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With money burning holes in government pockets all across the land, now’s the time to build the light-rail system Gatineau deserves, Hull-Aylmer MP Greg Fergus says.
Light rail hasn’t been in Gatineau’s transit plan, except in the distant future once it’s outgrown the Rapibus busway that opened in 2013 and that it still hasn’t finished extending to the northeast. But there’s a rare confluence of circumstances just now, Fergus says, with a federal government looking to spend billions on infrastructure, Hydro-Québec eager to drum up business by encouraging transit powered by electricity, and a city that needs better transit service to its west end, which Fergus represents.
“There’s a cost to not doing this,” Fergus says. “The cost is not taking advantage of this great alignment of the stars.”
Rapibus runs from just west of downtown Hull, at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, to Labrosse Boulevard in the east on its own Transitway-like separated road. Aylmer is connected to it by bus lanes on Aylmer Road and Taché Boulevard but doesn’t have dedicated Rapibus service.
“I’m a daily rider of the STO. There is a real need, there’s a problem, we need a better offer of service to the west of the city,” Fergus says. “I favour that it should run along the east-west corridor where there’s the greatest population density, which is Aylmer (Road).”
There’s even an opportunity to replace the Rapibus line with rail, he says, jumping decades ahead in Gatineau’s transit planning. “Rapibus was always pitched as a transitory transit system, a temporary one,” he says. “We always had the idea of moving to rail. Ottawa is moving to rail.”
Gatineau is studying that problem, says Coun. Gilles Carpentier, the chairman of the Société de transports de l’Outaouais, Gatineau’s transit agency. It’s commissioned detailed work on how better to connect Aylmer to the rest of Gatineau, and Gatineau to Ottawa.
“Obviously, Mr. Fergus’s opinion will be considered in the process, but there’s no defined solution on what will be presented to the board of directors,” Carpentier says. He’s very happy to hear that MPs like Fergus — plus his Liberal colleagues Will Amos and Steven MacKinnon — are eager to find transit in Gatineau, but Gatineau’s nowhere close to knowing what it wants. The study might recommend rail to Aylmer, it might recommend a Rapibus extension, it might recommend one corridor or two.
The advantage of switching the buses out for trains now would be better links to Ottawa’s light-rail system, Fergus says. The Rapibus line now sweeps just past the north end of the Prince of Wales Bridge, which crosses the Ottawa River at the northwest corner of LeBreton Flats and has tracks on it that run to Ottawa’s Bayview transit station. The City of Ottawa bought the bridge, once upon a time, intending to run trains on it into Gatineau.
The Prince of Wales Bridge has been a light-rail bridge, a heavy-rail bridge, a bike and pedestrian bridge and a bus bridge, though only ever in planners’ imaginations. The Ottawa Senators imagine it as a route to a new arena at LeBreton Flats, though who knows when. It’s in poor condition.
(Spiffing it up wouldn’t be a bad investment, mind you.)
The STO has previously made its own case against light rail, even on its Rapibus corridor. The chairman of the STO when Rapibus opened, Patrice Martin, pointed out that at peak times, the Rapibus line could be expected to carry 3,500 people in its busier direction; even a light light-rail line can move 20,000 people both ways.
“Comparative studies carried out for the STO showed that BRT (bus-based transit) was the mode that met our needs best,” Martin wrote in a long public explanation for why rail wasn’t right for Gatineau yet. And that’s on its busiest spine route. Light rail is cheaper to run than buses, per passenger, if the buses are full to bursting, but an underused train line is a money pit. A trench, actually, a kilometres-long money trench. Federal and provincial money might help build a rail line but the city has to run it.
Thinking of a civil engineering work as something a community deserves is dangerous. That’s how you get expensive stuff you don’t need. A government looking for big things to spend money on is just as dangerous, and now the two might find one another in Gatineau.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Light rail hasn’t been in Gatineau’s transit plan, except in the distant future once it’s outgrown the Rapibus busway that opened in 2013 and that it still hasn’t finished extending to the northeast. But there’s a rare confluence of circumstances just now, Fergus says, with a federal government looking to spend billions on infrastructure, Hydro-Québec eager to drum up business by encouraging transit powered by electricity, and a city that needs better transit service to its west end, which Fergus represents.
“There’s a cost to not doing this,” Fergus says. “The cost is not taking advantage of this great alignment of the stars.”
Rapibus runs from just west of downtown Hull, at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, to Labrosse Boulevard in the east on its own Transitway-like separated road. Aylmer is connected to it by bus lanes on Aylmer Road and Taché Boulevard but doesn’t have dedicated Rapibus service.
“I’m a daily rider of the STO. There is a real need, there’s a problem, we need a better offer of service to the west of the city,” Fergus says. “I favour that it should run along the east-west corridor where there’s the greatest population density, which is Aylmer (Road).”
There’s even an opportunity to replace the Rapibus line with rail, he says, jumping decades ahead in Gatineau’s transit planning. “Rapibus was always pitched as a transitory transit system, a temporary one,” he says. “We always had the idea of moving to rail. Ottawa is moving to rail.”
Gatineau is studying that problem, says Coun. Gilles Carpentier, the chairman of the Société de transports de l’Outaouais, Gatineau’s transit agency. It’s commissioned detailed work on how better to connect Aylmer to the rest of Gatineau, and Gatineau to Ottawa.
“Obviously, Mr. Fergus’s opinion will be considered in the process, but there’s no defined solution on what will be presented to the board of directors,” Carpentier says. He’s very happy to hear that MPs like Fergus — plus his Liberal colleagues Will Amos and Steven MacKinnon — are eager to find transit in Gatineau, but Gatineau’s nowhere close to knowing what it wants. The study might recommend rail to Aylmer, it might recommend a Rapibus extension, it might recommend one corridor or two.
The advantage of switching the buses out for trains now would be better links to Ottawa’s light-rail system, Fergus says. The Rapibus line now sweeps just past the north end of the Prince of Wales Bridge, which crosses the Ottawa River at the northwest corner of LeBreton Flats and has tracks on it that run to Ottawa’s Bayview transit station. The City of Ottawa bought the bridge, once upon a time, intending to run trains on it into Gatineau.
The Prince of Wales Bridge has been a light-rail bridge, a heavy-rail bridge, a bike and pedestrian bridge and a bus bridge, though only ever in planners’ imaginations. The Ottawa Senators imagine it as a route to a new arena at LeBreton Flats, though who knows when. It’s in poor condition.
(Spiffing it up wouldn’t be a bad investment, mind you.)
The STO has previously made its own case against light rail, even on its Rapibus corridor. The chairman of the STO when Rapibus opened, Patrice Martin, pointed out that at peak times, the Rapibus line could be expected to carry 3,500 people in its busier direction; even a light light-rail line can move 20,000 people both ways.
“Comparative studies carried out for the STO showed that BRT (bus-based transit) was the mode that met our needs best,” Martin wrote in a long public explanation for why rail wasn’t right for Gatineau yet. And that’s on its busiest spine route. Light rail is cheaper to run than buses, per passenger, if the buses are full to bursting, but an underused train line is a money pit. A trench, actually, a kilometres-long money trench. Federal and provincial money might help build a rail line but the city has to run it.
Thinking of a civil engineering work as something a community deserves is dangerous. That’s how you get expensive stuff you don’t need. A government looking for big things to spend money on is just as dangerous, and now the two might find one another in Gatineau.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
