Moose Rail (National Capital Region)

[kEiThZ]

It's too bad really, because a more proper densification-minded European commuter rail system would actually be good for Ottawa

Would it?

Ottawa is not exactly dense or heavily populated to begin with. We are talking about “towns” on these lines that have fewer people than some condo complexes in Toronto. Spending hundreds of millions to build commuter rail to them when a massive chunk of Ottawa still sees a bus only ever 30 minutes is an absolutely ridiculous and unjustifiable waste of money.

Beyond that, there’s no sensible setup for commuter rail in Ottawa. You’re either getting dumped at Bayview in West or Tremblay in the East. Neither of which are particularly useful in and of themselves.

The current LRT plan is more than sufficient for the city. What it needs is funding to accelerate buildout. Get LRT to Stittsville and Barrhaven and double track the Trillium Line and nobody will ever mention commuter rail or MOOSE again.

What those regional towns need is proper commuter bus service. They would benefit far more from an hourly GO bus than 1-2 trains at each peak period.

 

[mdrejhon]

Good reply. That's also a fair assessment until densification clusters starts happening.

Once we see 30 storey condos and taller offices near a Kanata LRT station and 60 stories at a Billings+DataCentre redevelopment by 2050, we may have to revisit commuter train ideas (not classic BiLevel GO size, but more akin to a hybrid between VIA HFR and LRT). Basically, a single deck electrified metro designed as an allday more-expresslike service. The jury is still out whether LRT will ignite sufficient density clusters to warrant an European style commuter-train-style layer (with good >50% farebox recovery) for Ottawa, but it has happened before elsewhere.

 

[kEiThZ]

Good reply. That's also a fair assessment until densification clusters starts happening.

Once we see 30 storey condos and taller offices near a Kanata LRT station and 60 stories at a Billings+DataCentre redevelopment by 2050, we may have to revisit commuter train ideas (not classic BiLevel GO size, but more akin to a hybrid between VIA HFR and LRT). Basically, a single deck electrified metro designed as an allday more-expresslike service. The jury is still out whether LRT will ignite sufficient density clusters to warrant an European style commuter-train-style layer (with good >50% farebox recovery) for Ottawa, but it has happened before elsewhere.

The need for commuter rail doesn't change under your scenario. If Kanate and Billings get major development, you just need to convert the light rail to heavy rail and increase frequencies, and you'd be just fine.

Again, there's no commuter rail scenario that truly works for the Ottawa suburbs (Barrhaven, Kanata, Stittsville, Orleans, etc). The would-be terminals are massively inconvenient. And the distant "suburbs" are tiny. If Carp and Navan get 50 000 residents, sure. And that's what Mr. Potvin's plans are hoping to facilitate. If that happened though, it would also be pretty damn terrible for the region. The sprawl and traffic that would create would be terrible for everyone. Train or no train.

 

[kEiThZ]

Mr. Potvin can suck it. The voters of Ottawa resoundingly rejected his trojan horse candidate, Doucet.

Hopefully, as Watson moves on with Stage 2, we'll soon be able to forget all about this nonsense for good.

Incidentally, the first time I've ever donated to a mayoral race. And Mr. Potvin did motivate me to help Watson.

 

[OCCheetos]

Mr. Potvin can suck it. The voters of Ottawa resoundingly rejected his trojan horse candidate, Doucet.

Hopefully, as Watson moves on with Stage 2, we'll soon be able to forget all about this nonsense for good.

Incidentally, the first time I've ever donated to a mayoral race. And Mr. Potvin did motivate me to help Watson.

Doucet had a lot of other issues, so I wouldn't say this was a good thing to base general public support on (although granted it probably won't help their investor situation). That said, MOOSE won't be dead until they say they're dead and I can't see that happening any time soon.

Doucet didn't have anything to do with MOOSE, nor is he the first mayoral candidate to ever propose a regional rail system. I know you don't like MOOSE at all, but jeez...

 

[steveintoronto]

Doucet didn't have anything to do with MOOSE, nor is he the first mayoral candidate to ever propose a regional rail system. I know you don't like MOOSE at all, but jeez...

Today's Ottawa Citizen Editorial:

Editorial: Ottawa's new city council must translate big ideas into action


OTTAWA CITIZEN EDITORIAL BOARD
Updated: October 23, 2018

Mayoral candidate Clive Doucet was right to stress the importance of the Prince of Wales Bridge during the election campaign. ASHLEY FRASER / POSTMEDIA

Jim Watson ran a hyper-cautious, incremental re-election campaign. His chief rival, Clive Doucet, countered with a grab-bag of big, sprawling ideas. It turns out Ottawans may favour a bit of both: They’ve re-elected Watson, but done so just as some big city projects are about to take off – or fall flat.

The man who made no campaign promises of consequence (except to say he needed a tiny bit more flexibility with property tax hikes) now confronts the challenge of managing several huge ideas through to fruition.

There’s the still-to-occur opening of the Confederation Line next year, after some dismaying delays. There’s the signing of a $3-billion contract and managing stage 2 to Moodie Drive, Algonquin College, Trim Road, Riverside South and the airport. There’s the hope to one day build stage 3 to Barrhaven and Kanata-Stittsville.

There’s the big central library project, meant for one corner of LeBreton Flats and conceived as an ambitious partnership with Library and Archives Canada. If done right – the big word is “if” – this building will become a cultural jewel of Ottawa’s shifting downtown core.

There’s the even bigger project of pushing progress on the rest of the Flats: finding ways to help bring the secretive RendezVous LeBreton-NCC ordeal to a point where something happens and a downtown arena is a fait accompli, not simply a gleam in the eyes of planners and sports fans.

There’s the attempt to figure out a better future for the ByWard Market, and for Sparks Street. There’s a continuing controversy over building a large shelter for homeless men on Vanier’s main street. There’s a redo of the city’s Official Plan, setting out the broad parameters for how the capital will look and feel in the coming decades. More tall towers? More inclusionary zoning? More evolution toward being both an innovation centre and a truly “green” city?

And there are the broad issues Doucet raised, though with insufficient detail to give them traction during the campaign. Regional rail is not a ridiculous concept to research further. Settling the fate of the Prince of Wales Bridge, and acting on it, should be a priority in this term of council. Discussion of the truck tunnel under the Ottawa River needs to resurface.

Watson and his new council must juggle all these big ideas while still sorting out garbage pickup, plugging potholes, slowing down traffic speeders and regulating where in the city an adult can smoke a joint.

It’s not work for the faint of heart. It’ll require both pluck and pragmatism. Good luck, Mr. Mayor. Good luck, councillors.

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/e...-council-must-translate-big-ideas-into-action

 

[kEiThZ]

That said, MOOSE won't be dead until they say they're dead and I can't see that happening any time soon.

Sure. But now there's no threat of a politician who wanted to put a pause on Stage 2. And once we have shovels in the ground on the Trillium Line, MOOSE's plans will be irrelevant. Despite their claims.

In a few years, MOOSE will sound exactly as kooky as they should have been seen. Imagine a developer who has never developed anything who insists on the right to take over the GO Train network while pre-empting subway expansion, to service Orangeville and Peterborough as priorities. Torontonians would laugh them out of the room and be enraged if they legally trolled the city.

I know you don't like MOOSE at all, but jeez..

I vehemently dislike scam artists who deceive the public and use the law to troll municipalities. And I have a severe allergic reflex to developers who push urban sprawl to the extreme to line their pockets.

I would bet money that Doucet and Potvin have consulted each other. And I didn't trust Doucet at all to keep his word on Stage 2. Especially with respect to the Trillium Line. It's why I donated.

 

[Joseph Potvin]

I've not been back to this blog list for a while. But having just returned earlier today from a very positive meeting with one of the re-elected mayors in the region, I thought I'd just check in to see where the post-election discussion here has gone. Poor old @kEiThZ evidently has far too much time on his hands, as he's still ranting and throwing around ad hominem attacks. Who's the moderator of this list, kEiThZ himself?

Anyways, stay tuned for the next stage in our work to prevent and reverse illegal destruction of federally-regulated railway infrastructure.
https://www.letsgomoose.ca/wp-conte...nToMinisterTransportCanada_2018-09-18cPDF.pdf

MOOSE is advancing our whole region commercial plan. I can report that quite a few senior people within the City of Ottawa administration, and several councillors also consider our work highly beneficial to the future of both Ottawa and the National Capital Region.

The closing line in this article about NYC might have been written to describe some though: “I’ve worked in this city for 45 years,” Mr. Schwartz said, “and frankly, if God came down and proposed the Garden of Eden, people would protest that.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/n...new-york-give-streetcars-their-own-lanes.html

Joseph Potvin
Director General | Directeur général
Moose Consortium (Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises) | www.letsgomoose.com
Consortium Moose (Mobilité Outaouais-Ottawa: Systèmes & Enterprises) | www.onyvamoose.com

 

[Allandale25]

Who's the moderator of this list, kEiThZ himself?

If you have a concern with who is moderating this site (it's not a "blog") you can just contact them rather than taking passive aggressive shots.

 

[steveintoronto]

If you have a concern with who is moderating this site (it's not a "blog") you can just contact them rather than taking passive aggressive shots.

Define "passive aggressive".

Going by the popular misunderstanding of the term, I'd say this meets your bar: (This was aimed specifically at Potvin, and it's far from the first ad hominem attack from the same poster)

I vehemently dislike scam artists who deceive the public and use the law to troll municipalities. And I have a severe allergic reflex to developers who push urban sprawl to the extreme to line their pockets.

Meantime, many journos are making similar points about Ottawa's transit squeeze, some of them editorials in Ottawa's press:

[...]Doucet has made regional rail on existing industrial tracks, and especially a link across the decrepit Prince of Wales Bridge to Gatineau, the centrepiece of his campaign. Repairing the bridge has been on Ottawa’s to-do list for 15 years but it never quite reaches the top. Moving commuters across the Ottawa River is an obvious need in the capital but it’s not wholly in either Ottawa’s or Gatineau’s interest to take it on — for each of them, it means spending their own taxpayers’ money to help residents or employers in the other’s territory.

Meanwhile, the pressure to widen roads in suburban wards is growing. In Gloucester-South Nepean, ex-news anchor Carol Anne Meehan is targeting sitting councillor Michael Qaqish with complaints that transportation infrastructure to the south end of the city hasn’t matched the explosive population growth. (Once upon a time, critics of the city’s first plan to send light rail to the subdivisions-to-be in south Gloucester called it a “train to nowhere.” Those aren’t farm fields any more.) The O-Train extension will help but it’s several years away yet and it’s not supposed to outright “solve” congestion.

Building more roads and wider roads is at odds with the city’s stated planning and transportation ideals, which emphasize transit, bicycling and walking. Of course, those ideals don’t comfort drivers trying to get downtown, stopping and going on Limebank and Leitrim and Albion (and Eagleson and Woodroffe and Innes) in the mornings.

Should the city stick with its plan, knowing that congested roads are part of the price of choosing not to spend millions of dollars for each lane-kilometre of pavement? Or will council decide it’s too harmful to the suburban communities?

We’re having enough trouble maintaining the roads we’ve already got. Ottawa’s a uniquely vast city, among Canada’s large ones, which means it has a uniquely vast road network, and a lot of it is in poor shape. Years of starving the budget for unsexy work like repaving — city council’s kicked the can along year after year since Bob Chiarelli was mayor — is showing.

The city’s increased its pothole-repair budget to $8 million this past year, a $600,000 increase, but major roads like the Vanier Parkway are still pitted with suspension-damaging (and potentially cyclist-killing) gaps. Watson blames some especially bad winters lately and the fact that a lot of major streets built decades ago are reaching the ends of their normal lives all around the same time, which is fair but doesn’t fix the holes.
[...]

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/loca...days-vote-is-about-the-kind-of-ottawa-we-want

 

[Allandale25]

^ No.

 

[steveintoronto]

^ No.

No further comment needed...

 

[kEiThZ]

Lol. Snake oil salesmen always promise their next potion will be better.

It's good thing for Mr. Potvin that paper is cheap. Cause that's all his garageband development company can produce. I look forward to Jim Watson literally driving a spike into his dreams of transit induced sprawl with the Trillium Line South. And in a few years the Gatineau LRT will kill what's left.

 

[OCCheetos]

I look forward to Jim Watson literally driving a spike into his dreams of transit induced sprawl with the Trillium Line South. And in a few years the Gatineau LRT will kill what's left.

Neither of those things are the spikes that you think they are.

The true spike would be the dismantlement of all relevant rail corridors and then the selling of those corridors, none of which have or are likely to happen.

 

[steveintoronto]

The true spike would be the dismantlement of all relevant rail corridors and then the selling of those corridors, none of which have or are likely to happen.

Indeed, the City of Ottawa itself is not only cognizant of that, but includes it in the Official Plan:

[...]

https://ottawa.ca/en/city-hall/publ...ial-plan-amendment-setbacks-railway-corridors

Further and subsequent to that:

https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/default/files/documents/draft_opa_rail_setbacks-s_en.pdf

Ottawa and Region is already choking on traffic congestion. One of the many headline stories:
Traffic jams: Ottawa is third most congested city in Canada
And the real point of concern for many of us is preservation, as required by Law, of existing rail infrastructure not officially abandoned already, which is what the Prince of Wales Bridge concern is all about. The next CTA ruling on the matter is pending.