Michael's musings

Tue, 01 Apr 2008

Submission from David P. James
<pre> From: David P James <dpjames@ucalgary.ca> To: plan@ottawa.ca Subject: Downtown Rapid Transit Network Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:51:33 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5 X-Length: 8007

Summary:

Overall, the options that have been presented are very disappointing and are a sort of "two steps forward, one step back" improvement on the current TMP. They all represent a very limited vision for the transit network in Ottawa in the next 20+ years, despite spending a minor fortune.

The 'Options':

Options #1 and #2 are not even viable since a tunnel operating with the volumes of buses anticipated is not even feasible. 14-16 second headways are unrealistic when station dwell times will exceed that time by a considerable margin, especially if the effective number of stations is reduced (Bay, Kent, Bank, Metcalfe, McKenzie King, Laurier & Campus (7) reduced to Lyon/Kent, Bank, Metcalfe, Union/Rideau & Campus (5)), thus putting more pressure on the remaining stations. Options #3 and #4 might represent a starting point towards an improved network, but as a vision of what the network should look like in 2031 they are inexcusably limited - they are a closer approximation of what it should look like by 2013, not 2031. Therefore, no option is particularly good, with options #3 and #4 "winning" by dint of being less bad.

General criticisms and suggestions

We should be looking at a network where light rail extends to all four of the extra-Greenbelt suburbs well before 2031. Baseline to Blair is a good starting point, and it is commendable that Transitway conversion is finally on the table as a serious option, if about a decade late. But it's only a starting point. Extending light rail to Bayshore in the west and through the Smyth Road hospital corridor in the east should be the first priority once Blair to Baseline is complete. Many of the bus transitways listed should not be built as such but rather as light rail transitways. For example, there seems to be very little reason to build the Cumberland Transitway as anything other than a light rail transitway. Indeed, there is compelling case to build the Cumberland Transitway as light rail all the way to Trim Rd before converting the East Transitway to Blair since doing so will relieve much of the pressure on the latter and facilitate its conversion.

I also notice that many of the secondary or "urban transit" corridors that are part of the current TMP have been reduced to grey arrows denoting "Future Urban Transit" - i.e. post 2031! There is no good reason that most of these corridors couldn't be in service by 2031 and their transit mode should be decided (as in the current TMP) now. In particular, the Carling Avenue and Rideau Street corridors are of concern since they go through downtown, a fact that can influence the decision of whether to go with a tunnel, and, if so, when.

Indeed, the entire tunnel question has been treated as a foregone conclusion. Calgary still has plenty of life left in its surface LRT system now that they are lengthening the stations for 4-car trains, and that is for a system that already carries more riders daily than does the Transitway. I don't dispute that we may one day require a tunnel, and it would be prudent and wise (and good planning) to plan for such an eventuality in the immediate future, but whether we need one right away is an altogether different question - a question that was indirectly answered in the section on surface options:

Surface Options

An LRT-only option would require:
- Single car LRT operating every 36 seconds (not practical);
- 3 or 4 car trains operating every 1.8 to 2.5 minutes (practical);
and
- 3 to 4 car trains require 90 to 120 metres of platform at
stations.

For example, it may well be the case that 3-4 car trains operating on the surface would be sufficient for 15 years and would be available for use much sooner than a tunnel. Of course, that leads to an obvious question: what to do with the surface LRT once a tunnel is in place? There seems to be a one-or-the-other thought process with respect to surface vs subsurface LRT downtown. Well I refer back to my earlier point about the unmentioned "Urban Transit" corridors, particularly Carling-Rideau. This corridor would go downtown but it may not make sense to insert it into a tunnel. It might well make more sense for it to go on the surface downtown. We would then have the genesis of a solution to our tunnel vs surface question: do both but only do each when it makes sense to do so. The implementation could look something like the following:

1. Construct surface LRT from Bayview to Hurdman, and implement diesel light rail extensions south (Leitrim, then Airport and Riverside South), southwest (Barrhaven) and west (Kanata) so as to relieve pressure on the Transitway during conversion while releasing more buses immediately for more frequent suburban feeder service. 2. Convert Transitway from Baseline to Blair, or better yet, Baseline to Bayview and construct Cumberland (light rail) Transitway to Trim Rd. 3. Complete conversion of Transitway from Bayshore to Lincoln Fields, and from Hurdman to Blair 4. Begin planning/design work for the tunnel and for the Carling-Rideau tram line 5. Carry out further extensions of light rail transitway to Kanata, Orleans, Riverside South, etc. 6. Build downtown tunnel and Carling-Rideau tram line 7. Once the tunnel exists, switch Transitway trains into it and the Carling-Rideau tram can use the surface tracks. The interconnections on either side of the tunnel between the two sets of tracks can be left in place for use in emergencies or for periodic tunnel shutdowns, etc.

I have plenty of other concerns with the options that have been presented, especially the vehicle costs (based on my knowledge of Calgary's CTrain network, only about $300M of the $1.3B or so set aside for vehicles is needed to buy sufficient light rail vehicles) but even some of the bus transitway costs that have been quoted in the Citizen seem excessive (i.e. $400-500M for the Cumberland Transitway between Blair Station and Trim - how does one manage to spend so much on a practically empty corridor? digging an entire new trench to rival Scott Street perhaps?).

I also have concerns with the entire process in that so little has been examined. The options don't even convert the entire Transitway within the Greenbelt, never mind extending light rail across it. There is nothing in the way of phasing or what options are available for immediate implementation. In particular, there has been no discussion or apparent consideration of the use of diesel or other autonomous light rail vehicles on existing tracks to serve people outside the Greenbelt. Citizens have not been asked if the requirement to transfer at Bayview is a reasonable trade-off for having an improved ride for most of the journey and to deliver immediate benefits rather than having nothing much for (apparently) a generation. What of looking into the acquisition of dual-mode vehicles, as recommended by the Mayor's Task Force, once a tunnel is in place? These options or entire areas of discussion have been simply excluded and the result is an unsatisfactory set of limited options to choose from.

Regards, — David P James Ottawa, Ontario </pre>

Submission to City's "4" transit "plans"

From: David Jeanes To: friends-of-the-otrain@lists.ox.org Subject: Comments on the City's 4 transit plans.

Submitted at 15:59. Only spellchecked visually. Some errors missed. Receipt of feedback was confirmed.

David Jeanes

===

There has to be a "None of the Above" option, for this to be a valid process.

All of these options assume first that there MUST be a tunnel, before we have even determined that a tunnel is necessary, feasible, and affordable. (That is what the Tunnel EA will do, and council has directed that that study team include world class transit tunneling experts).

This proposal is supposed to be how to deal with downtown transit issues, but all options involve over 60 km of bus transitway construction. This is about 50% more than the total in the 2003 TMP. The total rail component in Option 3 is only about 32 km (including the existing O-Train), which is only about 25% of the LRT network in the Transportation Master Plan of 2003.

There is no indication how the conversion of the Transitway to rail, which has supposedly been in the City's plans since the 1980's, would be staged to minimized distruption and maximize total system capacity at each stage. It does appear that the extimated costs for conversion are far higher than determined by previous studies. Why?

The two options with bus only east west are clearly unacceptable and should have been screened out of the study early to reduce wasted effort. The public has made it clear that East-West transit MUST be rail-based. The capacity of an all bus system has been found unacceptable. The operating cost has been found unacceptable. The environmental issues have been found unacceptable. There is no potential to address interprovincial transit needs. And finally the capacity is unacceptable, (and in fact has been since the downtown reached transit capacity failure in 2004). So why are these options still being studied?

The complete exclusion of surface rail solutions, avoiding re-use of our existing rail corridors, track, bridges, stations, even existing train services, is unacceptable for a rational transportation plan for this millennium. It completely ignores the Mayor's task force recommendations, and the multifaceted strategies that are being appplied in cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

The continued talk of Ottawa's "renowned" Transitway and the reference to transfers as "taboo" by Nancy Schepers in her presentation, goes against the evidence of the City's own public consultation. 85 percent of the people who voted at City Hall said a hub and spoke system with effective transfers was preferred.

Failure to invest in transit infrastructure downtown may have seemed like a good near-tern strategy in the 1980's, as stated by John Bonsall, but a quarter Century later it has become a disaster. The system is running at its limits and has no capacity for growth, or reliable operation under any abnormal circumstances, including winter weath\er. Furthermore an all-bus system offers no economies of scale on labour costs as ridership increases, unlike multi-vehicle single-operator LRT or commuter trains.

The claims that a transfer-free ride downtown is still a viable option for planning the system is ludicrous. OC Tanspo does not operate the kind of all-destinations network that Toronto is building with its new Transit City LRT plan. Instead the focus remains on the downtown which is already well-served but only represents the morning destination for 23% of trips by all modes and 31% of cross-river trips from Gatineau.

The proposal to use hybrid buses in battery mode in the tunnel at the volumes proposed is a totally unproven concept. Seattle's recent experience does not scale to Ottawa's needs. This is also a very bad use for hybrid buses as ALL transitway and express buses to downtown would have to be the very expensive articulated hybrids, but would not generate any significant fuel savings or emission reductions, due to the high proportion of their route that would be on Transitway rather than start-stop. These buses could also not be used on most express routes through suburban neighbourhoods.

Study a tunnel quickly (with a 6-month EA), but only for LRT and only in comparison to an LRT-only surface option, which has never been properly studied. The open house panels indicated that it had been determined that surface LRT was "practical" with 3-car trains. The powerpoint presentation was contradictory in this respect.

Extend the existing O-Train immediately to the Leitrim Park and Ride and to Terrasses de La Chaudiere, with further planned extensions to interface to Gatineau's Rapibus at the Casino and to serve both an airport spur and an extension to Artmstong Road, when it is rebuilt.

Work with VIA Rail and Ottawa Central Railway immediately to provide cross region commuting, effectively linked with the O-Train and Transitway at existing stations. Make sure that VIA's current and future track and signalling investments near Ottawa support these service expansions. Investigate new options for combined intercity freight and light rail service on the same tracks, as is being done in Europe and the United States.

Lay out a network plan that is phased to show how the downtown transit solution will be progressively extended to the suburns, including all major siburban park and rides. Show how transit capacity requirements will be met at each stage of the expansion.

Remember that the provious process was required by the federal and provincial governments to be open and transparent. It was not, and City councillors recognized this in 2006. Make sure that this process does not fail for the same reasons.