Sunday, September 14, 2008

Gotta Have More Cowbell

or in Ottawa, Rail.

Mr. Galipeau said the city has been fixated on short-term bus solutions for years, when the long-term answer is to build rail to major population centres. "Buses are a Band-Aid solution. I think they're dead-set on buses. I don't think they really believe in light rail," Mr. Galipeau said.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

At one time there were trains to Orleans. To me Ottawa(or Autowa) is a joke, they trashed so much of their rail infrastructure it's pathetic.

Matthew said...

Doesn't Ottawa have one little pathetic "commuter rail" system run with those Talent DMUs?

Sounds like what their putting in here in Austin, though some of the key details are different.

Justin said...

Ottawans are afraid of transfers. They are too used to taking express buses, and being to be dropped off close to their homes without transferring.
With LRT, they will have to make a transfer somewhere, and they do not want that.

Justin said...

I used to live in Ottawa for school. You really have to see the Central Transitway at peak time. The number of buses are mind-boggling. THe system is close to melting down.

Anonymous said...

Yeah. I can't stand the Transitway. When I moved here from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador 10 years ago, I thought the Transitway was so "cutting edge". Now I can't stand it much anymore.

Ottawa may as well be quite possibly the only urban area in the world where rail transit doesn't go downtown.

The decision to "substitute" BRT on the Transitway in place of what could have been LRT is a dumb decision, in the long term. How come our area, with 700,000 people in the early 80s (including neighbouring Gatineau, Quebec), decided to go with the Transitway BRT?

And this is when Alberta's two largest cities - Calgary (area pop. in early 70s: 400,000) and Edmonton (area pop. in early 70s: 500,000+) went with light rail that works so good. I used it on my trip to Alberta five years ago, and I liked it.

It has been a dumb decision to throw away good alignments that could have been useful here in Ottawa. There were also trains going from here to Carleton Place.

I don't understand why BRT boosters can get away with calling Ottawa a "role model" in the same way they would use this to describe Curitiba.