Right hand, meet left hand
This is a bad take.
Even without getting into the technicalities, do you think if it was possible to just expand Bayview Station itself they'd even bother proposing
another 1km tunnel through the downtown core? Expanding the station sounds like it'd be a lot simpler not to mention cheaper as well.
The issue with Bayview isn't the station itself, and frankly even if this was studied years ago I'm pretty sure they would have come to the same conclusions. It was addressed in the STO's presentation meeting itself that the real issue is the capacity of the line between Bayview and the core. City staff emphasized needing to purchase 12 more trains to handle the increased passenger loads
just for that corridor, but don't forget that this also reduces the ultimate lifespan of the Confederation Line in the long term as well. On top of that, with Bayview being so far out from the core, it's ineffective for Gatineau residents headed for downtown Gatineau (which the LRT would bypass if crossing at Bayview), and ineffective for Gatineau residents headed for downtown Ottawa, and vice versa.
Everyone's acting like this is a huge revelation, which it is, but then drawing all of the wrong conclusions from it with a distinct skew against the City of Ottawa for "some reason". Whether it's assuming that the "brand new Bayview Station" is too small, or assuming that anyone had an actual plan and completed study when the city first bought the bridge and then acting like this is a betrayal of that purchase, it's a bit frustrating that no one's really paying attention to how we got here and why we're in the position that we are now. This is the first formal study into using the Prince of Wales bridge and it concluded it wasn't a good idea. That's that. If this was done years earlier, the Confederation Line would be no better at handling those increased passenger loads, and at the end of the day the city has a policy on buying abandoned rail infrastructure so the bridge likely would have been bought anyway
and it still has potential as a secondary rail link, or if nothing else as a pedestrian crossing.
Everyone's real fast to get on the "LRT bad" bandwagon these days, and I don't think there's any better example than the coverage and public reaction to this story to show just how uninformed the general public is on what's happening with these projects and also the role the media has had in that. I've found Jon Willing to be one of the better reporters covering these projects, but this analysis was just wrong.
