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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
Define hugely expensive. The cost to twin and electrify the Trillium Line is bound to be over a billion. In that context, ripping up and building new platforms while costing some money and time, is not going to a show stopper. If/when they decide to upgrade the Trillium to that standard I expect a shutdown on par with the Transitway shutdown for the Confederation Line.
If you argue that they should have built Stage 2 Trillium differently, then the question I pose to you is how much more should they spend and where should that money come from? Building to a higher standard means spending more. And that money has to come from somewhere. So you want to suggest where that money should come from?
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I will say two things here. First, and as you said below, money doesn't grow on trees. So anything that is effectively going to mean rework (redoing stations, replacing a fleet, etc), is a waste of money. The city shouldn't have to do things twice. The cost of new low floor fleets, redoing station platforms, the extra costs of providing buses and the labour during a shut down, and probably other costs I am missing off the top of my head, could well be a couple hundred million by the time is all said and done.
Which leads to my second point, I recognize that upgrading the T-Line and using it to provide LRT service to the south end is hugely problematic, and expensive. And even a $1 billion dollar investment it might at best double track and modernize the existing line, and get a double tracked line to the branch south of South Keys, but probably get it to either the airport or Riverside, and wouldn't get it interlined. You need more money than that. And if you go with the option of just using the existing funds, and doing what you can to extend it as far as possible, and doing all the engineering works needed to avoid a second shutdown, you might only get to South Keys. I've never suggested the city should spend more money than is already allocated for the T-Line. That is why I suggested the city pause the project to re-evaluate; because I don't think the project as is is good value for money and a total rethink is in order.
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
This line is sufficiently low traffic and effectively flanked by the Southeast Transitway and Confederation Stage 2, that they really could divert plenty of riders and shut it down for a few few years to have a full rebuild. Would they do that in 10-15 years? Probably not. But if ridership starts warranting it, you can be they'll do just that. It's the most logical plan. And that closure would be less painful than shutting down much of the central and eastern Transitways for over half a decade.
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It is easy to say that now because it is so far out. If the line has double, triple, or more, in terms of ridership, it becomes a much harder sell.
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
They have gone from zero stops with rural and express buses to one stop and they'll still have a longer ride to the core, than you will with two stops. I'll save my sympathy for them.
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Everyone lost that. There is nothing special about them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Truenorth00
I am starting to think you really believe that money grows on trees. Did you miss the part where the city said they won't put a cent into Stage 3 and they don't anticipate any major LRT developments till 2048 without higher level funding? There's no LRT going to Stittsville till virtually everyone on this forum is retired or expired.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new...-governments-to-fund-future-lrt-projects |
No, I don't think that. In fact I would say I am pretty aware of that fact. Hence why I think it is worth deciding whether the city should spend anything on the proposed Trillium Line plan. And as for future funding, the city probably can't do anything else itself for a while, unless it finds an additional funding model to raise more funds. But to think no level of government is going to fund anything for 15 or 20 years is also a stretch given that transit has become an important investment, by the higher levels, with each decade that passes. So I think trying to funnel all the money into the C-Line today because the city might not see another drop of funding for 25 years is kind of disingenuous. There will be more money, just nothing beyond phase 2 is secured or in the works as of today.
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Originally Posted by Truenorth00
I think this is a dodge. Money doesn't rain from the heavens. And as long as that is true, you and I both know that increased spending on the Trillium Line means cuts somewhere else, most likely to the Confederation Line.
Now....it's not that I don't support twinning and electrifying the Trillium. And I'm supportive of those who say they should have spent the funds on doing that instead of extending it to Riverside South. What I am not in agreement with is spending more on Trillium, in any arrangement that would see cuts to bussing or Confederation. That's a recipe for lower riderhsip.
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And this is the funny thing, we are actually both in agreement, just in our own ways, and from our own perspectives. You don't think the Trillium Line should see additional expansion because it could impact the C-Line. I agree that the C-Line phase 2 is the most important priority. I also agree that the Trillium Line plan should be cancelled, in part because money needs to spent carefully now, and also because it will be expensive to make the line truly useful in future upgrades. And just as making cuts to the C-Line will impact ridership, having a value engineered trillium line that can't offer high frequencies, capacities, and simply terminates at Bayview, is a recipe for low ridership.
I would also add that having both the SE Transitway, and an extended T-Line, is kind of redundant. And dumb. You would actually have two pieces of transit infrastructure that don't take people directly downtown (I am assuming that they will simply terminate bus service at Hurdman, though even if they don't, that stretch from Hurdman to downtown on a bus will be rather slow). Basically you would have spend hundreds of millions of dollars and just added another sub-par solution. In fact, if bus service is still being offered along the Transitway to Hurdman, a lot of riders could be better off by taking a single bus all the way to Hurdman, and then the C-Line there, rather than a bus to the T-Line, and then taking the T-Line to the C-Line. The T-Line will never get the highest possible ridership in that situation because there will be be an alternate choice that will be better for a lot of people.
I would still argue that there is an immense amount of value, and potential ridership, by extending LRT further south and to the airport. And I would also argue that the T-Line has a lot of value in serving emerging neighbourhoods, and serving Carleton University. But maybe it is time the two goals are separated. Maybe what the pilot project taught the city is that just because a rail line existed in the city, doesn't mean that it makes it any easier, or cheaper, to integrate it into an LRT network, and make it useful in a way that maximizes ridership. The T-Line has always been problematic in a lot of ways. If it wasn't it would have been expanded by now. And the fact that no one, on a forum with people who crazy about transit and rail projects, has really come out and said this is a great project, should be a clear sign that something is wrong. And I think the problem is that the city, and lots of citizens, have been pushing a vision of the T-Line that doesn't actually make sense.
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