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duffo said:
How I'm interpreting this is that they will save the taxpayer money by turfing OC Transpo operators in favour of the private sector.
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Seems like something Ottawa Council would push for. Wonder if Metrolinx will be an upgrade over the suburban-controlled, private-leaning council.
 
duffo said:
How I'm interpreting this is that they will save the taxpayer money by turfing OC Transpo operators in favour of the private sector.
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Could be; on the other hand, Mx contracts to the TTC to run Eglinton and Finch.

Given that there are already trained staff working the system, and that if there were a new operator, presumably their jobs and wages would be safe, it could strictly be a 'new deal' for Ottawa which has strained
financially under the weight of all the things that have gone wrong with the Ottawa rail system.

In which case, it may be simply be that Mx becomes funder and bureacractic layer, but OC Transpo is contracted operator.
 
Northern Light said:
Could be; on the other hand, Mx contracts to the TTC to run Eglinton and Finch.

Given that there are already trained staff working the system, and that if there were a new operator, presumably their jobs and wages would be safe, it could strictly be a 'new deal' for Ottawa which has strained
financially under the weight of all the things that have gone wrong with the Ottawa rail system.

In which case, it may be simply be that Mx becomes funder and bureacractic layer, but OC Transpo is contracted operator.
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Probably. Although Ottawa already isn't really on the hook for most of the things that have happened to the line as the risk was mostly transferred to RTM. We'd still be here if Line 1 operated flawlessly. It's actually the operations part that's breaking the city's back right now. The city wasn't prepared for a 30% reduction of ridership caused by changes in how people commuted. Not that the TTC was either, but transferring part of that burden to the province certainly helps.
 
TossYourJacket said:
Yeah I'm reading this more as Metrolinx replacing RTM than Metrolinx replacing OCTranspo.
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This is a almost certainly a fiscal change only. Nothing changes except who pays the LRT bills and who gets to tender the replacement contracts in ~2045.

Metrolinx doesn't, and doesn't plan to, operate or maintain their own trains on any lines they've built. They're not about to buy-out the current contracts in order to do it themselves.
 
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rbt said:
This is a almost certainly a fiscal change only. Nothing changes except who pays the LRT bills and who gets to tender the replacement contracts in ~2045.

Metrolinx doesn't, and doesn't plan to, operate or maintain their own trains on any lines they've built. They're not about to buy-out the current contracts in order to do it themselves.
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From what Prabhmeet Sarkaria said in the Q/A, they want to do the same thing TTC and Metrolinx have. In Ottawa's case, OC Transpo will run the trains and the day-to-day, while Metrolinx will be in charge of system expansion and dealing with the outsourced maintenance contracts.
 
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Great! I know that there is a lot of grumbling about this system but it does seem to be connecting a lot of the right places. Airport, train, CBD, universities etc. I can’t think of another city in NA of this size that has a rail connection to the main airport.
 
rdaner said:
Great! I know that there is a lot of grumbling about this system but it does seem to be connecting a lot of the right places. Airport, train, CBD, universities etc. I can’t think of another city in NA of this size that has a rail connection to the main airport.
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Ottawa likes to grumble. While there's legitimate issues with the confed line, and some questionable corner cutting with Line 2/4 people tend to ignore the fact will have gone from a short 8km barebones rail line to 64km of fully grade separated rail across the city in just over a decade, for a bargain price of 7 billion
 
Kyle Campbell said:
Ottawa likes to grumble. While there's legitimate issues with the confed line, and some questionable corner cutting with Line 2/4 people tend to ignore the fact will have gone from a short 8km barebones rail line to 64km of fully grade separated rail across the city in just over a decade, for a bargain price of 7 billion
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People are grumbling because the 64 km of grade separated rail takes longer to get people where they're going than the grade separated BRT that was there before. Before 2016 it took 25 minutes to take the bus from the airport to downtown via the Transitway, now it takes 45 minutes by train. The decision to upgrade to rail was a good one for capacity reasons , but cost cutting during design and implementation severely undermined the potential benefits of the rail system.
 
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reaperexpress said:
People are grumbling because the 64 km of grade separated rail takes longer to get people where they're going than the grade separated BRT that was there before. Before 2016 it took 25 minutes to take the bus from the airport to downtown via the Transitway, now it takes 45 minutes by train. The decision to upgrade to rail was a good one for capacity reasons , but cost cutting during design and implementation severely undermined the potential benefits of the rail system.
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The airport is an odd case, that line didn't make much sense from a time perspective. But nobody took the bus to the airport anyway, so it's not really what people are grumbling about. Line 2 from Limebank is faster than the old 99 to downtown via Hurdman

The main grumbling is reliability on line 1, it's improved but the trust isn't there. Basically anything less than 100% isn't good enough for people now that their trust is broken after.two derailments. There's also a fair number of slow zones, which is disappointing for a system that's a few years old
 
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