Commuter and Intercity Rail in the Ottawa/Gatineau Area (fantasy thread)

[Urban Sky]

Rather than bloating existing threads which concern actual proposals discussed in the public, I would like to create this thread as a dedicated space for all kind of proposals nobody outside of this forum has probably ever heard of...

As a first example, I would suggest the proposal made in the "Moose Rail (National Capital Region)" thread to restore Ottawa Union Station, but I am rather confident that the imagination of certain members here doesn't know any limits...

 

[kEiThZ]

I love old train stations. I would have loved to have seen Union restored as the flagship station for the Confederation Line. But when they decided that ship sailed, there's really no point trying to shoehorn something there.



And the case for commuter rail got killed the minute they decided to extend the LRT out of the Greenbelt. There is no government that is going to spend billions building an LRT network and then commit to spending billions more to build a commuter rail network to target the same riders. Not happening.



The idea of a regional rail network is nice. But Ottawa-Gatineau is not the GTA. Between Ottawa's O-Train network and Gatineau's planned trams most of the region's population will be closer to an LRT or tram station than the GTA is to a subway or GO station.



Also, the authority that would have to build this network would be the two provinces. Because Ottawa and Gatineau taxpayers most assuredly will not pay for this when they have enough coverage from their own LRT lines. Doubtful either province is interested in any of this.

 

[kalis0490]

Thank you @Urban Sky for this thread

Here I might add my justification for a "line 5" dmu on the beachburg line:

A CN Beachburg DMU line was projected to have higher ridership than the original o train pilot (line2) in the same document that ended up proposing the otrain line 2. (link: https://app06.ottawa.ca/calendar/ottawa/archives/rmoc/Regional_Council/09Sep98/Light.pdf .)

I believe that there were over 15K riders /day proposed, and this was in 2000! Now that lines 1,2,3, and 4 are built, there will be a networking effect producing much higher ridership than expected. What, myself and others propose isn't a moose type rail to rural towns, but is essentially a line 2 type service in the city. Keep in mind suburb-suburb demand is bouncing back much higher than suburb - urban demand. This does not need a downtown station for it to be viable as the originally proposed line had, even with out a downtown union station, decent ridership.

Additionally, a Mooney's bay Via Station could have merit by allowing an easier transfer to line 2 , airport and many other destinations. (I know it is close to the other stations. We do not want to repeat the Eglinton fiasco in Ottawa, and it is a good time to have modern costed plan of a suburban crosstown line.

 

[innsertnamehere]

why is this any different than the "Moose rail" thread? they are both about fantasy commuter rail projects in Ottawa.. No need for two separate threads.

 

[Urban Sky]

why is this any different than the "Moose rail" thread? they are both about fantasy commuter rail projects in Ottawa.. No need for two separate threads.

I agree that no more than two threads are required to discuss Commuter Rail networks for Ottawa. However, having one thread dedicated to transit proposals which are actually discussed in the public („Ottawa Transit Developments“) and one for those some of us have smoked up on a lonely afternoon should should help distinguishing between current developments and fantasy proposals. As for the latter, the sooner we forget the M.R. scheme, the better and putting to rest the thread which holds its name is hopefully the last step to that goal…

 

[nfitz]

Perhaps an Admin could merge the threads