Ottawa Transit Developments

[Kyle Campbell]

I'm quite confused to be honest. I thought the contracts for Stage 2 LRT have already been awarded in February. If they've been awarded, that means they're obviously funded (otherwise, how do you hand out a contract without funds to pay for it?!)
So, what's new in today's announcement?

No, the winner was selected in Feb and approved by council, but the contract has not been signed. The council decision allows the city officials to go and finalize the contract. One of the things they needed was an official agreement from the province. However at this point the city is on hook for financial penalties if the contract doesn't go through.

 

[hw621]

Ford standing in front of LRT announcing money. Wouldn't have expected that from his Council days but here we are.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1109140903992668165

As long as it is not in Toronto, not blocking his luxurious SUV...lol...just kidding...

 

[steveintoronto]

^Serious questions abound...about a number of aspects raised.

In answer to questions from reporters, Ford said there was no doubt the province would honour the previous Liberal government’s pledge of $1.2 billion.

Sounds pretty damn conditional to me...and they've shirked that commitment in every other instance. I'll look for their 'caveat' or 'out' later when I have time.

--------------------------------------------------
Apart from that:

[...]
Both Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Gatineau Mayor Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin said they were surprised by the mention of an interprovincial bridge in the federal budget.

Watson said he has “no desire” to go down the road of another fight over where to put a crossing — a proposal to locate a Gatineau-connecting bridge over Kettle Island in east Ottawa was shelved almost six years ago after community uproar.

“I think the top-down approach failed a few years ago. We have to try another approach,” said Pedneaud-Jobin.

He disagreed with the budget’s assertion that there is a “demonstrated need for an additional National Capital Region crossing,” and said both Ottawa and Gatineau are instead focused on investment in their public transportation infrastructure, including interprovincial links between light rail transit systems in both cities.

“I think that should be the priority, not starting a process about a future bridge,” said Pedneaud-Jobin.

There might be immediate pressure to build another crossing, however.

The federal government says it will replace the aging Alexandra Bridge, potentially knocking out a key crossing for a significant period. However, the budget is silent on when the Alexandra Bridge replacement would happen, or if it would happen after a new crossing is built.

[...]

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/loca...evived-as-budget-renews-controversial-project

 

[innsertnamehere]

My guess is he was told "it's fully grade separated, will never get in the way of cars, and does not remove lanes from any roadway" and was like "great!"

Mind you that didn't work for Scarborough.. So..

 

[crs1026]

^Ford has now been in office long enough to have been tutored in the cost of subways versus the provincial revenues.

He also faced a choice between no photo op (taking no credit) and photo op (taking much credit). And the first phase is already built (if not quite opened) on somebody else's nickel.

- Paul

 

[Allandale25]

My guess is he was told "it's fully grade separated, will never get in the way of cars, and does not remove lanes from any roadway" and was like "great!"

Mind you that didn't work for Scarborough.. So..

That's a good contextual point. So for Phase 2/Stage 2, there is zero on street median running?

 

[innsertnamehere]

No.

Ottawa's LRT Is really more of a light metro given the planned frequencies and capacity - much like the planned Scarborough LRT was. It's really Canada's 4th metro network.

 

[steveintoronto]

I am seeing caveats and provisos skirting through various new reports. There's something really slippery about all of this...show me a signed binding agreement with all the conditions spelled out.

The province's contribution had originally been promised by the Liberal government, but was under review by the Progressive Conservatives.

CBC News Ottawa
Province officially pledges $1.2 billion for Stage 2 LRT
WATCH

00:00 00:34

In an announcement on March 22, Premier Doug Ford pledged $1.2 billion for the construction of Stage 2 of Ottawa's LRT system. 0:34
Cash in hand
While city officials had been assured the provincial money was coming, they need the cash in hand before signing the multi-billion-dollar contracts for Stage 2 LRT.

[...]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-lrt-province-premier-funding-1.5065883

I'll detail more later with more explicit reference. Development rights is one of the trade-offs I've seen reference to...which fits with their greater mantra.

Gift Horse? More like a Charlie Horse once the details are examined.

 

[robmausser]

"SNC-Lavalin has built rail systems all over the world, including the award-winning Canada Line in Vancouver."

I'm not sure if the vastly underbuilt Canada line is something SNC Lavalin should tout. Maybe Calgary's West LRT expansion would be better to use.

I used to think its underbuilt, but since they can run trains up to every 30 seconds with the automatic train control, I no longer think this way.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

I used to think its underbuilt, but since they can run trains up to every 30 seconds with the automatic train control, I no longer think this way.

At every 30 seconds and the mini C car, the max capacity is 15k pphd, which is awfully low for a fully grade seperated system using heavy rail vehicles

 

[robmausser]

At every 30 seconds and the mini C car, the max capacity is 15k pphd, which is awfully low for a fully grade seperated system using heavy rail vehicles

I was under the impression it was 32k at 30 seconds.

Its 8k at every 2 minutes.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

I'm basing it on this 2017 article where translink itself claimed 15k and they can't hit 8k until 2020

Canada Line is definitely under-built, says TransLink CEO | Urbanized

"The lesson learnt with the Canada Line is you have to think of these infrastructure assets as 50 to 100 year assets. What looks overbuilt today will be under-built tomorrow."

dailyhive.com

Tying it all back to Ottawa, the real equivalent is the Trillum line, which also will be underbuilt, though at least it's more feasible to expand at some point in the future even though it will be extremely disruptive.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

Back to terms of capacity, the confederation line itself is likely to be over capacity on day 1. It has an initial capacity of 10k pphd, which is actually equal to the initial peak demand. Of course that assumes you can fit 600 people into a two car Citadis train with a 4 minute frequency, which I know @nfitz doubts is realistic. So, the phase 2 trains (of which the first 4 are already under construction under a special contract) need to come online as quickly as possible.

 

[nfitz]

If initial capacity if 10k passengers per direction, and trains only run every 4 minutes, that would be 667 passengers per train.

Another way of looking at capacity is comparing to the Toronto subway. The train length is about the same (but about 18% narrower) than a Toronto Sheppard Line (4) train. The peak capacity (not crush, but peak) of that train is listed as 670 with the T1 equipment and 740 with the current TR equipment. If you scale each by 18%, it's 566 or 626 capacity.

Is the Alstom seating more like the Montreal metro cars, or the really limited TTC flexity cars? I"d assume the latter, so let's go with the lower 566, though that's probably pretty generous, given how messed up the Flexity seating is.

Could probably crush 667 in there to be honest ... though it will increase dwell times. But not a problem if only every 4 minutes (

Not surprising though that they are building more cars already ... I wonder if they've already realised they had a problem. I can't remember, what was the capacity when I approached it comparing it to Flexity vehicles instead of T1/TR vehicles?

Here's a question ... if you are going to something that's completely grade-separated, with it's own right-of-way like in Ottawa, why are they using low-floor LRT in the first place? Wouldn't it be cheaper and simper to go with high-floor (and maybe third rail). You'd get more capacity, without all the gerrymandering around the wheels and equipment.

 

[Kyle Campbell]

If initial capacity if 10k passengers per direction, and trains only run every 4 minutes, that would be 667 passengers per train.

Another way of looking at capacity is comparing to the Toronto subway. The train length is about the same (but about 18% narrower) than a Toronto Sheppard Line (4) train. The peak capacity (not crush, but peak) of that train is listed as 670 with the T1 equipment and 740 with the current TR equipment. If you scale each by 18%, it's 566 or 626 capacity.

Is the Alstom seating more like the Montreal metro cars, or the really limited TTC flexity cars? I"d assume the latter, so let's go with the lower 566, though that's probably pretty generous, given how messed up the Flexity seating is.

Could probably crush 667 in there to be honest ... though it will increase dwell times. But not a problem if only every 4 minutes (

Not surprising though that they are building more cars already ... I wonder if they've already realised they had a problem. I can't remember, what was the capacity when I approached it comparing it to Flexity vehicles instead of T1/TR vehicles?

Here's a question ... if you are going to something that's completely grade-separated, with it's own right-of-way like in Ottawa, why are they using low-floor LRT in the first place? Wouldn't it be cheaper and simper to go with high-floor (and maybe third rail). You'd get more capacity, without all the gerrymandering around the wheels and equipment.

Because when they bought the first set of vehicles 6 years ago, they wanted the flexibility of running it at grade outside of the core, very much intending it to be like the Crosstown. That idea is now passe, but it's too late now, we're stuck with low floor, compensating by allowing the trains to scale up to 120m by sticking in one additional module per vehicle. The original plan actually had allowances for 150m 3-car long trains.