Category Archives: OLRT

Side effects of the LRT construction

Assuming that the LRT project about to announced on Wednesday at City Hall won’t be saying “the bids were too high, and as your fiscally prudent mayor, I am therefore cancelling it” …I think we can assume it will be going ahead.

To construct it, the City is applying to close part of Old Wellington Street. Finding Wellington is rather like searching for a moving target when it crosses the Flats. Recall that the current Wellington runs down from Parliament, past the Archives building, intersects with Portage Bridge, and swings through the Flats to cross Booth and Vimy and then terminates a few meters west of the aqueduct when it gets renamed the Sir JAMacdonald Commuter Expressway Parkway.

One of the few old segments left still bearing the Wellington name runs from   Commissioner Street to a different intersection with Booth Street. I dunno if the one way westbound ramp from Wellington down the slope to Old Wellington  along the west side of the Garden of the Provinces & Territories is actually named Wellington. I sure know there are no street signs at the Booth intersection of Old Wellington, to avoid confusing Gatineau-bound motorists who probably couldn’t cope with a Wellington deja vu.

The City’s notice of planned closure was quick and scanty, so I wrote off to the City asking a few questions. Here are the questions and answers:

1.       Is this a permanent road closure, or for the duration of the construction?

Answer:  The closure will be permanent as this section of (old) Wellington Street will be required to accommodate the LRT’s tracks and guideway.

 

2.       If permanent, how does this tie into the city’s approved Escarpment Plan which relies on this street for local access to developments on city-owned lands (currently the surface parking lots along Albert)?

Answer:  Our understanding is that the Escarpment Area District Plan will be updated to accommodate the LRT’s alignment.  Although it was known that the LRT would run through the area when the Plan was developed, the actual alignment had not been finalized at that point.  It is anticipated that local access roads will be created as part of the relevant development plans for the area, as and when they are submitted.

 3.       if permanent, are there financial consquences for reinstating the road later, during development of the adjacent lands?It is false economy to close and not replace the street during LRT construction, to the benefit of the LRT budget, but to the detriment of the later land development budget which must restate the street

Answer:  As noted above, it is anticipated that access roads would be part of any comprehensive redevelopment proposals for the area.  Design would be concurrent with any development application.  As such, the cost would be borne by the developer.

 4.       the street is now used for parking tour buses whilst passengers are circulating in the downtown, or in hotels. What provision is being made for them, and is there community consultation planned beforehand?

Answer:  The decision to place the LRT’s alignment in this location was made in 2011, as part of the decision to utilize Queen Street for the LRT’s alignment.  A report on this matter was put before Council whereby public deputations were permitted.  Vehicles may park on City roads in accordance with local parking by-laws, as and where space is available.  There are no plans to directly accommodate any displaced tour busses that may park on this section of Wellington Street on any City-owned property or road.

 5.       will the use of the Old Wellington road for LRT stageing also include closing the parking lots, which will also preclude using them for bus parking?

Answer:  As noted, the section of Wellington Street is required for the LRT’s alignment.  The City-owned parking lots to the south are required for construction staging relating to the digging of the LRT’s tunnel which is to run under downtown.

 6.       will this include closing Commissioner street? Note that LRT construction parallels the river parklands, and ALL of the pedestrian and cyclist crossings are being impacted – Bayview, Preston Extension, Booth, Commissioner. Simply instructing cyclists to use constricted road detours through the construction sites will be insufficient. Some thought needs to be given to measures to permit continued easy access to the river front, and access to the downtown for commuter cyclists.

Answer:  Commissioner Street will not be closed as part of this process, or by the operation of the LRT.  The tunnel will run underneath Commissioner Street, so that the north-south access can be maintained.  There are extensive provisions being made to ensure that pedestrian and cycling connectivity and access are maintained through the LRT’s construction period.

 7.       Old Wellington is used by dog walkers, pedestrians, commuters  — closing off Old Wellington and adjacent areas will displace these people and functions to other spaces. Some thought needs to be given to the larger picture.

Answer:  The LRT’s constructor is required to maintain and leave open all routes currently used by pedestrians and cyclists that could be affected by the LRT’s construction.  Where temporary route or crossing closures are required, an safe alternative route will have to be provided and appropriate signage put in place.  Notwithstanding this, some disruption is inevitable as part of the LRT’s construction.  In the longer term, planning for the LeBreton Flats area will continue to be guided by the City’s Official Plan and the Escarpment Area District Plan.

And thus ends the guts of the letter.

Several notes: we still have to find a new place for the tour busses. The City is the likely developer of the city-owned parking lots, for affordable housing, and the restatement of the roads is thus a cost transfer from the OLRT project to the affordable housing provider. And lastly, I like the sentence  The LRT’s constructor is required to maintain and leave open all routes currently used by pedestrians and cyclists that could be affected by the LRT’s construction. Fortunately, the Preston street extension is open today , so …

 

Multi modal transfer station design

Ottawa will soon be getting a dozen or so LRT stations. We don’t know what the “final” design will be.  The PAC for those stations hasn’t met for months. I do hope it gets one last kick at the penultimate designs of the winning contractor. PACs can and do offer good advice, very practical, from the user perspective.

Until then, here’s a look at the Hyannis MA multi modal transfer station. Located in the downtown (such as there is in low density America) on former rail yards, it has a passenger rail terminus, the inter city bus station for buses to and from Boston, the tour bus facility, the city bus, and the local transit that runs from town to village up the coast of Cape Cod. There is lots of park and ride lot, and taxi pickup zones. It is a short and convenient walk to the ferry to Nantucket and elsewhere.

there exterior landscaping was lush and well done, but the architectural sign-age wasn’t upfront enough, so a more prominent sign was installed:

Alas, the “transportation centre” moniker is about as plain as the old attempt to rename “libraries” as “resource centres”. So, the plain term “bus station” was added.

the broad inviting walkway looked oversized for the volume of traffic, but was probably scaled to match the building and to be proportionate to the surroundings. The terminal building itself was in Cape Cod architectural style, of course.

the view from the station back towards main street and the road to the harbour. There were abundant drop off zones and bus storage zones, resulting in a facility that worked well for cars and buses but was very large for pedestrians. Architects do love back-less benches, and these granite ones look so comfy. The lack of bothersome trees would facilitate maintenance, and the trees actually installed were in the minimum-size sidewalk openings.

the large interior space was broken up into several more room-sized volumes

automatic doors. Notice the wind screen beyond the doors. The area is subject to breezes, not just when Tropical Storm Sandy blows by. There were also wind screens around the bus loading platforms.

The interior held the combined waiting areas, all indoors and heated (unlike Ottawa with its milder climate), with bus company offices upstairs, a tourist kiosk, info desks, and very nice washrooms

the station waiting area had wooden seating, in a traditional bus depot style. I did not test them for comfort. There was free WIFI.

The station was about a decade old, and was undergoing refurbishment and modernization. Crews were installing these monitors that presumably will soon have timetable info in addition to the route maps given in traditional map format and in the google view

The route map had lit up icons of buses, that blinked and moved along the route in real time, so you could always know where your bus was

 

 

Shake the planning etch-a-sketch: Build that LRT to Orleans, and charge them for it

Let’s shake the planning etch-a-sketch by building that LRT out to Orleans right now.

 And charging them for it.

The Sinkhole Incident on Hwy 174 has high lighted the lack of access to the former St Joseph d’Orleans.

And its not just the lack of road access, it’s the lack of alternatives.

If the sink hole happened on the road to Kanata, there are more alternative routes. The higher road capacity pushes off the breakeven point for extending LRT to Kanata. And remember, the nearest point of Kanata is further away than the farthest point in Orleans*.

In this road shortage situation, Orleans might be blessed. Because out of adversity comes advantage.

It is expensive to build more roads to Orleans, but I’ll bet all the politicians will be promising more roads. What they should do is provide more  transportation choices, such as extending the LRT out to Orleans.

After all, the purpose of transportation is move people, not automobiles. We have to get out of our minds the common assumption that people are normally in cars.

Why? Well, that road that begins in Orleans ends in Ottawa. Which means more traffic at our schools, universities, offices, and on the city streets.  Much better to move the people rather than their cars. I’ll welcome the Orleanais in Ottawa but not their tin boxes.

But won’t extending the LRT be too expensive?

Well, it certainly costs money, but what about the alternatives? Like the cost of widening all those roads and intersections, both out there and in the city. Oops, sorry, our media and public discourse doesn’t headline those costs, only the transit ones. And we don’t calculate the “cost recovery or  revenue” for roads (perhaps because it is so low), but only for transit.***

So part of the problem is how we perceive the cost.

The second part is the low density of Orleans, and the longish-haul out to there and back, with no revenue between Montreal Road and Jeanne D’Arc. So the conventional planning wisdom says its not cost effective to run the LRT out there. Our transit boffins say it will be 30 years or more before the LRT extends to Orleans, if ever.

So let’s shake our planning etch-a-sketch and start anew.

The LRT to Orleans has little competition, there being but one primary road out there, the 174, which conveniently is owned and operated by the same provider as the LRT (the city). So we don’t have to worry about someone (like the province) stepping in and providing a competing transportation facility.

To be blunt, the city can force encourage people into transit by not providing more roads. That’s pretty much how we forced encouraged everyone onto roads in the years past (by building roads and starving pedestrians of sidewalks, transit users of transit, etc). New modes take off by government coercion and subsidy, as well as their competitive advantage.

The distance from Blair Station (east end of the current OLRT project) to Place d’Orleans is about six miles. The average cost of constructing a double track LRT in North America is currently $35 million per mile ** and this alignment is along an existing freeway and pretty much entirely through open fields (golf course, greenbelt, freeway right of way in the Orleans built-up area). Surely even Ottawa could build this for a near-average cost.  So, $210 million.

We need a station at Montreal Road, then one at Jeanne d’Arc, and the terminus at Place d’Orleans. For stations, add 3 x $50 million, or $150 million.

Total expansion cost of the track: about $400 million. Divide by the 50,000 households in Orleans, giving a per household cost of $8000. Amortize over 30 years (which is at least how long it would otherwise be before an Orleans extension of the OLRT could be justified) and it’s $266 per year on each household’s tax bill (interest costs are at an historic low rate, so I have ignored them; I expect interest costs might extend the payback period by a year or two, but I’ll leave that up to the number boffins, who can also figure out how much would be paid by new residents of the area as it grows).

That’s just $22 a month, per household. If there are two commuters, that’s $11 each.

So why would the Orleanais want to pay a special levy on their taxes to get what other residents get for their regular taxes?

Well, they’d get LRT and an escape from the Queensway traffic 30 years before their due.  For those Orleanais who wouldn’t use the LRT, their $266 a year buys them space on the road for their car by getting their neighbours off it.  And their house values would go up by maybe $8000 since the lack of access to Orleans supposedly suppresses their resale values today. No need to buy a car for the kid to go to college or university. And no need for mom or dad to find parking spaces at their destinations. And less car traffic on Orleans roads. And in Ottawa.

Of course, I ignored the operating cost of the extension. Purchasing the LRT vehicles and operating them is not free. But I think these costs could fairly be attributed across the whole city, as everyone across the city benefits from the Orleanais using fewer cars on the road (less congestion), and the LRT vehicles carry way more people per operator than do buses, reducing those costs the city as a whole would otherwise have been paying for bus service for the next thirty years.  

I think one of our current planning problems is that we view transit as an expense, a cost centre. We don’t expect it to pay its way. Would that we did the same for roads, but we don’t, and that’s not going to change soon. So, to expand the LRT and keep Watson’s promise of low tax hikes, it would take a plebiscite from Orlean’s residents to see if they were willing to incur a local improvement tax.

Definitely worth hashing out some better numbers, and trying it out on a focus group of Orleanais. So, I think the first step is for an Orleans councillor to ask transportation committee to rough out a cost to extend from Blair to Orleans, along the Qway. (And eventually to raise bloody hell if it an Ottawa-built LRT along an open field, using an existing right of way, comes in costing more than the North American average).

And best of all, the Orleans LRT  might piss off the Kanatans who would remain parked on their eight lane Qway.

_________________________

*or so I have been told. I didn’t verify this.

**Wikipedia. Note that Ottawa’s initial phase includes a very expensive tunnel. And the western extension requires lots of grade separations and very nice landscaping. After that, who knows if Ottawa’s costs are typical? Fortunately, the Orleans extension is thru rather ordinary fields not yet naturalized by the NCC. It’s hard to imagine a simpler, easier to build route.

*** most residents in Ottawa who read the paper or listen to CFRA, even Sun readers, could probably identify $2 billion as the cost of the LRT. How many of them could identify the cost of new private-vehicle roads and bridges in the same planning/construction decade?

Will Council give equal space to pedestrians?

The City engineers have  voluminous tables of how much space to allocate to motorists. They use these all the time, requiring developers to provide turn lanes, traffic signals, and road widenings, at the developer’s expense, as a required part of the building approval process.

Yet we are seeing more and more new buildings with minimal parking, which means lots of dependence on pedestrian access to the building. These people have to move to and from the building on the sidewalks. Yet I don’t recall the approvals of the new high rises on Parkdale, or Preston, or Carling, or anywhere else, getting into the nitty gritty of how many people and how much space they will need.

Let alone any discussion of amenities, such as benches, that the elderly (and others)  might want to use on their way to the transit station. Or pedestrian scaled lighting. Or safe routes to school.

Nope, the city seems convinced they can stuff any number of pedestrians onto existing 5′ wide sidewalks that are glued to the roadside curb.

So, I am appearing today at Planning Committee to point out the folly of their ways (don’t everyone line up at once !).

The example at hand: a proposed government-tennanted office complex at 801 Albert St across from the Bayview Station (don’t worry, no signed leases yet, and in my view, unlikely to see any soon. But the developer is covering himself by getting the 32 storey limit approved for offices, apartments, hotels, or anything else he fancies).

So this building would have SIX THOUSAND employees in it (all of Tunney’s now has 10). And only 250 car parking spaces.

So what did the city transportation study deal with?

The parking, the turn lanes, etc for the 250.

And only a slight nod to the 5700 who will walk in and out every day. On the five foot wide Albert sidewalk. Or along the new 10′ wide cycle path along the OTrain. Any walkway widening will not be automatically charged to the developer, the way the road “improvements” are.

The city engineers have tables that show how much walkway space is required, but they let them sit on the shelves gathering dust. The Downtown Moves study is the first to actually dust them off and see how wide the walks should be. http://westsideaction.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/measuring-the-pedestrian-level-of-service/

So I’ll be at Planning Committee pointing out he folly of their ways at 801 Albert, the inequity of their planning for the 250 whilst slighting the 5700+ pedestrians. And pointing out that for this, and other developments, if they are going to have transit oriented development they’d better make sure there is enough pedestrian space in the public right of way.

What will happen if the sidewalk requirements conflict with the existing quasi-monopoly of public space taken by motor vehicles? Now, that will be an interesting fight. I can already see community activists at the next high rise proposal demanding to know if the walkways will handle the expected pedestrians and where will the city be getting that space?

A good place to start will be Parkdale: an already congested road. Narrow sidewalks. Lots of new condos. More coming. Will the city widen the walks to meet the engineering standards at the expense of the existing motor vehicle allowance? Stay tuned for fireworks!

Distilling Our Lady of the Condos – part ii

Last winter, Domtar knocked down an elderly mill building on the Islands in the Ottawa River. Great consternation arose, as they did it Without Consulting the Bureaucrats. Priceless heritage lost!

Like a dog with a bone, the media and planning pundits worried about the lost potential for a vibrant outdoorsy urban waterfront à la Granville Island or The Distillery in Toronto. Few people seemed to notice that Victoria Island is one of the windiest, coldest, bleakest spots in Ottawa, a far remove from sunny* Granville Island or the spirits factory in Toronto. Numerous calls were made for the Distillery Folks to come to Ottawa and Save Our Historic Neighborhood.

I had visited the Distillery District in Toronto last year. It was a rainy day when I visited. I didn’t come away quite as enthused as other observers; it was too much a tourist theme park rather than a real neighborhood (such as the Danforth). That might come in time, though, as urban renewal migrated east of the downtown core.

So a few weeks ago, I dutifully trotted over to take a gander at the Famous Place. It is indeed well done. I kept thinking of Victoria Island and also of Our Lady of the Condos on Richmond Road. What would the convent site in Westboro be like if the Distillery Corporation had bought it?

This dramatic modern interpretation of a flatiron building greets visitors walking from the downtown. Unflinchingly modern, it perches cheek-by-jowel with the original Distillery structures.

Now, as the Friendly Giant might say, Look Up. Way way up:

 

Yup, that’s one big highrise. And it’s not the only one. Here’s a bird’s eye view of the block, courtesy of Google. Notice how close the very high rises are to the antique Distillery heritage structures. can you imagine Ottawans or our planning folks saying this is compatible development? Our community associations would explode in a burst of dust.

 

 

the google view doesn’t quite capture the actual height contrast between the old and new, so here is another angle:

And yet, on the ground, in the Distillery precinct itself, the walking environment is pleasant, the view primarily of the podiums and low rises, with the glass towers somewhat receding and by no means omnipresent or hulking over the place like some overpowering manifestation of Nasty Developer Greed.

Here is the latest tower going up right at the eastern edge of the Distillery buildings, as of yesterday:

So what if Ashcroft proposes a forty storey glass condo to replace the much-maligned four storey seniors residence on the south side of the convent site in Westboro? Would it “ruin” the site? Would the contrast “destroy” the heritage? Would the car traffic render Westboro chaos? (note that these Toronto towers plus a bunch more proposed ones exit onto ordinary city streets similar to Richmond Road and Byron. There is no subway presence in the area, but like Westboro an LRT is on the way).

The Distillery neighborhood gives me great pause to ponder the merit of high rise vs low rise intensification arguments. And puts the Lansdowne and Convent site controversies into a different context. Do we really want the Distillery folks to redevelop Victoria Island? Or the convent? Let’s be a bit more careful about what we wish for.

Perhaps we should have had a wide-open international competition for those sites, where proponents would be invited to come up with their own land use mix and urban developments. Might have been interesting.

But naah, we are much too timid to allow that. We’d get something else … say Lansdowne Park, or LeBreton Flats…

 

_———-

*sarcasm. irony. whatever.

 

 

 

 

Toronto Now — Ottawa Later

Toronto has new subway trains, now. Ottawa will have its new LRT trains sometime in the future.

What Toronto has now has certain similarities with what Ottawa will have in 2017 or 2018.

Unlike earlier subway cars that were individual cars hooked together into trains, without any means for passengers to switch cars, the new train cars have open gangways. This is similar to how the articulated OC Transpo buses work.

It means passengers can get on any car but then as passengers shift around, the load evens out throughout the train. Passengers feel safer, less “trapped” in one car. It also increases load capacity by 10%.

The LRT train sets for Ottawa are very likely to be of this design. The Toronto “rocket” train sets consist of six cars fixed in each set; there are 70 new train sets, totalling 420 cars. They have sixty eights seats, and room for 200 standees. Some seats fold up. Here are some pictures of the new TTC train sets that have been gradually being introduced to service since last year.

interior view down the series of TTC cars

The interiors feature  classy wine-red accent colours and doors. The panels that shield seats from doorways and function as “dividers” between seating groups are now all transparent with no solid panels. Some of the older TTC train sets have been updated with a very similar colour scheme.

close up view of the floor joint and gangway wall between Bombardier TTC cars

red lines guide people to the exits

I also shot a very short hi-def video of the the view along the train as it turns. Go to  http://youtu.be/BpJmI_Irkg0

And, for the really brave readers, here’s a final shot of yours truly on the new TTC Rocket train:

the TTC allows all manner of scary citizens on their trains, OC Transpo may exercise greater care

etc

etc

High rises: Gladstone southwards

Yesterday’s post covered high rise intensification — on an east-west axis — along the north edge — the Carling Avenue line — of our  community. Today’s post covers a north-south line drawn roughly along the OTrain cut from Gladstone to Carling. It is not clear if the drawing (second pic, below) puts the line along the OTrain cut or Preston Street itself. This post is somewhat speculative. Here is the area in Google Maps:

Recall that there is a proposed LRT station on the OTrain corridor near Gladstone. Generally, the station is drawn running from Gladstone to the Queensway, with its north exit at Gladstone and its south exit around Young-George Street (which is why Preston has those underused traffic signals at George). Recall too that the City has apparently decided it will not build the Gladstone station at the same time as the OTrain service is upgraded in 2014, even though that will require trains to slow — but not quite stop — at this area.

The drawing below is labelled “7- Urban Morphology“. On the right is the north end of our neighborhood transept, anchored by the Gladstone Station. Shown on Gladstone are some high rises, perhaps these are on the Enriched Bread site or the BA Banknote site, which will become available for development shortly. Or maybe they are on the city’s own signals works yard site, or the back of the St Anthony club on city-owned land.

Maybe we could extort some funds out of the developers under Sec 37 to install the Gladstone OTrain station now or when the residents move in, rather than 20 years out. Better to train them to use transit from day one.

The Queensway is shown as a low point in the profile, and then there are some high rises south of the Queensway. I presume that these are on the block-sized site owned by the Young Street garage, between Preston and the OTrain cut, as the lots on the west side of the cut, along Young and Railway Streets, are already wrapped up in the throes of low-rise intensification.

Very faintly drawn on the diagram are the 600 m radii from the stations, intended to show convenient walking distances to transit and the city’s zones of intensification. Given that there isn’t any vacant land on either side of the OTrain cut in this area south of George, I am puzzled at the set of three graduated high rises shown south of George. Maybe it’s just a signal to developers to start buying up houses in this residential strip in preparation for redevelopment (one developer is already busy here).

Curiously, the profile shows “existing fabric” where the two 600m zones overlap. Surely this is the most prime location for intensification? And yet the authors of the drawing (whom we don’t know, but have suspects) show this area left as about a 33′ height limit. The zoning also permits converting these houses into businesses … so we might see low value conversions and land assembly rather than larger redevelopment. I suspect this designation will be inviting to challenge at the OMB.

The profile rises back up again as it gets within 400m of Carling Avenue and the OTrain station there.  This station currently has only one exit; city policy requires two. Will the second be south or north of the current stair? The buildings between “existing fabric” and the Carling transit station would scale at about 10+ stories.

The suggested heights at Carling station are higher than those suggested at Gladstone, but no height in meters or stories is indicated on this drawing. Recall that in yesterday’s post, the Carling profile suggests 40+ stories here. If this drawing is to scale, that puts 20 storey buildings on the Young St Garage site, and maybe 10 stories at the Norman Street land-assembly of Urban Capital group, but I’ve heard that had not flown by City planners who demanded something lower.

Very curiously, the drawing stops at Carling Avenue. The area south of Carling is shown undeveloped. Yet for decades, the grassy area south of Carling, right up to the Sir John Carling Building, has been designated as a mixed-use development area. This always surprises people who think a field of NCC lawn is destined (doomed?) to remain vacant land forever. In the last versions of the Bayview-Carling CDP, the mixed use development area was being shifted a bit from being only west of the OTrain to include both the lawn west of the OTrain and parts of the NCC parking lot for the Dow’s Lake restaurants on the east side of the OTrain cut. This would make a more continuous series of buildings along both sides of Carling from Preston to Sherwood. I haven’t yet heard a suggestion as to how tall they might be, but I was the NCC I would realize that the land is worth more if developed to the 40+ storey height of the north side of Carling.

In the future, we won’t want for a lack of high rise condos in the west side.