From: transit expert Tim Lane

I had a HORRIFYING day today, and am too tired to wax eloquent to any degree, on what went on last night.

Suffice it to say, that there were a LOT of VERY angry residents there.

Gregg Ross, David Jeanes, and Henry Swiech were there.
Cullen, Mark Taylor, Marianne Wilkinson and George Guirguis (Bay ward candidate) were there.

The City actually had a presentation, with questions from the audience afterwards.
I managed to ask the first question.
I asked Peter Steacy to show the map, projected on a screen, of the area from Pinecrest to the Queensway Transitway station.

I then asked him to show us how the buses currently traverse that section, eastbound and westbound, which he did with a laser pointer.

I then asked them how long it took buses to travel that section.

They could not answer that.

I asked them in any of them had actually taken a bus, recently, through there, in either direction.

From: Klaus Beltzner

My comments on "the Bulldog" in reference to "Open House to Discuss
Light-Rail Impact"

http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/2010/0...

@Yet another David:

Sadly you are right, and there is more.

To date, no DOTT public consultation (open house) and no TMP public consultation (cafe round table, e-consult or open houses) has led to as much as one word changed in the documentation going forward to Council.

And it is not as if Staff did not receive thoughtful and constructive comments on where they are making serious errors, and where they should consider more practical and less expensive alternatives. They just chose to close their eyes and ears -- very professional of them.

One of the first signs that city staff were not interested in cost-effective LRT is captured in this picture.
Rather than move the pole over (costing $700), they moved the rail line.
This causes the train to have to slow down before it gets to that curve, and then apply power to climb the hill, and then brake once it gets to the station.
In the other direction, the train coasts down the hill, has to brake to slow down to go around the curve, and then, has to apply power to accelerate again.

This is a zoom in on the relevant section. Notice how the tracks could have continued almost straight through. Hidden under the snow behind the pole is a turnout that the city of Ottawa wants to remove. Doing so will mean that the O-Train will NEVER get to Gatineau.

Why remove it? because it makes noise. No silly, curves make noise.

David Jeanes was the featured rant on CFRA's Rob Snow's Wednesday afternoon show.
You can listen to it here:
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Ae-Op.Ed.Jan27.10.mp3

Also stream it from here,download.

On the Lunch Brunch, CRFA discussed tunnels, (and cost overruns), and also reuse of existing rail lines. You can listen to that here:

http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/lb%20jan%2028-1.mp3

Also stream it from here,download.

The Ottawa SUN reported that

A record rainfall Monday contributed to roughly 120 million litres of sewage
overflowing into the Ottawa River.

In a memo to city councillors Tuesday, environmental services staff say the
Ministry of Environment's Spills Action Centre, public health branch and
downstream water system operators were notified about the overflow.

And Friends of the O-train's Klaus Beltzer wants to know why the city can not spend money where it matters, and insists on spending it where it does not?

Dear Councillors,

The expensive work that you authorized - the $30 million for real -time
control systems at three regulators - will not prevent overflows. The system
just helps staff know that regulators are working as designed and saves Staff
from having to inspect the regulators manually after each rain event. That
is, all that money was spent so that Staff can remotely monitor that the

Ottawa. October 30, 2009.

It was 3 years ago today that Friends of the O-Train released it's practical LRT plan.
http://www.friendsoftheotrain.org/node/3

Some councillors called us the Fiends of the O-Train, and wished we would go away. We did not. We tried again to play nicely with city staff: some successes, many failures.

In 2007 we tried to help the Mayor's Task Force, and when the report came out, we said, "tunnel? well. maybe if we are rich. But the rest is great". In 2008, we tried to work with staff.
We tried to collaborate with some motivated councillors to get things right. In 2009, we did not know what to do, the growing sense of deja-vu was overwhelming; paralysing.