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Ottawa Transit Developments

I am in theory served by the Trillium Line since day one, but I am not Carleton student and I don't work west of downtown. It's usefulness for the southern inner suburbs is very limited given the poor frequency. All the inner suburbs have bus service directed to Hurdman station on the Confederation Line because transfers will not be dependable on the Trillium Line and because of capacity limitations. What happens when Phase 2 capacity is exceeded? The Trillium Line is not commuter rail given the station spacing, but much of it's original temporary design is being retained through Phase 2 meaning that it does not provide urban trunk line service either. The latest concern on the Ottawa board is that following the completion of Phase 2, transfers to the Confederation Line at Bayview station are going to be awkward.
 
The current plans for the Confederation Line have the lowest frequency at 15 minutes late at night. All day service is 4 minute frequency and evening service is 8 minute frequency. They are currently waiting for the arrival of 4 additional trains. They believe they need to get frequency down to around 3 minutes 15 seconds particularly in the morning peak period to meet current demand.
 
Reecemartin said:
Late night is every 20 minutes, not off peak.
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Not sure what you mean here. The late night service is every 20 minutes. And that's peak. And not even particularly late - after 11 pm.

How is 11 pm not off-peak?

And how is there any lack of clarity to what I'm saying?

Reecemartin said:
Trains run every 3 mins for most of the day.
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That's not true. The Canada line from the airport from the airport is never scheduled better than once every 6 minutes at peak! It's often once every 12 minutes.

Ditto for the for the Richmond Branch.

Which is comparable - and at times worse, than the Trillium line. So if the Trillium line is comparable to RER rather than light metro - then so is the Canada Line in Richmond. (my point however, is that it isn't comparable to RER).
 
Kyle Campbell said:
Isn't the mediocre service by the Trillium line exactly what Toronto is excited about by GO RER? Not wanting to get into the symantics debate, but the trillium line is pretty comparable to commuter rail, and by those standards it's a front runner by bringing 12 minute frequent rail service to a far flung suburb 20km from downtown. By metro/light rail/whatever standards it's back of the pack.
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No. Trillium Line is a tiny Diesel train.

We are expecting electric bilevel EMU's for RER.

GO already offers headways that are more frequent than the Trillium Line. The Lakeshore West line has trains every 6 minutes from Union at one point in rush hour.

Trillium would be a downgrade from even existing GO, let alone RER.
 
robmausser said:
GO already offers headways that are more frequent than the Trillium Line. The Lakeshore West line has trains every 6 minutes from Union at one point in rush hour.
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For a 12-minute or 18-minute period? :)

For most off-peak periods, Lakeshore West is still every thirty minutes. In late morning and early afternoon there's an odd 15-15-30 gap going on. Even reverse peak is mostly only every 30 minutes.

Lakeshore West has certainly improved, but a couple of 6 minute gaps (I think because one is express, and the other local) is not better overall than the Trillium line. Nor does it meet the promises that the Tory government made in the mid-1970s.

Maybe one day ...
 
robmausser said:
No. Trillium Line is a tiny Diesel train.

We are expecting electric bilevel EMU's for RER.

GO already offers headways that are more frequent than the Trillium Line. The Lakeshore West line has trains every 6 minutes from Union at one point in rush hour.

Trillium would be a downgrade from even existing GO, let alone RER.
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I wasn't comparing equipment, and the lakeshore line is the exception to the generally hourly GO service on other lines. I was saying if you looked at it in the context of regional services like Go, Exo, West Coast Express, etc it's not so bad.

Of course the train is tiny, Ottawa is smaller than York region, let alone the GTA. But train length is also a factor of frequency. You need to run 300m+ long trains on GO lines because generally they run hourly. If you increase the frequency you can shrink the train and carry a lot more people. That's why 70m long skytrains along the expo line in Vancouver move 4.8 times (289k) as many people as the Lakeshore west line (60k)
 
gweed123 said:
Does anyone know with the ATC being implemented on the Confederation Line what the minimum theoretical headway is? Probably somewhere around 2 minutes?
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End-to-end, the minimum theoretical headway is about 2 and a half to 3 minutes. The crossover design at Blair is the issue, as it's length and layout will preclude operation any faster than that. The crossovers at Tunney's Pasture are shorter and the paths don't have any overlap and so that end is capable of a shorter headway.

If there were more locations for train insertion, there's probably no reason why they couldn't run on 45 second headways through the middle part of the line.

Dan
 
smallspy said:
End-to-end, the minimum theoretical headway is about 2 and a half to 3 minutes. The crossover design at Blair is the issue, as it's length and layout will preclude operation any faster than that. The crossovers at Tunney's Pasture are shorter and the paths don't have any overlap and so that end is capable of a shorter headway.

If there were more locations for train insertion, there's probably no reason why they couldn't run on 45 second headways through the middle part of the line.

Dan
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Thanks! So I suppose with the eastern extension they will likely include a better crossover design so that tighter headways are possible? Do you know if there's a crossover at Hurdman? That seems like a logical short-turn location, given that's where the SE Transitway will be feeding in. I really wish that station would have been designed as a 3-track, 2 platform station (with the centre track being a pocket track to allow for short-turns).

With regards to headways, I'm not thinking so much for the Phase 2 configuration, but once Phases 3+ start rolling out and you get more and more branches off the line, the headways on the core section of the line will need to be pretty tight in order to maintain decent frequencies on each of those branches. Even now you're going to have half the frequencies on the Baseline and Moodie branches as you do on the mainline.

As a semi-aside, I wish for Phase 2 they would have included a different route colour and number for the Baseline branch. Having "Line 1" go to 2 different destinations in the west will be confusing I think. Personally, I think the Confederation Line should run from Moodie to Trim, with another line (my name preference is the Rideau Line) running from Baseline to Hurdman.
 
Reecemartin said:
You did not say late night service you said off peak service. (Facepalm) that's seriously different given that off peak is all day.
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... checks post ... I was consistently talking about the worst off-peak service, using words like "got down to" and "at worst it's currently".

My meaning was clear - I'm not sure why you are trying so hard to argue grammar issues about the point I made, that Richmond Skytrain service is at times less frequent than the Trillium line.

Reecemartin said:
The vast majority of the day the trunk which carries the vast majority of passengers from Bridgeport -> Waterfront runs at 3 minute frequency so the branches are obviously not going to run at the same frequency.
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I was referring to the branches of the Canada line into Richmond and the airport - as you well know. Yes, the one station there before the branches runs every 3 minutes at peak on weekdays. However, I'm not sure how that's the "vast majority of the day", as it runs less than that in early mornings, evenings, late at night, and all day on weekends. It's not even 3 minute at mid-day ... dropping closer to 4 minutes at times.

But yes, some of the day one of those 7 stations in Richmond and the airport, has more service. That doesn't help someone who has to stand for 20 minutes for a train at the airport.
 
My city councillor has no confidence that the Confederation Line will open even in May. There are not enough operational trains to begin service and we are waiting for 4 additional trains to be completed, because 2 of the current trains may be scrap and there are concerns that there may not be enough trains to meet peak demand. I will be going to a public meeting concerning Phase 2 this evening. I am sure there will be lots of questions.
 
lrt's friend said:
My city councillor has no confidence that the Confederation Line will open even in May. There are not enough operational trains to begin service and we are waiting for 4 additional trains to be completed, because 2 of the current trains may be scrap and there are concerns that there may not be enough trains to meet peak demand. I will be going to a public meeting concerning Phase 2 this evening. I am sure there will be lots of questions.
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And to think, when the consortium was announced one of my big "phew" moments was "at least since they didn't go with Bombardier we won't be stuck in a Toronto situation where we're waiting on the vehicles". Oops.
 
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