Lessons

A lot has happened with Ottawa’s hybrid light metro/rail system, most of it negative, but most confuse it with the very successful O-Train, which is not light rail at all, rather a regional railway, operating DMU’s. This is what Rail for the Valley is proposing for the Valley Rail scheme and what the E&N folks […]

Ottawa’s O-Train

Part 1 Ottawa’s Trillium Line is often miscaptioned by the media as LRT, it is not. The Trillium Line is a DMU service. The Trillium Line is a good example of providing quality transit at a much lower cost than more expensive tramways and unrealistic and hugely costly light-metro. Monthly operating costs of the 24 […]

The Ottawa Fiasco Updated

Too many cooks spoil the broth and too many politicians spoil transit. But there is one quote that leaves me puzzled: The city chose an Alstom train with unproven technology that strained the limits of what an LRT system could do. Light rail is anything but unproven, as it has been around in one form […]

Ottawa’s Troubled LRT, Er……. Light Metro ~ Updated

UPDATE OCTOBER 14, 2021: City manager Steve Kanellakos said Rideau Transit Group reported on the root cause of the derailment: a gearbox came loose and dragged along the tracks. Kanellakos said RTG learned the gearbox bolts weren’t torqued properly.   What was going to be a showcase LRT has turned into a Light Metro fiasco. […]

Ottawa’s Ongoing LRT Drama

When  politicians get involved with transit, fiasco happens. When light-metro pretends to be light rail, fiasco happens. When the media’s ignorance of light-metro and light rail is so evident and they fail to ask important questions, fiasco happens. This article about the operational ills of Ottawa’s new light metro system (though the Ottawa light-metro uses […]

What Ottawa’s Stage Two Will Get for $4.66 Billion

Ottawa’s LRT is expanding. Mind you Ottawa’s, the Stage 2 LRT program went from $3.6 Billion to $4.7 Billion. This was due to three reasons. 1. Inflation from the 2015-2016 price estimate, mainly concrete and paying user fees for the new lower carbon emitting concrete formulas. Concrete emits massive amounts of polluting gasses like CO2, […]

Forward Thinking – Absent In BC

Now here is a politician who looks three minutes into the future, wanting existing rail lines preserved for future use. We lost the rails in the Kelowna/Vernon corridor; we are about to lose the E&N; and the city of Vancouver is making damn sure that the Arbutus Corridor is not used for rail! The political […]

Ottawa’s Transit system project

  ai???The Transitwayai??i??, in Ottawa, is one of the most successful Bus Rapid Transit Systems in North America. However with the increase of traffic and demand the Council has decided to develop the Bus Rapid Transit System into to a Light Rail Transit one. This 20 year plus expansion will start its first phase with […]

A Comment Worthy of a Post.

Zwei has never met, nor even talked in person to chap who uses the name Haveacow, but I do know he is a professional planning consultant working on the the Ottawa light rail project and I have a great respect for his opinion. Like Cardinal Fang, who is also a transit professional, and they choose […]

Ottawa LRT

CFRA News-Talk Radio posted this report on April 22nd about a possible alignment for the leg of the Ottawa starter light rail line west of downtown. http://www.cfra.com/News/Ottawa-Regional-News/City-likes-tunnel-under-Richmond-Road-for-next-pha The route dubbed Richmond Underground is the favourite of city officials for the second phase of the light rail transit route that would link Tunney’s pasture to the […]