Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Ottawa Public Transit: An Intro






Ottawa Public Transit:


I'm going to start by introducing and going over key points about ottawa's public transit system and how it works.

I'm going go over the in's and outs of Ottawa by explaining how to get to and from the city.

Ottawa is conveniently located 2 hours west-south-west of Montreal(canadas second largest metro area, Ottawa being third). Ottawa is about 5 hours north from the largest city in the nation, Toronto. These three cities are the heart of the nation. They are linked by several modes of transportation including greyhound bus, VIA rail, and provincial highways.


Ottawa has other surrounding areas that range from 5 000 people to 55000 in population.
These include;
Arnprior, Kemptville, Smiths falls, Carleton Place, Almonte, Cornwall, Kingston, Casselman, Renfrew, Pembroke, Petawawa, North Bay and, in Quebec, Gatineau(I will explain the relevance of this area in a second), Aylmer, Wakefield, Chelsea, Gracefield, Buckingham, Thurso, and Maniwaki.


All of these areas are connected to Ottawa via various privately owned bus companies(ex. Greyhound and Transport Thom)


Ottawa is only a little less than 1/8th of the contributing population in the metro Ottawa-Gatineau region(total pop. 1.1million approx)

The Gatineau part of this area refers to Le ville de Gatineau, which is the city of about 300, 000 people on the north side of the Ottawa river in Quebec. These two cities are connected to each other via two major public bus services. Société de transport de l'Outaouais, or STO in short, servi

ces aylmer, hull, and Gatineau both locally and rapidly. ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Société_de_transport_de_l%27Outaouais )

Ottawa Carleton Transpotation or OC transpo is ottawa's rapid and local transit bus and train(admittedly only one line) service. ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=Octranspo )

Both these services operate regular and express service to and from each other over various bridges in the downtown core.

OC T

ranspo is Ottawa's only source of public transit. It consists of several bus only roads or "transitway's" and a heavy rail line(the O-train)

Ottawa has the highest ridership of any city of similar size in North America. This does not mean it is the best... Late buses, confuseing transit paths and, terrible connection with important nodes are just some of the criticisms of the OC transpo. The airport is connected to the downtown core by buses( not very tourist and business friendly) the O train runs from the south of the city and connects the important node, carleton university, with a field. There is also no major transit ways through the downtown core or kanata/stittsville, forcing buses to use streets. Also the main train station(VIA Rail) is located a few miles from downtown and requires tourists to take a bus to get there.



These are all issues the current Transit Master Plan is looking at fixing by 2020. Allthough there are problems with that which I will address in later blog posts.

I will be going over the current transit layout of the city and the general urban layout in my next blog posting.

Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

An Introduction...

Hi, my name is Wes, and I am a twenty year old from Ottawa. I have a great interest in Urban Planning and General Urban Development.

I work for the local municipality here and am currently checking out the City Of Ottawa Transit Master plan - 2010. This interests me as well as confuses the heck out of me. I am posting blogs to inform people of my ideas that seem like feasible ideas. I would also like to make some comments on my concerns of the Master Plan draft.

I hope people from Ottawa read this and also voice their ideas and concerns regarding anything from the rapid transit, local transit, inter provincial transit, inter municipality transit, and road networking in Ottawa.

Here is the City Of Ottawa Transit Masterplan - 2010.

I will be posting a summary of ideas that are in my realm of interest and go over them in detail as well as voice alternatives, and concerns.

Enjoy and please enjoy!