Ottawa Transit Developments

[Kyle Campbell]

Sure, not everyone has time as their main priority, but @Bojaxs is not alone here. For me personally a large reason I would pick driving over transit is if driving is faster. The main reason I mostly cycle downtown Toronto is because it's faster than both driving and transit. I think it's important not to downplay the role time spent travelling has on picking the mode of travel. Yes, it's not the only factor, but I think it matters to a lot of people. Of course I could be totally wrong here.

P.S. In the airport example here, I would 100% take the bus if it's 15-20 minutes faster (and has one fewer transfer).

It's generally not realistic though when doing a local service that has all stops

Let's ignore Ottawa and consider other airports

It's 58 minutes from O'Hare to downtown, or 26 minutes by car. No transfers, just direct on the blue line

It's 35 minutes by car from JFK to times square or 55 minutes by train

It's 20 minutes by car or 44 minutes by train from downtown Philadelphia to it's airport.

It's 1 hr from Edmonton's airport to downtown or 30 minutes by car.

Generally the train is only competitive to car for airports when it's a premium Express service, such as UPX. If Line 5 eventually hooks up to Pearson expect 1hr + to make that trip downtown.

YOW is by far the smallest airport on the continent with a rail link, and Ottawa is the smallest city in North America with a fully grade separated transit system. I choose to look at it as Ottawa getting in on the ground floor, rather than that it's failed as it can't match big city budgets. The entire O-Train system, Lines 1,2,3 and 4 cost less than just building the first phase of the crosstown

Line 2 was designed with double tracking in mind in the future, and Line 4 was designed with eventual interlining to Bayview in mind once Line 2 is double tracked

 

[nfitz]

It's generally not realistic though when doing a local service that has all stops

Let's ignore Ottawa and consider other airports

It's 58 minutes from O'Hare to downtown, or 26 minutes by car. No transfers, just direct on the blue line

It's 35 minutes by car from JFK to times square or 55 minutes by train

It's 20 minutes by car or 44 minutes by train from downtown Philadelphia to it's airport.

It's 1 hr from Edmonton's airport to downtown or 30 minutes by car.

Generally the train is only competitive to car for airports when it's a premium Express service, such as UPX. If Line 5 eventually hooks up to Pearson expect 1hr + to make that trip downtown.

YOW is by far the smallest airport on the continent with a rail link, and Ottawa is the smallest city in North America with a fully grade separated transit system. I choose to look at it as Ottawa getting in on the ground floor, rather than that it's failed as it can't match big city budgets. The entire O-Train system, Lines 1,2,3 and 4 cost less than just building the first phase of the crosstown

Line 2 was designed with double tracking in mind in the future, and Line 4 was designed with eventual interlining to Bayview in mind once Line 2 is double tracked

Looking at other non-premium express services, it's about 33 minutes on the Elizabeth line from Tottenham Court Road station to Heathrow T1/T3 station, but 50 minutes on the frequently stopping Piccadilly line from nearby Leicester Square

The Google driving estimate is 75 minutes in the Tuesday PM rush, but ranges from 55 minutes to 110 minutes.

From Paddington the express premium service is 15 minutes, compared to 26 minutes on the Elizabeth line. The driving estimate is 55 minutes with a range from 40 minutes to 80 minutes at peak.

 

[bearcat]

It's generally not realistic though when doing a local service that has all stops

Let's ignore Ottawa and consider other airports

It's 58 minutes from O'Hare to downtown, or 26 minutes by car. No transfers, just direct on the blue line

It's 35 minutes by car from JFK to times square or 55 minutes by train

It's 20 minutes by car or 44 minutes by train from downtown Philadelphia to it's airport.

It's 1 hr from Edmonton's airport to downtown or 30 minutes by car.

Generally the train is only competitive to car for airports when it's a premium Express service, such as UPX. If Line 5 eventually hooks up to Pearson expect 1hr + to make that trip downtown.

YOW is by far the smallest airport on the continent with a rail link, and Ottawa is the smallest city in North America with a fully grade separated transit system. I choose to look at it as Ottawa getting in on the ground floor, rather than that it's failed as it can't match big city budgets. The entire O-Train system, Lines 1,2,3 and 4 cost less than just building the first phase of the crosstown

Line 2 was designed with double tracking in mind in the future, and Line 4 was designed with eventual interlining to Bayview in mind once Line 2 is double tracked

Okay, my main complaint about this whole situation is that the bus service that can be faster, and provides an alternative way to get to the airport is getting removed.

For those that don't have a bunch of luggage and don't care to share a public bus with the plebs that's objectively a downgrade. Like myself lol.

 

[ARG1]

It's 35 minutes by car from JFK to times square or 55 minutes by train

Many of these examples are pretty time sensitive all things considered, especially when you consider how cities like NYC usually have non-existent parking downtown. That being said I just looked at travel times from JFK to Times Square and I have 42m by car, and 47m by train (LIRR). This is also Times Square, it gets really competitive if you just choose Penn Station where its 36m by train.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Many of these examples are pretty time sensitive all things considered, especially when you consider how cities like NYC usually have non-existent parking downtown. That being said I just looked at travel times from JFK to Times Square and I have 42m by car, and 47m by train (LIRR). This is also Times Square, it gets really competitive if you just choose Penn Station where its 36m by train.

In my example I was doing the Air Train to Jamaica then the E line, as that's a local stop service. It was an apples to apples comparison, since Line 1/2/4 in Ottawa is a local stop service.

The LIRR isn't a premium Express, but like GO transit allows you to cover much larger distances, there's only 3 stops between Jamaica and Penn station. That's the missing level of transit in Ottawa, there's no regional level service with infrequent stops to allow covering large distances quickly. It's also not what the O-Train is meant to provide. In Ottawa you could probably get by with something like the GO Bus system that could get you from one node to another without a thousand in between stops, but OC Transpo hasn't ever considered the idea. We also don't have express buses that parallel a route like Toronto has, which would also be a big boon

Actually it's surprising in both JFKs and O'Hares case, that given good how important the airports are there isn't a service like UPX or Heathrow express.

YOW has 5 million passengers a year, definitely not enough to justify an express link. Even if it was a single seat ride to Bayview it still would be a low ridership part of the line, there's just not enough demand.

The airport had very low ridership on the 97, so there's very few people that would notice the service is a downgrade. Ironically, Line 4 will likely far exceed the 97 in ridership, because people will take it just because it's a train.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

The airport had very low ridership on the 97, so there's very few people that would notice the service is a downgrade. Ironically, Line 4 will likely far exceed the 97 in ridership, because people will take it just because it's a train.

I do have a bit of anecdotal evidence to this effect. Before Line 2 reopened I was a frequent 97 rider (South Keys-Hurdman). It was very infrequent to see someone to get on the bus with luggage.

However, since I now generally use Line 2, it's not uncommon to see people with luggage on the train. But they aren't tourists going downtown. They tend to be Little Italy residents getting off at Dow's Lake or Corso Italia, or Carleton students

 

[IRT_BMT_IND]

I'm not sure if this has been answered in this thread yet, but is there any indication of what the service patterns for lines 1 and 3 will be when the west extension opens? When line 1 had a 5 minute base frequency, I would have assumed that lines 1 and 3 would each have a 10 minute frequency, for a 5 minute frequency in the combined section. But with the post COVID service cuts, this would mean that these lines would each have a 20 minute base frequency. Are the planning a frequency boost in 2026 (and if so, why not just do it now?), or have one of the lines operate a shuttle service (like line 4 to the airport) during certain times of the day instead.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

I'm not sure if this has been answered in this thread yet, but is there any indication of what the service patterns for lines 1 and 3 will be when the west extension opens? When line 1 had a 5 minute base frequency, I would have assumed that lines 1 and 3 would each have a 10 minute frequency, for a 5 minute frequency in the combined section. But with the post COVID service cuts, this would mean that these lines would each have a 20 minute base frequency. Are the planning a frequency boost in 2026 (and if so, why not just do it now?), or have one of the lines operate a shuttle service (like line 4 to the airport) during certain times of the day instead.

It's still to be determined. The most recent option I heard floated was full interlining during rush hour, but in off peak they'd run line 3 as a shuttle between Lincoln Fields and Moodie. That's part of the reason Lincoln Fields is designed as a 3 track station, with a cross platform transfer from Line 3 East to Line 1 East, similar to South Keys. But they may change their mind

The map below shows the general track configuration. It's a similar setup to the Expo/Millienium line transfer at Lougheed Town Centre in Vancouver

Rail Fans Map

A detailed and interactive map of urban rail systems across Canada.

map.railfans.ca

How Lougheed works

 

[reaperexpress]

To put things into a GTA perspective, the distance from Greenboro to Bayview is 8km with 7 stations. Line 2 makes this trip in 19 minutes as mentioned above, though in the original pilot project it could do it in 13, because there were only two trains on the track, and they passed at Carleton. That came at a cost of a 15 minute frequency.

A comparison would be between Woodbine and Spadina along the Bloor subway, which is also about 8k with 12 stations, which takes 17 minutes.

To expand on this, I compared the Trillium Line from South Keys to Bayview (the urban portion of the line, 8.5 km) with other rapid transit lines going about 8.5 km from the inner suburbs to the edge of the city centre.

Both O-Train lines were dramatically slower than any other comparable service, even when controlling for stop spacing. The Trillium line averages 25 km/h and the Confederation Line averages 26 km/h (which is a speed you'd expect of a mixed-traffic bus, not a rapid transit line). The next slowest service is the Bloor line, which averages 32 km/h despite having much closer stop spacing (700m vs 1100m).

Other rapid transit lines with 1.1 km stop spacing would cover 8.5 km in about 14 minutes, whereas both O-Train lines take 20.

 

[nfitz]

To expand on this, I compared the Trillium Line from South Keys to Bayview (the urban portion of the line, 8.5 km) with other rapid transit lines going about 8.5 km from the inner suburbs to the edge of the city centre.

View attachment 637336
View attachment 637337
Both O-Train lines were dramatically slower than any other comparable service, even when controlling for stop spacing. The Trillium line averages 25 km/h and the Confederation Line averages 26 km/h (which is a speed you'd expect of a mixed-traffic bus, not a rapid transit line). The next slowest line in Canada is the Bloor line, which averages 32 km/h despite having much closer stop spacing (700m vs 1100m).

Other rapid transit lines with 1.1 km stop spacing would cover 8.5 km in about 14 minutes, whereas both O-Train lines take 20.

JFC!

Is the Citadis acceleration terrible?

Excellent work!

 

[reaperexpress]

JFC!

Is the Citadis acceleration terrible?

Excellent work!

No actually the Citadis acceleration is remarkably quick. The issue is all the 25 km/h slow zones through curves east of downtown. Hopefully the extensions won't be subject to the same speed restrictions and will actually post some decent times.

 

[CapitalSeven]

Are the dwell times at stations also an issue in Ottawa? I've seen complaints about that online, but has anyone quantified the differences? I recall very snappy stops in Toronto even where there are many more passengers than in Ottawa. OC Transpo just seems to be run by folk who don't think it matters how fast you get where you're going.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Are the dwell times at stations also an issue in Ottawa? I've seen complaints about that online, but has anyone quantified the differences? I recall very snappy stops in Toronto even where there are many more passengers than in Ottawa. OC Transpo just seems to be run by folk who don't think it matters how fast you get where you're going.

Actually the dwell times are the main cause for the slow times on. Line 2 on that chart @reaperexpress did.

Line 2 track speeds are between 60-70 km/h, with speed buffers around the stations, but this section is also the part with the most single track. And the trains actually move pretty much at those max.speeds. But the dwell times are very long to ensure the trains can pass each other, e.g. trains at Carleton or Corso Italia can't leave until the other train arrives. This causes dwell times in the 90+ second range, far longer than the TTC, which I swear sometimes closes the doors almost immediately after opening them.

Line 1 has the slow zones, but also a problem with vehicle design. There's 14 doors on a 2 car Citadis, but they aren't evenly spaced. That causes choke points and door holding. So OC Transpo increased the dwell times to avoid that. They aren't as long as Line 2, but much longer than the TTC subway.

The Line 1 problem might be unfixable. The long dwell times on Line 2 go away once the eventual double tracking happens (which was designed, but not built). However the slow buffer zones around the stations would remain as long as Line 2 falls under federal regulations

 

[Kyle Campbell]

To expand on this, I compared the Trillium Line from South Keys to Bayview (the urban portion of the line, 8.5 km) with other rapid transit lines going about 8.5 km from the inner suburbs to the edge of the city centre.

View attachment 637336
View attachment 637337
Both O-Train lines were dramatically slower than any other comparable service, even when controlling for stop spacing. The Trillium line averages 25 km/h and the Confederation Line averages 26 km/h (which is a speed you'd expect of a mixed-traffic bus, not a rapid transit line). The next slowest service is the Bloor line, which averages 32 km/h despite having much closer stop spacing (700m vs 1100m).

Other rapid transit lines with 1.1 km stop spacing would cover 8.5 km in about 14 minutes, whereas both O-Train lines take 20.

Sometimes these charts reveal surprising things.

We know why Line 2 takes 20 minutes, but why does the fully automated double tracked Canada Line take 17 minutes between Marine drive and waterfront. That section is entirely underground.

Do you have the original travel time between Blair and Parliament @reaperexpress before they did all those slow zones? It should be something like 16 minutes I'd think

 

[Kyle Campbell]

In terms of riding experience, the odd thing is Line 1 feels slower than 2 to me. Line 2 is moving at a decent pace when it's not waiting at a station or the dreaded Brookfield siding to pass another train. Line 1 though between Bayview and Parliament crawls between Pimisi and halfway into the tunnel to Lyon. Others might perceive it differently.