I noticed a few changes to some Ottawa bus stops. Mostly to the good. Kudos to OC Transpo.
Here’s an existing stop on the transitway in the downtown. Notice the draft gap below the glass.
And all across the upper part of the glass, above the advert, another draft gap:
Yes, these shelters are better than nothing, but now check out the improved ones:
Solid, right to the concrete sidewalk. Now more frozen feet. Well, less frozen. Note the door on the right.
No big upper gap either:
The woodgrain panel on the top and the underside of the roof blends in with the design of the LRT Stations. The roofs have a swoop too:
The ones pictured here are at Tunney’s transfer station. I hope they are not being reserved just for a few transfer points. I can think of lots of places where these features could be employed, starting with my the bus stops nearest my house.
The new shelters are much larger than the standard ones. Check out the bolt holes in the pavement in the foreground that show the old shelters being about 30% narrower than the new one. They even had to widen the platform area to accommodate the new shelters:
The new shelters also have doors on them. On Wednesday I popped into one at Tunneys that was in the sunshine and it was positively warm. The greenhouse effect giving much welcome mini-climate warming.
The Tunney’s shelters have lighting inside. Great !
At Lincoln Fields, and other stations, real-time bus schedules have been appearing. While they don’t make the bus come any faster, knowing how long one is to wait, and what other route options might appear, is comforting and makes the wait less stressful. The screens seemed to show all buses going through the station. Maybe later they can curated to show primarily the buses coming to one’s own platform first. Too much information can be just as stressful as too little.
The times with an asterisk beside them are real time, not schedule time. My smartphone app also shows real times, and also shows what make of bus is coming my way (regular, double decker, or articulated, with or without a bike rack).
Downtown, the Lyon Station entrance to the subway that faces Queen Street is built under the Podium building, which used to house the Place de Ville cinemas. That building was rezoned some time ago to permit it to grow to 20 stories or so, up and over the new station entrance. Presumably the other entrance, that faces Lyon Street itself, could also be incorporated into the apartment towers Claridge has zoning for on that site.
The old entrance to the Podium Building is from the Place de Ville sunken plaza level. A few months ago, reconstructed Queen Street sidewalks still had several outdoor steps down to the new station entrance. These are an obvious fall and winter maintenance hazard.
Now, the sidewalk has been reconstructed (or has the station floor been raised?) to eliminate that outdoor stair:
Meanwhile, down near Bayview Station, recall that the eastbound (towards the downtown) bus stops were moved in September from the crest of the hill over to Bayview Road / Tom Brown. This results in a rather long walk for folks transfering to and from the Trillium OTrain Line.
Completely forgotten in that move were the people who not transferring. These users include people along Preston, City Centre Avenue, etc, and included both business workers, customers, and residents.
It has been further complicated by the closure of the south side sidewalk on Albert for the next many months:
It the better part of three months since the Bayview Station bus stop moved to Bayview Rd, but a new bus stop has appeared at the corner of City Centre Avenue, albeit only for the 95 and 16 buses. Asphalt seems to been hard to find. This unfortunate soul was an early user:
Alas, he gave up waiting and headed off towards LeBreton Station instead:
Those new shelters have been installed at Hurdman since the end of summer. Great improvement.
These bus stops look good. In Ottawa South the other day I remembered the really, really bad cement square one at Bank and Grove. A public urinal really, but on a windy winter day or night, had to go inside.
There are lots of different and interesting different OCTranspo shelters. The black one you chose to photograph at Slater and Metcalfe is interesting, as it is unique in the system and no other shelter is quite like it, with curved glass end panels. Other shelters with curved roofs all have a metal panel to allow identical rectangular glass to be used in all shelters. All shelters in the OC Transpo system, save for some very old ones, use the same size of glass panels to simplify maintenance. All shelters are therefore fixed to being one or two panels of glass deep.
The shelters you picture at Tunney’s are unique to train stations, as the design matches. Blair, Hurdman and Tunney’s will all have some. They are also built with provisions for heat, though I believe only the night stop will be equipped initially.
The Trillium line shelters that were upgraded in 2013 all feature sealed bottoms, though the tops are vented as they don’t have doors or heat. One shelter was removed from each platform at Carleton this past year, as part of the faregate project (they were replaced, just with four smaller shelters). I was pleased to see the reused shelter pop up on Date Centre road at Heron Station, with the sealed bottom intact.
Baseline has shelters similar to the ones installed along the Trillium line, but two glass panels deep. Doors, sealed bottoms and heat were retrofitted onto all of the shelters there last year. It doesn’t look as finished as the ones at Tunney’s, and the top is still vented, but it does the job.
You’re probably seen a few of the current shelters OC is installing at regular bus stops; silver, normal sized, and with a curved, transparent roof. The transparent roof is nice as light from streetlights can enter the shelter, but sun does as well on a hot summer day. Ventilation in these shelters is still important because of this.
The real-time arrival screens are very nice. As you notice, the screens at concourse level show all routes serving the station. At each individual stop though, the screens show only the routes serving that stop. The concourse level screen st Greenboro is absolutely gigantic, 72 inches or so. Overall, it seems the screen project was very well executed by OC.