keys. Sometimes. Maybe.
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