The main problem, though, is a historical perspective on transit tunnel projects does not translate to a historical perspective on City-wide transit projects, so one can't jump directly to Alain's conclusion that DOTT is therefore the way to go.

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Alain wrote: "The current plan correctly starts with downtown as the main element of the plan and its first phase, but also starts out by serving the heavily-populated east and west ends, in that order. There still is a north-south line, but it only gets built in later phases."

Both points are disputable. The East and West arms don't go out to the suburbs, as the cancelled 2006 plan did to the South (that plan's biggest flaw was the downtown component) . They were discounted because not enough people live close enough to where the stations would be (never mind the number of people who actually take transit through those stations). Suburban extensions are not planned until beyond 2031.

Secondly, the extension to the South is not a later phase, but a parallel part of the 2008 TMP that is to be built in a separate project in an independent timeline. Because much of the planning for that line has already been done, the EA and construction can happen in a matter of a couple years, though it wouldn't make sense to finish it before the DOTT is ready. (Not that I agree with the N-S component, but that's a separate issue)

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Re: "Every train is your train" and Josh's comment about "every 90-series bus is your bus": While it may not be a perfect or long-term solution, you could certainly relieve some of the pressure on downtown with "bus platoons" or "bus trains": Between, say, Hurdman and Bayview, Send out articulated buses in sets of three: a 95, a 96, and a 97, with no other buses travelling through the downtown Transitway corridor. You could conceivably alternate these with a set comprising of a 85, 94, and 98. The important thing is that they arrive in order, and they all leave each station at the same time. This way you know (1) where to stand if you want the 96, and (2) if this 96 is full, the next one will arrive in the next light cycle.

As Josh suggests, the reason we don't do this is that transfers are unpalatable to suburban commuters. Why are transfers unpalatable to suburban commuters?
- For one, they're spoiled by single-seat "express" routes that toodle around their neighbourhoods and go all the way downtown. They then travel empty all the way back to the suburbs for another round of toodling. Having to transfer to a 90 series bus means that whatever they do to occupy themselves (e.g. reading a book) gets interrupted, and on the second leg they may have to stand the whole time.
- Second, because of the "express" buses that focus on the 24% of commuters who work downtown, the non-"express" buses that don't go downtown (the ones to which commuters would transfer if they didn't take the express) don't have as many riders, and thus don't come by as often, making a long wait for the transfer.

The important question to ask is, if the switch to a hub-and-spoke model is unacceptable enough that we can't do it now, why would it be acceptable to commuters if we force it with a train? And with the trunk line moved underground, we have no guarantee that the "express" buses wouldn't continue downtown. City Staff say that people would be more likely to transfer to a "higher order" level of transit, i.e. from bus to train. But what of the return trip? What of people who have to commute across the City? If anything, a hub-and-spoke model should be more palatable with buses because you can get on anywhere between Kanata and Orléans, not at Blair or Tunney's.

An important consequence of ditching the "express" buses for a hub-and-spoke model is that you also sacrifice the premium fares for "express" trips, but the savings might work out with better service for people commuting from downtown to the suburbs.

The reason for the quote marks around "express" is that in other jurisdictions an "express" route runs along the same route as a regular route, but it skips certain spots to get further faster. So a true "95 express" might make only one downtown stop between Hurdman and Bayview, making life much better for, say, Orléans residents commuting to Algonquin College.

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Peter Drake wrote: "To my mind, one of the benefits of deep stations is they allow a larger spread of entrances. The proposed entrances in the current plan provide coverage every block or so."

In the initial, concept stage, Staff sold this to Council on this premise. However, as the designs progressed to their current stage, it has become apparent that the exits go straight up, because you can't build a diagonal access without excavating all the dirt above it. So the end result is that we've got lots of swtichback escalators essentially going straight up. The horizontal distance covered is negligible, it's just that most if it is done at the platform and concourse level instead of on the surface. There's even a department-store style elevator at the Rideau station's western entrance (with the portal at the War Memorial), where the top of one escalator is directly atop the top of the previous one, requiring you to walk the entire horizontal distance back to get up to bottom of the next one.

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Darrell Henderson wrote: "there's no real discussion of how a tunnel in the downtown could be an impetus for transformation of the downtown, or how it could free up space for better pedestrian facilities or bicycle lanes"

Actually, that has been a big point of conversation downtown, and I know Diane Holmes has raised it many times. That could even be her main reason for supporting it. But it's flawed.

For one, the Official Plan and Transportation Master Plan both require any new transit corridor to have pathways built alongside it, to allow pedestrian and cyclist access to the stations. However, these are the first amputations of a hemorrhaging project budget. In the mid 1990's when the South-East transitway was built, this component was removed from the plan to save $4M. At the time, they said the pathways would be built "when funds became available," which is never.

The same thing happened for the now killed N-S LRT plan to Riverside South, except that one was $6M in savings.

The current plan is not a new transit corridor, so it wouldn't qualify under these grounds, though certainly we'd want to improve Albert and Slater. If they end up building it along the Ottawa River Parkway (and I hope they don't), that already has a pathway alongside it.

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Getting back to my original point, an analysis of tunnel plans neglects other plans for rapid transit. As Fraser suggested, the flaws cited for dismissing surface rail in the current plan are far fewer and pithier than those in the current plan which are resolved with expensive "mitigation measures". It's literally two paragraphs in the whole 200 page document, and easily disputable. Politically, it didn't need to be elaborated further because one option involving surface LRT had already died (though it shared the cluttered route with buses), and this any option involving surface LRT could be dismissed. It's not logically sound, just a clever conjuring trick.

I'm not saying that surface is the way to go, but I am saying that a surface option has not been sufficiently considered. While Alain says that money should not be a major limiting factor, in reality it is, otherwise the plan would encourage building rail to the suburbs before 2031 instead of 63-plus kilometres expensive and unnecessary bus Transitways.

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That would be the Vancouver which has a rail-based transit system, including extensive underground RoWs and stations, and the Montreal which has a metro, right?

If the first- and second-most seismically active large cities in Canada can handle underground transit and its risks — to say nothing of the cities in Japan, California, China, and Europe which are even more seismically active — then Ottawa can handle them, too.

What's next? Dredging up Jim Watson's terrorists?

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No, it doesn't. Ottawa has Bus Transit. It's not especially rapid, and is decidedly NOT rapid at peak.

= = = And every bus could be your bus, too, or almost everyone, but the comfort of suburban asses is politically paramount in this town. So, even in the face of yet more delays — I give it at least another half-century in this pathetic excuse of an over-governed city — in LRT, we won't even have BRT, either. Just BT. Sad, sad, sad.

The arguemtn that this is a car-centric plan isn't actually so bizarre. If you look at the city's plans and all that the talking heads from the city have put out there, there's no real discussion of how a tunnel in the downtown could be an impetus for transformation of the downtown, or how it could free up space for better pedestrian facilities or bicycle lanes (the latter being something the city doesn't even appear to think to be favourable additions to the city). Given the city's history of auto oriented development Alain, I think that writing off this concern as bizarre is a tad condescending. After all, aren't we still having a battle over the Alta Vista Expressway in this town?

Secondly, If a tunnel is so much better for providing shelter for riders, why are so many of the shelters outside the core not even fully enclosed?

I think the big issues with the tunnel are that:

1) Whenever you take away surface transit in favour of further apart stations in a tunnel, you can easily create dead spaces on a street. Look at some sections of Yonge Street in Toronto, and you'll see that the development clusters around stations, not in a linear fashion as surface LRT or streetcars will promote.

2) Unlike other cities, we are not simply putting a busier part of the system below grade in response to demand. We are trying to build out to a very advanced state for opening day, which is why we have a light rail line that doesn't even cover a long distance. Build the system now, and if we have 10-20 years where surface operations are viable, use them, then go underground.

3) Surface rail would not be a throwaway cost as the city claims, in any event. If we actually build the Carling LRT it could always come downtown at grade, to complement underground services.

4) There's not enough stations on the tunnel. Bank Street, the most significan north-south commercial corridor in the city doesn't get a station. WTF??? For that matter, why does Sandy Hill get a station that is farther away than the already desolate Campus Station and lose Laurier? If tunnels are not as constrained by right-of-way as the surface, why not build it at King Edward and Laurier, you know, close to the community, then tunnel under King Edward to Lees. it should more or less be the same distance.

5) Anyone who thinks that a tunnel will be built for $600 million with 4 stations is wilfully delusional. Look at the costs in other cities, and tell me how ours are going to be 50% lower than theirs.

As you can see, there are some pretty good reasons to believe that this tunnel is going to end up not promoting any great shift in urban development and auto oriented patterns in this city. The older neighbourhoods of Ottawa will STILL have crappy access to rapid transit, and there's no plan to deal with the former bus lanes on Albert and Slater. Sounds like business as usual at the City of Ottawa to me!

1. for the 1910 proposed CPR tunnel
The Ottawa Citizen, May 5, 1910, p 1
2. for background on the Holt Commission
Barry Podolsky, The Ottawa Citizen, Jan 23, 2009
3. for geology of the Ottawa area
Wilson A.E., Canadian Field Naturalist, vol 70, no 1, p 1-68, 1956
4. for floor heaving at O’Connor and Slater
E.Penner, J.E.Gillot, W.J.Eden. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, vol 7, p 333-338, 1970. NRCC 11437

Jean-Claude Dubé

Since this is a northern country and it snows quite a bit here, I have to wonder, wouldn't surface operations increase operating costs as (opposed to capital costs)? Isn't it then sort of a shift of the cost towards the future?

In Montréal they are making similar noise about expanding the métro on the surface. I doubt the wisdom of that idea too.

This is the best presentation I have yet read on the historical aspects of a downtown Ottawa train tunnel. However, you omitted the 1910 CPR proposal filed at the city registry to run tracks on the bed of a drained Rideau Canal and to bore a tunnel 50 feet under the surface of downtown Ottawa and to run steam engine trains under Wellington Street toward the then called Union Station in LeBreton Flats.
I do not share your conclusions, however, because you are overlooking some very real and pertinent problems to this DOTT project. Foremost is the unpredictable cost due to engineering issues while another is an inadequate foresight in the transition needs of the entire region in this second decade of the third millennium. I describe the present DOTT plan as “tunnel vision”.
The 1910 CPR proposal and the fact that Herbert Samuel Holt, a major investor in the Canadian Pacific Railway as well as being the chair of the Royal Bank of Canada, a rich man and a civil engineer, may have led the Conservative Prime Minister, Robert Borden, to appoint Holt as chairman of a Federal Plan Commission to plan the future growth of the city of Ottawa and the city of Hull. Edward H. Bennett, an American architect, was also appointed to this Commission and hence the Holt-Bennett Plan of the “Holt” Commission.
Mr. Miguelez, you neglect to say that two tunnels were envisaged: one under Wellington St. for the steam railroad trains and one somewhat under Sparks St. for electric streetcars that would end up close to the newly built Union Station for a quick transfer to trains going east to Montreal or north to the Hull train station and beyond over the then recently built Alexandra Bridge. This plan, known as the 1915 General Plan for the Cities of Ottawa and Hull of the Holt Commission and tabled in the middle of the First World War, was also proposing a federal district to carry out its proposals. Then, as well as now, such a concept was and still is deemed unacceptable by the governments of Ontario and Quebec.
The cost of a downtown tunnel in Ottawa is presently estimated at 2.1 billion dollars. This is an incredible sum. If each of those dollars would be a kilometre, the sum would be fourteen times the mean distance between the earth and the sun. If each of those dollars were merely an inch it would travel 1.3 times over the circumference of our planet. This is a capital cost of great magnitude to be totally paid with taxpayers’ dollars.
We really have no idea how much this tunnel will cost because we can only make learned guesses at what is underneath our streets and buildings. The mass behind the cliff face upon which the Parliament Buildings are built is primarily limestone with random cross-sections of black shale. Furtively throughout are water-permeable small faults diverging from the Gloucester fault. This fault, starting somewhere between Ottawa and Cornwall and ending somewhere in the Gatineau hills, meets the Eardley fault near the downtowns of Ottawa and Gatineau. It crosses somewhat perpendicularly the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben, a topographic depression and still seismically-active ancient rift valley in the Canadian Shield. The Ottawa River flows through this graben.
Recent events of the seismic activity of the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben are the 1935 Temiscamingue earthquake (6.1 on the Richter scale) and the Lake Kipawa earthquake east of North Bay in 2000 (Richter 5.1). A 4.5 Richter earthquake happened in Thurso on February 24, 2006. In comparison, the Haiti earthquake measured 7.0 on the Richter scale.
The Ottawa-Gatineau area, being the 4th largest metropolitan area in Canada, is also listed by the Geological Survey of Canada as the third in Canada as an urban area most at risk of an earthquake. This first at risk is Vancouver on the Pacific Rim and the second is Montreal which shares the same seismic zone as Ottawa.
Montreal had a Richter 6.2 earthquake in 1732. The Geological Survey of Canada estimates that there is a 10% chance of an earthquake in the next 50 years that would be strong enough to damage buildings in Ottawa. Of course, being built upon solid rock, there would conceivably be less damage to the Ottawa-Gatineau downtown buildings than to houses built on soft soil and Leda clay in the areas south of Orléans. However, structural damage with water and air intrusions would probably happen in the underground of Ottawa.
In 1961, an addition the Bell Telephone building at the corner of O’Connor and Slater was built on Slater Street. After completion, the basement floor started to heave and this necessitated the continual re-alignment of the generators and switching units plus freeing the partition walls from the ceiling. Over a period of time, this heave reached 10 cm (4 inches) over a floor area of 223 square meters. Although the building was more than 2 kilometres away from the Gloucester fault, it was believed that the damage was due to the numerous minor faults emanating from the Gloucester fault. An investigation was done by scientists from the National Research Council.
This investigation came to the conclusion that building across a fault zone permitted the entry of air that reacted with the water and sulphides present in the fault’s cracks that created an acidic medium that activated dormant bacteria to oxidize inorganic compounds in the shale which converted to substances with a larger mass and so on ….
Let us keep in mind that this proposed downtown Ottawa tunnel transit system is much more than just a tunnel. It involves the building from the surface to deep underground of stations, entrance rooms, hallways, escalators, stairs, platforms and various servicing areas. All of these will have to be built by detonating through limestone and shale. Any structural and geological problems would necessitate cementation at great cost.
I do not believe that burrowing a multi-billion dollar black hole under the vaults of the Bank of Canada is such a great idea. We can do better. YES WE CAN!

(to be continued)

Jean-Claude Dubé
Ottawa, Ont