I think we have no alternative but to wait for Larry O'Brien's task force report given the state of the LRT debate at the moment.

I think it is most unfortunate that so many members of the public have listened to certain commentators (some have a political agenda, others are simply not well informed) and lobbyists as their main source of information on LRT. There are many sources of information available on LRT. You can read about the success stories on the Internet. In particular, it is important to understand what has happened in other cities, particularly in North America, in areas with even a stronger car culture than Ottawa.

First, almost all cities select electric technology for urban and suburban use. Diesel technology is only used for intercity situations (eg. Dallas-Fort Worth) and when you are trying to reach distant suburbs in very large cities like Toronto, Montreal and New York. Running Toronto style Go-Trains over similar distances would be like running trains to Arnprior, Carleton Place, Smiths Falls, Kemptville, Casselman, or Rockland. These destinations would be perfect applications for diesel service if there was sufficient demand.

The ridership studies that keep getting brought up are no more than professional guesses. We must also reflect that there are no equivalent ridership studies for the FOTO plan. There are valuable lessons we can learn from other cities on this too. The much criticized Houston electric LRT reached its 20 year ridership projections in just 3 years. The Calgary C-Train doubled ridership in the last 10 years.

I spoke to someone just today about the Salt Lake City electric LRT (Siemens). She said it was fantastic and used it often during her visit. According to one website, ridership exceeded expectations by 40-50% in the first 2-3 years of service and turned around a failing transit system. A second line, exceeded ridership expectations by 22% after just months of service.

In each of these cities (and probably others), there has been an urgent need to purchase more trains to both increase service frequency and piggyback trains. Would we really be prepared for this with an cheap single track network that may share track with other types of trains?

In each of those cases, the city chose electric technology and the trains run from the suburbs to downtown. If almost all other cities build their first LRT lines as direct lines from the suburbs into downtown, why would we consider building something completely different, a downtown only shuttle or lines that don't reach downtown? Are we fools by not following successful examples in almost every other city? Doing things cheaply is not always a good investment. Also, the lines use a combination of separate right of ways and on street service. This gives the flexibility to run LRT where people want to travel. The often heard comments made about electric LRT being an old fashioned tram or street car is absolute nonsense and was used as an easy way to discredit the original plan. Diesel technology is much less flexible and in an urban setting must run exclusively on existing rail corridors. They cannot run on streets nor is it possible to create suitable new corridors when almost always space is very limited in an urban environment. They also cannot make anything close to a sharp turn. They are simply not designed for an urban setting. It may be true that diesel trains may have a higher maximum speeds but it is highly unlikely that they will travel any faster than an electric LRT in an urban or suburban situation. Those maximum speeds are likely only to be achieved when used for intercity travel.

Furthermore, it has already been established in the industry that it is not safe for electric LRT to share track with heavy freight or passenger trains. There are examples in the United States of tragic collisions. This means that later upgrades to electric LRT on existing freight or Via Rail track is not possible without building new track at least a certain minimum distance from the existing track. This kind of upgrade could be enormously expensive if possible at all.

What a relief that the vote never happened. Thanks for the support. A phased expansion of the O-Train will be a much easier-to-manage approach to rail transit than a mega boondoogle of a project.

Ron