Monthly Archives: April 2011

Chicken pedestrians

The City will reconstruct Somerset Street West between Booth and Preston later this year. As part of the streetscaping, a number of decorative granite pavers will be inserted into the concrete paver sidewalk.

While the final designs haven’t yet been selected, the likely theme will be animals of the Asian zodiacs. In addition to the Chinese zodiac animals, the Vietnamese zodiac has some different characters, so there will be more than twelve designs. Each will be carved into a granite block that is then set flush in the sidewalk. These will be sure to delight children and amuse adults who watch where they are going.

I am interested to see how they manage to portray the Rat in an attractive way.

Storm damage

There are so few large trees left in the City, and the City is determined not to (re)plant large-maturity trees, instead preferring small-size trees. Even in areas with no overhead wiring, or underground utilities, where there is plenty of room for a large tree, new tree stock is generally what I have heard some refer to as “toy trees” or furniture-size trees. As for fruit and nut trees … fergetaboutit.

Yesterday I saw this large limb knocked off the tree at the corner of Albert and Commissioner (Bronson) Streets:

Primrose Park cleanup

Local residents have registered a Spring Cleaning project for Saturday, April 30 as part of the city’s “Cleaning the Capital” campaign.

Our neighbours are invited to bring their work gloves and join us in the park at the corner of Rochester and Primrose Streets on Saturday, April 30 anytime from 9 AM to 3 PM.

We will have cleanup kits, several rakes, and cold drinks on hand. Bring your kids: we’ll clean up the play area first!

Rain date is Sunday May 1 but we are sure to have a beautiful sunny day on April 30.

Electric bus

I was doing some browsing on the internet to look at bus and transit technologies. This is dangerous for me, as with little knowledge I can be easily mislead. But I did see a few things that interested me, and so I am sharing them here.

Shanghai fast charge electric bus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3rg-SsPJuU.  The bus charges at bus stops, when picking up passengers. A pantograph-like device rises from the roof to connect to charged overhead rods. The bus needs ten minutes to fully charge its batteries, which can be spread over several stops. In theory, the bus could run all day without leaving service, as long as it got ten minutes of dwell time at stops before it’s batteries ran down. Note the bus driver in the clip did not stop for the last, running passenger.

Similar, is the Eco ride in California: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkSXmrEUPGc&feature=related but the pantograph comes DOWN from the stop, meaning the roof of the bus is smooth, with just two recharging rails slightly raised from the roof. North American innovation is not dead.

At the city of Ottawa’s demo day a year or two ago, several LRT equipment manufacturers demonstrated their wares. One vendor had a LRT setup that could run powered by overhead wires in some zones, then go for several miles (eg, through the downtown, or along the western parkway) without wires but using its batteries. Then it would charge again at the station. This also meant the system could be expanded outwards first by laying track and only later installing expensive overhead wires. It would make extending the LRT service from Lincoln Fields to Baseline/College Station feasible sooner, or make it economic to jump the greenbelt to Orleans, Barrhaven, or Kanata. They have systems up and running elsewhere. Obvious drawback is that the vehicle has to carry around the weight of the batteries all day, even when on wire-power.

In Seoul, Korea, there is an operating electric bus service on a mountainous, park-like route. The hills must be challenging to the electric bus, which seems to have its batteries mounted on the roof (which makes sense since the electric motors are usually near the wheels and there is no drive-train from an “engine compartment”). This is a pretty conventional application of Li batteries to a bus, and charging is a time waster, according the driver dressed in a typical OC Transpo uniform of suit, tie, and white gloves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWrhQifMuSc&NR=1&feature=fvwp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVteo4jk5Ds&feature=related shows Shanghai expo buses, wherein the driver didn’t bother to stop close to the curb. Surprisingly noisy bus. And here are some interior shots, equally noisy; and the bus manages to stop not at the platform location but for pax between the security fence and road surface. It shows Ottawa pax are not the unruly bunch we sometimes think we are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq3IPnoXlO8&NR=1 These Shanghai clips clearly show that world fairs still produce lots of weird-shaped buildings.

Here are some more interior shots of the Sunwin bus, a joint venture of China and Volvo. I especially like the bus drivers wearing white gloves (symbolize clean service) but the driver also is sitting on a plastic wrapped driver’s seat, so as to not get it dirty. Mind, I’m so old I remember when OC drivers used to have broom (non-electric powered cleaning device) on each bus and they would activate the device to sweep the bus out at the end of each route, so the bus wasn’t six feet deep in newspapers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52-HwZIOuaM&NR=1. Old-fashioned drivers also wore peaked hats (not baseball hats) which served to establish more authority. I wonder if the casual driver attire of today contributes to the demeanor of pax?

This isn’t a comprehensive look at bus and transit technologies, and I am not passing an opinion on whether they are (yet) practicable here or elsewhere. I seem to remember Expo 67 in Montreal had a number of nifty people mover systems that did not survive the fair. But, for a an hour on a rainy day, viewing new technologies was edutaining.

For those whom the world is always black or white, and never shades of Gray, these new technologies will make a great club to assail our current LRT scheme.

Well planted trees

Here’s another bit of Ottawa sidewalk I like. It’s along Place Bell Canada. Notice how well the curbs protect the trees against snowplows, parked objects, construction vehicles and equipment, etc. The tree trunks are thick, the leaf canopy is generous. The trees appear to be happy and growing. What a difference from so many Ottawa trees so obviously struggling hopelessly along the streets.

Hey, it’s a sidewalk worth walking on.

Bus shelters vs a station for Bayview

 The picture below shows the current Bayview Station. It is simply a bus shelter on a hill in the middle of a field. It’s been that way since 2001, and while not ideal, it does function.

The City is currently designing its transit stations for the new LRT network. For the first few years of the Downtown Ottawa Transit Tunnel (DOTT) process, they had very elaborate station design for Bayview. It was a long elevated structure with east-west trains on top, and underneath was a second set of platforms for the successor to the north-south LRT that would someday replace the O-Train. Until that replacement occurred, the O-Train could continue to stop at its own station under Albert Street, albeit one accessed with escalators and elevators and weather-enclosed platforms.

DOTT version of the station, c2009

Bayview station proposed c2009

There were a number of very obvious problems with this design. First, it was very elaborate and expensive, I could not imagine the City actually building it as proposed. Especially since it is designed in considerable part to service a neighborhood that is not yet built. This ain’t the Glebe. While it is correct to design for the future, and for future development to be constructed taking full advantage of the proximity of the station, it also means building something for future voters, and council is much more concerned with delivering goodies to the current voters.

 

So I wasn’t surprised back in January when I caught a quick glimpse of a revised station proposal for Bayview. The new station was much more modest, but still with an enclosed platform and elevator access from the O-train level. It would essentially lay the LRT tracks on the current transitway alignment, reusing the existing bridge over the O-Train track, and build the station on the ground.   The City wouldn’t let me have a copy of the proposed station, but when I saw Peter Raaymaker’s photo of Longfields Station at http://www.transitottawa.ca/, I thought it looked awfully familiar. It makes sense that the LRT station team would adapt from the latest transitway station designs.

Other aspects of the proposed station for Bayview were awful. They proposed a large “kiss-and-ride” drop off zone and a taxi stand. Such a facility makes sense in the ‘burbs, but not in a dense downtown neighborhood.  The current drop-off layby built on Albert (with space for two cars) is more than enough. Furthermore, the proposed location for the kiss and ride is also the location the Carling-Bayview CDP plan shows as an intense Transit-Oriented-Development (TOD) building. Which of these two land uses is better for transit and a livable city?

 While I know the Bayview CDP planners have been consulted by the Bayview station designers, their plans strike me as seriously at odds. Some of this relates to the station designers clearly being unfamiliar with the area, designing it from paper maps and plans rather than any on-site data. For example, they are designing the station without any traffic count of how many people walk in to the station now. Nor did they have estimates of how many will walk there when the new buildings are built and occupied. They don’t propose any improvement to the narrow sidewalks where Albert goes over the O-Train cut. Nor are they doing anything to connect the Albert Street multipurpose path (bike path) on the north side of Albert to the Scott Street path, frustrating the BikeWest proposal for a downtown-to-Westboro off-road bike track.

Instead, they view it primarily as a transfer station. My suggestions that there be a genuine public consultation with the adjacent neighborhoods and the people that actually use the station has thus far been ignored. Maybe, just maybe, the “public consultation” phase, whenever it comes, will be more than a “there it is, it’s too late to change it” charade. Otherwise, we run the risk of getting a multi-million dollar station that underachieves.

 The Bayview CDP is not without its problems. It proposes a lot of intense urban building around the station. This would include two office towers on the south side of Albert (the area is now a hole, owned by Phoenix) in the 25+ storey range, plus the developments proposed for the City Centre site. Alas, the tallest buildings are closest to the station, which makes some sense, but also ensures that only the front row buildings get the fabulous river views. Ironically, the sketchups of all the tall buildings are like a bagel: there’s nothing in the middle. The most accessible, most transit-friendly area, where density should be highest, is proposed as a …. one storey transit station. The adjacent developers get building rights, the city gets nothing but an expense.

At the least, the station needs to be designed so that a building can be later built over it, and the city can recover some of its transit costs through selling the air rights.

 One concern I have right now is that the proposed Bayview station will be just large enough, just fancy enough, just expensive enough,  just good enough for the next half century. And thus the eventual replacement of the low rise station with a real TOD will be put off.

For that reason, I think we might be better off simply replacing the current bus-shelters-in-a-field station with more bus shelters in a field. At least that will cause every planner and developer to lick their lips and salivate over the opportunity to design the Bayview residential area, or the new Science museum, or the next condo or office development, with an integrated station befitting the neighborhood.

Sometimes, temporary is good.

City transit planners are convinced that this substandard sidewalk on Albert Street will be an attractive pedestrian access to their new Bayview Station

 For keeners, here is a link to a Chinese TV show. At about minute 2 there is an extended scene taking place on a LRT. I like this clip because it is not a wow-golly-gee promo clip, it purports to be a real life TV episode. It must still look really futuristic and glamorous to rural and small town Chinese. Or to Ottawans. http://tv.sohu.com/20100621/n272957944.shtml Note it may take a minute or more to download, but it is fun to watch. Note also how basic the transit station is.