I am constantly amazed at what I hear about light rail planning in the City.
I have to conclude it doesn't matter what happens, people will simple reinterpret it (twist it) to fit their own preconceived agenda. It is part of the hyper-partisan-ization of our society that I find distressing.
There was a SW transit plan under Mayor Chiarelli. It ran on street surface in the downtown, accross the Flats and Dalhousie neighborhoods, and turned south at Bayswater, ran along the OTrain line, managed to miss the airport, to Riverside, to the new Strandherd Bridge over the Rideau and thence into Barrhaven where it ended.
The plan had a number of merits. It put transit into a rapidly growing area at the same time as the population moved in, which meant people could get used to transit from day 1, and the street plan could be shaped to feed to it. It serviced a lot of underused lands en route to Riverside. It did not go to Kanata or Orleans, because those areas already had the transitway. It was to cost well less than a billion dollars.
Voters turned it down. Some because it was too expensive. Some because it wasn't expensive enough: they wanted a tunnel. Others wanted it to go East-West first, even though most of the new LRT would simply replace existing BRT. Thus was born an unwiedly coalition of nay-sayers who voted to delay the SW - LRT til a later point in building out the LRT transit system.
After the election, the east-west route took priority. To appease those who did not want surface rail in the downtown, it was put in a tunnel. Even if the LRT could run on the surface for a while, it wasn't a good long term solution, which the tunnel is. Those who claimed the SW - LRT was too expensive gladly voted for the more expensive tunnel version. Converting the BRT transitway to LRT was seen as progressive, even if it didn't give a huge boost to ridership. From a strategic point of view, these Council decisions are defensible.
Along comes the recession and government stimulus money. Stimulus money isn't to be spent far in the future if it is to stimulate us out of a recession, it needs to be spent soon (unless you are US Congress which will announce the majority of their stimulus money next June, before their re-election, and well after the recession is over). The stimulus in Canada requires municipalities to accelerate or bring foreward planned projects so that they can be implemented sooner than otherwise planned and stimulate the economy. This means projects that are already in the planning pipeline. They are not to be the projects the City planned to build this year anyway - that wouldn't be a stimulus, it would just replace municipal money with federal money. Ottawa has two transit plans with environmental approvals: the E-W LRT from Blair to Tunney's, and the SW - LRT from Bayview south.
The City is suggesting it could build the segment from Bayview to Riverside immediately. This is NOT the old SW plan that included the street surface tracks in the downtown. It does not include the link to Barrhaven. It builds on elements from the old SW plan, which Council has previously decided needs to be built someday, and offers it up for immediate funding. This is smart politics. If other levels of government are waving money around, rejiggle City transit projects timelines around a bit to take advantage of the free - or at least cheap - money.
Let's not forget other elements of the transit route nirvana. The NCC, Gatineau, and Ottawa are examining a better linkage of interprovincial transit. The most logical first-phase outcome, in my opinion, would be a LRT service from Rideau through the new tunnel to Bayview Station and thence north accross the Prince Of Wales Bridge to Gatineau. Say goodbye to most of those blue buses in downtown Ottawa, and hello to a busier LRT system. The converted OTrain alignment looks pretty prescient in this case.
Take a valium Ottawa, the unfolding LRT plans are not to everyone's liking, never will be. But they are certainly not a disaster.
[Note that the extension of the LRT from Tunney's west to Lincoln Fields is not eligible for short-term stimulus money because the route hasn't been decided on yet. There is still lots of consultation and hand-wringing to do].
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"Converting the BRT transitway to LRT was seen as progressive, even if it didn't give a huge boost to ridership."
ReplyDeleteHow do you know that? The O-Train, after all, has doubled ridership expectations. Why? Probably because they were using the same model used for estimating BRT ridership. They didn't anticipate the large number of people who use it in the morning to head north and then west (rather than east) to Tunney's Pasture. They didn't anticipate Carleton students moving into areas around the stations - yet any urban planner (not to be confused with transportation engineers who call themselves "planners") graduating in the last 20 years could have told them as much. Areas around light rail rapid transit stations become more attractive to businesses and residents, both of which serve to increase ridership in imperceptible ways over time.
Converting the Transitway frees up plenty of bus capacity for feeder service, thus leading to an increase in ridership. It also leads to a reduction in operating costs, which indirectly increases ridership by reducing fares (or reducing the rate of fare increase) and the increase in reliability makes the service generally more attractive.
and the street plan could be shaped to feed to it.
ReplyDeleteCould be, yes.
But wasn't.
Ottawa is still building spaghetti string suburbs.
Why?
David: boosting ridership: yes there are numerous examples of ridership being higher than projected or growing faster than projected. Unfortunately, there are also a number of transit extensions that have proved to be duds. Traffic planners take certain measurable factors and make a projection. It has to be defensable. I dont want them to boost projections by 50% or 150% because SOME fixed rail systems have had higher than projected growth. Until someone does a series of reviews/backcasting of transit projections for all the LRT segments opened in North America over the last two decades, we wont have usable rail data.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to your second para, swapping out buses from BRT to feeders once the LRT is open will not reduce total costs, as we are increasing our costs by running all the old buses plus the LRT. Some per passenger costs might drop, and the back-haul savings from BRT MIGHT be converted into new bus users on improved feeder services, but total transit budgets go up, not laterally or down.
-Eric
WJM: could be, but wasn't: and for the developers, a good thing too. Imagine selling a neighborhood based on direct access to a LRT and then it doesn't come. Would home buyers sue the builder for false promises? What if LRT never comes? Ideally, I'd love for Urbandale to be building transit-focussed developments today, but he won't, until the transit appears and the consumer expresses a demand for transit-focussed communities.
ReplyDeletethx for the comments today and previously,
-Eric
WJM: could be, but wasn't: and for the developers, a good thing too. Imagine selling a neighborhood based on direct access to a LRT and then it doesn't come. Would home buyers sue the builder for false promises? What if LRT never comes? Ideally, I'd love for Urbandale to be building transit-focussed developments today, but he won't, until the transit appears and the consumer expresses a demand for transit-focussed communities.
ReplyDeleteThe "communities" (ugh) aren't transit-focussed today, but the way they are physically laid out, the never can and never will be.
The same style of suburban housing (and bloody strip malls) COULD have been laid out on a street pattern that (A) could be supportive of a future LRT or other transit system, and (B) could be capable of "growing up".
But it wasn't.
Ottawa keeps building suburbs that are frozen, and always will be frozen, in the 1950s.
It's wasteful and stupid.
Hi Eric, I like how you call the line the "SW O-Train." I think the "North South" name was unfortunate because it sounds like it goes two different directions, when really it only goes south of downtown and doesn't go north to Gatineau.
ReplyDeleteThe bidirectional "north-south" name meant people would compare it to an "east-west" line across the City, when the project would really be comparable to building a single "east" line or a "west" line.