07-08-2019, 07:37 AM
(07-08-2019, 07:21 AM)MidTowner Wrote:jamincan Wrote:ION is obviously nowhere near Ottawa's level of service, because what Ottawa will have is closer to a subway system than normal LRT.
Generally these sorts of comparisons don't seem particularly useful to me. The important questions are whether ION provides a meaningful improvement to transit service in KW, whether it helps redirect growth to central parts of the city, and whether it attracts more people onto transit. The choices that were made for ION's implementation were decisions that made sense in the context of Waterloo Region. Something like what Ottawa has wouldn't be possible here, and if it were proposed, wouldn't have been approved.
This is the most important bit. I don't see why tunneling here would be technically not possible, but I do know that it would not be achievable politically. We had a significant fight to get LRT; a more expensive system that involved tunnelling in some but not other parts of the line would not have achieved the necessary support.
The two cities are in completely different contexts. Many more middle-class and professional Ottawans take transit and have experienced how having buses operate in mixed traffic downtown wastes time and resources. A completely separate right of way is probably much easier to sell to them.
The thing is, Ottawa already had a separate ROW for most of the line except the downtown bit. The part that required tunneling was 2.5 km and 3 stations of a total 12.5 km and 13 stations. ION has roughly 6ish km on the central on-street portion of the line with 8 stations out of 19km/16 stations total (ignoring the section to Conestoga Mall as well). Without an absurd amount of tunneling, a system like what they have is simply impossible here.