Moose Rail (National Capital Region)

[micheal_can]

In the past, Mr. Potvin suggested that Moose would displace OC Transpo service from the Trillium Line. Hence, why I see this proposal as completely useless for Ottawa residents.

Is there anything that is along the current Trillium line that the current Southeast leg does not go near? Is there any reason an LRT could not be built to connect those other places better?

 

[kEiThZ]

The passing tracks added 5 years ago were supposed to increase frequencies to 8 minutes. Instead, we're now at a steady 12 minute frequency. It's unlikely that 8 minutes will be attainable without more double tracking.

So not only are you an insider at MOOSE, you're apparently not a transportation engineer at the City of Ottawa? How do you manage the conflicts of interest?

If you had attended any of the public consultations, they did explain the issues they had meeting pledged frequencies and how that will be mitigated in Stage 2.

Considering their lack of funding,

....they should not be taken very seriously at all.

MOOSE could and should provide more information.

Understatement of the year. But we've got many more months to go.....

you can't definitively prove

The onus is not on me to prove anything. You seem to constantly miss this basic concept. Are you trolling or do you get how this actually works?

This is why we can't have nice things. With a sizable portion of the population of the NCR living across a provincial border, it kind of makes good (or better) interpovincial transit difficult.

Again, why should an Ottawa ratepayer care about this at all? Why should Ottawa residents suffer worse service on infrastructure their city owns so that others can benefit? Let communities on the other side of the river pony up.

Were you also against amalgamation?

People say amalgamation has been bad for Toronto because Old Toronto took in the burbs. They should come to Ottawa and see the nightmare its become where completely rural areas were merged with urban and suburban boroughs and now expect similar levels of service. There's a reason property taxes in Ottawa are ridiculous and rising quickly.

To gain support they'll absolutely have to in the future.

Given that they are petitioning for the bridge right now and we're on the verge of construction of Stage 2 right now, there's no time to wait for the future.

But you can't start making claims that they'll be a detriment to public transit when they're still in a planning phase

When they keep attempting to undermine Stage 2, and have publicly admitted that they would offer worse frequencies than Stage 2, why should they not be called out?

If you look at the areas

Areas that don't pay taxes to the City of Ottawa, but want access to infrastructure that I support with my taxes, all while asking me to accept worse service. Again, why is this in my benefit as a taxpayer? And why should my city councillor, MPP and MP support this?

(and if they ever did, I would happily cut cheques to their opponents....that's a promise from me)

Assuming all three lines ran hourly and the two that use the Trillium Line corridor are interlined and evenly spaced out (time-wise), you'd be looking at a frequency of 30 minutes.

So best case scenario is half the number of trains on the Trillium Line today? Again, why should any Ottawa resident support this?

But so are you.

No. I am going off facts that Trillium has provided. You're the one making assumptions. For example, you have no idea about Trillium's finances,but you seem to already project that they'll offer more service than they've publicly proffered to date in their filings with the authorities. Are you trolling or working PR at MOOSE? Which is it?

Mr. Potvin has added some of the information we needed.

No he hasn't. And you can't be so naive that you can't see the flaw in his post?

MOOSE would work to achieve 5-minute service on the Trillium Line. Of course double-tracking.

OC Transpo would be able to achieve 3 min service or better if they wanted to with double tracking. I didn't ask for a hypothetical on what MOOSE could accomplish given some hypothetical infrastructure that does not exist. I asked what MOOSE was willing to commit to. Tell me, as an Ottawa ratepayer, what service you will commit to providing on day one of your operation and how it compares to what the city is planning on delivering in Sept 2021.

The questions I have been asking stand and you can feel free to answer them:

1) What will the peak, midpeak, off-peak frequencies be for Moose at launch? And how do they compare to the Trillium Line after Stage 2?
2) Can you commit to the station locations of the current stations on the Trillium Line and the planned station locations for Stage 2?
3) What are the negotiated transfer arrangements between OC Transpo and MOOSE?

Answer those without equivocation or red herrings (as you did above), to my satisfaction and I'll happily start advocating for you. Heck, I'd gladly invest.

 

[kEiThZ]

Is there anything that is along the current Trillium line that the current Southeast leg does not go near?

Is there any reason an LRT could not be built to connect those other places better?

The Southeast Transitway is not being converted to rail. It will remain a BRT/Transitway. The Trillium Line is being refurbished.

If you're referring to what is distant from the Trillium Line, that would be the airport and Riverside South (with a future extension west of Bowesville). Building a whole separate LRT would be quite impractical. The airport is paying for their station for Stage 2. I am not sure they'd pay for a separate LRT/People-mover system. And there's no way the city would entertain an LRT to connect Riverside South to the Trillium Line. They don't have the funds to double track the Trillium Line. Building orphan LRTs or people-movers will definitely not be high on the agenda.

 

[Allandale25]

Exactly.

MOOSE would work to achieve 5-minute service on the Trillium Line. Of course double-tracking.

But (as the punchline goes): "the lightbulb has to want to change".

Then why are the documents on your website, as has been pointed out here, saying "hourly service every day, through Ottawa". Also interesting that you didn't comment on this: "In the past, Mr. Potvin suggested that Moose would displace OC Transpo service from the Trillium Line. Hence, why I see this proposal as completely useless for Ottawa residents." Are the documents on your website out of date?

Why aren't you providing more details on the change you are claiming can occur? Why keep residents in Ottawa in the dark (speaking of lightbulbs)?

 

[Allandale25]

Sure, but at this point they haven't. That's fine. To gain support they'll absolutely have to in the future. But you can't start making claims that they'll be a detriment to public transit when they're still in a planning phase and haven't published the necessary information to make that kind of judgement.

Their website claims hourly frequencies, they've apparently indicated they want complete control of the Trillium Line corridor, but then claim they want 5 minute frequencies here. That sounds pretty worrying to me if I was a Ottawa transit user, both in terms of consistency and reliability of information. We have no idea what "phase" Moose is in because they are not going through a public EA process or other normal transit process at this point. That's the challenge when a private sector entity pushes an idea outside of the public process that municipalities across Ontario use.

 

[OCCheetos]

So not only are you an insider at MOOSE, you're apparently not a transportation engineer at the City of Ottawa? How do you manage the conflicts of interest?

I'm neither..? I explained why I believed that MOOSE wouldn't just cut service along the Trillium Line in my last post.
As for the O-Train... It was in the news a few years ago:
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...rain-upgrade-failed-to-reach-frequency-target
Also, if you visit any O-Train station, rather than timetables they literally just say "every 12 minutes".

If you had attended any of the public consultations, they did explain the issues they had meeting pledged frequencies and how that will be mitigated in Stage 2.

And as the above article shows, that isn't a guarantee. Especially in the southern portion (between Carleton and Greenboro) where they aren't adding any new passing track, but they are adding a whole new station.

....they should not be taken very seriously at all.

Then don't. No one's forcing you to.

Understatement of the year. But we've got many more months to go.....

Agreed.

The onus is not on me to prove anything. You seem to constantly miss this basic concept. Are you trolling or do you get how this actually works?

Then don't make claims without sufficient evidence. I think I've repeatedly demonstrated that there was no information that said that Trillium Line service would be drastically cut under MOOSE.

Again, why should an Ottawa ratepayer care about this at all? Why should Ottawa residents suffer worse service on infrastructure their city owns so that others can benefit? Let communities on the other side of the river pony up.

There are definitely ways that Ottawa ratepayers could use and take advantage of MOOSE's service. I think there are already people who visit: Chelsea, Wakefield, Gatineau Park, Fitzroy (and the Provincial Park there), Arnprior, and Smiths Falls, who would now be able to make more regular trips out there. Good for them and good for local tourism. But maybe I'm just being too optimistic...

It also doesn't seem like anyone here would be suffering from worse service. Especially not if you're just talking about the PoW bridge and not MOOSE...

People say amalgamation has been bad for Toronto because Old Toronto took in the burbs. They should come to Ottawa and see the nightmare its become where completely rural areas were merged with urban and suburban boroughs and now expect similar levels of service. There's a reason property taxes in Ottawa are ridiculous and rising quickly.

So, I'll take that as a yes.

Given that they are petitioning for the bridge right now and we're on the verge of construction of Stage 2 right now, there's no time to wait for the future.

Future's a pretty loose term. All I mean is that as they move forward with their plans, they'll need to provide more information to gain more support.

When they keep attempting to undermine Stage 2, and have publicly admitted that they would offer worse frequencies than Stage 2, why should they not be called out?

Were the Stage 2 frequencies going to be lower than every 5 minutes? Again, I'm not sure how that's even achievable with the current Stage 2 plan.

Areas that don't pay taxes to the City of Ottawa, but want access to infrastructure that I support with my taxes, all while asking me to accept worse service. Again, why is this in my benefit as a taxpayer? And why should my city councillor, MPP and MP support this?

(and if they ever did, I would happily cut cheques to their opponents....that's a promise from me)

Because you aren't receiving any worse service?

So best case scenario is half the number of trains on the Trillium Line today? Again, why should any Ottawa resident support this?

Did you even read the next sentence? I said that it wouldn't take many more trains to meet the current levels of Trillium Line service, and not very many more to exceed them. That's also what Mr. Potvin stated.

No. I am going off facts that Trillium has provided. You're the one making assumptions. For example, you have no idea about Trillium's finances,but you seem to already project that they'll offer more service than they've publicly proffered to date in their filings with the authorities. Are you trolling or working PR at MOOSE? Which is it?

Trillium = MOOSE?

They also said that they would be using 6 trains. This was debated a lot over in the other forum and was concluded as: they'll use at least 6 trains. As I've repeatedly stated, their information is incomplete.
It's concerning that you think that anyone who doesn't share your views of being opposed to MOOSE must be either a troll or work at MOOSE. Promotes healthy debate.

No he hasn't. And you can't be so naive that you can't see the flaw in his post?

That it wasn't complete? Woah, shocked.

OC Transpo would be able to achieve 3 min service or better if they wanted to with double tracking. I didn't ask for a hypothetical on what MOOSE could accomplish given some hypothetical infrastructure that does not exist. I asked what MOOSE was willing to commit to. Tell me, as an Ottawa ratepayer, what service you will commit to providing on day one of your operation and how it compares to what the city is planning on delivering in Sept 2021.

The questions I have been asking stand and you can feel free to answer them:

1) What will the peak, midpeak, off-peak frequencies be for Moose at launch? And how do they compare to the Trillium Line after Stage 2?
2) Can you commit to the station locations of the current stations on the Trillium Line and the planned station locations for Stage 2?
3) What are the negotiated transfer arrangements between OC Transpo and MOOSE?

Answer those without equivocation or red herrings (as you did above), to my satisfaction and I'll happily start advocating for you. Heck, I'd gladly invest.

I'm not entirely sure where the 3 minutes is coming from. Not even the Confederation line (which is fully double tracked) is going for that level of service...
I think he said they're committing to 5 minute frequencies, did he not?

 

[OCCheetos]

Then why are the documents on your website, as has been pointed out here, saying "hourly service every day, through Ottawa". Also interesting that you didn't comment on this: "In the past, Mr. Potvin suggested that Moose would displace OC Transpo service from the Trillium Line. Hence, why I see this proposal as completely useless for Ottawa residents." Are the documents on your website out of date?

Why aren't you providing more details on the change you are claiming can occur? Why keep residents in Ottawa in the dark (speaking of lightbulbs)?

Their website claims hourly frequencies, they've apparently indicated they want complete control of the Trillium Line corridor, but then claim they want 5 minute frequencies here. That sounds pretty worrying to me if I was a Ottawa transit user, both in terms of consistency and reliability of information. We have no idea what "phase" Moose is in because they are not going through a public EA process or other normal transit process at this point. That's the challenge when a private sector entity pushes an idea outside of the public process that municipalities across Ontario use.

As I've already mentioned, their documents are incomplete and mostly just for application purposes right now. Their documents also currently state that they'll use 6 trains, but we know that not to be true.
I've also argued that the "hourly frequency" is only referring to the outer rural lines and describes nothing about service along the Trillium Line.

 

[Allandale25]

"describes nothing about service along the Trillium Line" - that line would give me no confidence as an Ottawa transit user.

 

[OCCheetos]

"describes nothing about service along the Trillium Line" - that line would give me no confidence as an Ottawa transit user.

Fair enough. But you should be arguing that MOOSE hasn't provided sufficient information to know for sure whether it would be beneficial. Not that it's guaranteed to destroy transit in Ottawa.

 

[Allandale25]

^ Did you mean to write "shouldn't" instead of "should"?

If you meant "shouldn't" then that's exactly one of my concerns and what I think @kEiThZ is pointing out as well: Moose hasn't provided sufficient information and as a result there are legitimate concerns that their proposal is not beneficial to transit users. There appear to be contradictions in the information they have put out and serious concerns with it. So, I'll continue to argue there are legitimate concerns and won't provide advice to others on what they should or shouldn't be arguing.

 

[OCCheetos]

These are the kind of arguments that I'm arguing shouldn't be made:

@Allandale25

Also, let's not forget that in the past, Mr. Potvin has argued that the corridor should be turned over to MOOSE to provide sub-par service (substantially lower frequencies than Trillium Line post-Stage 2) to residents inside the greenbelt so that MOOSE's real estate clients can get shitty 30 min suburban rail service. Mr. Potvin isn't looking for compatibility if he can avoid it.

It would indeed be great to have rural rail service. But not at the cost of completely demolishing urban transit in Ottawa-Gatineau. Giving up 10 min frequencies on the Trillium Line (and probably better if the line is double tracked later) for 30 mins or worse rural rail service is not a good trade.

It would indeed be great to have rural rail service. But not at the cost of completely demolishing urban transit in Ottawa-Gatineau. Giving up 10 min frequencies on the Trillium Line (and probably better if the line is double tracked later) for 30 mins or worse rural rail service is not a good trade.

Between here and SSP they've been clear. They are not bound by existing station locations and they don't give a shit about existing Trillium Line users. They will locate stations where their customers (read real estate investors) stand to benefit the most.

This one (in my opinion) is more constructive:

Moose's proposal has never promised to match or better that for riders inside the Greenbelt. Heck, Mr. Potvin won't commit to using current station locations, where all the existing bus services connect. So my contention is clear: there's no reason for any Ottawa resident currently living inside the Greenbelt (the majority of Ottawa's population) to support Moose's proposals at all.

If someone completely unfamiliar with MOOSE stumbled across the forum and decided to ask what the advantages/disadvantages of MOOSE are, there would be a big difference between telling them "They're going to shit on the Trillium Line" and "We don't really know yet, but it's a concern".

The first four quotes are examples of the former, while the last quote is an example of the latter.

Of all of the quotes from MOOSE's documents that have been provided, they've all be from incomplete/drafted documents that are used for the CTA application and as basically a preview to what they're proposing. Hence why I believe that the lack of information regarding the Trillium Line doesn't equate to MOOSE wanting to ruin it.

 

[Allandale25]

Of all of the quotes from MOOSE's documents that have been provided, they've all be from incomplete/drafted documents that are used for the CTA application and as basically a preview to what they're proposing. Hence why I believe that the lack of information regarding the Trillium Line doesn't equate to MOOSE wanting to ruin it.

Given what I've read from @Charles and @kEiThZ, and particularly Charles post below, I think we have a pretty good sense of what's proposed and the implications for the Trillium Line. Their documents say one hour frequencies and today Joseph is claiming they can do five minutes? That lack of consistency is worrying.

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/moose-rail-national-capital-region.25806/page-36#post-1309239

 

[OCCheetos]

Given what I've read from @Charles and @kEiThZ, and particularly Charles post below, I think we have a pretty good sense of what's proposed and the implications for the Trillium Line. Their documents say one hour frequencies and today Joseph is claiming they can do five minutes? That lack of consistency is worrying.

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/moose-rail-national-capital-region.25806/page-36#post-1309239

You must also be very concerned about MOOSE stating that they'll only use 6 trains?

 

[Allandale25]

^ @Charles and @kEiThZ know the Ottawa Region better, so I'm interested in what they think about how 6 trains compares to the City's plan and particularly Stage 2.

 

[Allandale25]

Some interesting points here in the other forum by acottawa:

1. The Bridge has not appear to have been used for passenger services in 98 years (when Union Station opened downtown). It has not been used for freight services for a long time.
2. Moose is no closer to being operational than they were 7 years ago (further in fact because there have been several instances of discontinued track all over their planned routes). They cannot even convince investors to put up a few million for a feasibility study. Even in the most optimistic scenario they are many years away from operating some sort of service.
3. The City of Ottawa has no specific plans to make use of the bridge. There is no consensus within the region on how inter-provincial services should work. Over the last few days at least a half dozen different different ideas for the PoW bridge have been proposed on this forum alone (O-Train extension to Taché or Montcalm, O-Train extension to Terrasses de la Chaudière, extension of Rapibus to Bayview, people-mover, Truckway, Pedestrian/Cycling Bridge).
4. Despite having no users, and no potential users for any foreseeable future, the CTA is now requiring the city to spend a significant among of money (exact amount unknown) to upgrade the line to 12-month readiness, just in case maybe someday somebody wants to use it. That is not a rationale behaviour for the city (or any owner of unused railway lines) to undertake.