Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Crossing their lines: The idea of a transit hub at the VIA rail station has its faults

Another few weeks have passed and Ottawa's guaranteed headline topic of transportation is back on the media agenda. Except this time our issue-weary eyes cannot be easily fixated on City Hall directly.

Apparently there have been moves behind the scenes to move Ottawa's bus terminal -- situated on Catherine St. -- out to Tremblay Rd. with our monument to 1970s architecture, the Via Rail terminal.

Two weeks ago the mayor mused about grouping the bus terminal, Via Rail and our future LRT/bus network out on Tremblay Rd.

In his defence -- since he is presently in China leading a local trade mission -- it appears as though this idea is more a creature of the proponents. That would seem to be Greyhound and possibly Via Rail given their reaction at the time, especially from a Greyhound spokesman.

Conceptually, the idea of an inter-modal transportation hub has some appeal when we think of Union Station's links in Toronto or Grand Central and Penn Station for those who have visited New York. However, these train stations basically link above-ground regional rail, with underground urban rail, no buses need apply. And when you dig deeper, the reality of the proposal is laden with issues of difficulty, disruption, desirability and even danger.

PUBLIC CONSULTATION

To start, the difficulty of such an idea is that it by-passes proper public consultation and engagement of city planners given everything that is happening in the Tremblay Rd. corridor between Riverside D., Industrial Ave. and St. Laurent Blvd.

For example, the 1 million sq. ft., mixed-use Trainyards retail complex is coming into its own as a shopping destination and pushing present traffic capacity to the limit.

As well, this past February Public Works paid $24.75 million to the Ontario Realty Corporation for the 29.6 acre property at 530 Tremblay Rd. which will likely be developed as office space for federal bureaucrats. This development will put further strain on the Tremblay Rd. corridor and the 417/St. Laurent and 417/Riverside Dr.-Vanier Parkway interchanges, not to mention local neighbourhood disruption.

This is already turning into a recipe for fundamental disruption along a key vehicular artery near the core of our city, even without a co-located train and bus facility.

From a business model perspective and desirability for travellers, the case for one central station is dubious at best.

The bus terminal presently serves more than 1.1 million passengers per year. Its top two routes are Ottawa-Montreal and Ottawa-Toronto, with 20 and 15 daily departures/arrivals respectively.

It seems to me that VIA's top traffic volumes would likely serve Montreal and Toronto as well. That means the same two destinations are attracting a different customer demographic with little need for switching between bus and rail. Intuitively this makes sense and was confirmed through my recent observation of line-ups at both the train and bus stations.

SECURITY CONCERN

Finally in a post 9/11 world we should not discount the macabre attractiveness of crippling a city such as Ottawa by, and I shudder to think it, taking out an uber-transportation hub. So security must be a fundamental and enduring concern whatever happens going forward.

As you can tell, I'm no fan of this transport hub idea, but if discussions continue, they should involve the affected communities, city officials, taxi drivers, and most importantly, regular Via and Greyhound passengers.