Ottawa Rapid Transit Network developments

[Suzie]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Ha! There really wasn't that much of a debate. As we saw the 4 options, all the routes were predetermined. When I attended public meetings, nobody was listening to the public, the consultants were telling the public that this was the way it had to be. Bah! And remember the mayor telling the councillors to shut up and quit questioning the plan. Just vote for it! No wonder councillors are now rebelling and producing an alternative that public is anxious to embrace.

Regarding the O-Train and Carling LRT sharing the same corridor, electrifying the O-Train will solve the problem as the track could be shared.

Regarding the O-Train extension to Gatineau, this is for Ottawa residents travelling to downtown Hull, not for Gatineau residents travelling to downtown Ottawa.

Regarding Tunney's Pasture and Westboro, that portion of the Transitway could also be converted to LRT at a low cost, and in the longer-term this could be extended possibly via Byron. All possibilities still remain, even if Carling were to be chosen as the primary route.

We are now seeing Doucet and Leadman stealing Cullen's thunder on the eve of voting through the transit plan he was leading. Was Alex Cullen the right person to be leading the Transit Committee?

At best, Tunney’s Pasture and Westboro residents would get a little stump in the distant future. And we’d be lucky if we got headways of 10 minutes (peak) and 20 minutes (off-peak) versus less than 1 minute (peak) and less than 5 minutes (off-peak), which is what we have now, because we’d no longer be on the main route. And we’d probably lose our access to the West because the Parkway would be blocked off (believe it or not, there is a steady traffic going from Westboro and Tunney’s Pasture to the West, including Kanata). People from the West going to Tunney’s Pasture (there are lots of them) would face a particularly circuitous route and an additional transfer. This would be totally unacceptable.

Last week, you posted a letter and asked that we sympathize with someone who had moved to far-away, sparsely-populated Riverside South on the expectation that rapid transit would be built there. For every person like that, there are hundreds of people who moved to Tunney’s Pasture and Westboro, both well-established, growing, inner core areas, in order to take advantage of the high-quality transit corridor that is already in place and has been there for twenty-five years. Now you want to take that away and put it in a parallel corridor that is less desirable in terms of ridership, speed and cost. This does not make any sense.

Carling is a longer corridor and would have more stations:
- Parkway Route: 7.6km with 3-5 stations (Tunney’s Pasture, Westboro, Dominion and perhaps one or two more (Ambleside and Woodroffe)).
- Carling Route: 8.7km with 6-8 stations (Carlingwood, Maitland, Churchill, Merivale, Civic Hospital, Carling and perhaps one or two more (Gladstone and Sommerset, as per the North-South LRT)). Plus, a sharp curve to reach the O-Train corridor.

So clearly, the Carling route would take significantly longer. And as I said on my original post, Carling is likely to lose the Civic (probably its biggest trip generator) and other major employers.

I’m not a fan of streetcars generally and don’t think it would make sense to put one on Carling. A simple BRT line could do the job, be up-and-running in less than one year and cost nothing. If, in 25 years, demand reaches a level where an LRT would be justified, the money was available, and development opportunities in Westboro/Tunney’s Pasture/Bayview/Lebreton were largely exhausted, then maybe. But it certainly should not be the priority.

Doucet is an fanatical bus-hater. He’s made it clear he wants to eliminate buses from the downtown core, STO buses included. So yes, there would be pressure to force STO riders to use the O-Train stump to Hull. To provide decent headways (less than five minutes), you’d need to twin that bridge at huge cost. To have stations that are as close to the big office towers as the current bus stops, you’d need to tunnel. Again at huge cost. And, as I noted in my original response, STO would suffer a severe loss in service quality. Unless you spent obscene amounts of money, this O-Train stump would also be definite downgrade for the vast majority of OC Transpo riders that go to Hull to work. The only ones that would be better off are the handful of riders that already use the O-Train. The rest would face much longer waits, a more circuitous route (especially from the East) and longer walks since the stations would be located much farther from the office buildings. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.