Confederation Line trains leaving Lincoln Fields Station will proceed south into the Pinecrest Creek corridor. Immediately past Woodroffe HS, the line will split, with some trains going on to Baseline and others turning west towards Bayshore.
Baseline Station is located on the west side of Woodroffe Avenue at the western edge of Algonquin College campus, itself a large traffic generator. The Station will be the southern terminus of the Confederation line for many many years and thus will be a major transfer point to local buses and buses to Barrhaven / Riverside South.
Before the current plaza was built on the west side of the new Algonquin Building, a large underground station was constructed. It is designed to take trains or buses, and is huge.
The pic below sketches the before view and the future layout and main surface entrance. Three existing covered-over light wells/stairwells will also be opened up into the underground platforms. Of the three colleges / universities on the LRT, it looks like Algonquin will get the largest station, followed by Ottawa U with the renovated Campus Station, and Carleton will continue to have bus shelters accessed via a corrugated pipe underpass.
The current bus staging area to the south of the station will be relocated even further south, on the future southward extension right of way.
College Avenue comes in from the upper right, by the Algonquin greenhouses and south side of the existing buildings, to access the surface level bus platforms located where they now are. Eventually additional bus facilities will be located immediately south of College Avenue, as shown by the transparent cube to the right of the station in the sketch above.
A pathway is planned for the east side of the LRT alignment all the way from Navaho Drive to Iris. Presumably the west side pathway will also continue to be in place, but its worth asking about.
The nearby parking lots by the Constellation Building (city offices) is already planned for more commercial buildings, as are a number of vacant lots between there and Baseline. Hopefully a Transit-oriented development study (ToD) will do better than the disappointing one at Tremblay (VIA) Station as discussed here a few stories ago.
As mentioned earlier, the Confederation Line trains leaving Lincoln Fields will head south up the Pinecrest Creek corridor towards a junction just south of Woodroffe high school. Some trains will continue south along the creek to Baseline; every other train will ver off to the west, travelling under a park, thru or under or beside the space occupied by the OC Transpo west end garage, and into an open cut along the Queensway. The cut and the Queensview Station will be in the space between the Queensway and Leons, the Upper Room, Fuller, and other businesses.
(above: my approximation of the route to Queensview Station) The Queensview Station will be in an open cut, with a ped bridge over the Queensway far above. This was discussed in greater detail a few articles past, which can be found by using the back button at the bottom of the page. In the picture below, the new station is right between Leon’s and the Queensway, with the OC Transpo garage at an angle to the right.
I note we have not named this IKEA Station. Although in Europe, I noticed transit stations gave prominent directions to IKEA — obviously catering to user reality — or simply named the station IKEA. Who wants to bet people will refer to Queensview-you-know-the-station-for-IKEA?
The next west station is at Pinecrest. The current transitway station / bus shelters, is on the north edge of the interchange; the LRT Station will be much closer to the Queensway alignment. Again, the station is a simple centre platform, open air, in a cut, with stair and elevator access up to Pinecrest just before it becomes a bridge over the freeway:
The base picture used for the city sketch above is unfortunately taken while the current transitway station was under construction so it does not reflect what is there today:
Nor does the sketch show that there will be stairs and elevators up to Pinecrest on both sides of that road. The MTO is considering rebuilding the overpass at the same time, so there is opportunity (which could yet be missed !) to improve the horrid overpass for people who walk and cycle as well as people who drive. There is also a pathway to the Foster Farm neighbourhood to the west.
The south on Pinecrest to westbound on ramp has been moved to just south of the new LRT Station, which frees up a chunk of land where the ramps used to be on the north side of the LRT Station.
Traffic going north on Pinecrest will access the Queensway westbound from a squared-off signalized intersection replacing the current remnant of the original cloverleaf design. This will be much safer for people who walk and people who bike to use Pinecrest without high speed vehicles making high speed exits and merges. Hopefully, the remaining ramp-type exits on the south side could also be squared off so that pedestrians might make it safely to IKEA.
The terminus station for the Western LRT is at Bayshore.
The existing transitway platforms will be reused by the trains, and additional bus platforms will be built. The station will offer walkin ability to Holly Acres road. The bus parking zone will be moved west of the new Station.
It looks as if the LRT Station reuses the not-terribly direct existing walkways to the Bayshore Mall. With all the millions the Mall is spending on parking garages, it would have been nice to have spent even a dime on making better, more welcoming transit connections.
West of Bayshore will be the extended transitway. It will cross Holly Acres road at an intersection. The design of the Bayshore Station and the design of the transitway westwards will be fully accommodate later conversion to LRT, although it is obvious a grade separation will be required at Holly Acres Road. Express and local buses from Kanata will terminate at Bayshore or Baseline Stations.
Note that the existing transitway station at Queensway will be closing soon, to make way for widening the freeway. Oddly enough, we are expanding the roads at the same time as we built transit along the same route. Hmm.
I think the most interesting thing for the stretches south and southwest of Lincoln Fields will be the need for more trains from Bayshore in the morning, and the need for more trains to Baseline in the morning.
Granted, there might be fewer people going from Lincoln Fields to Bayshore in the morning now, but the DND complex (former Nortel Campus) will eventually have more than 10,000 workers and most of them will be heading west in the morning. (If the train had been extended one stop, to Moodie, then some of the DND workers would likely have walked the last kilometre and the west-bound # 118 buses that stop in Bells Corners could have been continued north on Moodie, past the train station, to the DND complex; working as a shuttle. But that is a different issue.)
Remember that Baseline Station is going to be the transfer station between the buses from the south and the train. A huge number of the people who take a north-bound bus from Barrhaven will be transferring onto the trains at Baseline in the morning.
I think the interesting part will be how OC Transpo balances the two branches. Currently there is 15-ish minute service on the # 95, plus, half-hour service from the # 94, on a Saturday, for example, but there is only half-hour service for the # 96. So the Central Transitway sees eight buses per hour, six from Baseline and two from Bayshore. Each large trains will carry more than a couple of bus loads of passengers. If the trains are every 15 minutes through the core, then there will be only half-hour service on each branch; a drop in frequency for Baseline Station. Alternatively, Bayshore could get twice its current frequency and the main line would have eight partially filled trains an hour. Thus, I think it will be the off-peak branch imbalance which will prove to be the most interesting; seeing whether low-use branch gets improved frequency or the other branch gets less frequent service. Users see a level of service reduction when the frequency of service is cut; even if it is more efficient for OC Transpo operations. Since OC Transpo was predicting a large annual saving from the switch to trains, I think I know which option they are going to choose.
Indeed. Though actually right now there is more than the 96 (separate from the express routes)! There is also the 93, and 101; and the 97 traffic is also important between Lincoln Fields and Bayshore. Of course there is plenty of time to plan traffic flow changes.
As it is now, the 96 is actually 15 minutes in off peak, the 101 is 20 minutes except Sunday, and 93 is 30 minutes. The 95 is 5 minutes, 94 15-30 minutes. The 97 is 20 minutes and 87 is 15-30 minutes.