Herewith two proposals concerning a rapid transit system for the City of Ottawa. The first has a rail tunnel beneath the down-town section, with transit way buses carrying commuters to the suburbs. The second has the whole system converted to rail right from the beginning. It will be obvious that the second proposal will be much cheaper to build and operate if only the funds to build it can be found.

Proposal Number 1.

Recently Option #4 of four options was selected as the way to go for a rapid transit system. This was very broad in concept, with many details still to be worked out.

For example, is the down-town tunnel going to be diverted to the old Union Station? This was proposed by the mayor's task force some time ago. Is there enough room at Lincoln Fields and the University of Ottawa for hundreds of buses to load, unload and turn around every hour? If Lincoln Fields is to be a transfer point, then the railway will be forced to use the Western Parkway. Do we want this to happen?

Trains operating between a western and an eastern transfer station will probably operate every three minutes

A cursory examination of some bus schedules show that today approximately 100 west-bound transit way buses pass through the Hurdman Station on their way to down-town each hour during the rush hour. Or five buses every three minutes.

To justify the expense of improving the existing system, ridership must be at least doubled from say 17% of commuters now using public transit to 34%. With the city getting ever larger and with more and more cars on the roads, I see no reason why we should not aim at tripling the ridership to say 50% of commuters.

Staying with a target figure of 34% of commuters using public transit, then under the new system passengers from 10 transit way buses (10 buses every 3 minutes instead of 5 buses every three minutes) should be able to transfer to a train every three minutes during the morning rush hour, and transfer from a train to 10 buses every three minutes during the afternoon.

Each train will have to be big enough to accommodate passengers from ten crowded buses.

How many passengers travel on 10 buses? What kind of buses are we looking at? Say five articulated buses, and five regular 40 foot buses.

To the best of my knowledge, an articulated bus has 54 seats and can accommodate 78 standees, for a total of 132 passengers. Five of these buses would carry 620 passengers. A regular bus has 40 seats and can carry 50 standees. Five of these buses would therefore carry about 450 passengers. A total of 1070 passengers to transfer every three minutes during the busiest time of the rush hour.

The current O-Train has a capacity of 134 seated passengers and 150 standees for a total of 284 people. If two of these were coupled together, it could carry 568. Given that the O-Train has limited acceleration and low speed, I doubt that it could operate on a three minute interval between trains. It could not move the traffic generated by the transit way buses.

A heavy-rail train is required.

A Toronto subway car has seats for 66 and room for 184 standees. A six-car train can carry 1,500 people and has more than enough capacity for the immediate future, and a train with eight cars would serve well into the foreseeable future.

A bus/train transfer station will have to be on three levels.

Buses would load and unload at ground level at an array of ten islands. A bus would stop at one end of the island to unload, then move forward to its other end to load, then leave to return to the transit way and its terminus. At ten buses every three minutes, then a bus would arrive and leave at one of the islands every 18 seconds. This should be enough time so that conflicts could be avoided.

Two stairways on each island would lead down to the concourse level. Arriving passengers descend using the first stairway.

At the concourse level, in addition to the 20 stairways leading up to the bus islands, would be two stairways leading down to the island platform and the trains at the third level. Trains would wait on one side or the other of the platform, with a train leaving for down-town and the west every three minutes.

A train from the west would arrive about 90 seconds after an east-bound train had left the station. Passengers from this train would unload onto the train platform, climb the stairs to the concourse level, select the stairway for their bus route, climb that stairway, and board their bus.

This system should work fairly well, I believe, but will need a lot of real estate for its construction.

The question in my mind is that there does not appear to be enough room at Lincoln Fields or at Ottawa University for such structures to be built. Transfer stations capable of moving thousands of people every three minutes must have the room to do so. The only sites with room for these is at Lebreton and Hurdman.

If the rapid transit system is to be eventually converted to rail throughout, then these transfer stations will be temporary structures. A large investment in money and resources.

Proposal Number 2.

I have always envisaged a subway system for Ottawa as having three main lines. One between Kanata, Lebreton, Hurdman and Orleans, one between Fallow Field, Lebreton, Hurdman and
Blackburn Hamlet, and one between Manotick, Lebreton, Hurdman and Leitrim.

Another line to be built much later and to take care of the south part of the city would run from Montreal Road and St. Laurent Blvd, south on St. Laurent, west on Walkley Road, Heron Road, the Heron Road bridge and Baseline Road to Woodroffe Avenue, thence north on Woodroffe to Carling Avenue.

The last line, to operate on the surface, would run from Lansdowne Park, along Bank Street, Sparks Street, Rideau Street and King Edward Avenue.

Somewhat grandiose, but doable IMO.

Note that the three main lines all pass through Lebreton and Hurdman. It might be said that these three lines could be looked at as seven separate lines, one downtown, and the others spreading out across the suburbs.

What occurs to me is that these seven lines could all be built at the same time. As long as the downtown section was finished first, there is no reason to wait for it to be completed before the others are started. I do not see any reason for waiting until 2030 or thereabouts, before starting work at Kanata or Orleans,

In fact, if the money for the imminent widening of Prince of Wales Drive were to be spent on an environmental assessment and pre-engineering surveys, then work on the Manotick-Lebreton line could be started almost immediately. Similarly, funds for widening Highway 17 to Rockland could be used on the Orleans line. Instead of widening the west end of the Queensway, why not start working on the Kanata-Lebreton line?

The stumbling block, of course, is finding enough money for all this work to be done in the next ten or twelve years. What we need are large amounts of money from elsewhere. It was suggested by someone a few months ago that stations on the new subway be named after famous Canadians or large corporations. It was discounted as not being geographic enough, and such names would not automatically relate to certain areas of the city.

However seven of the lines could be named to recognise famous firms. For example, the Corel Line from Manotick, the Scotiabank Line from Kanata, and so forth.

The right to name such a line would not come cheap. A sum of $400 million comes to mind for each line. The exact fee to be negotiated later. This name would not be for four, or six, or whatever number of years, but they would hold these names in perpetuity, for ever and ever. How about the Microsoft line going through the downtown?

At first, I thought the sum of $400 million to be excessive. I now note that certain corporations were spending $800 million to have their corporate logos on display at the Olympic venues in Beijing. I will admit that a lot of people saw the logos in Beijing, but only for two weeks or so. An Ottawa subway line name would be for ever.