Interprovincial transit opportunity to choose your mode

Prince of Wales rail bridge from Ottawa to Gatineau

Tuesday from 5.30 to 8.30 at City Hall (main floor) there will be a public display of the options for interprovincial transit between Ottawa and Gatineau.

Options include which mode of transit to use: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or LRT. Route options include connections via the Alexandra Bridge (or under it, in a tunnel under the river, and remember the tunnel under downtown Ottawa is already very deep down so this doesn't require a steep slope, and the Rideau station has been designed with this connection in mind); a west connection on the Prince of Wales Bridge or Chaudiere Bridge; and maybe connecting these two crossings to make a loop.

Mode: Ottawa is growing out of its BRT system and converting it to an LRT system including a downtown tunnel. Gatineau, smaller than Ottawa, is just building its Rapibus BRT which will last it 30 years until it too is converted to a LRT.

It just doesn't seem logical to me to opt for a BRT linking the two cities. The idea behind the tunnel is get the buses off the downtown streets (so the streets can be redeveloped and landscaped for pedestrians and cyclists), and this means getting the STO buses off the streets too.

And we don't want large BRT stations at LeBreton Flats or near the National Gallery to transfer passengers to the LRT. So, my choice for the mode is LRT for the loop. In Gatineau's small downtown, it is probably premature to run the LRT in a tunnel; I suggest it would be fine to run it on the surface for the next several decades where it would serve to animate the street life.

Route: in the west, either the Chaudiere crossing or the Prince of Wales Bridge will work. But since the LRT route will help intensify development, it makes the most sense to me to run it on the POW bridge so it services all of  LeBreton-Bayview redevelopment areas, and connects with the future North/South line along the O-Train corridor (which might extend right over to Gatineau on the POW). While a bit further than the Chaudiere, the POW bridge would be car-free so service would be faster. The already-planned Bayview Station has been designed to handle east-west and north-south traffic and all its transfers, permeatations and combinations.

I also don't think they would need to double track the Prince of Wales bridge at the beginning, five or seven minute scheduling should be possible even with a single track bridge. Indeed, it might be possible to initially run the whole loop only in one direction on one track, and later expand it to two ways on two tracks.

On the east side, it intrigues me that the LRT could run on the old Alexandra Bridge rather than in a tunnel under it. Of course, car traffic would be booted off, and the bridge would revert to its original rail function. It is sort of poetic justice that rail structures were converted to roads in the 50's and 60's and now they could be converted to LRT service*. And the views from the LRT would be fantastic from both bridges, which can be a great feature attracting ridership.

City hall is air conditioned, so its a great time to come down and tell the City and NCC what you want to see for the interprovincial transit connection.

If you can't get there, you can go to this web site and make your comments. If you are really lazy, you can just copy and paste the shortcut to this blog posting: www.http://interprovincial-transit-strategy.ca/

*expanding on this idea of converting rails to roads and back to rails, the parkway along the canal would be a great conversion back to surface LRT (streetcar service) which would include Lansdowne Park, the Glebe, Main Street, Ottawa South, to Billings.

Transit Stations ... What will we get? ...

Detroit's downtown city bus station

This photo is of a new centre-island transit station in Detroit. Detroit is not the most viable city in the USA. We're not Flint ... nor Detroit. Will Ottawa's LRT system get anything as nice?

It has a tensile fabric outdoor shelter at the bus loading platforms and there is also a elevated people-mover station platform. The air conditioned and heated glass waiting room building is 25,000 sq ft, includes washrooms, ticketing, and shops. The whole thing cost $22 million dollars, and opened in June 09.

And here's the kicker: the entire terminal complex serves about 12,000 passengers a day -- which is about the same as the OTrain station at Bayview. Could anyone say our bus-shelter collection at these points is better than Detroit's?

Proposed Bayview station; click to enlarge

Thus far in the DOTT - LRT process all the outdoor (non-tunnel) stations have looked the same because the project team has a local-architect-on-board who has sketched in the stations. I presumed that the station architects were there to ensure the functional aspects of station design - pedestrian flow, access points, ensure there is enough space for an elevator well, escalator well, etc.

But at the last few DOTT meetings I recall that the stations have been described in much more definite terms: Tunney's station will look like this; this is what Bayview will look like, etc. I am wondering if the conceptual space planning is turning into a fait accompli?

What happened to the notion that LRT stations should reflect individual neighborhood identities (existing or proposed)? Do other LRT systems have uniform station design system-wide (like we did for the transitway) or unique stations?

Are unique stations reserved for politically and economically powerful neighborhoods whilst lower income neighborhoods or unorganized communities get off-the-shelf stations-from-a-kit?

Where is the we need a world-wide design competition crowd -- have they gone away because no stations are planned for the Glebe? Are Ottawa's transit stations going to be sole-sourced to the planning bureaucrats or the winning bidder architectural firm on the project planning level?

Proposed Tunney's bus centre-island transfer station and LRT station. No soaring roofs ... but soaring isn't usually associated with government office complexes. In the City of Ottawa, only taxes soar.

Read more about Detroit's station at http://www.metropolismag.com/lists/lt.php?id=eU0DAQUFUQFZUxoIAUwADgICAA%3D%3D

DOTT plans affect west side residents (vii): Bayview Rapibus Station?

The City has been evaluating the structural soundness of the historic Prince of Wales Railway Bridge over the Ottawa River to Gatineau. The City bought it a number of years ago for transit.

Friends of the OTrain and  LRT transit proponents have long viewed the POW bridge as a great solution for taking transit across the River. The interprovincial transit study offered renewed hopes for extending LRT service from downtown Ottawa to Gatineau over the POW as the first phase of a loop system serving the two downtown employment centres and to alleviate bridge congestion. Alas, logic may be loosing out to other concerns.

I gather that a leading proposal for addressing interprovincial transit woes is to widen the POW bridge to a two lane transitway (not LRT or OTrain) to bring the Rapibus system (Quebec's new bus rapid transit system just like Ottawa's 25 year old transitway) over to the Ottawa shores. A transfer station and bus storage area would be constructed under the new Bayview Station, connected by elevators to our E-W LRT line. The Rapibus terminal would be in place until such time as LRT was extended across the River. Of course, building a new terminal and widening the bridge * will work to delay that day by at least a quarter century.

 I dislike the idea of building a bus parking lot on valuable LeBreton and Bayview Yards development lands. Extending the LRT across the river and having it service a transfer station on the Gatineau side and having a terminal station at Place de la Chaudiere makes more long-term sense to me. The interchange at Bayview would then be much smaller, more efficent, and technologically advanced. Has the interprovincial study really gone so far "off the tracks" and gotten stuck in bus mode?

* I hear rumors to the effect that the existing POW bridge is in really bad shape, and may only be worth the scrap value of its steel, and that to extend either bus transitway or LRT service from Gatineau will require a totally new bridge. In any case, double tracking it, converting/widening it to two way bus way, or building a new bridge altogether will be very expensive. Mind, a bike and pedestrian link along the bridge would make for a wonderful new link in the bike network.

DOTT plans affect west side residents (vi): Bayview Station revised

Currently the transitway passes over the railway tracks at Bayview with a simple high level overpass. At the east side, it widens for the Bayview station, which is built on a downslope into the LeBreton Flats area. The only access to the Bayview transit station or OTrain station is from the east side of the overpasses.

Passengers can transfer to the OTrain tracks which are on the east side of the railway right of way, simply by walking down the sloped asphalt paths (being careful not to fall off the broken up edges of the path). Recall that the OTrain service north terminus is at Bayview.

The transitway will be converted to LRT use. Earlier plans showed the new LRT station located roughly where the existing transitway station is now located, but with slightly revised elevation and alignment. The new plan proposes major changes to that scheme. The existing transitway overpass will remain in place, but will be widened by about 20' on EACH side, and the station will be on this elevated structure directly over the OTrain cut.

The west end of the station will be on the existing embankment with elevators down to the new OTrain platforms that would be relocated to the west side of the cut, about 100' west of the current OTrain platforms. Presumably the west end of the LRT Bayview station would also have access onto Scott Street, although this is not yet shown (plans are not fully developed). The Otrain platforms are being moved west to open up the area under the overpasses for future LRT construction and possible Rapibus terminal.

The east end of the station will be on the embankment where the current transitway station is now. However, the embankment itself will be gone, replaced with an elevated concrete structure to hold up the tracks and station. Pedestrians will walk over a pedestrian bridge from Albert Street to a mezannine level under the tracks, and then up escalators to the side platform station. Or, from the mezannine, they could go down one level to the future LRT station for the north/south LRT should that be built (currently converting the OTrain line to LRT service is phase 3 of the LRT system buildout). Until the N/S LRT is built, or LRT service is extended to Gatineau via the Prince of Wales Bridge, they may be going down to a Rapibus terminal instead.

The new station location preserves and serves all the necessary options for LRT service to Gatineau, to the south along the OTrain alignment, and east-west. It permits transfers and continuous service by the same LRT vehicles from the downtown to points north, west, and south. It seems a logical design, if expensive and years ahead of living up to its major full potential.

Given that so much bridge widening will be necessary at Bayview, it is time for cyclists and community associations to lobby for improved cyling access from the Albert Street rights of way to the Scott Street corridor rights of way. The simplest thing is to widen the transit bridge on the south side to include a bi-directional segregated bike route. If this link is not built (and during transit construction is the best time to do it) then the dreams of efficient and safe cycling from the west to the downtown will be thwarted as there are no plans to widen the Albert Street overpass over the cut.

Otrain "temporary" station at Bayview

When the OTrain service began in 2001 it was a "temporary" experiment to see if Ottawan's would like a train. That the service - derrided as being from nowhere to nowhere - quickly exceeded its longer time ridership projections was a pleasant surprise. Today it carries 50% more riders than the optimistic forecast.

Still, being an experiment and all, the stations were designed to be "temporary". Bayview Station was no exception. The City engineers designed the paved paths with steeply sloping gravel sides. No doubt their text books and tables told them that these would be "stable". Of course, in the real world people walk on the verges, OC Transpo maintenance vehicles and snowplows drive on the paths, and they have erroded. In many places 10" to 14" of the asphalt path has broke off, leaving a dangerous to walk on edge. In the few spots where the gravel base extended out further or cannot be walked on because of the handrail, there is no breaking up of the surface.

Temporary facility or not, maintenance is essential. Repairs are required now.

Light Rail and the SW (OTrain) route

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].

Bore Hole Drilling at City Centre Complex

The City Centre complex is a combo office tower and industrial bays located on City Centre Avenue just east of and south of Bayview Station. Built in 1960 as part of the federal-funded railway relocation project, it was a intermodal terminal for offloading rail cars onto delivery trucks. Now it is industrial bays, with a surprisingly large number of printers located there. The largest tennant in the whole complex is my old company, Cielo Print.

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All last week there were two drilling rigs working the parking lot, drilling bore holes around the perimeter of the parking lot along City Centre Avenue and up close to the building. Surely, after so many delays, the owner, Equity Management, isn't planning to resurrect the 2 million square foot office-residential already-approved plans for the site?

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Or maybe they are just drilling for other purposes. Whatever, the project is unlikely to appear soon since it depends on a decided transitway LRT alignment and Otrain right of way project, both of which the City seems unable to make its mind upon. In any case, the tennants do not have demolition clauses in their leases, so it could easily take a decade to vacate the bays.

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The plans made a 15 years ago had the first (smallest) tower being built in the parking lot east of the existing tower, so no demoliton was necessary. Tower 2 was to be at the south end of the parking lot along Somerset, and only it or tower 3 actually required demolishing the southmost bays in order to proceed. More problematic, is who would rent all this space with the industrial uses still scattered amongst the new towers.

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Note that Phoenix DCR bought the vacant triangle of land to the north, 801 Albert Street, and is pushing the city for approval to build two 30 storey condo towers. Most motorists and passersby do not realize how very close this site is to the Ottawa River (Nepean Bay, unfortunately a lot of it was filled in while implementing Greber's plans) which means great views from the condo.

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The whole beehive of interest in this area (recall earlier posts on Arnon's proposed developments at the 855 Carling end of the Otrain corridor) reminds of me of the City's dumb decision to postpone the Carling - Bayview CDP which was to implement a coherent zoning and development vision for this whole underutilized corridor. Rumours abound the CDP is getting back on track, but nothing is firm yet.

LRT Maintenance Facility Site

There will be a low-key public meeting at City Hall on Wedn. June 24 from 5.30 to 8pm on the proposed new maintenace facility. No speaches, just poster boards and comment sheets.

Recall that on May 27 Council approved the alignment (route) and station locations. The consultants and staff are now working on station design, the BRT to LRT conversion process, construction staging, and how the LRT and BRT will operate once the line opens. Their results will be shown at another open house in Sept.

But back to the Maintenance Facility. Planners examined all the site along or near the LRT phase one alignment from Tunneys to Blair. The three top sites are
1. St Laurent, south of the Qway, either on PWGSC lands or immediately west of the current OC Transpo yards
2. Bayview, between Bayview Ave, Scott/Albert to the south, the Ottawa River Parkway to the north, and the existing bus marshalling facility to the east (Bayview Station)
3. Hurdman North, the vacant land immediately north of Hurdman Station

The consultants showed some familiar google satellite images or air photos of existing facilities in Mineapolis, Houston, and San Jose. Unfortunately, none of those are of the type proposed for Ottawa. Due to our extreme climate (minus 50 in winter, plus 32 in summer with high hummidity) most of the Ottawa facility will be indoors. The maintenance facility itself would of course be a large indoor structure. The storage yards would also be a structure, perhaps partially heated, to protect the vehicle fleet from weather. There would also be some test track sections, lots of loops and switches to move vehicles around, and a huge employee parking lot. These are most likely to be outdoors. So there is abundant oportunity for the facility to a noise nusience to residential neighbours, which is why the consultants prefer an industrial or already-noisy area.

The Bayview site is currently vacant brownfields, former snowdump and garbage infilling of Nepean Bay. Running through the site is the east-west transitway and the north-south OTrain line, the presence of which will complicate building a yard. Especially worrysome is the link across the Prince of Wales Bridge to Gatineau, which cuts the site in half. I would hate to see this potential interprovincial link 'lost' because the LRT itself used up the approach space to the bridge.

There is an existing Community Development Plan for the site. It calls for high rise apartment towers about 75m tall (23 stories, approx). Unfortunately, the City elected to build the high rises east of the Larouche Park, on unstable land that requires massive cleanup. The CDP plan deliberately scorned any consideration of economics, which would have put the residential uses on the land now used by Larouche Park and moved the park east one block to be adjacent the riverfront parklands. Now, apparently, the CDP is stalled because the proposed developments are too expensive to build due to remediation costs. And the City may well lose a potentially large and viable residential neighborhood close to the transit, the core, and employment centres, in favour of a one or two storey high sprawling industrial building and outdoor trackage because to build that does not require remediating the lands: just lay down a meter or two of stone excavated from the tunnel under the core, and presto, industrial heaven.

Now I can envision that a facility could be built there that would be compatible with adjacent neighborhoods and able to develop the site to a higher potential. Such a facility would locate the buildings and test tracks then fill in the loops and empty spaces with apartment buildings on top of a large podium structure that would be the green roof covering the maintenance facility, etc. Note that buildings would not be built over the maintenance garage itself or storage tracks, just all the other less-critical tracks and parking lots. Such a facility should have minimal neighorhood impact as all the facility would be indoors and quiet. The biggest impact would be workers commuting to the buildings, but that should be a similar traffic volume to the proposed CDP which would have had a dozen or more tall apartment towers.

But while architects, planners, and dreamers can envision such a development, I have absolutely zero faith that the City could or would actually built it. Until they come up with a plan that shows a largely indoor facility, with apartment towers above, and no gross underutilization of the site for "surface parking" or squealing train loops, it's thumbs down from me for this site.

Royal Mis-treatment

The Prince of Wales railway bridge is owned by the City of Ottawa. Built in the 1880's it should be declared a heritage structure. It sits unused just north of Bayview O-Train station.

Does the city have any maintenance plan for the bridge, or are they going to let it rust away until it collapses or requires more expensive repair? I do not know if the rust is just a surface effect to not worry about or if it is corroding away the bridge. But I do notice that other city steel structures are rust free. Just north of this bridge is the Lemieux Island bridge, pristine and rust free. While cycling around I tried to find other steel bridges that are owned by the City, but could not find a rusty one.

So, does the City have an asset maintenance program or not?

Leadman's DOTT meeting May 26th

Leadman's ward bumps up against Somerset Ward where I live, almost on the border of the two, which is why this blog is named West Side Action, since I try to cover events that happen on the west side of the downtown, regardless of fiefdom. Anyhow, I joined the big turnout for her forum Tuesday evening on the DOTT.

Her presentation and meeting themes covered two things: the DOTT in the downtown area, and the first-phase LRT in her ward terminating at Tunneys Pasture. She was accompanied by Renfrew Morrison, a transportation consultant that we recall was Clive Doucet's hired gun for his Carling LRT proposal earlier this spring, and who was Urbandale's hired gun in August 2007 when the developer lobbied to resurrect the southwest LRT.

What follows is not a report of the meeting, but my impressions of what went on. So, it is personal views, interpretation, and not "objective".

Leadman claims that council approved the Albert St routing for the LRT tunnel, including a surface crossing of the canal using the Mackenzie King bridge, with a sharp turn south, ie the current bus route through the downtown. And that the counsultants have gone off and "surprised" her and "shocked her" by examining alternative routes, and eventually recommending the Albert St - Rideau St - Ottawa U route. She claimed to be shocked that they had extended the terminus of the first phase LRT to Tunneys Pasture instead of Bayview, as council had directed.

Both Leadman and Morrison want an underground city in the downtown, connecting the stations with underground malls under office buildings. I wondered why the underground city idea never dies: council killed the plus-16 version of it years ago, and the city's developers have consistently refused to connect together their own malls. Minneapolis discovered you can have a lively plus-16 network or lively streets, but not both, and got the worst of both. I think Ottawa is way too small to support two lively streetscapes, or three, if plus-16 walkways are brought back in. Please "bury" this fantasy. And recover more of the surface from autodomination.

Morrison surprised me by claiming that 180m stations, capable of handling six car LRTs or future conversion to subway trains, would never ever be required in Ottawa, not in 100 years. I am in part puzzled by this because so many of the other blogsphere critics of the DOTT claim the system will not be able to handle the traffic proposed. Is the system undersized or oversized, on the short term or the long term?

I go to the DOTT meetings held about every two months as member of the public advisory council. The give the same presentation earlier that day to the business advisory council. And I thought they gave it to council members. But both Leadman and Morrison continually surprised me by their poor grasp of what I thought were well-covered items.

For example, Morrison chided the DOTT team for failing to include a spur at Rideau to extend the LRT east (along Rideau, or north to Gatineau), in fact, this has been frequently mentioned by the consultants.

More bizarrely, Leadman claims that by ending the first phase LRT at Tunneys, it forever "precludes any great circle line through Gatineau" (using the POW bridge) and will "eliminate potential for cross river transit forever". I guess this eliminates any potential for a n/s LRT line along the O-Train route too, but elsewhere in the meeting Leadman seemed to support that route, and the Carling LRT, even with the LRT going to Tunney's.

Well, maybe not to Tunneys. Her position alternated all night on that. Certainly building a major transfer station at Tunneys will be disruptive. But it will be very useful for the residential community, local bus transfers to the LRT, and Tunneys employees in the future, during the first phase LRT AND once the LRT is extended westward. Some citizens at the mike expressed appreciation for improved LRT service. It is not a "throwaway cost". It is, of course, perfectly fine to build a major transfer station at Bayview, in the neighboring ward, and she expressed no concern about throw away costs there. So does she favor ending the LRT at Bayview, or continuing to Tunneys? And in future phases, should it continue west past Tunneys? The answers varied all night.

Similar confusion prevailed on the use of Scott and Albert for BRT service. Recall that during conversion of the transitway to LRT service (at least two years) all the buses that use the transitway from Tunney's to the downtown will have to move off the transitway onto Scott and then onto Albert. This will certainly be very negative for adjacent residents, and I too question how the roads can handle all the buses. Staff suggests that the two curbside lanes will be bus only lanes, but I still see congestion hell.

Then, once the LRT is running, in theory most of these buses can be stopped at Tunney's and riders transfer to the LRT if going to the downtown, and for those going to Bayview or LeBreton, every third 95 would provide this service. However, Leadman and many citizen speakers derrided putting buses on Scott, derrided transfers at tunneys, and derrided evil-Kanata residents who want one-bus service from Kanata to downtown. Well, if they dont want transfers at Tunney's, they'll have decades of buses on Scott until the LRT is extended to Lincoln Fields and transfers are forced there. At some point you cannot please everyone, tradeoffs are necessary. There are hard choices here, and more leadership and consistency is required than was evident last night.

There was consistency though, in several aspects: Tunneys transfer station: bad; buses on Scott street: bad; LRT to Tunneys: good; no: bad; Kanata riders shouldnt be worried about making transfers at nice indoor stations; local riders wont stand for forced transfers; put the transfer station at Bayview, the city owns all the land around it (points to PPT slide that highlights land that is in fact owned by other parties like Phoenix DCR who have applied to build a condo on the land); its dumb to put LRT on the Ottawa River Parkway; the solution is to run all the buses on the parkway all the way to the downtown and not along Scott; look at the big picture, plan for the future and the whole city, but make decisions based on short-term local impacts. The tunnel selection should be based on city-building criteria, but give us the costs of each option first (so we can choose the cheapest?)

And the STO buses ... Leadman claimed the study ignores the STO buses on Ottawa's downtown streets, and claimed that there are more STO buses than Ottawa buses downtown. In fact, the DOTT projections always have counted all the STO users as being DOTT tunnel users, which gives some hint about the future of STO surface buses in the downtown, and some hint about the direction of the interprovincial transit study.

The audience asked many intelligent questions, and some whoppers. Members clearly disagreed as to whether transfers were good or bad, generally it seems Kanata residents should be prepared to transfer but local riders should not. The Byron right of way is useless for LRT, claimed a speaker, because it goes no where (gee, and I thought it ended so close to Lincoln Fields...). The LRT should run along Carling because there could be many stops serving local businesses and institutions (but no mention of why Kanata commuters would want such a milk run service). Use Byron, on the surface, no, put it underground. Leave the parkway only for cars, remove the buses, dont put LRT on it. No, keep the buses on the parkway. Even extend them all the way to the downtown on the parkway. A number of people spoke to the idea that the current transit planning too oriented to long-haul commuters at the expense of local transit (I agree heartily, but we still gotta deal with the folks in Barrhaven and Kanata). Keep the buses off Scott (cheers !) (how? by putting them on Albert, but hey, that's not our ward, it's someone else's problem).

Oh, that Bayview station, great place to put it, its in a field surrounded by no one. As for the Blair terminus, its stupid, its out in the middle of nowhere with vacant space around it, move it into a built up area. Morrison: London transit cited as doing great innovative tunneling work using the Austrian mine technqiue, and we are not considering it. He ignores that the tunnel-boring consultants for DOTT are from London Transport. Dont build the DOTT near the Langevin Block ... running it under the War Memorial would make a "nice" terrorist target ... but not to worry about running it along or under DND ...

Conspiracy theories abound, and are some of the reasons why going to public meetings can be so much fun. Did you know the LRT is intended for the Ottawa River parkway because they want to rezone it all for condos? That Hintonburg is always "targetted" because its poor? (I nod my head at that one ...) That it should be run on Byron so locals can use the LRT, but not on Byron because it is no longer a right of way but a park? That the urban core is the victim of suburban dominated council? (allright, I've gotta agree with that one too). Or that city staff is so incompetant that they continually bamboozle councilors and go off on their own tangents regardless of council direction and staff is secretly running everything ...

In summary, there were a number of valid concerns raised, in particular how well the DOTT will work at the great depth proposed; and how buses will be handled during construction and between phase and phase two. Yet if we are to focus on the big picture, the city-building one, we cannot continually nitpik on local impacts. The transit system has to serve a variety of needs and users, and cannot exclude the long haul, short haul, peak or off-peak users.

Leadman was listening, and giving people a chance to vent, and that is admirable. But she made no effort to reconcile her own mutually-conflicting options, and offered little leadership. I would have preferred her to have expressed some preferences for moving the system forward instead of just agreeing with every expressed concern. I think it is a leader's role to also temper public opinion, to acknowledge that with change comes disruption as well as opportunity. There will be some pain along with the gain. She could also try to reactivate the Carling-Bayview CDP so that vulnerable chunks of the neighborhood are prepared for change as the LRT is built out. She could also attend some more of the DOTT briefings (or send her staff, or get more community association people attending) because the significant factual gaps and misunderstandings undermine the quality of decisions and leadership we expect.

One train/one tunnel vs many trains in one tunnel

The downtown transit tunnel will have two tracks, one for each direction.

This would be fine if the trains only went east and west. However, desire for travel is also north and south.

It is possible to force everyone on the future southwest LRT, and future southeast LRT, and future link to Gatineau LRT, to transfer to the east-west line. Transfers would occur indoors, be comfortable, but would still increase trip time significantly. This would be significant for those who already had to take a local bus to the BRT to the LRT transfer ... etc.

Recall too that IF the southwest LRT, which should go through the airport, doesn't offer direct to downtown service we can kiss goodbye many conventions. Apparently a deciding factor in choosing convention destinations is direct airport to downtown transit. However, if the southwest LRT went over the Prince of Wales bridge, it could easily continue on the Casino and a convention centre there. Is this really what we want? I want to be good neighbors, and the two jurisdictions really should function and be planned as one metro city, but I dont feel obliged to build a major transit system to deliver conventions to Gatineau and not Ottawa.

I like to view the tunnel as being like the existing transitway, open to many transit vehicles with various destinations. Consider if we had red trains running east /west Blair to Tunney's, and green trains running from the southeast through the downtown and then back out to the south along the southwest route, a giant U shaped route. This not operationally difficult to schedule.

Now consider the Gatineau service. Recall that the DOTT projections for tunnel ridership assume all STO bus users are in the LRT tunnel. How did they get there? I don't see a major bus transfer facility at Rideau. But recall that the currently planned tunnel has a spur tunnel designed into it, branching off at the east end of the Rideau St station. From there, that tunnel could someday extend under the market to a station near Sussex before crossing the river (whether in a tunnel, on the McDonald Cartier span, or my preference, taking back the Alexandra Bridge as a transit and pedestrian/cyclist bridge).

The DOTT team have specified a spur at Rideau, not a two level station with transfers. This I expect (but it hasnt been said out loud) is a Federal tourist influence. The Feds want an easy to use system for tourists and visitors and for the interprovincial LRT to have a national unity function. A one-car no-transfer service from downtown Ottawa to Gatineau is best for this. So visitors could go to any downtown station, and get on the blue train that would go to Rideau and then off to Gatineau.

It is just my speculation, but obviously the LRT could continue through downtown Gatineau and back to Ottawa on the Prince of Wales bridge, make a circle route. Or, it could be implemented in reverse, with trains from the east going through the downtown and then over the POW bridge to Gatineau, until such time as the rest of the loop is completed.

Fully developed, a multi-train multi-destination LRT service in the DOTT could consist of a east/west line, a route from the south that loops through the downtown from the east and back out to the south from the west side, and a circle route that crosses the river.

Fortunately, the interprovincial study just starting up should be well enough under way as the DOTT planning process continues, to incorporate any number of options.

Kanata to downtown direct bus service ?

I read on Real Grouchy's blog that he and Marianne Wilkinson expected direct BRT service from Kanata to downtown to continue after the LRT system is opened from Tunney's to Blair.

When the DOTT study began, its terms of reference were from Bayview to Blair. It was a somewhat dubious proposition to force all west end commuters to transfer to the LRT at Bayview when they were already in sight of the downtown. They therefore proposed continuing BRT service from the west into the core. Since the transitway would be converted to LRT, the buses would exit the transitway at Tunney's and use Scott-Albert-Slater through the downtown. Turning all the buses around was a problem, so they proposed to run them all the way through to Hurdman. Then they would pick up traffic at Hurdman. It was immediately apparent that this approach had many flaws:

1. we would build a tunnel and LRT, but have to keep the bus lanes on Albert-Slater
2. not enough people would be on the LRT/BRT if a parallel surface BRT ran from Hurdman to Kanata through the downtown
3. The LRT and BRT are on the same alignment from Campus to Hurdman, and Booth to Bayview ... this might force a mixed surface running both buses and LRT's
4.. the surface bus lanes would stay in place for about 20 years, until the LRT was extended to Lincoln Fields. Would west end taxpayers be willing to continue funding an LRT system they seldom used? Recall that one reason the southwest LRT was killed was because west and east end commuters saw no immediate benefit to themselves.

The final LRT system selected deliberately offered service to two high ridership routes - east and west. (I confess I still think the southwest route was better from a town planning perspective, as it shaped new growth rather than servicing old growth, and existing neighborhoods usually complain about any changes, especially intensification).

BTW, as a citizen rep on the public advisory committeee to DOTT, I made those very aguments repeatedly.

So in January of so of this year, the DOTT mandate was extended to Tunney's. There is room there for a major transfer station. It is far enough from the downtown core to "warrant" transfering people from BRT to LRT. The LRT will offer all users the advantage of an exclusive grade separated congestion free all-indoor route through the congested downtown and its immediate east and west sides. And importantly, more taxpayers will get to ride on the LRT and benefit from its glamorous stations etc etc and thus be willing to vote for expanding it.

Note that the DOTT team and OC Transpo do not expect west end BRT users heading to Bayview and its O-Train or Booth to go to Hull, to transfer to the LRT. Instead, every 3rd or 4th 95 bus will continue to Bayview and Booth and maybe over to Hull. But not into the downtown.

In full disclosure, I should note that Marianne Wilkinson was my high school Geography teacher at Boredom High in Nepean. I subsequently went on to accumulate two geography degrees and the world's shortest career at the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs and subsequently the urban transit directorate at Transport Canada.

Transit tunnel success ...

The City today announced its preferred LRT routes and station configurations.

Good news: the major transfer station from buses-on-the-transitway-west will be at Tunney's Pasture, built on the grassy vacant area north of the current station.

Good news: the configuration at Bayview will permit same train access from the (future) southwest transitway / O-Train alignment to the downtown. This means that we can attract larger conventions to the new convention centre downtown as we will have no-transfer-required service direct from the airport to downtown. The configuration at Bayview permits much greater flexibility in train routing.

Bad News: the LeBreton Station is going to be accessed by bus service along Scott-Albert. This will be about a thousand buses per day per direction (I haven't been able to get a straight answer from DOTT about the number). This will impose a severe noise and dust and vibration penalty on adjacent residents for at least two years during construction of the at-grade LRT system and probably lesser volume of buses for decades after.

Good News: the Rideau St station will be at the north end of the Rideau Centre, under Rideau St. Other alignments examined had put the tunnel directly under the Rideau Centre, which had some bad service implications but preserved foot traffic in the mall. Now the Rideau Centre will have to lobby for moving some bus services off Rideau to the Laurier side of the mall. Maybe they could start with the STO service ... I note that the old Union Station is still being identified as a potential Library site.

Mixed News: the LeBreton station will be at-grade, maybe outdoor, until new developments build over it and turn it into an indoor station. At the rate the Flats are being developed, this could be never ... ironically, the City owns and plans to develop the site above and adjacent the proposed station, which bodes even more poorly for its prospects.

To see the powerpoint presentation by the DOTT committee, click on...

https://ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/transit_tunnel/interim/technical_briefing_en.pdf

Somerset Viaduct (Bridge) over the OTrain Line

Somerset west of Preston rises up and over the OTrain Tracks, near the City Centre Building. At the height of the crest, the bridge itself is only about 20' long; the rest of the road is simply a fill between retaining walls. The road was designed long ago and the angle of the slope means that motorists cannot see what's on the road (for eg, a parked car) over the crest. This creates a stopping-in-time problem.

The solution selected by the City is to narrow the road to two lanes for vehicle traffic. The road is wide enough for a bike lane on each curbside, but whether it is implied or will be painted on I do not know. By narrowing the road, moving vehicles are out of the curbside parking lane.

This project is nearing completion. Decorative lampposts and bollards were installed this week.

The south side concrete sidewalks were laid late last winter and the cement did not set well, with the results the sidewalks are spalled and already look a decade old. More curiously, the bridge repairs -- like the ones at Carling and Prince of Wales -- kept the one-OTrain-track-wide size. [in the comments section, I correct this. This bridge is already two tracks wide] If the OTrain is not double tracked or replaced with a double-track LRT for the next 20 years or so (life span of the repairs) then it will have been a cost effective decision to repair the bridges at their current size. But if the OTrain service is expanded or LRT service to the south is resurrected, the newly repaired bridges will have to be torn out and replaced by longer spans to cross the double tracks.

I sincerely hope that at that point the bridges are made another 15' longer to cross a future bike lane that is supposed to run along the Carling-Bayview alignment, although with no Community Development Plan in place, we run the risk of the Chiarelli-era fiasco whereby the bridges were to be replaced but without provisions for bike and pedestrian lanes. That was a near tragedy averted only because the LRT project was cancelled. Will we do better if the project is reincarnated? Our chances are better if we had CDP in place, but as yet there is no sign of one.

New OC Transpo bus routes impact centretown

OC Transpo is proposing some significant bus routes changes that affect our neighborhoods on the west side of the downtown. Comments on the routes must be in to oc transpo by April 25th.

Most significantly, the number 16 would no longer run along Scott nor Albert in the Flats area. It would instead start somewhere in the downtown ( I couldn't find out where on the OC transpo page) and run east only. And number 18 will run only run as far west as Tunney's. These changes are part of OC Transpo's rerouting scheme to reduce the buses that run through the core in favour of routes that deliver people to the transitway and the express buses on it.

A new route, 150, will start at Tunney's and go west approximately on the old 18 route. It appears that OC Transpo is getting a head start on the major transfer facility proposed in the DOTT plan for Tunney's Pasture.

While the goal is laudable, I find a number of things upsetting. First, it assumes all users commute to the core. What of people in the central neighborhoods that want to travel west? While many transpo users are M-F commuters, many residents depend on OC Transpo for all trips. Well, we'll just have to transfer. For those who live beyond an easy walk to the transitway stations, that means yet another bus transfer. And why do the oc transpo web pages highlight the routes affecting the west end neighborhoods but ignore the trips originating in central area neighborhoods?

A stadium for Ottawa

Lansdowne Live? Scotiabank Place? LeBreton - Bayview?

I am not a fan of a new stadium at Lansdowne Park. It is not accessible enough - the neighborhood streets are narrow, local-style shopping and residential streets. It is not on the Qway nor the transitway. Open air concerts and mass public events are just not compatible enough with the residential area. A major park, including residential development (yes, expensive condos) to help pay for it all, is better. A massive city expenditure on a fancy park just for the Glebe, no. I suggest we continue the urban fabric along Bank Street and maybe on the north side too, with condos and commercial spaces sold to fund the development of the parkland. Do a great job, not a cheap job (the condo sales will help determine the budget).

ScotiaBank Place? A better choice than Lansdowne, for sure. It just makes sense for two major sport facilities to use the same parking lot and eventually the same transit station (extend the transitway out there sooner rather than later, bus rapid transit if necessary but LRT would be best). Open air concerts and games would not be so intrusive on neighbors simply because so much space around the Place is commercial or freeway. And we want our suburbs to be more than dormitory dead zones, so putting another major cultural centre in Kanata makes sense in diversifying their/our economy. And if I recall right, Scotiabank Place is pretty much the geographical centre of the city anyway, and stadiums of this size draw from a wide region.

I realize that the recent city report into stadium locations put three highly rated possible locations in my neighborhood: Bayview, Somerset, and Carling sites. Only Bayview seems large enough to me. But I dont want the noise of the open air concerts (Noisefest is intrusive enough, being permitted to exceed the city's noise bylaws by 100% isn't exactly a subtle musical atmosphere). Nor do I really want all the on-street parking that would accompany every game or event. And Bayview isn't on the Qway but it will be the meeting point of the east-west and north-south and interprovincial transit system. I also lack faith that the city could ever develop a dense enough project, that they couldn't really integrate it into an urban fabric - I fear we would have a big building surrounded by dead space and parking lots (see Scotiabank, and any city funded building elsewhere). Smart growth remains all talk, little action in this city.

So, with some misgivings, put it in Kanata.

Bayview Station - What's It For?

The Bayview Station isn't part of the original bus transitway; it didn't exist until 2001. It was built because the experimental O-Train service, using the existing rail tracks, needed a transfer point for passengers. From day 1, city planners assumed it was only a transfer station from buses to train. Little or no walk in traffic was expected. Yet anyone frequenting the station notices a continual stream of people walking into the Station. They come from the office and industrial buildings on City Centre Avenue, the residential areas to the southeast and southwest. They have worn paths accross the fields to make their own direct access to the station. All these paths are indicators of how badly the planners misjudged the neighborhood demand for the station.

A few years back, the city was planning for the now-temporarily-abandonned North/South LRT route that would have gone from the downtown to Bayview and then south to Riverside and Barrhaven. They planned to simply close up the Bayview Station for several years during construction, because the O-Train would not be running. I challenged them to notice the walk in traffic; and demanded they measure the pedestrian volumes to have a factual basis whether to keep the station open or not. No surveys were done, but the plans were soon revised to keep Bayview open for neighborhood access.

Now I am seeing some of the same attitudes as the DOTT team works out options for the Bayview Station complex. Their team bias, as I see it, is for a T-shaped station. The north-south vehicles (whether O-Trains or LRTs) would pull into the same spot as the current O-Train platform, and users would ascend to a upper level platform station where the transitway is now. Possibly, the N/S train service could be extended accross the Prince of Wales railway bridge to Gatineau. (Historic trivia: when built this was the longest bridge in the British Empire).

On paper this is a nice simple T-shaped station. But that choice carries a lot of ramifications for future rapid transit in Ottawa. To start, it means that there will be no continuous same-car LRT service between the downtown, its hotels, and convention centre, to the airport. Say goodbye to many large conventions as a result. Or maybe wave to them over in Hull, for if the Gatineau end of the LRT is extended along the existing rights of way, the Casino (and its convention centre) will have the one-car no-transfer direct-to-airport service.

It also means the future west side LRT network will consist of discrete lines with transfer stations. A future Carling Avenue LRT line for example, would also terminate at Bayview, and users would require another transfer. Commuters from Barrhaven would take a bus to the south LRT, transfer, LRT to Bayview, transfer, LRT to downtown. Despite all these transfer stations currently planned to be indoor heated facilities, I won't be surprised when some of them end up being bus shelters out in a field somewhere.

About the only quantifiable benefit the DOTT team can come up to justify a T-station is that it takes less land then the alternative layout, termed the Direct option. The alternative permits the N/S trains to continue to the south or north accross the POW bridge. AND it would permit trains from the downtown to turn onto either the southbound line towards the airport and Riverside or onto a northbound line over the POW bridge to Gatineau.

I much prefer this second option. It permits both Ottawa and Gatineau to have direct airport access. This alone may be the carrot that gets Gatineau on-board the LRT system. It gives commuters a whole new interprovincial bridge, with no congestion. It means passengers from the downtown won't have to transfer when they want to go south to Riverside or west on Carling, but will pick up their train from any downtown transit station. This direct-to-all-directions layout is much more flexible and well worth the minor additional land use, especially since the additional land take is in the "hole" under the Albert Street and transitway bridges.

The possiblity of direct service to Gatineau means that the first part of a soon-to-be-studied downtown-to-downtown interprovincial loop could be open at the same time the first phase of the Ottawa LRT opens, in 2017. We could replace most of those STO buses on downtown Ottawa streets with LRT service from the downtown to LeBreton to Bayview to Gatineau via the existing POW bridge. It wouldn't be a full loop at first, just a half loop, but it would deliver significant service improvements to interprovincial travel.

The DOTT planners don't seem to get excited by these possibilities. They seem to be still married to the idea that Bayview is merely a transfer station. Certainly, it is in an isolated location, rather like Hurdman. But when LeBreton Flats is eventually built out to the eastern edge of the Bayview Station, when the Bayview yards is developed as currently planned with a dozen highrises, if Phoenix developments gets their two high condo towers on the south side of the Station, and if City Centre is ever redeveloped into 2,000,000 sq ft of office and residential use (as is currently approved), then the Bayview Station will be the centre of a very busy, very dense catchment area.

The DOTT planners are fond of saying they are building a system for the next 100 years. I don't yet see them acting as if the west side of the core will be anything but empty fields. Perhaps they need to get their architects to sketch out the Bayview area incorporating the Phoenix, Bayview Yards, City Centre, and LeBreton proposed developments to drive home just how important this station location is.

For Lack of a CDP - Community Development Plan

There is a deliberately vague planning environment for the two 30-storey condo towers proposed by Phoenix DCR for 801 Albert Street (the vacant lot beside the City Centre tower and opposite Tom Brown Arena and the Bayview OTrain Station ). The City has signalled that it wants development to be significantly better than the industrial zoning common along the Bayview to Carling rail corridor. Yet it lacks a comprehensive plan for developing the area. A Community Development Plan (CDP) was begun several years ago, and considerable progress was made. The Phoenix development in a number of respects honours the incomplete CDP, but the city shelved the plan process in favour of other priorities.

Residents are left with the worst of situations. The current zoning cannot be relied on. The new zoning is hinted at in the incomplete CDP but there is nothing official. We can now only look with envy at the Escarpment CDP recently approved by the city (for the lands running from Ottawa Tech site down Albert to Booth) or the Lebreton development agreements. The existence of a CDP allows developers to propose projects that fit into a larger neighborhood wide plan, which will make their projects more marketable and a result in a better neighborhood over time. Meanwhile Dalhousie residents, and those in adjacent Hintonburg, are stuck with ill-defined underdeveloped lands that become prey for any developer or politicians’ bright idea – including three (!) outdoor stadium-and-concert-hall proposals just last month. LRT train yards? Highest condo in the city? Parole office? Anything goes!

We must, yet again, nag the councilors and city to get the neighborhood CDP reactivated: neighborhood plans are supposed to be in place before developments are proposed.

[The Escarpment Plan, passed by the City last year, calls for a number of neighborhood benefits, including a bike/pedestrian path along the north side of Albert, and burying the LRT track underground starting at Booth St so that the City-owned development sites won't be looking into an open cut. The multipurpose path appeared like magic in 2008 as part of the new watermain project along Albert; the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel plans all start with the buried section of track right at the edge of the City's development site. Would Bayview-Carling corridor residents be so lucky as to have an effective CDP in place to guide developments!]