roger1818
Senior Member
Thanks for sharing the picture!
There is certainly no debate that at one time it was a union station (lowercase u and s), but the debate is if it was ever given the official name "Union Station."
|
|
|
VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Thanks for sharing the picture!
There is certainly no debate that at one time it was a union station (lowercase u and s), but the debate is if it was ever given the official name "Union Station."
reaperexpress
Senior Member
According to that map, VIA owns the building on Terminal Street that backs onto the station. Good on them for having the foresight to acquire it, since it keeps the door open for an entrance on the south side of the tracks.
roger1818
Senior Member
AFAIK, it was always theirs and is some type of service building (it has the same, "award wining," blank concrete wall architecture). I believe it is connected to the station via a tunnel. If you look back at old areal photographs of the station, you will see that it used to have tracks filling in the space between the buildings, but at some point the land was sold and the tracks were torn up.
1991 aerial photograph from geoOttawa Beta
2017 aerial photograph from geoOttawa Beta
sacred
Active Member
They can get started early and build the new intercity bus terminal there!
micheal_can
Senior Member
Like Ottawa Station? Or Tremblay? Original names are confusing. Stations should be simple and easy to connect them with the locale.
Do you mean just like how the TTC uses a different area for their "union" subway station? Or their Streetcar station named Union? Or the Go Bus station called union?
The old union stations were many different companies using the same tracks. Taking Toronto's for example, the bus, streetcar and subway stations all are not really a union station, but are still called that.
Maybe a better name could be Intermodal station. Then it would be more accurate.
roger1818
Senior Member
Exactly. In Ottawa it is especially difficult as all station names need to be bilingual.
The TTC named their subway and streetcar stations after the train station they were adjacent to. Arguably they are slightly different since they use the same building as the trains, but they don't contribute to it being a Union Station. Similar for the GO buses. Stations are often named after the landmark they are close to. For example, the Parliament O-Train station in Ottawa is named after the nearby parliament buildings even though the station has nothing to do with houses of parliament and they aren't even connected.
I don't disagree that calling the O-Train station Tremblay is problematic and should be revisited. I do understand why they didn't want to call it train though (calling a train station "Train" is strange). I don't think it is as big a problem as Urban Sky is making it out to be though. When you arrive, all you need to know is you need to find the "O-Train" station and that can be solved with appropriate wayfinding inside VIA's station. That is no different to knowing that you need to find an "S-Bahn" station when you fly into many German cities. When it is time to leave, you have then become more familiar with the city and its transit system, so while needing to know that the statin you need to go to is called Tremblay is not optimal, it isn't that hard to figure out (they likely came from that station when they arrived).
One could equally say VIA (and Exo) is guilty of the same thing with Dorval station being the station for Montréal–Trudeau International Airport. How would a tourist be expected to know that it was previously called Montréal–Dorval International Airport because it is located in the suburb of Dorval?
I would say the situation in Ottawa is better it is in Brussels. There, none of the international trains go to Brussels Central Station, but instead go to Bruxelles-Midi. To get downtown, you need to transfer to one of the local trains (and your ticket to/from Midi will cover your fare to/from Central station). However, figuring out which train you need to transfer to and which platform it departs from (it constantly changes) is not easy to figure out as a tourist (we ended up having to ask someone).
ARG1
Senior Member
Counter-Example: Grand Central, Penn Station, King's Cross, and Paddington Stations in NYC and London. With maybe the exception of Grand Central, they're for the most part unique names and I'm fairly certain nobody gets confused by them.
Allandale25
Senior Member
Fascinating to see the comparison.
lenaitch
Senior Member
I suppose the actual historic name and whether or not they accurately reflect current usage is less important than the ability to unambiguously identify them to unfamiliar travellers. Whether the destination is 'Lester B. Pearson International Airport', 'Toronto- Pearson' or even 'Malton' is probably less important than clearly signing how folks can get there (I have no clue why TTC St. Andrews is called what it is, but know it is at University and King). If you want to fly to North Bay (when you could), that fact that it is called the Jack Garland Airport if probably on the bottom of the list of importance.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
I like the idea of consolidating the intercity bus terminal to Ottawa Station for obvious interconnectivity reasons. But I think it would be better to put it on the north side for better access from highway 417 and for much shorter transfers to the LRT. The current passenger pickup (PPUDO) area could be repurposed into a bus terminal, while passenger pickup moves to a new facility on the south side of the station.
Last edited:
Bureaucromancer
Active Member
It was honestly very nice when the bus pickup was right at the main door during LRT construction.
kEiThZ
Superstar
They have two parking lots. Build a parking structure in the larger lot to the East, which will be needed for the higher traffic levels with HFR. And repurpose the smaller Western lot behind the LRT station for a bus terminal.
I really don't the fascination some people have for locating the bus station so far from the LRT.
roger1818
Senior Member
I agree 100%.
I don't see the need to have any passenger activity moved to the south side beyond having a secondary entrance there. I have heard that VIA rents out some of the unused office space in the station, though I can't find any confirmation of this. From what I can see, it looks like there would be plenty of room to have a bus terminal within the station.
That would probably be the optimal solution. My gut feeling is that it is the western part of the terminal building that isn't used by VIA, so opening that up for use by greyhound et. al. shouldnt' be too difucult.
Another option would be to cover the O-Train tracks inside the loop and put bus bays there.
I agree!
This is of course assuming that Greyhound wants to move to the VIA Rail station. It is a decent location, but not the only one.
nfitz
Superstar
Not sure why everyone is worrying about the name of Train train station ... which really doesn't impact people. What about bigger issues ... like a 20-minute walk from the station to the big employers on Terminal Avenue ... whose parking lots back onto the Train train station platforms!
sacred
Active Member
We are talking about that, we've talked about redevelopment on the south side of the station which would make both stations easily accessible