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Originally Posted by frinkprof
A more robust and serious undertaking of rail transit in Ottawa was actually supposed to have been up and running by now. City Council approved the project in 2006, but after the election later that year, the project was cancelled.
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True; unfortunately the main reason that the contract was cancelled was the routing - they were going to continue to use the freight line alignment of the O-Train out to one southwest suburb of the city (Barrhaven), ignoring the huge populations east and west of the centre of the city (also ignoring the huge population across the river in Quebec)! When you let dreamers run the show rather than realists, that's what you end up with.
I hope that someone makes Calgary Transit come to their senses about that alignment. Who will take transit from the North if you have one station between Beddington and 8 Ave?! The buses will have to keep running and they'll be packed.
This is a great thread - I hadn't been paying attention to the "future" of CT.
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Anyway, Ottawa actually has one of the best BRT systems on the Americas, but the limitations of that system have been reached and the transition to LRT is now seen as the solution along some of the corridors.
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Like Thrillingbroom said, the only real capacity problem on the transitway in Ottawa is where the buses leave the "protected" section and onto regular streets (Past the U of O in the east and past Lebreton station in the west) - too many buses with too many traffic lights. Especially the buses running to the east in the afternoon rush - those lineups can be nuts. I grew up in the west end of Ottawa (not the suburbs) so the Transitway was great for me - I lived a 15-minute walk from one of the stations. And the rush bus crunch wasn't nearly as bad going my way. (of course I moved closer to work so I could walk, so my info is from 2001-ish, that was the last time I regularly took the bus there!)