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Originally Posted by lrt's friend
The old bypass plan wouldn't address in city traffic to any degree. It was too far on the periphery and mainly was designed for traffic wanting to bypass Ottawa. But how much traffic is actually bypassing the city? Not much. Ottawa is 'the' destination for most traffic running through the Ottawa valley. Remember, that the eastern terminus of the bypass highway was at Vars. I remember the signs. How would this really help people crossing town from Orleans to Barrhaven? It won't.
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Agreed. The proposed Kars to Vars route would have been underutilized, which is probably why the Province decided not to build it.
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We have thrown most of our money at the Confederation Line, to cover a route that was already addressed.
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I disagree. Albert and Slater streets are at maximum capacity. Something had to be done to increase the capacity through the city core.
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I have said this countless times. It doesn't solve other emerging traffic problems. Not one bit.
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I agree. Resolving transportation issues south of the Airport may be your top priority, it isn't the city's top priority.
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We are moving major employment centres, RCMP from Overbrook to Barrhaven, and DND from downtown to near Kanata. Neither to be really effectively served by LRT anytime soon.
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Nor should it. LRT's biggest strength is transporting a large volume of people. I don't know, but I highly doubt if either of them will be employing enough people to make LRT feasible for them. Given that people will be coming from a large number of directions, buses would be much more effective. If an LRT line is coming close to one of the campuses, then an extension/detour might be worth considering, but it shouldn't be a fundamental requirement.
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And in the case of the former, no wonder Leitrim Road is a mess. It is a rural road, for pete's sake. And all those people who worked at the RCMP who chose to live in the east end now face an arduous commute using these old rural roads. Forget transit. It is not effective with our current plans.
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The new location for the RCMP headquarters is certainly awkward to get to, especially from the east end. I am not sure we want to build infrastructure to encourage employees to make this commute though. I suspect over time the problem should fix itself as people move closer to their work.
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Our decision to cancel the N-S LRT route is now coming home to roost. This would have facilitated getting people off the roads and moving people between suburbs.
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How would it have done this?
It might have helped some of the residents of Riverside South avoid the traffic mess created by the RCMP employees by giving the residents an alternate mode of transport (if it goes where they are going).
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How does it make it easy to go from Orleans to Barrhaven with the current plan? Way too many transfers.
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The original plan wouldn't have helped people get from Orleans to Barrhaven either (too many transfers and a long, exaggerated S shaped route).
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The south end is now the fastest growing part of the city,
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That is such a misleading statement and another example of how you can lie with statistics. If you add two small numbers, the percentage increase is large. if you add a large number to a very large number, the percentage increase is small.
Kanata, Barrhaven and Orleans all have more housing starts than Riverside south, but since they are all about 10 times larger than Riverside South, the percentage increase is smaller. Even Stittsville has 2.5 times the population of Riverside South.
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the easiest to service with rapid transit
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Yes there is an abandoned rail bed from South Keys to Earl Armstrong Drive (about half way between Albion Rd and Bowesville Road) and beyond, but to get from there to Riverside South, a new Right of Way needs to be built.
If that is your argument for it being easiest, I will counter by saying there is an abandoned ROW from Bayshore to Stittsville via Bells Corners, Bridalwood and Blackstone, but no one is even thinking of using that despite it would serve over 5 times the population of Riverside South, plus the vast majority of Kanata/Stittsville's future growth.
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but we have become obsessed now with Phase 3 of the Confederation Line and reaching the very fringe of the city. There is no balance in our planning.
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I do agree and am against the current Stage 3 plan. Paralleling the Queensway does not improve service. The motive for this is to save costs by shortening multiple bus routs that run on the same road (and replace them with a single train) and serve commercial interests with big pockets.
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Phase 2 of the Trillium Line ends in the bush and will not address real needs to get people out of their cars. The Trillium Line does not go where people want to go or where they live. We have no money so just build a token line that doesn't solve any problems.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you on this one. I have said it before and will say it again. The southern extension of the LRT doesn't make any seance. A community of 10,000 (children and adults) doesn't need a train that can 600 passengers every 12 minutes 3000 passengers an hour). The rest of the city have survived on buses for decades. For a similar cost, the southern transitway could be extended to Earl Armstrong Drive, giving residents a direct, and fast bus from their door to Hurdman Station (with stops along the way) that will allow direct transfers to both the Trillium line and Confederation line. All the other suburbs will have to make similar transfers.