Councillors decided to bury it a year and a half ago, but Ottawa’s stubborn new light rail line through the downtown may yet refuse to go underground.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty mused last month that costs for the new Tunney’s Pasture-to-Blair Road project were getting out of hand, having risen to $2.1 billion from $1.4 billion. That threw up another red flag in Ottawa’s long-running light rail saga, since the city is counting on the province to kick in a third the project’s cost, along with another third from the federal government.
The only clear way to save a sizeable chunk of money is to ditch the downtown tunnel portion, which likely means reverting to the idea of running trains on either Albert Street or Slater Street, or both. That’s the plan that was summarily dumped in 2006 by the newly elected city council and Mayor Larry O’Brien, costing the city about $100 million in wasted expenditures and penalties for breaching a contract.
Coun. Alex Cullen, the transit committee chair, hated the old plan, and says businesses on Albert and Slater that would have lost parking and front delivery access hated it too. “It was a trolley car,” says Cullen – not real rapid transit in his estimation. He thought it would do little to ease the congestion wrought by up to 185 buses choking the corridor at peak times.
But according to Dennis Gratton, an urban planner and Senior Project Manager at the City of Ottawa, the 2006 plan was a “very viable” cheaper option to a tunnel. It would have worked for about 15 to 20 years before a tunnel was needed. Surface light rail can move close to the speed of underground trains to a certain capacity.
These days, though, council wants to build a tunnel first, a decision Gratton says came from new data showing more people than expected commuting downtown and using the Transitway bus routes on Albert and Slater. “The tunnel really seemed to be best option not just for the short term but for the long term, for something we can keep using for 100 to 150 years,” says Gratton. Ottawa has big plans for expansion of the system over time, so the thinking at city hall is to do the full job to begin with, rather than going with the interim solution above ground.
“If you’ve got enough money to do the full job and build a tunnel, well, why not?” Neil McKendrick says this with the joking tone of a guy who’s been in the business a long time and knows there’s never enough money. He is the Manager of Transit Planning with the Calgary Transit System, but also has an Ottawa connection. Before Calgary he was at the former Gloucester Township – now amalgamated into Ottawa – and worked on laying out the Transitway rapid bus system before heading west in 1980 to work on their C-Train.
McKendrick wears his bare-bones, incremental approach to expanding light rail like a badge of honour, and gives presentations across North America – including Ottawa – about the Calgary approach.
McKendrick tells how in a sprawling, car-oriented city, transit planners had to constantly prove their light rail system was worth further investments. “We focused on spending money on things that were going to generate ridership.” A whole downtown street was closed to traffic and turned into a dedicated “transit mall.” Two lines – making what will soon be a rough “X” across the city – converge in the mall. Trains are timed to hit all the green lights and only stop at their stations. Normal traffic flow on cross-streets isn’t affected, and Alex Cullen’s fear that trains downtown in Ottawa would cause congestion doesn’t exist in Calgary.
“We at the time recognized that to build a tunnel with the funds that were available, we wouldn’t have had a system that went very far,” says McKendrick on the transit mall. “We would have ended up with a lot of money sunk into underground stations and very little money providing service.” Compare that to Edmonton, which built a downtown tunnel early on. “They ended up with one line,” says McKendrick.
In Calgary, investing minimally in the downtown core with simple outdoor platforms meant more funds for expanding the system across the city. That meant more support for the system, which meant more money, which meant even more service.
Within 15 to 20 years, Calgary will also need a subway. Increased ridership on the two rail lines will overcome the transit mall’s capacity. Even then, Calgary plans to keep costs down where possible. Only one line will move underground while the other stays above. McKendrick explains that from a technical standpoint this is much easier than having trains from different lines converge together in the tunnel, as Ottawa intends to happen eventually.
McKendrick says “there are some pretty good people in Ottawa” working on light rail and he respects the conclusions they’ve reached. He just points with pride to his own system, which has top ridership among similar systems in North America for the lowest cost. And while Gratton says Ottawa is still working to reach a target of having 30% of commuters going downtown via transit, Calgary boasts 42% using its train to get to work downtown, and they’ll run a tunnel-free system for another 15 years.
Edmonton, for its part, is finally expanding its light rail system but projects its downtown tunnel will actually run out of capacity, forcing some routes to operate above ground.
Dennis Gratton warns that comparing cities is “never apples to apples.” For one thing, Ottawa in 2009 isn’t Edmonton and Calgary of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they opened their light rail systems to build on existing local bus service. Ottawa’s Transitway could be considered comparable to a light rail system.
And while McKendrick in Calgary had to carefully entice riders to justify expanding his system, Ottawa doesn’t seem to be hurting for riders – too many people using the downtown Transitway on Albert and Slater is the problem.
But whether or not funds will come through for the tunnel project remains to be seen. It’s slated to finish in 2017. How to pay for it or something to replace it will have to be worked out soon. So many buses will be needed downtown by 2018 that Gratton predicts a “system failure” of the status quo.
Chris Ferguson grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario, but has lived all over Canada. He's interested in telling stories that inform and engage citizens to act in their communities and hold their governments to account. When he's not doing schoolwork (which is sadly rare), he can be found cross-country skiing, curling and talking about ideas.