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

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by acottawa

There are plusses and minuses either way, but the city has also spent the last 60 years developing with the Queensway as its main transportation artery, so things like shopping malls, the Via station, etc. tend to be along this corridor, which are also the hub for local bus routes routes. Spend billions tunneling under Montreal you pick up some extra local traffic, but lose all of the other drivers of ridership.

The location of the VIA station is a mistake in its own right, so we'll omit that. Yes, you would lose connectivity with the St. Laurent Centre and Gloucester Centre, but think of all the km's of street facing retail on Rideau/Montreal you'd have access to instead, along with the Montfort Hospital. You'd also still have reasonable access to gov campuses like NRC or CSIS/CSE using local routes or shuttles.

I'm not doubting why the decision was made to follow the 417/174. It's clearly meant to serve outer-Greenbelt suburb-to-downtown commuters using a cheap right of way.

If the goal was instead to design transit to serve a 24/7 crowd instead of just commuters, I've long felt that the absolute best corridor to follow from downtown would've been tunnelled under Rideau/Montreal until the 174, then elevated or at grade along St. Joseph from the 174 to Jeanne D'Arc, then tunneled again continuing along St. Joseph.

Would it be expensive? Of course. But you'd have transit that accesses places people actually want to go apart from their offices. Stations would be easily accessible in pleasant urban environments instead of in the middle of highway interchanges. Transit would be a bigger part of the modal share and it wouldn't be seen as something only meant to be used by captive riders outside of rush hour. Then you have an easier business case to build more transit and so on. At some point we're going to have to take a leap of that nature if anything's going to change, but with the current council and culture amongst voters, it's not happening anytime soon.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

The location of the VIA station is a mistake in its own right, so we'll omit that. Yes, you would lose connectivity with the St. Laurent Centre and Gloucester Centre, but think of all the km's of street facing retail on Rideau/Montreal you'd have access to instead, along with the Montfort Hospital. You'd also still have reasonable access to gov campuses like NRC or CSIS/CSE using local routes or shuttles.

I'm not doubting why the decision was made to follow the 417/174. It's clearly meant to serve outer-Greenbelt suburb-to-downtown commuters using a cheap right of way.

If the goal was instead to design transit to serve a 24/7 crowd instead of just commuters, I've long felt that the absolute best corridor to follow from downtown would've been tunnelled under Rideau/Montreal until the 174, then elevated or at grade along St. Joseph from the 174 to Jeanne D'Arc, then tunneled again continuing along St. Joseph.

Would it be expensive? Of course. But you'd have transit that accesses places people actually want to go apart from their offices. Stations would be easily accessible in pleasant urban environments instead of in the middle of highway interchanges. Transit would be a bigger part of the modal share and it wouldn't be seen as something only meant to be used by captive riders outside of rush hour. Then you have an easier business case to build more transit and so on. At some point we're going to have to take a leap of that nature if anything's going to change, but with the current council and culture amongst voters, it's not happening anytime soon.

I think you are overstating how “urban” Montreal/St.Joseph are. There are a few urban pockets, but it is mostly strip malls, low density housing, and campus-style employers set in vast fields. This line would probably have a few thousand people actually living or working in walking distance. A transit line would probably lead to more density over time, but at the rate Ottawa builds high-density housing it is a project that would be measured in centuries.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I think you are overstating how “urban” Montreal/St.Joseph are. There are a few urban pockets, but it is mostly strip malls, low density housing, and campus-style employers set in vast fields. This line would probably have a few thousand people actually living or working in walking distance. A transit line would probably lead to more density over time, but at the rate Ottawa builds high-density housing it is a project that would be measured in centuries.

I’m not saying it’s like Yonge St. but in general it’s good to run transit lines down corridor with shops, grocery stores, small businesses like bakeries and whatnot. Take a look on Google Maps and you’ll see plenty of businesses that are easy to miss when you’re driving down Montreal Rd. focussing on the road ahead of you. And way easier access for surrounding residential, even if it’s low density. It’s a lot easier to walk say 200m to a potential station on Montreal Rd. than to walk 200m across 174 on/off ramps getting a nice coat of salt spray.

All I’m trying to get at is that right now, the way we build O-Train means that most of the time you’re emerging from a station to nothingness. Tunney’s, nothing apart from sprawling, car-oriented gov campus. Bayview, nothing. Pimisi, nothing… etc. And even in cases where we do aim for TOD near stations, the “integration” is poor, e.g. Dream Lebreton interface with Pimisi station or proposals for future Bayshore station etc.

This is all fine and great if you’re a commuter, in which case all you care about the terminus station where there’s either a bus loop or a park and ride waiting for you. But for our transit to truly fit the generally accepted definition of success, it should serve commuters and also people who want to hop on for 3-4 stations to visit somewhere like Clocktower or The Royal Oak or Dhruvees and then head back. Simple, every day outings that should be easily achievable on transit but aren’t at all. Right now O-Train isn’t being built that way, instead it’s built as more of a bridge between outer suburbs and downtown while taking the cheapest path in between, especially re: the east extension.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

But for our transit to truly fit the generally accepted definition of success, it should serve commuters and also people who want to hop on for 3-4 stations to visit somewhere like Clocktower or The Royal Oak or Dhruvees and then head back. Simple, every day outings that should be easily achievable on transit but aren’t at all.

This isn’t what mass transit is for, this is what local buses (or trams in high density areas) are for. Even in cities with extensive metro systems, you would make this sort of trip by bus or tram.

I have said this in other threads, but the solution to “my local bus does not come often enough” is more frequent local buses, it is not spending billions on a subway.

I agree with your point about entrances, which are often badly located even within the chosen corridor.

[Truenorth00]

If the Confederation Line was built along Rideau/Montreal, the cost of 100% grade separation, would have meant it would never have the left Greenbelt (making this thread moot). The city would also have had to maintain the Transitway and a fully grade separated rail line. Given what we know why, that's hard to imagine without substantially more cuts.

Service on Rideau/Montreal can be fixed with some tigh decisions and a few gallons of road paint to build and properly enforce bus lanes. An inability to make tough choices doesn't justify spending billions more.

Finally on density, it's going to come along the Confederation Line. We can already see it happening. 20 years from now, there will be more condos along the Confederation Line than Rideau-Montreal.

[DTcrawler]

Originally Posted by acottawa

This isn’t what mass transit is for, this is what local buses (or trams in high density areas) are for. Even in cities with extensive metro systems, you would make this sort of trip by bus or tram.

For the most part yes, but it's not uncommon to make short(er) non-commuting trips using the subway or metro in cities like Toronto or Montreal. In fact, ironically, in Toronto it's often favourable to walk a little more use the subway because streetcars move at a rage-inducing pace in mixed traffic. In Ottawa, I don't doubt for a minute that frequency boosts and better bus priority measures would be a perfectly adequate and far cheaper option than tunnelled O-Train, but the city clearly favours doing the opposite with the Montreal Rd renewal and bus service cuts. At least with the O-Train the city can only sabotage service so much.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Service on Rideau/Montreal can be fixed with some tigh decisions and a few gallons of road paint to build and properly enforce bus lanes. An inability to make tough choices doesn't justify spending billions more.

Definitely, but that requires investing money on improving a transit corridor that runs parallel to Line 1, which the city doesn't seem particularly willing to do. I agree that Rideau/Montreal doesn't need a subway to be adequately served, but if we're a city that puts all its eggs in one basket, a line that does double-duty serving outer-Greenbelt commuters AND a fairly busy retail corridor would've been ideal. Definitely cost-prohibitive though, and my original post probably belonged in the fantasy thread. Was merely expressing my idea of an ideal alignment.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by DTcrawler

Definitely, but that requires investing money on improving a transit corridor that runs parallel to Line 1, which the city doesn't seem particularly willing to do. I agree that Rideau/Montreal doesn't need a subway to be adequately served, but if we're a city that puts all its eggs in one basket, a line that does double-duty serving outer-Greenbelt commuters AND a fairly busy retail corridor would've been ideal. Definitely cost-prohibitive though, and my original post probably belonged in the fantasy thread. Was merely expressing my idea of an ideal alignment.

Putting bus lanes on Rideau/Montreal is not a real parallel system. Most of the ridership will still move in to the LRT. It mostly speeds up local travel along that corridor. It's cheap and easy to do and simply elevates existing bus services. But it takes space from cars. Which is why it will never happen.

[J.OT13]

Ship has sailed on surface transit improvements for Montreal. It's now down to three lanes in much if Vanier.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Ship has sailed on surface transit improvements for Montreal. It's now down to three lanes in much if Vanier.

That was a political decision to rip up the bus lanes and install bike lanes.

[Tesladom]

Originally Posted by Harley613

It still blows my mind that they put a station there at Montreal Road, a place with little to no TOD potential, an industrial park that I'm certain most employees will continue driving to, and walking distance mostly to single family homes. The greenbelt is on on one side, as well.

More mind blowing is the Orleans Blvd station. The only way any of these work out is to have modal connections since there is not enough local walking distance demand to justify these stations

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Tesladom

More mind blowing is the Orleans Blvd station. The only way any of these work out is to have modal connections since there is not enough local walking distance demand to justify these stations

That station (now called Convent Glen) does have some struggling strip malls at the corner of Orléans and St-Joseph Blvds that could be redeveloped to higher density housing. They're 500 m or less from the station.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Acajack

That station (now called Convent Glen) does have some struggling strip malls at the corner of Orléans and St-Joseph Blvds that could be redeveloped to higher density housing. They're 500 m or less from the station.

If we want to make St. Joseph a proper main street, it needs its own transit route. A 500m walk to a specific point on a main street (longer to anywhere else) is ridiculous.

We keep talking about having transit on arterials, but then we don't deliver. Just like out where I live, with bus service cancelled on Bank Street south of Hunt Club.