Ottawa’s O-Train: A Cost-Effective Project (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Ottawa’s O-Train: A Cost-Effective Project (2013)

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15 pointsluu17 comments

That's a good one. For those who don't know, the O-Train line was an old freight line converted into a light rail line. If you ever want a good laugh, take a look at where the original O-Train line terminates on either end. It stops juuuuust short of an EXISTING rail bridge to Gatineau (hundreds of thousands of residents and tons of government jobs) and on the other end juuuuust short of the international airport. I will never understand why, to this day, city council isn't talking about where the O-Train can already go.

By all means, they should extend light rail in the other direction, but come on guys, the rail is already there and we're not using it!

Actually, Stage 2 of the LRT project will extend the Trillium line down to the airport.

Crossing over to Gatineau is a very tricky issue though, because the bridge is in terrible condition and would require major renovation before it could support traffic again. There's some details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales_Bridge_(Canada...

Also, Quebec & Gatineau had a opportunity and picked the rapid bus set up over it. :(

The new line[0] has not been rolled out as well, its a daily discussion topic[1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Line

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/comments/dx576w/the_lrt_has_...

An interesting point is that despite the fact that the train line was already built and the rolling stock was acquired dirt cheap, the cost was still significantly higher than a bus.

Poor old buses, unloved by politicians, but usually a far more cost effective solution to public transport needs than the average multi-billion dollar tram or train project.

Short of dedicated lanes that are separated with bollards, a bus will be snarled in traffic at peak hours. Additionally, busses have much lower carrying capacity and higher operational costs compared to light rail or even street cars.

In England we do have dedicated bus lanes and famously very little room to add light rail and it works pretty well. Probably a good option for cities and buses can rerouted and powered by greener energy more easily than rail.

> buses can rerouted and powered by greener energy more easily than rail.

? Buses are definitely easy to reroute, but electric trains are much easier to "green". I'm slightly surprised we've not seen trolleybuses as a compromise, but I guess the wiring is too expensive.

The one thing that definitely doesn't work is guided buses on separate dedicated routes.

In England here. I wouldn't say the buses work pretty well - journeying on them tends to make me sick fairly consistently, unlike trains which do not.

I think it is due to the bumpy roads, terrible suspension and polluted air.

The difference is stark enough that I'm happy to go to work at the end of a train, underground, cycle and/or substantial walking (even in the rain), but I'm severely put off any job that requires a daily bus. After all, who wants to feel sick every day.

If there's money it's good.to plan bus corridors with future expansion for lrt if possible. Space, money, time always to balance.

The reason why we built Line 1 is that snow storm would tie up buses, particularly when it goes through the downtown core. I've been stuck in the backups before, where the articulated 60ft buses fails to go up the hill from Lebreton (now Pimisi) into the downtown, and there's a long chain of buses just trying to mush through downtown.

If only the whole Line 1 wasn't penny wise and pound foolish, and it would have been a much better replacement than buses.

Hey, that's from my city! :P

Yeah the O-Train was cheap, but it honestly showed. The stops are few and far between, and often in the middle of nowhere. I'm in this weird zone where I can walk for a solid 10 minutes right along the tracks and not encounter a station. Makes it useless for me.

Ottawa just rolled out its 2nd line a couple months ago, and it's been a bit of a disaster in terms of costs and technical issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_Line

Some major stops were at South Key's Mall, Carleton University and allowed boarding on the bus transit way before the LRT.

Isn't useless for the thousand of Carleton students who use it every day.

Definitely, not saying it's not useful, just that I can't make use of it. I'm in the centretown west area, and a Gladstone stop would go a long way in making transit less of a pain for me. That is on the way now, but is still a few years away.

It has significant problem when it come to increasing capacity. Because it's mostly single track, they can't increase the frequency that easily. That leave it to blasting and twining, which will probably wipe out any saving made by reusing that freight line. And extending the platform so that they could tack on more cars when necessary.

Line 2's ridership is pretty pitiful in comparison. Daily ridership is 16900 [1]. SkyTrain does 25000 passenger per hour per direction [2].

Outside of the door problems, we're already seeing capacity problems for Line 1 now. Platform gets full, and it is built for the current configuration, so you can't add more cars without major construction (read: service disruptions).

This is what happens when we cheap out on infrastructure. We end up paying twice, and getting less for the money.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillium_Line 2: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/translink-2017-kevin-desmond...

The more stops you have the longer each trip takes. Makes more sense to use train to move people between areas and busses within areas.

It hasn't been a happy time for Ottawa's LRT. They've been scrambling to buy up buses to take over during LRT shutdowns.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/transit-update-commiss...

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