By Mike Rifkin
The Rideau Centre could eventually become the centre of an expanded light rail system as the City of Ottawa is investigating a number of ways to increase light rail service.
The city’s 2005 budget includes $23 million to study and begin construction on several possible electric light rail train systems.
Some of the proposed improvements, which would be implemented over the next 20 years, would be additions to the O-Train while others would be new, separate electric systems.
The city is proposing a north-south electric light rail corridor that would connect the Rideau Centre to Barrhaven. An environmental assessment is currently underway, which the city expects to be finished by this summer according to the plan outlined in the budget. Construction is expected to take place from 2006 to 2009. The city still needs to buy the property and track for the system.
The estimated cost of the entire north-south project is $675 million.
David Jeanes, president of Transport 2000, an Ottawa-based public transit advocacy group, says light rail downtown would alleviate current traffic problems. He says a light rail train can carry two to three times as many passengers a bus.
“In the downtown core we have a huge problem,” says Jeanes. “It’s not only Rideau and Wellington that’s clogged by buses, it’s also Slater Street. We’re buying 61 new buses but we’re not buying any more streets for them to run on.”
Jeanes says electric light rail has helped revitalize the downtown cores of other major cities where it is being used, such as Houston and Portland, Oregon.
“It’s very quiet, it has no emissions and it’s very well-suited to trees and shrubbery,” he says. “You can have vegetation that would never survive around a car street.”
The city is also considering continuing the O-Train north from Bayview Station across the Ottawa River into Gatineau. The Socite de Transport de l’Outouais (STO) has rejected the idea, but the City of Ottawa has already purchased the Prince Of Wales Bridge and 3km of track in Gatineau from CP Rail.
Gatineau is planning its own rapid bus service, called Rapibus, which would be similar to the Transitway in Ottawa. It still needs funding from the Quebec government before it can move ahead.
Jeanes says that while the proposed rail improvements will be good for the city, council is not moving fast enough to get them completed.
“The O-Train was fast-tracked. Now we’re moving much more cautiously,” says Jeanes. “We know we have $600 million to spend, we know absolutely that city council and the public want light rail transit, so we should be moving faster than that.”
Also included in the 2005 budget is roughly $11 million for short-term repairs to the O-Train, such as the refurbishment of engines and adjustments to the tracks at stations.