Comment 120277

By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted October 14, 2016 at 11:12:10 in reply to Comment 120275

I was born in Ottawa and am throughly familiar with the Transitway, ever since first riding our wonderful Ottawa BRT in 1983, even before the Billings Bridge Transitway extension.

For a long time we prided on being the world's biggest BRT system, and one of the best bus transit networks in North America! BRT can be wonderful systems, you definitely preferred catching a bus on the BRT as you got to nearly freeway speeds with the intersection-less BRT right of way. But there are definitely cons too -- like what you described -- and what Chris described.

There are other BRT systems that stay 2-lanes rather than 4-lanes, but these lanes are still extremely wide (about 4 meters). And the platforms are at least as wide, so even in the best case scenario, I've never ever seen stations on true-BRT systems narrower than LRT stations.

There are also BRT systems that go through level intersections too, helped along by traffic priority signalling -- just like Hamilton LRT plans to use. In the best case, if Hamilton LRT was the Hamilton BRT, it would still require just as much space (and, alas, expropriation) if the whole B-Line route was dedicated BRT lanes and bare-minimum 2-lane BRT stations.

Visit Ottawa and look at their 4-lane BRT stations and you really see how big the stations are -- compared to the token bus shelters (and in many cases, no bus shelter) on the B-Line route.

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