North America's largest and busiest busway turns 25. Ottawa Transitway

[miketoronto]

I just found that Ottawa's Transitway is celebrating 25 years this year. Official celebrations were held in October.

The Ottawa Transitway is North America's largst busway, and also the busiest busway network in North America and one of the busiest in the world. Daily ridership on just the Transitway is over 240,000 riders.

The Ottawa Transitway is world reknown and planners from around the world have come to Ottawa, to see how Ottawa has become the city with the highest bus usage in North America for a city in the one million metro mark.


Photo thanks to OC TRANSPO.

Following are milestones of the Ottawa Transitway from OC TRANSPO
http://www.octranspo.com/mapscheds/Transitway/Transitway_25/Tway_Memories_Background.htm

1983-2008

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1978: The Transitway system – the largest engineering project in the Ottawa-Carleton Region’s transportation history – is approved by Ottawa-Carleton Regional Council.

1983: First sections of the west Transitway open in December from just south of Baseline Road to Carling Avenue, and in the east across the Rideau River, with seven new stations at Baseline, Iris, Queensway, Lincoln Fields, LeBreton, Lees and Hurdman.

1984: Lincoln Fields is connected to LeBreton Station via the Ottawa River Parkway and the new west Transitway running parallel to Scott Street, featuring a large rock cut and new stations at Westboro and Tunney’s Pasture.

1985: Campus Station opens and the Transitway is extended north from Mann Avenue to Laurier Avenue.

1986: Laurier Station opens. The Transitway is extended from Laurier Station to Mackenzie King Bridge. The first Park & Ride lot opens at Place d’Orléans to ease congestion on the Queensway during construction.

1987: Train and St. Laurent Stations open along with a new section of Transitway from Hurdman Station to Michael Street, just east of St. Laurent. The 100 millionth rider is celebrated.

1989: Blair Station opens and the Transitway is extended from St. Laurent Station to just east of Blair.

1990: Cyrville Station opens.

1991: The southeast Transitway opens from Hurdman Station to Riverside Hospital, with new stations at Abbey (renamed Lycée Claudel in August 2002), Smyth and Riverside Hospital.

1992: Bus-only lanes introduced along the Transitway between Blair Station and Orléans Blvd.

1993: 500 millionth Transitway rider is celebrated.

1994: Place d’Orléans Station opens along with a permanent Park & Ride lot. Greenboro Park & Ride lot also opens.

1995: The new southeast Transitway opens September 3 from Billings Bridge to Hunt Club Road with new stations at Heron, Walkley and Greenboro, with improved service to the Airport. Eagleson East Park &Ride opens November 20.

1996: South Keys Transitway Station opens June 23. On November 3, the 31 km of Transitway, that was first approved in 1978, is completed at a cost of $420 million, with the opening of the Transitway from Billings Bridge to Riverside Hospital. The expansion of Billings Bridge Station opens, as well as Pleasant Park Station.

1998: The 750 millionth Transitway rider is celebrated.

1999: Dominion Station opens November 29.

2000: Mackenzie King Station opens June 28 with an underground passageway between the Rideau Centre and the eastbound platform, and with a new Sales and Information office in the Rideau Centre. Fallowfield Park & Ride opens October 29. Bayshore Station opens December 14.

2001: Bayview Transitway Station opens October 15 and Greenboro Station is expanded, coinciding with the launch of the Light Rail Pilot Project. Trim Park & Ride opens in November.

2002: The one billionth Transitway rider is celebrated September 10.

2003: Gold permit parking at Park & Ride lots introduced in March. Telesat Park & Ride opens September 1.

2003: Eagleson West Park & Ride opens November 3.

2004: Terry Fox Park & Ride lot opens September 5.

2005: Terry Fox Station opens February 22. A new 3.2 km extension of the Southwest Transitway, from the Nepean Sportsplex to Fallowfield Station, opens December 14.

2006: Jeanne d’Arc Park & Ride opens in June and Strandherd Station and Park & Ride opens in December.

2007: Teron Station and Riverview temporary Park & Ride lot open in September.

2008: The 1.5 billionth Transitway rider is celebrated along with 25 years of Transitway rapid transit service.


Future Transitway Plans
2009: Four Park & Ride lots to open at Millennium; Chapel Hill, Riverview and Leitrim, with approximately 200 spaces each in phase one. A new section of the West Transitway will open between Pinecrest Avenue and Holly Acres Road, with a new station at Pinecrest and an expanded station at Bayshore.

2010: Longfields Station will open along with a new section of the Southwest Transitway between Fallowfield and Strandherd Stations.

Other: New Transitway links from Strandherd Station via Marketplace to Barrhaven Town Centre, from Baseline Station to Norice, from Queensway Station to Pinecrest, from Holly Acres to Moodie, from Eagleson to west of Terry Fox and from Riverside to the Smyth Hospital Complex. Improvements planned at St. Laurent Station and Jeanne d’Arc.


Transitway Statistics
Number of Stations - 38
Park & Ride Spaces - 5,372
Bike & Ride locations - 31
Average weekday passenger volume - 240,000
Length of Transitway bus-only roadway - 34 km

[urbanfan89]

And within five years it will be ripped up to build LRT tracks. Sound planning there.

[alexjon]

OC Transpo only carries 369,000 riders a year, though.

[lrt's friend]

yep, city council will vote on Friday to spend billions of dollars to lay LRT track on the Transitways and soon (well in a decade or two) they will be no more. A waste of money in my opinion that could be better spent by building LRT on new routes. Who knows whether this will ever actually happen since the current city council has a record of botching LRT plans and is being sued for breach of contract by Siemens.

[alexjon]

Siemens is suing everyone lately

[Doady]

Originally Posted by alexjon

OC Transpo only carries 369,000 riders a year, though.

OC Transpo carried 138 million riders last year.

http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/riderep/documents/07q4can.pdf

[alexjon]

Originally Posted by Doady

OC Transpo carried 138 million riders last year.

http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/riderep/documents/07q4can.pdf

http://octranspo.com/admin/Facts_Figures/Facts_ridership.htm

[Doady]

Originally Posted by alexjon

http://octranspo.com/admin/Facts_Figures/Facts_ridership.htm

I see nothing on that site that states that OC Transpo has 369,000 riders per year.

In fact, it claims to have 95.6 million per year, not 369,000. The latter is for a weekday.

Furthermore, those stats are for linked trips, not unlinked. Unlinked they would be 138 million and 516,000 respectively.

Ottawa is the fourth most transit-dependent metropolitan area in the US and Canada. No way that its transit system could have only a few hundred thousand riders per year, unless Ottawa is a small town. And let me assure you that Ottawa is not a small town.

[alexjon]

Oops, I meant a day! Thanks for pointing out what I couldn't catch when half asleep. Oh wait, you didn't. Thanks all the same

[Doady]

But still, the stats seem to indicate high ridership, not low ridership. I think it is high enough to support LRT. Ridership stats are much higher than Portland, for example. But the stats could be wrong, I have never used Ottawa's system so I can't really be sure.

[lrt's friend]

Ridership is expected to exceed 100 million (linked) for the first time in 2008. The metropolitan area is also served by STO, which brings in at least 15 million more linked trips and STO ridership is growing even faster and they are expecting to build their own bus Transitway soon. Transit frequency on the Transitways can be measured in seconds during peak periods.

[miketoronto]

Greater Ottawa, including the STO bus system has over 400,000 daily transit riders. OC TRANSPO carries over 360,000 riders a day, and STO carries over 55,000 riders a day.

[waterloowarrior]

19.4% of people in the metro use transit to get to work (population 1.13 mil), 21.2% on the Ontario side (population 0.85 mil)

[Justin10000]

When I lived in Ottawa, the only bus that mattered was the 95.

[lrt's friend]

On Friday afternoon, Ottawa city council voted to accept a new transportation plan that will build a rail tunnel through downtown and extend LRT along most of the inner bus Transitways in order to allow for continued increasing ridership and relieve downtown congestion. In addition, the Bus Transitways will be extended substantially further out into the suburbs.

[vanman]

Wtf is a busway?

[ssiguy]

^ something that costs one/seventh of SkyTrain ,can be built in months not several years, but is just as fast and carries more passengers with scores of suppliers as opposed to SkyTrain's one.

[Justin10000]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

^ something that costs one/seventh of SkyTrain ,can be built in months not several years, but is just as fast and carries more passengers with scores of suppliers as opposed to SkyTrain's one.

Have you ever used the Transitway in Ottawa? I used it extensively, and I can tell you, that the conditions during rush hour are pretty bad. The overcrowding on the 95 is nuts, and the supposed time-savings is completely erased when you reach Albert/Slater. At Tunney's Pasture, Westboro, and Lincoln Fields.

Off-Peak, the speed on the Transitway is quite fast though. I will never forget the bus I was on, drafting a car. That was awesome. Too bad the suburban service is crud in Ottawa. Of course, that depends on the posted speeds. Some busways might have lower posted speeds. But then, I used the Skytrain, and it was quite fast also.

Also, the Transitway was NOT built in several months. The Transitway is mostly grade separated, and follows a complex alignment. It took several years to build, especially the Southeast portion.

The supplier issue, is the Skytrain's failing. If Bombardier ever went under, Translink would be screwed on getting new trains. They would have to pay a premium for them.

[ardecila]

If Bombardier ever went under, presumably its assets would go up for sale, including it's intellectual property - the patents and copyrights on its products. TransLink could simply buy the patents and copyrights for the ART vehicles, and then they could seek competitive bids on other corporations producing the trains. TransLink is the largest user by far of this technology, although there are similar and much smaller lines in Toronto, New York, Detroit, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and Singapore.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Justin10000

Have you ever used the Transitway in Ottawa? I used it extensively, and I can tell you, that the conditions during rush hour are pretty bad. The overcrowding on the 95 is nuts, and the supposed time-savings is completely erased when you reach Albert/Slater. At Tunney's Pasture, Westboro, and Lincoln Fields.

Off-Peak, the speed on the Transitway is quite fast though. I will never forget the bus I was on, drafting a car. That was awesome. Too bad the suburban service is crud in Ottawa. Of course, that depends on the posted speeds. Some busways might have lower posted speeds. But then, I used the Skytrain, and it was quite fast also.

Also, the Transitway was NOT built in several months. The Transitway is mostly grade separated, and follows a complex alignment. It took several years to build, especially the Southeast portion.

The supplier issue, is the Skytrain's failing. If Bombardier ever went under, Translink would be screwed on getting new trains. They would have to pay a premium for them.

Except for downtown, Ottawa's Transitways are totally grade separated, which distinguish them from BRT in other cities. The downtown section, although congested, is not that bad and to suggest that all benefits are negated by that section is not accurate. The overall Transitway system is far better than running buses entirely in mixed traffic. One has to understand the volume of passengers being handled essentially by only one route through downtown, and that is caused by the lack of available alternative routes and peculiar local geography. Most local politicians believe that a LRT tunnel is needed to speed up service through downtown, however the benefit of this will be mostly negated by an extra transfer introduced for most suburban passengers. We will see if funding will become available for this very expensive project.

In comparing rail and bus speeds, I once watched a bus travelling on the Transitway running parallel to our diesel O-Train and both ran at virtually identical speeds.