OTTAWA, Ontario — The phase two extension of Ottawa’s light rail Trillium Line, which includes a connection to the city’s airport, is set to open Monday, Jan. 6, transit agency OC Transpo has announced.
The addition will open for limited service for at least the first two weeks, operating from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. Monday through Friday. Existing parallel bus service will continue seven days a week, at least initially.
The extension expands the original 8-kilometer (5-mile), seven-station Line 2 route to 19 kilometers (11.8 miles) and 11 stations, plus a 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) spur to Macdonald-Cartier International Airport known as Line 4. The Trillium Line, which uses diesel-powered equipment, connects with the electrified Confederation line at its northern endpoint, Bayview.
The original route opened in 2001 and was shut down in 2020 for what was supposed to be a two-year expansion project.
Stadler FLIRT trainsets will operate on Line 2, while Alstom LINT equipment that had previously run on the Trillium Line will now operate on Line 4.
More on the start of operations is available here.
Canada does it again: a train that goes directly to the airport terminal (see also: Vancouver, Toronto), and doesn’t make you walk through the largest single-building parking garage in the country- that would be Seattle, Sea-Tac.
DEN Denver International could have used a closer connection to the train. The space the train could have gone to is instead devoted to hotel shuttles, taxis, Uber, etc. I’ve ridden the train a few times and have been less than impressed by the patronage.
SEA SeaTac is as you say a half-marathon to the light rail, but plenty of people do it, the train is jammed as is the walkway through the parking garage.
PVD Rhode Island T. F. Green is a long walk (fully enclosed against the weather) to MBTA but I doubt if anyone takes the train to/ from the airport as it’s basically a weekday rush hour schedule south of Providence to Wickford Junction. I did the same walk as that’s the route to the rental car desks.
I took CTA to Chicago Midway a number of years ago. It was a haul of a walk by the parking garage. This was at a time of construction, so I can’t say if it’s still the case.
Greg, I appreciate your optimism about the Ottawa Airport. For transit to/from an airport, it’s necessary to have frequent trains early morning to late at night, seven days a week. Reading the article (above) I got kind of a bad feeling about the whole thing.
It’s a short walk to the train, but then it looks like you have to transfer at South Keys to get downtown (and thence to another train if your destination is on the 1 line). Similar to how BART requires a transfer to reach Oakland Airport. Not terrible, but I wonder if they could have made the primary line go to the airport instead of a connection?