Confederation Line East LRT Extension (Stage 2) [Blair to Trim] | U/C

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Needless to say the problem with having stations everywhere is it makes the system god awful slow.

Even a "god-awful slow" system is still pretty god-d-mn fast compared to the bus, and especially compared to the buses that downtown residents, subsidizing the expansion of LRT to the suburbs, have to put up with.

Realistically, what will be the dwell time at an LRT station?

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Looking at the potential use and TOD opportunities at each station:

Jasmine Crescent (not on plans, but useful) - Not exactly a redevelopment spot unless the Pineview Golf Course becomes available, and even then it would have limited impact due to the Greenbelt and Green's Creek. However, it is already a dense area with demographics highly conducive to transit, so Day 1 ridership would likely be quite high - even if there is limited potential for future growth unless the area becomes even more dense.

Some of those buildings near Jasmine are going to be reaching the end of their shelf-lives fairly soon, as will be some of the public buildings to the west. And the presence of an LRT station at Jasmine as well as Blair would put price-pressure on the suburban shopping plazas nearby that will probably make some of those massive surface parking lots worth more as redeveloped land.

Montreal Road - Limited redevelopment opportunity due to the Greenbelt and the industrial zoning of the area.

There's a lot of room for denser redevelopment of that industrial area; the amount of pointless, stupid "green space" that Ottawa industrial estates have between buildings, compared to similar areas in other Canadian cities, is astounding. And again, a lot of those buildings are prtty much disposable, and will likely be replaced anyway during the next few decades.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I have said this before, that a station at the Shenkman Arts Centre is critical if we want to urbanize Orleans at all. This is where there has been an ongoing attempt to build a more traditional urban commercial area. It is also the location of public facilities including the afforementioned arts centre but also the municipal service centre for the east end of the city. That was the former Cumberland municipal hall. It is also the location of a multi-plex cinema. To me this is a no brainer. Without a station at this location, we can kiss goodbye further efforts to urbanize this location. We are also making easy access to the mentioned public facilities only available by automobile.

The station at Place d'Orleans many not be a long distance away but the entire distance is pedestrian hostile.

+1 again. Suburbs like Orleans aren't going to urbanize if we keep treating them like, well, like suburbs.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

If they want to use the current Place d'Orléans station to save money, fine. But converting the current station and building a new one meters away at Shenkman is asinine. Build 1 brand new station in between. Don't double down on stations 200 meters apart. Enough with the laziness. This is even dumber than the distance between bus stops on Montreal Road.

What's dumb about the distance between bus stops on Montreal Road?

[MoreTrains]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

What's dumb about the distance between bus stops on Montreal Road?

Mainly the fact they seem to be less than 20m apart.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

If they want to use the current Place d'Orléans station to save money, fine. But converting the current station and building a new one meters away at Shenkman is asinine. Build 1 brand new station in between. Don't double down on stations 200 meters apart. Enough with the laziness. This is even dumber than the distance between bus stops on Montreal Road.

I think the distances are further than 200 meters. Regardless, a compromise would produce a system that is bad for everybody. We need to align with mall entrances, Park n Ride lot and transfer station at Place d'Orleans. If we start reconfiguring everything and improve pedestrian accesses, you may end spending more than the cost of just building two stations. Compromises can have good intensions but sometimes they are not a good idea.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by MoreTrains

Mainly the fact they seem to be less than 20m apart.

That might be someone's perception, but not the reality.

Between the Rideau River and the Ogilvie intersection, by my reckoning, the stops are spaced 189m apart westbound, and 237m eastbound. The westbound figure might be slightly corrupted by accidentally leaving in stops from the "special" 12, rather than the normal one.

That compares to the 2 between Rideau and MacRae (236m eastbound, 228m westbound) and the 1 between Rideau and the Rideau River (213m northbound, 223m southbound)

[eemy]

I think a higher density of stations makes more sense if it were following a more urban route, like along St. Joseph. Unfortunately, that would likely require tunnelling as I don't know if they could fit LRT along the corridor between Jean d'Arc and Place d'Orleans. Otherwise, as long as the route follows 174, I would probably just put stations at Jean d'Arc, the east side of Place d'Orleans, and Trim. They can always leave the other locations as potential infill stations.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

What's dumb about the distance between bus stops on Montreal Road?

Again, having bus stops every 200m makes the bus slow. You're the one always complaining about how long it takes to travel on buses in the inner city... well the fact that they stop every 10 seconds is the main reason.

Judging by the experience of Toronto, K-W, and Kingston, all of which have introduced limited stop express buses on urban corridors, the speed of the 12 could be increased 20% if they cut every other bus stop.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Again, having bus stops every 200m makes the bus slow. You're the one always complaining about how long it takes to travel on buses in the inner city... well the fact that they stop every 10 seconds is the main reason.

Judging by the experience of Toronto, K-W, and Kingston, all of which have introduced limited stop express buses on urban corridors, the speed of the 12 could be increased 20% if they cut every other bus stop.

Alternatively, they could, at low cost, introduce a "rapid" version of the 12, which only stops at a handful of busy or important stops. That could be a holdover until rapid transit appears on that corridor.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

Again, having bus stops every 200m makes the bus slow. You're the one always complaining about how long it takes to travel on buses in the inner city... well the fact that they stop every 10 seconds is the main reason.

Fun fact: buses don't actually stop at all of the stops.

Judging by the experience of Toronto, K-W, and Kingston, all of which have introduced limited stop express buses on urban corridors, the speed of the 12 could be increased 20% if they cut every other bus stop.

The key limiting factor on the 12 is not the number of stops, its lack of transit priority on the route it runs. We could have had transit-linked traffic signals 20 years ago - this being the high-tech capital of the Ottawa Valley and all. And no one is willing to sacrifice parking or vehicular priority anywhere along the route.

For the 12 in particular, there's also a problem at the Cummings Bridge, which was exacerbated by stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID traffic-control practices on the Rideau reconstruction project much of last year. Honest to God, for all the time, trouble, and expense that the Bank and Montreal reconstructions cost (and Wellington, 15 years ago), they should just have cut and covered a transit tunnel into those streets for little additional cost!

Long dwell times on the 12, and other downtown routes, are the fault of OC Transpo for not putting enough (or any) rear-loading vehicles on these routes. Run times and schedule adherence would improve significantly without a front-loading vehicular bottleneck, but no one at OC Transpo agrees. Buses run dangerously overcrowded, but OC Transpo denies there is a problem. Operators submit reports which are ignored. Artics are for suburbanites, so not only do the suburbs get LRT quicker in the future, they get better bus service now.

You're welcome, suburbanites. You're welcome.

[lrt's friend]

I suspect that a subway connecting Rideau and Montreal Road will be technically difficult because the streets are not well aligned and the elevation change with a river in between. I am sure Cummings Bridge will be considered a heritage structure, so demolishing it and creating a two level bridge is not likely. Almost certainly they would have to curve a subway to the south long before reaching the Rideau River and possibly running across Cummings Island but then it would somehow have to go underground before reaching the east shore. I don't know how you would do that without blocking too much of the river. The alternative would require a very deep subway to get completely under the river.

When they built the Bloor-Danforth subway over the Don River, they didn't have the same problems. The big thing was they had already built a two level bridge years in advance.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I suspect that a subway connecting Rideau and Montreal Road will be technically difficult because the streets are not well aligned and the elevation change with a river in between.

That's not much of an obstacle. Since it would start having to "go deep" well before reaching the Rideau River eastbound, the sub-fluvial tunnel portion could be used to not only achieve the vertical alignment, but also the horizontal dogleg required.

Almost certainly they would have to curve a subway to the south long before reaching the Rideau River and possibly running across Cummings Island but then it would somehow have to go underground before reaching the east shore. I don't know how you would do that without blocking too much of the river. The alternative would require a very deep subway to get completely under the river.

It would only be "very deep" for a few hundred meters on the west side of the River.

When they built the Bloor-Danforth subway over the Don River, they didn't have the same problems. The big thing was they had already built a two level bridge years in advance.

Not a solution for the Rideau River, given the lack of elevation on the east bank, unlike the Don Valley.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by eternallyme

Alternatively, they could, at low cost, introduce a "rapid" version of the 12, which only stops at a handful of busy or important stops. That could be a holdover until rapid transit appears on that corridor.

They could, I spose, like the B-line in Vancouver and the limited-stop bus that goes through north-central Calgary, but those solutions are of limited value in mixed urban traffic anyway. The chief limit is the ambient speed and volume of traffic, not the number of stops.

I'd start by putting rear-loaders on the downtown trunk routes, to reduce the dwell-time problems.

[J.OT13]

If the Rideau-Montreal subway is ever seriously considered by the City, I don't think the extra cost of going under the Rideau will be a big deal. Rideau isn't even all that deep or wide, so tunneling would be fairly simple.

[silvergate]

The main problem with busses going down Montreal is the Vanier bottleneck. Maybe if they removed on-street parking and turned it into a bus lane it would work out.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

They could, I spose, like the B-line in Vancouver and the limited-stop bus that goes through north-central Calgary, but those solutions are of limited value in mixed urban traffic anyway. The chief limit is the ambient speed and volume of traffic, not the number of stops.

A limited stop bus will still yield travel time improvements. In Kingston, the urban section of Princess Street (from Bath east/southward) is highly analogous to Montreal/Rideau in the sense of being an urban mainstreet with heavy and slow moving traffic, and the express bus makes it through in 10 minutes as opposed to the 14 minutes the local bus requires. Plus the express bus is far more reliable.. its much less likely to go over 10 minutes than the local bus is to go over 14.

[Catenary]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

The key limiting factor on the 12 is not the number of stops, its lack of transit priority on the route it runs. We could have had transit-linked traffic signals 20 years ago - this being the high-tech capital of the Ottawa Valley and all. And no one is willing to sacrifice parking or vehicular priority anywhere along the route.

It's unusual that Ottawa doesn't have Traffic Signal Priority for emergency vehicles anywhere in the city, which would be a good starting point. Where I'm from (and where my parents live) the city just replaced their entire priority system, going from an optical emitter to a radio based system that can predict which way the vehicle will turn based on the turn signals on the vehicle. This system is fully compatible with transit vehicles in the future, should they ever choose to implement it.

[MoreTrains]

Originally Posted by Catenary

It's unusual that Ottawa doesn't have Traffic Signal Priority for emergency vehicles anywhere in the city, which would be a good starting point. Where I'm from (and where my parents live) the city just replaced their entire priority system, going from an optical emitter to a radio based system that can predict which way the vehicle will turn based on the turn signals on the vehicle. This system is fully compatible with transit vehicles in the future, should they ever choose to implement it.

Sounds... sooo.... decadent....

[c_speed3108]

From the Orleans star:

LRT to run along centre of 174

Published on January 26, 2015


By Kelly Snider

TRANSIT. The City of Ottawa is reaching out to the public for their feedback on the preferred alignment of the Confederation Line East Light Rail Transit (LRT) extension. A series of open houses will be put on in February that the community can attend. For the most part, the preferred alignment for the rail line is in the median that runs in the middle of Highway 174 and is being co-ordinated with the eventual widening of the highway.

"For the last year or so a proposal looked at a number of different ways, through the high way corridor, to bring LRT to Orléans," said Stephen Blais, Chair of the Transit Commission and Cumberland Councillor. "This was the preferred alternative, especially when you look at the sides being closer to housing and conflicting with the hydro corridor."

Blais said if it were to interfere with the hydro corridor, it would become an expensive process to move.

"When Stage 2 is complete, which includes the extension of LRT to Orléans, 95 per cent of all Orléans, Blackburn Hamlet, and Beacon Hill residents will be within five kilometres of rail," said Blais.

Blais said the rail will not be in the middle of the highway the entire time, as it will transition from the North side to centre as you enter Orléans.

"This is a great project that will improve the quality of life for people living in the east part of the city," said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson. "This eastern rail extension is an important part of our Stage 2 package of future rail projects that will help us build a truly City-wide transit system to serve generations of residents.

The City of Ottawa is co-ordinating this environmental assessment study for the extension of LRT from Blair Station to Trim Road, with the EA study on the widening of the Highway 174 and Highway 17.

The project will add 10 kilometres of rail from Blair Station to Place D'Orléans and four new stations to the City's overall transit network. A potential extension to Trim Road could add up to four more stations and 3.5 kilometres of rail.

The Confederation Line East LRT extension is one of three environmental assessment studies underway as part of Stage 2.

"Transit use in our city is highest in the east. It's important that people let us know what they think of our plans," added Councillor Keith Egli, Chair of the City's Transportation Committee.

The open houses for public feedback are:

Tuesday, February 3

R.J Kennedy Memorial Community Centre

Halls A & B

1115 Dunning Road Cumberland

6 to 9 p.m., presentation at 7 p.m.



Wednesday, February 4

Bob MacQuarrie Orléans Recreation Complex

1490 Youville Drive, Orléans

6 to 9 p.m., presentation at 7 p.m.



Thursday, February 5

Guy Faubert Hall

954 Giroux Street, Rockland

6 to 9 p.m., presentation at 7 p.m.