August 21, 2007

Infrastructure

Ottawa resurrects Light Rail Transit line

$1.1 billion plan calls for fewer stations, faster trains

KORKY KOROLUK

correspondent

OTTAWA

Ottawa City Council may have thought it killed its controversial Light Rail Transit plan last winter, but efforts now are being made to resurrect it in a revised form.

S. Lyon Sachs, president of Urbandale Corp., a real estate developer active in the city’s south end, proposed a new version of the old plan, one that he said addresses the problems that ultimately sank the project in December.

His version includes two tunnels under the downtown core, would not cross the Rideau River into Barrhaven at the south end, and would extend the north end past the University of Ottawa into the Via Rail passenger station.

Total estimated cost: About $1.1 billion, including the tunnels.

The original plan would have cost about $880 million, with $200 million each coming from the federal and provincial governments. Those contributions from the senior levels of government are believed to be still available for a light rail project.

The proposal contains a number of elements that would save time and reduce cost. The original O-Train line which has been successful as a pilot project, was to have been torn up and replaced. The Urbandale plan would keep it. The plan to twin a tunnel under Dow’s Lake would be scrapped, with a signaling system installed to control traffic in the existing single tunnel. There would be fewer stations than in the old plan, and trains would be faster.

Urbandale’s plan was tabled at a joint meeting of the city’s transportation and transit committees. And the initial response was favourable.

Mayor Larry O’Brien said the proposal “which leaves the door open to an east-west connection, is unique.”

Councillor Dianne Deans said the plan addresses several key issues.

It includes downtown tunnels, it’s affordable, and it connects to both regional transit and east-west transit.

The downtown link turned out to be the focus of criticism of the old plan. It called for trains to share two one-way streets across the core both with transit and regular vehicular traffic.

Both streets are already at or above capacity during rush hours, and a coalition of downtown business people mounted an effective attack against adding trains to the traffic mix.

Hume Rogers, coalition spokesman said “problems throughout the downtown core are going to get worse, so the faster we can get a tunnel in there to solve the problem, the better off we are.”

Trying to fast-track consideration of the proposal, committee plans to ask staff to begin the environmental assessment of the tunnels this fall, instead of next spring.

“Why wait for spring? Do it now,” said committee chair Alex Cullen.

The assessment was to be done as part of the consideration of a larger regional plan that would have abandoned light rail and used existing rail corridors to bring passengers to the Via Rail terminal.

That regional plan was to be incorporated into a new transportation plan by next spring, and staff suggested the environmental assessment should wait until then.

But Cullen said the delay is not necessary.

Any rapid transit plan is going to have to deal with the problems downtown, “and we knew from the start that we need to look at a tunnel,” he said.

The proposal, and the recommendation for an early start on the environmental assessment, now goes to the full city council.

Print | Email | Comment