News   Nov 04, 2024
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Ottawa Transit Developments

Uh oh, you used the "m" word. To head off debate, we should use "fully grade seperated rail based transportation system within an urban environment" ,or fgsrbtswue for short, just rolls of the tongue :)

APTA usually follows whatever the agency considers the line to be internally. They really only care that the ridership gets counted once.

So, basically it's up to Ottawa and I expect Ottawa will file it as a Metro, especially after phase 2; therefore it's a metro (until Ottawa says otherwise).
 
I'm most curious to see what francophones call it. I've heard a few call it "metro". Some call it train. I can see ex-Torontonians calling it "the subway".
 
I was in the Rideau Centre today, and because all confed line stations use glass elevator doors including in the mall I could peer down the elevator shaft. It's certainly a looooong way down to the concourse some 20+meters below.

This is what the elevators look like. You can walk right up to them, the call button just isn't enabled.

b2ap3_large_IMG_0483.jpg
 
Look around the world people, the days of heavy rail subway trains is over. Its antiquated and unnecessarily heavy tech, and its time we stop our lust of it here in Toronto. Unless an extension of existing lines, almost every city in the world is building with High Floor or Low Floor Light Rail, or skipping heavy rail subway tech all the way to EMU traditional train tech aka regional rail.
Toronto's subway cars are lighter, less expensive and carry more people than a Flexity Freedom, so that point is moot. Same can be said about every other 'heavy rail' subway car out there. Toronto continues to have such large rolling stock because it demands it. The Same goes for Montreal and NYC. Building this line as a subway would not have been difficult to accomplish nor would it have significantly increased costs. The increased costs would have come from high-floor platforms and longer platforms (larger stations). Heavy rail has the capacity for the future, Light Rail generally does not. Ottawa has expanded their transit system conservatively over the past 30 years and they keep having to deal with the politics that come with any sort of relief. While the Confederation line will likely never need to require a full rebuild or relief line to increase capacity, I'm still surprised they chose to not just build the line as a full Heavy Rail EMU line or a Metro.

And new heavy rail subway/metro systems open up almost every year, 9 have opened up this year alone. Just because they aren't being built in Western countries doesn't mean they aren't being built at all. Cities that require heavy rail lines tend to already have systems in place, and expansion occurs all the time. Even in NA, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, DC, NYC, The Bay Area, Mexico City and more have seen expansions in the past 15 years and many more (including LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, and many of the aforementioned cities) are planning or building new lines and extensions. Heavy rail is not dead, we are just seeing a renaissance of lighter rail systems throughout the world, but especially in North America. Part of it is due to costs and concerns that capacity goals will be met, but part of it is also due to the fact that there is little room to build additional subway lines in certain cities.
 
Toronto's subway cars are lighter, less expensive and carry more people than a Flexity Freedom, so that point is moot. Same can be said about every other 'heavy rail' subway car out there. Toronto continues to have such large rolling stock because it demands it. The Same goes for Montreal and NYC. Building this line as a subway would not have been difficult to accomplish nor would it have significantly increased costs. The increased costs would have come from high-floor platforms and longer platforms (larger stations). Heavy rail has the capacity for the future, Light Rail generally does not. Ottawa has expanded their transit system conservatively over the past 30 years and they keep having to deal with the politics that come with any sort of relief. While the Confederation line will likely never need to require a full rebuild or relief line to increase capacity, I'm still surprised they chose to not just build the line as a full Heavy Rail EMU line or a Metro.

And new heavy rail subway/metro systems open up almost every year, 9 have opened up this year alone. Just because they aren't being built in Western countries doesn't mean they aren't being built at all. Cities that require heavy rail lines tend to already have systems in place, and expansion occurs all the time. Even in NA, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, DC, NYC, The Bay Area, Mexico City and more have seen expansions in the past 15 years and many more (including LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, and many of the aforementioned cities) are planning or building new lines and extensions. Heavy rail is not dead, we are just seeing a renaissance of lighter rail systems throughout the world, but especially in North America. Part of it is due to costs and concerns that capacity goals will be met, but part of it is also due to the fact that there is little room to build additional subway lines in certain cities.

For cities comparable to Ottawa, it's very rare to pick full size trains, they almost always choose some sort of "medium" sized thing, like the Mark IIIs, or the VALs in france, or the Anselo Breda automated trains used in Copenhagen, Milan and Honululu.

Politicians always seem to think it's the more "innovative" way to go rather then just taking existing proven rolling stock and shortening the train accordingly, although I suppose the Canada Line is an example where they picked heavy rail but went overboard with too short trains.
 
Politicians always seem to think it's the more "innovative" way to go rather then just taking existing proven rolling stock and shortening the train accordingly, although I suppose the Canada Line is an example where they picked heavy rail but went overboard with too short trains.

Politicians didn't pick anything for the Canada line. They tendered for capacity and the vendor with the lowest priced bid selected the train (and a whole host of other things).
 
While the Confederation line will likely never need to require a full rebuild or relief line to increase capacity, I'm still surprised they chose to not just build the line as a full Heavy Rail EMU line or a Metro.
But we have the flexibility to run parts of the line at-grade, or as streetcars! --an idea that was promptly thrown in the trash

Though, why the Confederation Line needs to elevated all the way through Kanata to Stittsville, I don't know.
 
But we have the flexibility to run parts of the line at-grade, or as streetcars! --an idea that was promptly thrown in the trash

Though, why the Confederation Line needs to elevated all the way through Kanata to Stittsville, I don't know.
I really think they should root around and take that idea out of the trash. Why are we building elevated stations among a bunch of low density single homes, with all the according expenses like fare gates and redundant elevators. It should be at grade out there, still in it's own ROW with level crossings. It would be just as fast, but way cheaper.
 
I really think they should root around and take that idea out of the trash. Why are we building elevated stations among a bunch of low density single homes, with all the according expenses like fare gates and redundant elevators. It should be at grade out there, still in it's own ROW with level crossings. It would be just as fast, but way cheaper.

As long as there are crossing gates. if not, I don't think there's any point now at this stage in the game.
 
So the new Line 2 trains are now getting a new paint scheme to match the Confed Line, instead of the current Deutschbahn scheme we borrowed with the original Talents

I really don't get what's up with Ottawa. Couldn't they stick with one type of trains? They gone from BBD to Alstom to Stadler. Although the news has been putting it as Ottawa is perfect while the private industry can't keep up, the City of Ottawa might have some mismanagement that haven't been revealed yet. Ottawa with even less experience than ML would likely have very little expertises and be changing their minds like ML did. I await trial when these two fight over the $59 million Ottawa is withholding from the Rideau Transit Group.
 
I really don't get what's up with Ottawa. Couldn't they stick with one type of trains? They gone from BBD to Alstom to Stadler. Although the news has been putting it as Ottawa is perfect while the private industry can't keep up, the City of Ottawa might have some mismanagement that haven't been revealed yet. Ottawa with even less experience than ML would likely have very little expertises and be changing their minds like ML did. I await trial when these two fight over the $59 million Ottawa is withholding from the Rideau Transit Group.

It's exactly because Ottawa has little experience that the trains keep changing. The original Talents weren't so much a choice as it just happened DeustchBahn had some new ones it didn't need. The second batch of Alstom trains also just happened to be available by adding onto a DB order. This batch is the first one that was actually chosen as part of a P3 process. Any additional trains added to the line will also likely be Staedler, unless it comes time to replace them.

Because Ottawa goes with Design Finance Build Maintain models for these projects, it doesn't matter that the model keeps changing, as OC Transpo doesn't have any in house staff that actually maintains the trains unlike older players like Montreal and Toronto.

Metrolinx seems like it will also go mostly the P3 route, so it to will also likely end up with a new kind of train for each project.
 

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