LRT vote passes 20-0.
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Ottawa Confederation Line LRT (City of Ottawa, U/C)
- Thread starter green22
- Start date
Markster
Senior Member
What was the specific nature of this vote?
[edit] Ah, an article on the vote:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/tunnel+agenda+council+debate/5101405/story.html
[edit] Ah, an article on the vote:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/tunnel+agenda+council+debate/5101405/story.html
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unimaginative2
Senior Member
That's a very good idea.
I'm reluctant to rock the boat on this otherwise fantastic plan, but I don't understand why, if they're ordering new vehicles anyway, they can't take advantage of the full grade-separation and buy less expensive, higher-order, automated vehicles.
Or maybe they could buy the Eglinton vehicles from us, and we can build Eglinton as David Gunn suggested...
I agree. I think it should be ICTS, but I'll take what I can get, and right now I (and all of Ottawa) are getting a fantastic plan. I remember attending the open houses in the early to mid 2000s when they were discussing the first LRT plan, and when talking with staff, I could see that the plan had more holes in it than Swiss cheese (and that was even before I got my degree in planning!). At this point, my beefs with the plan are very very minor:
1) The bus transfer station at Tunney's Pasture is a bit overbuilt, especially when you consider that it will only be a terminus station for a couple of years, until the West LRT extension opens. Hopefully this detail will get ironed out in the bids. It really doesn't make much sense to build the bus transfer facility there at all, because the Transitway west of Tunney's will be being ripped up for conversion to LRT by the time the LRT east of Tunney's opens.
2) The vehicle selection, as previously mentioned.
3) The lack of details surrounding the O-Train to LRT transfer at Bayview. I'm sure once the bids come out this will all come to light though.
The thing I'm looking forward to most right now is the District Plans that will be prepared. They're doing land use plans for each of the major stations and their surrounding areas in order to maximize and give order to the densification that the City wants to promote. The biggest blank slate is Bayview, with massive tracts of land around it.
Deez
New Member
I first suggested this more than 3 years ago while I was a co-op student working for the City. I never got a perfectly straight answer, but my guess is that staff are (foolishly) gung-ho on using the parkway as an extension of the first phase of the project. Grade separating that section wouldn't make sense, so they went with LRT.
Deez
New Member
(Incidentally, I also suggested using Queen for the tunnel. But I do go on...)
Thankfully the Parkway option seems to be off the table, so from what I gather from staff reports and presentations they're leaning towards grade-separation in the Richmond-Byron corridor, which is totally fine by me.
Deez
New Member
Me too, although I'd prefer Carling.
Too far out of the way from the Transitway at the east end, so it would probably need a tunnel to even get to Carling. Plus I don't think that the City's main haul transit line should be an in-median LRT. Too Transit City-ish. Stick to high capacity, high frequency, grade-separated transit. The last thing we need is a choke point on the system.
I'm totally fine with Carling having an at-grade LRT as part of the Supplementary network though, I just don't want it to be part of the primary Transitway system.
PS: Welcome to UT.
unimaginative2
Senior Member
I suppose the other ICTS issue would be the plan for eventual interlining with the N-S LRT. I'm not sure that should be a decisive factor, since it might make more sense to just extend it north into Gatineau anyway and a simple connection at Bayview wouldn't be all that problematic. Interlining would also have capacity and reliability implications.
Looks like the City planners are favouring the Richmond-Byron corridor. This is the right choice in my opinion.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/City+eyes+Richmond/5554271/story.html
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/City+eyes+Richmond/5554271/story.html
kEiThZ
Superstar
Thank Heavens. Sanity has prevailed. Hopefully the politicians follow suit.
Definitely. The Richmond-Byron corridor is by far the best option. It will be interesting to see what type of design elements they come up with with the corridor itself. My personal preference is for trenched, with urban design elements like wood fences, trees, and shrubs to hide the view of the trench from street level. I'd also like to see the trench shifted to one side or the other of the corridor, so that a linear path can be placed along the entire length.
PS: If this design element works out well, this could very well be used as a template for what to do with the Richview corridor, seeing as how the circumstances are very similar.
Also, the short-listed bids were released today: http://www.ottawalightrail.ca/en/ne...list-for-ottawa’s-light-rail-transit-project/
Swarley
Active Member
Interesting how all 3 JVs are led by large foreign contractors. I guess there aren't any Canadian companies left anymore that can build this?
I don't see what being Canadian-owned has to do with it. If they have offices in Canada (many of the firms listed even have offices in Ottawa), I don't really see why it's so important to have them be 100% Canadian. The work will still be done by Canadians, for Canadians, in Canada.
I can see at least 5 companies on that list that I know are Canadian-owned.
And the reality is that this project is so large and so complex (it's a design-build-maintain) that there are very few companies on the planet that can do all of those things really well. Overall, I think they're 3 great consortiums (and no, my firm isn't on any of those lists, so I can say that objectively, haha).