The Ottawa Light Rail Tunnel Questioned

At least someone in the media in Ottawa gets it; building transit tunnels does very little, except reduce the scope of a transit system. Unless a transit line ridership exceeds about 15,000 persons per hour per direction, only then should a tunnel/subway be considered. It is to be remembered that the city of Karlsruhe Germany is relocating its city’s main tram line in a subway because the surface tramway was catering to well over 40,000 pphpd, with coupled sets of trams operating at 45 second headways! Canadian planners and engineers, routinely over-engineer transit projects to the point of unaffordability, with needless tunnels and viaducts, with Vancouver’s SkyTrain mini-metro being a very good example (the driverless mini-metro needs grade separation at all times, thus enforces subway and viaduct construction). To this end they have ill-advised politicians as to the need for tunnels and viaducts, to the point of professional misconduct! Why? The only reason I see is to ensure that taxpayers dollars flow to themselves and associates with deliberate and extremely expensive transit over-engineering. It is time for regional politicians "to bell the cat", so to speak and engage real transit professionals who have a contemporary knowledge of urban and public transit to plan and build regional transit. In a commentary for The Ottawa Citizen, contributor Ken Gray says the city’s mayor should eliminate the light rail tunnel from the $2.1 billion starter LRT project and use the savings to extend surface rail as far as possible:

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2011/11/23/\ watson-must-dump-the-light-rail-tunnel/ "Watson Must Dump The Light-Rail Tunnel November 23, 2011. 12:01 am Posted by: The Bulldog by Ken Gray So the theory behind the current light-rail plan for Ottawa is the short line between Tunney’s Pasture and Blair Road is just the beginning. That the tunnel will speed transit traffic through downtown eventually all the way to and from the suburbs. Well, and I can’t say this strongly enough, it’s very unlikely that the line will be extended anytime soon. Economist Don Drummond, who runs a commission on public service reform, says health-care costs will devour the provincial budget before two decades are up. That’s because of the huge demographic of aging baby boomers who will demand at our hospitals and ballot boxes they get the best of care. The boomers are unlikely to be happy with not getting enough treatment to keep them from dying. People are like that. Suddenly, projects such as light rail seem insignificant when the grim reaper is staring the boomers in the eye. Already, Premier Dalton McGuinty has dumped any idea of a bullet train between Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, citing the dicey provincial fiscal situation. So sorry to play this record yet again, but Mayor Jim Watson must dump the downtown tunnel, create a surface rail, bike and pedestrian corridor through the core, and extend the light-rail line as far as it can go because, given the cost of health care, the chances of getting more light-rail money to extend the line beyond Tunney’s and Blair after the current project is completed in 2017 is extremely unlikely. And the current planned line is not long enough and creates too many cumbersome transfers to be of much use at all. It’s big, wasted money with the possibility of huge cost overruns. Surely the mayor understands that.