I spent a few days in Ottawa this month. I’d been in the Ottawa area several times over the years, most recently in 2015. Ottawa is not a huge, complicated metropolis in the way that Toronto, for example, is, but it has seemed to me an exceptionally agreeable place. The aesthetically pleasing and walkable gentrified neighborhoods just south of downtown—for example, Centretown and the Glebe—are particularly noteworthy. A comparison with U.S. urban areas like Raleigh and Oklahoma City that have similar populations (approximately 1.5 million) is revealing. The U.S. places are much more automobile-oriented.
View (looking southeast) of part of Centretown, Ottawa.
In terms of the themes emphasized in this blog, Ottawa’s most distinctive feature is perhaps its large number of pedestrian and bicycle paths (sometimes collectively called the Capital Pathway). There are several hundred kilometers of these. It’s possible that, in proportion to its population, no substantial urban area in North America has a larger number of such features.
The paths are enormously varied. A few (for example, parts of the path along the Ontario side of the Ottawa River) take users far from roads. Others (for example, the path along the Rideau Canal south of the Queensway) are essentially sidewalks along busy highways. Some paths are wide, others uncomfortably narrow. Most are striped; a few are not. Most are for both pedestrians and cyclists, but some of the green lines on the map below represent protected bicycle lanes where pedestrians would be unwelcome.
View of the pathway along the Rideau Canal south of downtown. Photograph made from pedestrian/bicycling bridge that connects the University of Ottawa (and the uOttawa O-Train station) with Centretown. Ottawa’s pathway system also includes many routes that pass through less formal parkland.
Ottawa owes its extensive network of pedestrian and bicycle paths mostly to the efforts of the National Capital Commission (NCC) and its pre-1959 predecessor, the Federal District Commission (FDC), which, in the years after World War II, worked hard to improve Ottawa’s amenities.1 The goal of the FDC and NCC was to transform Ottawa so that the city’s physical form would reflect its status as the capital city of a major country. The work of these commissions was somewhat handicapped by the fact that little money was put at their disposal. In addition, they had an awkward relationship with the Ottawa area’s city governments. But they did at least have federal backing and ended up accomplishing a great deal. They created parkland along Ottawa’s major watercourses: the Ottawa, Rideau, and Gatineau Rivers and the Rideau Canal. They also established a greenbelt around the older parts of the city of Ottawa and took steps to construct recreational spaces in numerous suburban areas as well. As more and more people took up walking, running, and bicycling in the 1970s, the NCC did what it could to improve the then still rather informal network of pathways by filling gaps and paving trails. There have been numerous additions and improvements in the years since, but the basic network was in the place by the early 1980s.2
Map of Ottawa and vicinity showing the O-Train’s routes, the remaining transitways, and pedestrian and bicycling facilities. GIS data chiefly from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap.
Perhaps partly as a result of its pathways, Ottawa had the second highest proportion of workers (8.7%) who got to work by bicycle or on foot among large Canadian urban areas according to the 2016 census (Vancouver was first, with 9.1%). Among large U.S. urban areas, the highest comparable figure was 6.6%, in both New York and San Francisco.3
The open spaces reserved by the FDC and NCC came in handy when a decision was made to improve Ottawa’s transit system in the early 1980s. The Ottawa area by this time had become highly suburbanized and traffic-ridden, but there was still a substantial demand for public transport. The region didn’t seem to have enough people to justify an investment in rail transit. Instead, North America’s largest system of off-road busways (collectively called the Transitway) was created. There were, eventually, east-west corridors in the eastern and western suburbs and north-south corridors on both sides of downtown.4 Bus lanes, considered part of the Transitway system, were built in the CBD. I’d been on the Transitway on earlier trips to Ottawa and found it quite impressive. Unlike some other North American BRT lines, Ottawa’s Transitway (except for the downtown bus lanes) was almost entirely grade-separated, and the stops provided some protection from Ottawa’s often harsh weather.
An Ottawa Transitway station on a rainy day in 2015.
Very likely in part as a result of the pretty good service on the Transitway, public transit has been used by a fairly large proportion of Ottawa’s commuters (18.3% in 2016 in the census metropolitan area). In the second half of the 2010s, among North American urban areas, only New York, Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and (barely) San Francisco (all much more populous—and probably denser—places) had a higher proportion of transit users.5
A very odd digression in Ottawa’s transit history was the addition of the (original) O-Train (now known as the Trillium Line) in 2001. This was an 8-km, mostly single-track “LRT” line between the southern suburbs and an area approximately two kilometers west of downtown in the middle of the NCC’s greenbelt, but at least on the Transitway. The O-Train’s rolling stock consisted of self-propelled diesel cars. Despite its peculiar geography, the Trillium Line did a respectable amount of business (20,000 passengers a day according to one source),6 and it could be said to have whetted the appetite of those in Ottawa who thought that only rail transit would do for the city. (The Trillium Line is now temporarily closed for a major renovation.)
A diesel Trillium Line train along the greenbelt pathway near Trillium Line’s terminus at the Bayview Transitway station. Photograph made in 2015.
Proponents of a more comprehensive rail line eventually got their way, arguing in part that the downtown bus lanes were not working very well. They were used by too many buses, at least in rush hour, and delays were common. Early in the 2010s, a decision was made to build a more conventional urban rail line, the Confederation Line (now sometimes called Line 1), running east-west.
This new 12.5-km O-Train opened in September 2019. It runs through downtown in a 3-km tunnel and mostly replaces the east-west Transitway elsewhere. The surface portions of the O-Train’s alignment still have a few sharp curves that were easier for buses to manage than they are for a train, but you would otherwise hardly know that the route had once been a busway. The old busway has been almost entirely obliterated, and the busway’s stations have all been replaced by much more elaborate structures.
A Line 1 (Confederation Line) O-Train west of downtown running parallel to one of the National Capital Commission’s pathways. Note the Pimisi station in the background.
An O-Train crossing the Rideau River. There are pedestrian and bicycle paths both on the bridge and along the river. Note the high-rise apartment buildings in the background, which lie within easy walking distance of the O-Train (and bus) Hurdman station. Additional TODs near O-Train stations are planned.7
The suburban area at the eastern terminus of the O-Train route at Blair. Note the freeway, the low-density suburbs beyond it, and the tall apartment buildings near the station.
Bus routes have been rethought completely. Many bus riders who once could ride all the way downtown now must change to the train. They’re able to do so fairly easily since there are no fare gates between the bus stops and the train line at the three main transfer stations. But there has still been some grumbling about the inconvenience of a change of vehicle.
The O-Train has had its share of well-publicized problems.8 A downtown cave-in during construction slowed work for months. And the Alstom Citadis rolling stock has not been very reliable. Heating hasn’t always worked; the doors have sometimes gotten stuck; and there have been derailments. But (I’m told) things have settled down over the last year or so.
I was quite impressed by the system, especially by the fact that there are trains every five minutes during the day and early evening. This is more frequent service than is found on most North American heavy-rail lines. One could argue that the O-Train is providing better service than it has to, since the trains are usually not all that crowded, but it’s likely that Covid-19 is a factor here. The system is certainly in most ways state-of-the-art. It’s fully grade-separated (although it’s still called a “light rail” line by its builders). There are accurate countdown clocks in the elaborate stations (but no platform doors). The trains in use when I was there consisted of two very long cars (48 m each), each divided into four modules. They seemed quite comfortable to me. Announcements about coming stations (and mask policy) are provided in English and French, both orally and on digital signs. The large windows offer pleasant views, often of the pathways that run along much of the line.
Inside a Line 1 train.
There are now serious plans (with funding mostly in place) to extend the Confederation Line east and west and the Trillium Line south. The east-west extensions will mostly bypass the existing transitways. The eastern extension will run in part down the middle of a freeway, and the western extension will include a substantial tunnel. A branch of the southern extension will reach the Airport via an elevated segment. An additional extension to Gatineau, across the Ottawa River in Québec, has been discussed, but there are no firm plans actually to build it. A constant lament of some of the literature on Ottawa’s planning efforts has been the lack of cooperation across the provincial boundary.9
Even more than elsewhere, ridership has plummeted during the Pandemic. OC Transpo, Ottawa’s transit agency, argues credibly that ridership is down more in Ottawa than in other Canadian urban areas because remote work is more prevalent in an overwhelmingly white-collar city. Passenger loads are recovering. Overall ridership (including buses) reached 3.8 million in April 2022, up 73% from April 2021 totals but still less than half of pre-Pandemic levels. Ottawa’s O-Train is not, of course, the only radial public transit line suffering from diminished ridership these days.
Even if commuting—and rail ridership—remain lower than expected, Ottawa, especially after the extensions are finished, seems set to end up with an impressive rail line to go with its excellent pathway system. It will be able to provide much more non-automobile-oriented transportation than most North American cities.
- There’s a pretty good description of this process in: Jeff Keshen, “World War Two and the making of modern Ottawa,” in: Construire une capitale, Ottawa = Ottawa, making a capital / edited by Jeff Keshen, Nicole St-Onge. Ottawa : Les presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2001, pages 383-410. ↩
- For a much fuller description of the creation of Ottawa’s bicycling network, including the more recent addition of protected bicycle lanes on city streets, see: Nicholas A. Scott, “Performance and the common good : Copenhagenizing Canada’s capital,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, vol. 25, no. 1 (2016), pages 22-37. For JSTOR version, click here. ↩
- The Canadian figures come from the 2016 census and can be found in Table 1 (“Sustainable transportation by main mode of commuting and census metropolitan area of residence … “) of an on-line article entitled “Commuters using sustainable transportation in census metropolitan areas” (2017). The U.S. figures come from the 2015/2019 American Community Survey and were downloaded from the NHGIS-IPUMS website. The Ontario side of the Ottawa-Gatineau area had a still higher proportion of workers (9.6%) who commuted by “active” transportation modes, and much smaller Victoria, B.C., did even better (16.9%). In the U.S. as well, several smaller metropolitan (and micropolitan) areas with substantial universities—for example, Flagstaff and Champaign-Urbana—also had higher figures. There are subtle differences between the Canadian and U.S. data sets that may create some minor comparability issues. The Canadian figures apply to census metropolitan areas (which consist of a group of “neighbouring municipalities”) and are for “employed persons with a usual place of work or no fixed workplace address.” The U.S. figures apply to metropolitan/micropolitan statistical areas (nearly all county-based) and are for “workers 16 and over who live in metro areas.” ↩
- The cardinal points in Ottawa English and French assume that the Ottawa River is flowing west to east, whereas in fact it flows more or less southwest to northeast as it passes the central city. ↩
- See footnote 3 above for the source of Canadian data. The U.S. figures again come from the 2015/2019 American Community Survey and can be found most conveniently in Table 3 (“Public transportation commuting among 25 large metropolitan areas and their largest cities, 2019”) of an on-line article entitled Commuting by public transportation in the United States, 2019. As noted in footnote 3, there are subtle differences between the Canadian and U.S. data sets that may create some minor comparability issues. ↩
- Source of ridership figure: John Thompson, “Ottawa LRT projects advancing,” Railway Age (March 22, 2022). Other, mostly earlier, sources give lower figures. I was the sole passenger on a couple of runs in 2015. ↩
- Apartment buildings, much easier to serve by public transit than detached houses, are generally more common in Canadian than in U.S. cities. 14% of Ottawa’s housing units are in apartment buildings of five or more stories. ↩
- There have been hundreds of newspaper stories about these. See, for example, Laura Osman, “Off the rails again : Ottawa’s troublesome LRT keeps jumping the tracks,” The Globe and Mail (3 October 2021). ↩
- The problem is partly structural. Canada’s urban areas are even more firmly subordinate to provinces than American urban areas are to states, and there is no simple way to set up a regional government entity that actually has any power. The fact that no major Canadian urban area other than Ottawa crosses a provincial boundary is a factor here. For much more on the difficulty of establishing effective regional cooperation in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, see, for example: The unimagined Canadian capital : challenges for the federal capital region / edited by Rupak Chattopadhyay and Gilles Paquet. Ottawa : Invenire Books, 2011. ↩