I wanted to share a positive experience with transit. In the last week I had a trip planned and I wanted to try taking transit and see if it would work. I had a flight at 2:25PM to Montreal and I live a short distance away from Tunny’s. My wife dropped me off at Tunny’s and I took the train and got to the airport in ~50 minutes without any issues.
Now this isn’t the fastest (Driving would have only taken ~20 minutes), but man did it feel great to be able to take the train all the way there. It was a very comfortable and smooth ride. I just wanted to share the positive news to let people know its viable and possible.
If there was higher frequency on line 2, I suspect the commute time would have been closer to ~35-40 minutes, make it even more competitive with driving. I’m hopeful for the future of transit in the city :)
Ottawa has a few extensions to Line 1 in progress, which is very exciting!
Since the OTrain has had a few unfortunate events during its first few years, they have been very careful to ensure there would be as little room to screw the Line 2 opening up as possible. I do think the tracks are straight enough that it could be faster, but I also noticed how smooth the ride on the FLIRT was.
It’s because line 2 still has sections of single track. So the trains can’t go any faster or they would have to wait longer at stations while waiting for the track to clear.