ARG1
Senior Member
It won't be as bad as someone parking on LRT tracks
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London Rapid Transit (In-Design)
- Thread starter Midtown Urbanist
- Start date
micheal_can
Senior Member
You mean like how someone always ends up driving into the Streetcar tunnels? Is it wrong I think that the train should just push the car for as long as it takes to move it out of the way?It won't be as bad as someone parking on LRT tracks
ARG1
Senior Member
That would be funny to watch, but at the same time I feel like that would probably make the situation worse. You could easily nudge the car to rest perpendicularly to the tracks and now you have a literal wall on the tracks that will be hard to pull out.
micheal_can
Senior Member
Depends if you care the condition of the car when it comes out.
Each mode has it challenges and each has it's own good qualities. Whether London does an Express bus, BRT or LRT, I hope it is a success. I hope it attracks more riders to the system. I hope it is future proofed enough that the switch to the next mode is not too much of a pain for the users of the system.
nfitz
Superstar
I don't think that's true - at least for Ottawa. From the X-axis, the population would be under 900,000. The graph is from 2009 - if you look at the 2006 census info, the CMA (Ottawa-Gatineau) was 1.1 million. It was over 1 million back in 1996!It's using StatsCan journey-to-work data, which is for the entire CMA. In this case, that would be Ottawa-Gatineau. You can read Jarrett Walker's (of Human Transit) commentary on that here:
Further Cause for Canadian Triumphalism — Human Transit
Yesterday I posted some data we were playing with, suggesting that Canadian cities have consistently higher transit ridership than similar US ones. Commenter Matt pointed me to his own charts on the subject, which are based on Paul Mees’s database. One of Matt’s charts makes use of citywide...humantransit.org
The (2001 boundaries) city of Ottawa itself had a population of 812,000 in 2006 - I think that's what is graphed.
ARG1
Senior Member
Ye they probably just messed up with Ottawa, either forgot Gatineau existed, or misprinted the population. Looking at Toronto, < 6 million in 2009 for the whole CMA is on point.
nfitz
Superstar
Quite possibly ... the original data used in that graph is at https://web.archive.org/web/20140611072639/http://mams.rmit.edu.au/fwgm5rdaow29.pdf
Also interesting to see they cut off Chicago, LA, New York City
I'd expect this would look very different in core areas. Say just City of Toronto or even the old 1990s boundaries. Or New York City vs Manhattan.
kEiThZ
Superstar
CMA level data doesn't separate out Gatineau. So how would they "forget Gatineau"?
I don't know why it triggers so many people into disbelief that Ottawa has high transit usage for its size. One look at Albert or Slater during rush hour in those days would tell you that this was pretty true.
Also, unlike other cities/metros of similar population, parking is both more scarce and more dear in the downtown core, primarily driven by a single large employer who refuses to subsidize parking for most employees and coordinates with transit to develop in a way that increases ridership. Heck, DND built a massive new headquarters with half as many spots as employees in the middle of a suburb and told people who missed getting a spot in the lottery to bus it. It'll be 5 years till that campus has an O-Train stop down the street.
All this is to say again, push factors aside, Ottawa built a successful city-wide transit system without rail and for a rather reasonable cost. This is a great example for London to follow. Building rail just because other places have it, is probably the most ridiculous reason to build multi-billion dollar infrastructure.
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Midtown Urbanist
Superstar
As I see it, there are two cities in this region (London and Hamilton) that are more-or-less squandering their potential to grow into important economic hubs and population centres in the country through their own doing, at a time when Canada is welcoming 400,000 new immigrants a year, the majority of which are set to come to Southern Ontario. With the country growing so rapidly, it is placing an outsized burden to accommodate that growth in a few select areas, in particular, the GTA. Something needs to change, because I refuse to believe we'll reach the mid-century mark with both cities remaining as economic backwaters with seas of parking lots in their downtown cores, while all that investment pours into the GTA and K-W regions.
Reading the past dozen pages in this thread, I'm beginning to form the opinion that the upper levels of government may need to decide to step in and start making decisions on building transit and other important infrastructure for these cities and taking away that decision from the two municipalities. We need a strong London and a strong Hamilton, serving as major economic hubs and destination cities for the greater region. This won't happen unless there is a course-correction in attitude and ambition, and a complete move away from the lethargic and negligent decision-making that these municipalities have become accustomed to (or well, the intervention of higher orders of government).
Reading the past dozen pages in this thread, I'm beginning to form the opinion that the upper levels of government may need to decide to step in and start making decisions on building transit and other important infrastructure for these cities and taking away that decision from the two municipalities. We need a strong London and a strong Hamilton, serving as major economic hubs and destination cities for the greater region. This won't happen unless there is a course-correction in attitude and ambition, and a complete move away from the lethargic and negligent decision-making that these municipalities have become accustomed to (or well, the intervention of higher orders of government).
ARG1
Senior Member
The graph shows Ottawa's population at <1M which was Ottawa's population back in 2009 excluding Gatineau. This leads to a single question, which is did they also omit Gatineau when punching in the numbers for transit riders, or did they just make a mistake with the population? If the population is smaller than it should be, but the number of commuters is correct, then who really cares. If they completely omitted Gatineau's numbers, then the real numbers might be lower. Don't forget that while Ottawa had a substantial Transitway network back in 2009, Gatineau had squat, and almost certainly had a smaller share of transit riders than Ottawa. As such the overall public transport usage percentage would be smaller than what's shown on the graph.
I do not doubt the numbers given. I find the numbers actually fairly believable, but in order to make sure, you must always apply as much scrutiny as you possibly can. If the data is as true as it claims to be, any scrutiny should in the end strengthen the claims being made - such as when I asked yesterday if the numbers given applied to the Metro Area or the hard city borders. It turned out it was using CMA values, which strengthened the value of the data given in this chart. Now seemingly another hole has appeared.
Granted, with all this being said, Gatineau does have a smaller population than Ottawa and so in the worst case the drop in percentage points is unlikely to be significant. Also, even if we exclude Gatineau from the equation, the ultimate point that BRTs can easily work as Rapid Transit still applies fully, since now we're looking at (what was) the only section of the region that is served by BRTs.
kEiThZ
Superstar
This is exactly what I suspect happened.
They didn't have a Transitway then. But they have fairly high transit usage to work, for the same reason that Ottawa does: public servants don't get free or cheap parking. Ever seen STO buses at rush hour? Also, commuting across the bridges into Ottawa at rush is not fun.
ARG1
Senior Member
I have seen STO busses during rush hour, but I haven't seen STO busses during rush hours in 2009. A decade is a long enough time that you can't apply future observations to the past.
micheal_can
Senior Member
The real question is shoudl there be the push for BRT or LRT?I for one feel LRT for both Hamilton and London makes the most sense.
ssiguy2
Senior Member
Would you guys please stop comparing London to Ottawa as there is no analogy to be made. London cannot duplicate Ottawa's Transitway little alone LRT for several reasons:
A] Ottawa had 650k and another 250k across the river when built as opposed to London's current 435k
B} Ottawa built form is linear and shaped like a rectangle as opposed to London's circle.
C} Ottawa has a far higher employment centre in it's core due to the government office & Ottawa U.
D} Ottawa had unused rail tracks going into it's centre to serve the eastern and northern portions of the Transitway and bare land thru LeBreton and the Western Parkway to the west and London has no such corridors.
E} Ottawa could take advantage of empty land beside the Queensway to St..Laurent and London has no urban freeways.
Ottawa is in many ways is comparable to Calgary in size, having unused rail corridors, and empty/unused land closer to the downtown so they are fair comparisons while London certainly is not.
A] Ottawa had 650k and another 250k across the river when built as opposed to London's current 435k
B} Ottawa built form is linear and shaped like a rectangle as opposed to London's circle.
C} Ottawa has a far higher employment centre in it's core due to the government office & Ottawa U.
D} Ottawa had unused rail tracks going into it's centre to serve the eastern and northern portions of the Transitway and bare land thru LeBreton and the Western Parkway to the west and London has no such corridors.
E} Ottawa could take advantage of empty land beside the Queensway to St..Laurent and London has no urban freeways.
Ottawa is in many ways is comparable to Calgary in size, having unused rail corridors, and empty/unused land closer to the downtown so they are fair comparisons while London certainly is not.
ARG1
Senior Member
Congratulations on missing the point.
The point being made was that busses can attract ridership, all of that has nothing to do with it.