Good to hear! Thanks for your detailed review. However many decades ago Ottawa built the Transitway, to which it recently added the O-train, although this latter has been plagued with problems, delays and budget overruns. What do you think of the Transitway? I used it a lot as a teenager 30 years ago and it was surprisingly fast and efficient. It made commuting to the far eastern and western suburbs of the city (Orleans and Kanata) fast and affordable.
I passed this along to traffic engineering professor, John Morrall, who tried to at least get a BRT discussion going about Calgary's "West Leg" of our LRT system. He estimated a BRT could have served any possible business that line could generate - estimated at most at 30,000/day for the first few decades - for not much over $100M.
But, no, for pride's sake, it had to be LRT, they wouldn't even discuss a lesser solution than a full train. He couldn't even get a BRT discussed. The train involved massive roadworks, creating a new train path between the halves of a newly-divided major road, and elevated stations, the full bit - came in over $1.4B and they can't possibly pay the interest with tolls, even if there were no operating costs.
Painful, therefore, to see how well a BRT would have met the same need.
Good to hear! Thanks for your detailed review. However many decades ago Ottawa built the Transitway, to which it recently added the O-train, although this latter has been plagued with problems, delays and budget overruns. What do you think of the Transitway? I used it a lot as a teenager 30 years ago and it was surprisingly fast and efficient. It made commuting to the far eastern and western suburbs of the city (Orleans and Kanata) fast and affordable.
I passed this along to traffic engineering professor, John Morrall, who tried to at least get a BRT discussion going about Calgary's "West Leg" of our LRT system. He estimated a BRT could have served any possible business that line could generate - estimated at most at 30,000/day for the first few decades - for not much over $100M.
But, no, for pride's sake, it had to be LRT, they wouldn't even discuss a lesser solution than a full train. He couldn't even get a BRT discussed. The train involved massive roadworks, creating a new train path between the halves of a newly-divided major road, and elevated stations, the full bit - came in over $1.4B and they can't possibly pay the interest with tolls, even if there were no operating costs.
Painful, therefore, to see how well a BRT would have met the same need.