On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Context: Lincoln Fields is one of the Transitway stations being refitted for service as part of OC Transpo's Confederation Line O-Train service in Ottawa's West End...

From Yonah Freemark of The Transport Politic:

https://twitter.com/yfreemark/status/1377390375854219265

The map attached explains one more positive thing that can be done to slow down or stop climate damage, improve the international economy, and generally make life easier for more people.

Public transit...there's a topic.

My understanding of the current state of OC Transpo and STO across the river in Gatineau goes like this: the buses and trains here are usually, at worst, ¾ empty. Everyone aboard has mostly managed to keep their distance from each other, and masks are standard good-manners practice. I can't afford to not use it if I want to leave my neighbourhood to do anything outside of it.

I keep paying for my monthly bus pass despite my lack of usage because they're a continuing target for deficit hawks, and they need the money to maintain the facilities and fleets for when Pandemic is finally over. Even if the levels of demand-for-service stay reduced afterward, the transit services have to be able to do their work safely.

I recently got called a "social thought leader". This, in the context of a push to get an O-Train line built under Bank Street:

https://clintondesveaux.medium.com/ottawans-favourable-to-bank-street-o-train-tunnel-a85925c68977

As I said in the comments:

YES. This is exactly the point. Transit preserves civil society. Therefore it must be protected and defended, even as we defend funding for police, firefighting, public broadcasting, etc..

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2020/04/coronavirus-public-transit-subway-bus-ridership-revenue/609556/

I went to the Shenkman Arts Centre last night. City Hall had announced a public briefing/Q&A session to discuss the plans for leveraging redevelopment goals from OC Transpo's "Phase 2" plans to expand O-Train service from Blair Station into Orléans itself, and I wanted to see what's going on with that. The plans are collectively referred to at City Hall's website as "the Orléans Transportation Corridor".



Briefly, I'd say that the session was informative, and while there was a preoccupation among many of my fellow attendees with the consequences of the O-Train for their driving, with needs for supporting infrastructure...the city representatives, including Orléans Ward councillor Matt Luloff, managed to get the word out about the wider ambitions of this plan.



Particular attention went to St. Joseph's Boulevard. If you've been able to visit that original "main street" of Orléans in recent days, you'll understand why City Hall might want to see some changes in the look of it. Many businesses are housed in facilities set well back from the sidewalk, with wide swathes of parking lot making pedestrian access to those buildings and the businesses they house more difficult than it's needed to be. Some of the more recent buildings added to St. Joseph - the new facilities for Shoppers Drug Mart, the Royal Bank, Farm Boy, etc. in particular - were built to accomodate this goal through specific incentive programs jointed referred to as a "Community Improvement Plan".

(The attendance was high enough to require the attendees to split into simultaneously-briefed sessions on the first and second floors. I attended the second-floor session in full, but managed to catch a glimpse of the ground-floor session towards its end on my way home.)



Ideally, the goal is to steer St. Joseph Boulevard to more closely resemble the Wellington West and ByWard Market "main street" areas.



(Making a note to add photographic detail for the neighbourhoods I'm referring to later in the day!)

There's two of them right now:

ottawa_gatineau, which is devoted to discussing stuff going on in the Ottawa-Gatineau region of Canada, including its core cities.

viarail_fandom, for talking about passenger rail service across Canada in all its forms, regardless of its name.

Crossposted from viarail_fandom

This is a six-year-old project. Call it mapping of ambitions. I doubt that the Canadian government of 2019 shares them, but here they are.

For your listening interest...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/will-canada-ever-get-high-speed-rail-1.5402952