Reece Martin

Ottawa’s O-Train Trillium Line, or Line 2, is a very interesting diesel “light rail” line that is really more like an islanded European interurban train line, originally opened with European DMUs (literally part of a DB order) and signalling, with 5 basic stops and reasonably frequent service.

The original “O-Train” was a real success story in cost-effective transit construction, and has performed fairly well in terms of ridership — especially considering its <$100 million initial cost, which for a frequent rail line with 5 stations is unthinkable today, where single subway stations cost several times that.

But Ottawa has changed, notably opening the new electric Line 1, which, despite its problems, seems to slowly be growing more and more reliable, and which already benefits from very frequent service (that may be getting cut, but at least we know the line can support high frequencies), and stations that are superbly well-located for connections to key Ottawa destinations such as the VIA Rail Station, Byward Market, the Rideau Centre, Downtown, U-Ottawa, and Tunney’s Pasture (to be supplemented by many new stations and destinations as part of Stage 2).

This pretty much immediately left the original O-Train feeling outdated and inadequate, and so since only a short time after Line 1 opened, Line 2 has been closed for work to completely rebuild it to offer higher capacity (with new 80-metre platforms that support roughly doubly-long new trains from Stadler), new stations (two new infill stops are being added on the existing line), and a major extension south to near Barrhaven with a few other green belt stops that are going to be super dependent on park-and-ride, as well as to the airport via a shuttle train service.

While these improvements are significant and obvious very positive — existing stations will be made nicer, new stations will feel like more substantial facilities, and new larger trains will be in service, reflecting on the project now, it’s hard not to feel like the work was a missed opportunity to go further and take Line 2 to the next level, especially since the work has taken years and is going to be completed late.

The obvious question then is “what does the end state for Line 2 look like”?

I’ve talked about the idea of extending the line into downtown Ottawa before, so in this article I am only really talking about what I think you’d want to change on the rest of the line to get it to a place where there aren’t obvious improvements that need to be made to it to provide more and better service.

The first thing is finally just double tracking the line. This is probably the thing that annoys me the most about the Stage 2 project — so much of Line 2 is already double-tracked, but without more (which could have been built for little marginal cost on top of the current works, both in terms of time and money) service is still going to be limited to around every 10 minutes — just as before, which is going to prevent increasing capacity by making the service more attractive, instead of just using larger trains. The single track remaining also means that the airport line must operate as a shuttle, when I think its pretty clear that it makes more sense as a branch, especially since it will mean people need to change trains three times to get to downtown Ottawa. Just simply having the track capacity to run trains every 6 minutes both to Barrhaven and the airport would dramatically improve the usefulness of the line for everyone — doubling frequency on the preexisting portions of the line, and providing the original Line 2 level of frequency to the new destinations to the south.

Line 2 also obviously needs to be electrified. It felt a bit weird that it wasn’t when the new FLIRTs (which can obvious run on electricity) were first unveiled, but this is even moreso the case in 2024, with it seeming clear that the days of diesel passenger trains are numbered (trains tend to last decades, so now Ottawa is either stuck or going to need to spend a lot of money “converting” these trains). Of course, electrification is probably frighteningly expensive in Canada in 2024, but with Line 1 electrified and the climate crisis growing ever more urgent, it really seems like a missed opportunity. And for the record, the electrification would also help improve train performance, making it easier to hit that higher frequency, and electrification could be at the same voltage that we already see on Line 1 to simplify things a bit.

Now, for both double-tracking and electrification, there is a spanner in the works, and that’s the Dow’s Lake tunnel, which is a restrictive single-track tunnel in the middle of the line. Fortunately, it really shouldn’t be a problem. The tunnel is only about 600 meters long, and a train can pass through it in less than a minute, so you could get away with double tracking the entire line except for the tunnel (though we could do it — double tracking everything else should just be trivial) and still run frequent service, just perhaps not quite as frequent as on Line 1. Electrification might also seem like a problem, but (and this probably would also not be necessary if not for all our infrastructure construction costs problems) this is where battery FLIRTs (which Metra of all agencies is getting soon, and they are of course already operating on branch lines in Europe) would be handy, allowing for trains to go off wire and drop the pantograph at the stations on either end of the tunnel.

It also does feel unfortunate that while we doubled the size of the Line 2 stations, we only doubled them. Having stations of 120 meters (or even just protecting for this) would again align Line 2 with Line 1, and while yes, Line 2 is not going to see demand anything like what is seen on Line 1 anytime soon if ever, the issue I have here is that a bunch of work was done and a bunch of money was spent, and some pretty obvious things were not done that it feels like we’re going to have to come back in in 15 years (shutting the line down once again) and do. Especially if we can’t sort out the frequency!

If these three things could be addressed, Line 2 would be able to be scaled into something much more substantial than the experiment it started as, and the experiment with some added touches that we are currently building. With full double track, electrification, and space for larger trains Line 2 could slowly become proper frequent rapid transit, with the capacity for more branches, the infrastructure for higher performance, and the space for long-term growth. You could extend the line through downtown Ottawa (I also need to write a future blog post about how the rail system could interact with the new Senators arena) and to the east (Montreal Rd. SkyTrain anyone?); you could do the obvious thing and create a new line feeding into the downtown tunnel that replaces the RapiBus corridor in Gatineau; and you could start building entirely new lines to a better standard on the various rail right-of-ways the city of Ottawa has wisely purchased. Instead, we will have to wait; how long is anyone’s guess.