Quote:
Originally Posted by Uhuniau
The point where the northbound rail line meets Taché is about 700m from the Governbunkers of Hull; depending on the exact route of a surface spur (let alone a tunnel), it could terminate at the Governbunkers themselves or across the street, or some other place that is closer to a Governbunker entrance than the up to 200m that existing O-train stations expect the worst-treated bus transfer passengers to walk.
You're right. If only there was already a bridge of any kind at that location; a rail bridge would be even better.
From the existing Bayview to a notional Hull station is about 2000m of track, which is on a par with the distance on the Montreal metro between Berri-UQAM and Jean-Drapeau, but without the nuisance of having to dig a tunnel under the river.
There are zero metres between Bayview Station and Bayview Station, and a spur to downtown Hull would put LRT immediately adjacent to the big civil servant bus loop at Terrasses, which is also, by volume, effectively a RapiBus station.
Perhaps a "better" one is necessary.
That doesn't mean a somehow imperfect one should be thrown out.
Shorter and more direct for whom?
And until that shorter or more direct route (for whom) is built, a rail link that can't get tied up by pinch-point mixed-traffic bridges in the core would share the same advantages that the tunnel under downtown now does.
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The mere existence of a piece of dilapidated infrastructure is not a reason to invest a huge amount of money to try to restore it to former glory. If you see a dilapidated motel on the side of Highway 7 does not mean the Government should spend big bucks to open a hotel. The bridge was built in 1880 when the main CP station was on the flats. It survived the NCC rail purge because it was out of the way. It is not well located for Ottawa-Gatineau commuter patterns.
You are talking as if Terrasses de la Chaudière is downtown Hull. It is one complex at the Western edge of downtown Hull. Most buildings/hotels/museums/etc are further east. Building/massively reconstructing a 3ish km rail spur primarily to benefit the a small subset of the employees of one building is not particularly practical.
But even if we assume Terrasses de la Chaudière is the only important destination in Hull, getting from Bayview station to Terrasses de la Chaudière currently takes about 10 minutes in rush hour on the 105. If the Zibi Spur were built, running a DMU 2.5ish km on a single track spur (roughly the distance from the arboretum to Bayview) is not going to be much faster than that. If 2 km spur were built to Taché, requiring a 700m walk or bus/lrt ride it wouldn't be faster at all, and for every other destination in downtown Hull it gets worse than that.