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Ottawa Transit Developments

The timed trip length is 21 minutes. If that can be matched in real operations, then being short a couple trains may work out for the time being. It was originally expected that end to end travel would be 24 to 25 minutes. September will be a good test, with vacations ending. We will see how train loads will be. The last thing the city needs is crush loads right at the beginning especially when security concerns have been expressed.
 
lrt's friend said:
September will be a good test, with vacations ending.
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September will be an artificial read with some parallel bus service still running. What happens if those two vehicles aren't up in October?

W. K. Lis said:
But, but, but... they are not Bombardier! They're Alstom Citadis Spirit (with no proven North American record). See link.
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To be fair, the bids weren't picked for the vehicle. They were picked for an overall concept which included the vehicle.

Also, I'm not all that confident that the size of the Flexity Freedom would have been good for Ottawa.

The biggest mistake Ottawa made was going LRT instead of HRT. It's obvious that they'll never have non-segregated service on any of their trunk routes. And converting to HRT will be difficult in the future, which means that a substantial growth in ridership could force the construction of parallel lines instead of targeting expansion at underserviced areas.
 
kEiThZ said:
September will be an artificial read with some parallel bus service still running. What happens if those two vehicles aren't up in October?



To be fair, the bids weren't picked for the vehicle. They were picked for an overall concept which included the vehicle.

Also, I'm not all that confident that the size of the Flexity Freedom would have been good for Ottawa.

The biggest mistake Ottawa made was going LRT instead of HRT. It's obvious that they'll never have non-segregated service on any of their trunk routes. And converting to HRT will be difficult in the future, which means that a substantial growth in ridership could force the construction of parallel lines instead of targeting expansion at underserviced areas.
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Expansion to under-served areas will accomplish the same thing. Every new rail or other rapid transit line will redirect passengers from existing bus routes and the Confederation Line. At some point in the future, we need to look at more routes serving areas inside the Greenbelt to promote broader intensification and broader access to rapid transit. This is no different than what is happening in Toronto with the proposed Ontario Line and GO RER. They provide parallel service to a degree, but also serve under-served parts of the city as well. We cannot forever be focused on the suburbs, which has been given top priority with current plans. There is plenty of expansion capability built into the Confederation Line. Adding further capacity would have increased the cost well beyond the funding envelope available. Capacity was curtailed in the plan as it was so that costs would not spiral out of control. Any budget overruns would have had to be paid by property taxes, which would have forced additional tax increases. This would not have been fiscally responsible.

The Confederation Line may not be perfect but it is a remarkable accomplishment for a city the size of Ottawa after decades of deferring a downtown transit tunnel of any sort.
 
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kEiThZ said:
September will be an artificial read with some parallel bus service still running. What happens if those two vehicles aren't up in October?



To be fair, the bids weren't picked for the vehicle. They were picked for an overall concept which included the vehicle.

Also, I'm not all that confident that the size of the Flexity Freedom would have been good for Ottawa.

The biggest mistake Ottawa made was going LRT instead of HRT. It's obvious that they'll never have non-segregated service on any of their trunk routes. And converting to HRT will be difficult in the future, which means that a substantial growth in ridership could force the construction of parallel lines instead of targeting expansion at underserviced areas.
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I had worked on the recommendation for normal metro cars but since there was supposed to be one(!) crossing, it was dismissed. There was also much political pressure to LRT because it looked like the new cooler thing.
 
Full end to end media ride. For those unfamiliar with the original transitway note the slightly akward St Laurent station (underground around 4:00) where the platforms themselves are the fare paid area, meaning you can't switch directions or use the bus terminal at the surface without leaving the fare paid zone. It's the only reused transitway station, and they're weren't designed for fare gates. Blair is only sort of reused, the original station is largely still there, but the LRT station is all new and built in the former roadway. Everything else was demolished.

 
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kEiThZ said:
September will be an artificial read with some parallel bus service still running. What happens if those two vehicles aren't up in October?



To be fair, the bids weren't picked for the vehicle. They were picked for an overall concept which included the vehicle.

Also, I'm not all that confident that the size of the Flexity Freedom would have been good for Ottawa.

The biggest mistake Ottawa made was going LRT instead of HRT. It's obvious that they'll never have non-segregated service on any of their trunk routes. And converting to HRT will be difficult in the future, which means that a substantial growth in ridership could force the construction of parallel lines instead of targeting expansion at underserviced areas.
Click to expand...

LRT is fine, as the second phase will branch in the west, towards Baseline (Algonquin College) and Moodie, with surface running. The mistake was running with low-floor LRVs instead of high-floor LRVs like those running in Los Angeles, Calgary, or Edmonton. There's just so much more space to work with without the trucks in the way that make the awkward seating arrangements.
 
ShonTron said:
LRT is fine, as the second phase will branch in the west, towards Baseline (Algonquin College) and Moodie, with surface running. The mistake was running with low-floor LRVs instead of high-floor LRVs like those running in Los Angeles, Calgary, or Edmonton. There's just so much more space to work with without the trucks in the way that make the awkward seating arrangements.
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They should have gone with subway cars. Trains would be wider and cheaper plus they would likely be in service now. I don't think there is any street running in the entire extension. The west extension that's not on the existing transitway would be tunneled.
 
Steve X said:
They should have gone with subway cars. Trains would be wider and cheaper plus they would likely be in service now. I don't think there is any street running in the entire extension. The west extension that's not on the existing transitway would be tunneled.
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If they had gone high floor, it wouldn't have changed the capacity of the system, they would have scaled down the platforms to 80m and shortened the trains. The confed line is very comparable to Skytrain in terms of capacity.

In hindsight it still probably would have been a better choice, but as mentioned many pages back they were originally considering more traditional lrt like running without full grade seperation for phase 2 when phase 1 was originally designed.

Now we join the very small ranks of low floor grade seperated systems (note my deft avoidence of launching another "what's a metro" debate :) ). Other examples are Sevilla Spain (which even has platform screen doors) and U6 in Vienna
 
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