PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2007.02.12
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PNAME: Arguments
PAGE: A11
BYLINE: David Gladstone
SOURCE: Citizen Special
WORD COUNT: 633

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Getting back on the rails

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Difficult as it is to understand, the city of Ottawa's controversial north-south light-rail project wasn't (at it was often advertised) an expansion of the successful, award-winning, O-Train light-rail transit service, but its entire replacement.

The result would have been three years of no O-Train service between Greenboro and Bayview. Inexplicably, ending O-Train service was agreed by Ottawa council with no discussion of the impact on its up to 10,000 daily riders, Carleton University, a major institution on the line, and the rest of Ottawa's transportation system, or why it was in fact necessary.

The fact that the north-south light-rail project wasn't an expansion of the O-Train was core to its undoing, as it led to a proposal to spend up to $1 billion with little real benefit over the current O-Train service.

If the City of Ottawa wasn't prepared to defend its O-Train, community volunteers were, and the name was a natural choice: Friends of the O-Train (FOTO). Since June a lot of volunteer effort has been spent developing and fleshing out our "Practical Plan" for expanding the O-Train service. The plan has four elements:

- maintaining the Greenboro-to-Bayview O-Train service;

- expanding it on existing railway corridors to the north (Gatineau), south (Riverside South), west (Kanata), and southwest (Barrhaven);

- replacing the Hurdman-to-Bayview portion of the Transitway with an electric light-rail loop;

- and improving bus service outside central Ottawa, linking with the light-rail lines (for a map see www.friendsoftheotrain.org/maps/map_poster.pdf).

A bit more detail on the Practical Plan: The current O-Train is a central element of Ottawa's transit system as it reduces the demand for buses -- and cars -- on central Ottawa streets. Core to the O-Train's success is the readiness of users to transfer to and/or from buses: about 75 per cent of O-Train rides include such a transfer.

Expanding service on existing railway lines is a highly cost-effective means of building on the O-Train's success and shifting toward the higher levels of transit use we all want. And as the Citizen reported on Feb. 3, there is strong railway company interest in getting more value out of Ottawa's legacy railway lines. My favourite expansion: O-Train service across the Prince of Wales railway bridge to Gatineau.

Perhaps the most controversial element of our plan is replacement of the Transitway between Hurdman and Bayview with an electric light-rail loop. Bus riders have written of their concerns, the premise being "if it isn't broken, don't fix it."

Well, the Transitway through downtown Ottawa is failing and city staff know this. At peak hours there is simply not enough capacity for the buses that commuters want to take and OC Transpo has been quietly cutting back on the number of express buses.

Even on good days, block-long convoys of awkwardly -- and inefficiently -- manoeuvring buses are routine, with riders running to catch their buses. Replacing the bus convoys with electric light-rail trains would allow for a much more efficient -- and accessible -- transit service synchronized with the traffic signals and would be a long-overdue investment in increasing the capacity of the crucial downtown section of the Transitway.

Bus/train transfers would take place in climate-controlled stations at Hurdman and Bayview, with facilities typical of Montreal and Toronto subway stations. Our expectation is that travel times for most riders would decrease, given the substantial increase in efficiency and the increased number of buses linking with Hurdman and Bayview.

And that's the link with the fourth element of the Practical Plan: the redeployment of up to 100 buses from central Ottawa to the suburbs, allowing for substantial improvements in service.

FOTO's Practical Plan is exactly that: it accepts our city as it is and doesn't try to use transit to change it. It provides substantially improved transit service to all parts of the city, and it's affordable within available funding.

David Gladstone is founder of Friends of the O-Train (friendsoftheotrain.org).