I enjoyed Adam Bentley’s transit map vision for Ottawa of the future, but nevertheless found it frustrating that the mindset in my home town can’t think about making it happen now. I don’t believe the Bentley vision is pie in the sky for two seconds. If we had gone ahead with the North/South project we would be well on our way to exactly this kind of region wide comprehensive service instead of stuck with what we have, which is the most expensive commuter service to operate in the country (combination of distances and deadheading), grafted on to an old city bus service that has less service for many parts of the city than it did 40 years ago.
If the north/south rail service from the University of Ottawa to Barrhaven had been completed in 2009, we would also have built the airport connection because it would have been so close and made so much sense. The Carling Ave connection west and St. Joseph East would be under construction and approaching completion. Plus there would have been enormous pressure from the public to connect Gatineau via the existing rail bridge to Ottawa. There you have the heart of the Bentley vision. A spinal light rail service to all parts of the region and suddenly a real integrated train-bus service is possible – and Ottawa’s transit system would begin to grow like topsy.
Transit service is not rocket science. Look at any successful transit city, Ankara is much smaller than Istanbul and has no need of ferries but has much the same mix of of heavy and light train services with connecting bus hubs. Istanbul’s mix is of course bigger and includes an underground metro service to the airport, a spinal tram network and under construction is the Marmari line which will cross the Bosphorus underground and ride on the surface elsewhere for over a hundred kilometers.
Istanbul and Ankara also have private partnerships that I’ve not seen elsewhere. The dolmuses are small, yellow vans that run on regular routes, have stops and fixed prices, all regulated by the city but are owned and operated privately. They are affordable and widely used. Then there’s the blue Metro buses a step up in size from the dolmuses and they run longer distances on the main roads. They are also publicly regulated but privately operated, and finally lots and lots of yellow cab taxis.
In Istanbul, there are, of course, the ferries which leave every few minutes from the the centre of the city to various terminals up and down the Bosphorus. The effectiveness of Istanbul’s transit services can be gauged by this: Last week, when Patty and I had lunch with the former Turkish Ambassador to Ottawa, we met at Taksim square, crossed the Bosphorus on a dolmus to the Asian side and returned via a ferry. All done without ever waiting. All done easily. The ambassador and his charming wife are now happily retired in Istanbul but it had not occurred to them to buy a car.
10 comments
Thanks for another interesting post, Clive, now we travel with you !
I think you’ve hit the issues spot on. I too gauge good public transportation when i do not want a car. Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona, … and apparently Ankara ! Very little waiting, a bit of healthy walking, and no planning – just go. And of course hop into a train right at the airport.
Contrast that to Ottawa where even a perfectly planned transit is 2x to 3x the time to bike, drive (downtown to west end work is 1.5 hr at best, instead of 25 min drive or under 60 min bike), or sometimes as fast to walk as to take the public transpo (into town).
And the current city plans for a small downtown tunnel are both very costly and do not provide the basic “spinal light rail service to all parts of the region” but attempt to resolve a non-existing downtown core transit issue, and very poorly at that.
“a non-existing downtown core transit issue,”
I would encourage you to stand on Mackenzie-King bridge looking west and watch the bus jams from as early as 3:00pm to after 5:00 every evening and reconsider this comment. Reasonable people can disagree about the solutions, but there is no denying that there are clearly visible issues with transit in the downtown core.
Michael – I agree, downtown bus jams are a major major problem. But if you take the time to look, you’ll notice that a significant percentage of the buses creating that jam are suburban express buses carrying far fewer passengers through downtown than the 90-series routes (most of which are standing room only during peak periods) yet taking up almost as road space. Eliminate most or all of those express buses (a.k.a. glorified home-to-office-to-home taxis to Kanata, Orléans & Barrhaven) in favour of a proper hub & spoke network ASAP and you greatly reduce the problem for a fraction of the cost of a tunnel.
Yes, too many buses in the downtown is a problem, but you don’t cure it by spending billions to transfer the congestion underground which will be no faster than the present system and offer no new rider capacity. This is like a cat chasing its tail. The cure is to treat the Ottawa transit system like a real transit ‘system’ and increase the entire capacity, i.e. new east-west and north/south surface rail lines such that people have more than one choice to move around the city i.e. transitway or car. This is what cities with real transit ‘systems’ do. They give riders choices and have transit options. They don’t spend billions constantly tinkering with one service line.
Thanks all for the comments. It would seem we all agree in the sense of:
– there is a severe problem ( i will go observe it closer as y’all suggest, but i defintely have seen, and have heard how bad it is)
– filling up busses/trains (spine/spoke lines) and designing the system better might solve much of the problem (maybe even put more priority for busses on roads etc)
– smart planning and design would avoid putting in the few very expensive tunnels that are very inflexible and do not solve much
– No one said a tunnel is the only answer, nor the best answer, and interestingly very few people on any blog seem fond of the tunnel.
I like Clive’s summary: fix it as an entire network / system. Until you do it’s like putting your fingers in leaks in a leaky dam – the problem just shifts around or gets bigger.
Clive is so right. Riders have to be given another option to the present system, That should consist of an east-west LRT from Kanata to Orleans paralleling the 417 mostly with a jaunt down Carling from Nortel to Little Italy.
The present O-train should be extented to the airport and possibly Leitrim to the south and northward over the Prince of Wales bridge to Gatineau.
A hole in the ground to nowhere will not provide more service nor will it carry more passengers than the present Transitway. As for downtown: just cut and cover Albert and Slater to separate buses from other vehicles.
A tunnel-to-nowhere will be fantastic for scuba diving folks !!
I agree with your posed plan, seems simple and effective. Except that it should go across the river to gatineau not just to the bridge. Of coruse this needs as Clive said to be done holistically as an Ottawa design and not a series of disjoint point designs.
So the big question is how do we get this council to see the obvious realities, both financial and to build something useful ? right now they’re headed on the tunnel-to-nowhere.
What the,downtown tunnel does is it breaks up the bus congestion downtown into there points. In Toronto, most subway stations have a corresponding bus depot.
In Ottawa, the buses from Kanata will feed into the LRT at Tunneys, while the orleans and barrhaven buses feed into Blair and Greensboro respectively.
This breaks up the downtown congestion on the transit way into there points, and by putting underground, bottle necks aren’t created due to the stop lights.
Some of the issues that folks have brought up is assuming that lrt ends with, construction of current Line. The reality is, transit maps around the world are living maps. The current line I’d a basis in which to,expand upon.
Since this article was written, the Otrain expansion to lietrim and riverside south has been approved. My only concern is when they will expand to Gatineau or to the airport?
LRT capacity is significantly higher than buses, if it runs every 5 min like it should, it should more than serve current population. Also, lets consider reliability. Lets face it, buses scheduling is not,reliable rail is generally more reliable. This,is true on the Montreal metro and is,true of the otrain.
*there means three, apologies for poor framer as my smartphones keyboard is new and doesn’t recognize my tendencies.
Dear Clive,
Great blog. Thank you for sharing your observations with us. Having lived in Ankara and Istanbul (as well as Paris, Stuttgart and of course Ottawa), I enjoyed your description of the Turkish model. For 11 years I commuted to school and back using the dolmush and I like to think of it as a taxi for the poor. It served me well.