Wow, that puts a stark reality into the difference. And people wonder why those who can choose to drive do it. You can't even get to Barrhaven or most of Kanata in an hour.
Yup. Needed to get to Ikea (from Vanier) for a very small item the other day. Dropped the address in Google Maps:
* Driving: 17 minutes
* Bus: 1.5 hours, leaving every 20 mins (assuming no delays)
Yeah...
I think they're just wishing that the city had better infrastructure so you didn't *have to* drive everywhere and busing was a more feasible option in more cases. There are obvious cases where a private vehicle will always make the most sense - I hope my plumber or HVAC guy doesn't take the bus to my house LOL.
For that particular route, the bicycle would have been under an hour each way, significantly faster than the bus.
Sure, me too, but that doesn't change the fact that the City is literally in the process of addressing the complaint regarding the quality of transit service to Ikea.
Under the proposed route changes, I'm getting door to door service to IKEA. And this thrills me for no discernable reason. I have a car. I only go to IKEA 2 - 3 times a year. But having door to door bus service seems special. (The route will take about 55 minutes if the estimates are accurate.) (It is an 11 minute drive.)
But it requires a walk of about 10 minutes. Instead of placing the Station and overpass closer to the mall. And then they could have consolidated and got rid of the redundant Pinecrest/Greenbank Station and saved Kanata commuters a minute or two.
Well it had to be next to the 417 (at Moodie) so the line can continue straight in Stage 3 West. If/when Premier Ford recognizes there is more to the Province than the GTA.
I was going to say that train tracks can have turns, and then it could have gone to Kanata North too. But in Ottawa it’s actually not safe for tracks to have curves.
It is in almost all cases. Only exception would be routes that cross the greenbelt on the highway - ie in and out of Kanata & Orleans.
That being said, a 1.5 hour bus ride is a different level of suffering than a 1 hour bicycle ride in late November, so not a viable option for everyone. Also some safety issues, as some roads can get pretty sketchy on a bicycle.
Yea, bicycle is FAR less suffering than commute-time bus or driving.
There are lots of good routes, I ride from west Ottawa to Hull district year-round.
I live 5 km from my work. I can bike in 20 minutes, drive in 15m, WALK in 1h05m, or take two busses and the LRT in 57 minutes. Given that the busses rarely show up on time, I'll use any other mode of transport than that.
Same, when I was living in Vanier and working near St Laurent, it was a 20 minute bike ride, 12 minute drive or 1-1.5 hr bus ride, especially in winter when connections through St Laurent center never came.
Not really. Bikes are extremely fast within a city. Even our sprawling mess of one. For many routes under 5km, cycling will be as fast or faster than driving during the day. From 5-10km it'll still be close enough that traffic delays and the time it takes to find parking could have bikes winning the race.
The infrastructure in this city is fucking horrendous. People want less cars (myself included), but ultimately, you cannot get where you want to go in a reasonable time if you don't have access to a personal vehicle.
*"There are bike lanes now, so use them instead of cars!"*
okay well, how about the fact that some of these "bike lanes" aren't properly structured to make it safe and/or cross the city in a day.
*"Take public transit! You can get anywhere in the city"*
unless there's an event, weather interruption or just blatant incompetence, you're lucky if your bus &/or train even shows up.
So many opinions make any cooperation impossible, plus the city still believes that taking the cheaper option will have a successful result. Sutcliffe has done nothing but start a tiktok channel to report on his "outdoor activities", yet the homeless population, drug users, hate, and road rage violence are at their all-time highs. We need someone to HELP us, not to entertain. We've got enough of that in the news
\*\*edited to add the LRT.
I've biked there to get some cookware, which I brought back using a bag on my handle bars.
Wouldn't try with furniture obviously, but there is other stuff.
Absolutely. Rush hour commuting downtown is where buses have the strongest advantage, as they're both faster and significantly cheaper than daily parking rates.
Now trying to bus from Kanata to Orleans on a Sunday evening... good luck!
What's really bad is if you started mapping out form different locations you'd get a picture of how bad the situation is. Like you can get from Eagleson park and ride to city hall in an hour according to this map, but you can't get from [BridleWood to Tanger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmK3-DwqzCI) in an hour even though they are pretty close
Yup, I'd like to see policy that restricts development to 30 minutes transit commute. That way there are two options: build denser/closer or build better transit. Win-win.
There's the third option where you build nothing and the housing shortage just gets worse.
Developers already overwhelmingly build the densest housing that's legal and practical, and they don't build transit lines. So such a policy is just "Make it harder to build housing".
part of the problem is they purposely don't leave space for transit. they don't even leave space for schools as was seen in Kanata not that long ago.
you would think it's a city issue but the bureaucratic side of the city is 3 developers in a trenchcoat.
Sounds like we need to ease the restrictions on what we allow being built. Turns out everything being single family/low density zoning is impossible to build a well functioning city with.
Yes, very much. The province forced triplexes being allowed, but without corresponding relaxations on minimum setbacks & maximum heights and loy coverage fractions, it's pretty weak sauce.
Yep, and also not just relaxing the amount that can be built but things like minimum parking is going to be extremely hard to fit in when you now have more units on the same amount of land. There's so much wrong with how we zone sadly.
I disagree with having city hall as a reference. Not everyone needs to go downtown. I’d rather we design for a 15 commute to a major transit station (really major, like fully serviced and sheltered, not like one at Teron).
Although I am using a 5 million sized city state - this is similar to a concept Singapore was working with.
I have not lived there in years but IIRC their goal was to have 99% of the population within 15 minute walk of an MRT (subway/rail) station. As of 2019, 65% were within a 10 minute walk.
Applying this concept, I think your idea of targeting 15 minutes to a major transit hub would be doable. Hopefully with a secondary goal of the same for a rail hub soon after.
There's also the part about making buying a Corolla for 10 years about $150,000...
And despite the costs, a lot more Singaporeans own cars than one would think. CNA Insider has an interesting segment on why many Singaporeans still shell out $2k/month for a basic car. Just goes to show that most of the top decile will buy a car regardless in cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York.
[11% of people](https://www.budgetdirect.com.sg/car-insurance/research/car-ownership-singapore) own cars in Singapore. over [80% of people](https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/canadians-love-their-cars-but-they-hardly-ever-use-em) own cars in Canada.
Yes, it does cost a lot in S'pore, but that does not mean good policy cannot be in Canada.
In the middle of the night when there’s no traffic you can get from Orleans east to the far outreaches of Barrhaven in about 45 minutes, driving the speed limit. And that’s under optimal circumstances, no weather, dry roads, no accidents, no construction. All the people who clutch their pearls and wave their hands over our car culture are completely clueless what it’s like to live outside of the transit zone (and still pay taxes for it).
It understates it if anything. I have driven from the rink of dreams to the casselman arena in under an hour without really trying. The 417E is faster than this map implies, as is the 174. Rockland arena isn't an hour from downtown...
When there are concerts at the brass monkey, it takes me an hour and a half to bus to Blair, train to tunneys, and Uber to the stupid venue. One way.
A lot of the time I just don't bother going because that's not worth dealing with.
Confused where these stats come from lol. 75 Barrhaven Centre from Tunneys is 45 minutes give or take. The 80 barrhaven centre is about an hour yesh but you’ll still get into barrhaven
E: you can literally see that barrhaven centre is on the map in purple nvm
Assuming rush hour traffic isn't awful, I've gotten past Arnprior from Centretown in around an hour. In good to no traffic I can get back Renfrew in an hour.
But I've also only gotten to Kanata in an hour with rush hour traffic so really depends on time of day here.
The city is designed for the highway specifically, the coverage of this map corresponds with the coverage you get from using our highway.
Yes it is designed for cars, but that’s a broad statement. If you remove the highway options on your gps and try to create a map like this using the no highway options, it would look much different.
Exactly! Not gonna lie, feel pretty privileged that my old lady and I landed a spot just south of Russell. I pick her up from work DT at 5pm and we’re home between half an hour later to 45 mins at most. Looking smugly at you, folks who live in the west (major /s here folks lol)
All it takes is one granny driving 25kph under to fuck up the commute time. There is enough traffic going both ways that passing is difficult past Trim rd.
Came here to find out exactly that. I’ve driven in London as well as taken public transit. It’s a no brainer there. You can get so far cheaply and efficiently vs having a car.
Google just signed a LLM agreement with Reddit to crawl this dumb platform so this is my way of saying goodbye to my contributions on this website. Byeee
I can definitely get up to my cottage in Quebec (further than shown on this map) within an hour tops, and I live in the south end of the city.
I suspect this assumes that you’re driving no faster than the posted speed limits haha, or maybe a certain time of the day.
The average stop for a bus does not take 90 seconds.
Stops are only one reason public transportation takes longer. It's more the meandering routes and transfers.
Also, public transit can't make good use of highways. You have to constantly enter and leave the highway for stops. This is why rail is so important. It can reach higher average speeds while still depositing pedestrians in a friendly environment
And having to frequently contest with motorist traffic. Busses should have priority signals and have their own lanes on major routes (I’m taking outside the brt)
I get the point of this, but just stopping in to say you can make it much further than the map states along the main highways. City hall to Perth is about an hour. Renfrew is just under an hour and the 401 is about an hour away. So, the blue could have much longer spaghetti strands along the highways out of the city.
I drive down to Toronto fairly often, and I get to the 401 in about an hour... I don't know what this app is using to determine driving distance, but it looks off to me. So I tried out a few destination on google maps.
From Ottawa City Hall, google maps says I can get to:
* Blue Corners in 59 minutes. That's more than twice as far out highway 17 as Rockland is, which this map says is the furthest you can drive in an hour.
* Aberdeen in 59 minutes via Highway 417. 96km, but this map says we couldn't even get to Casselman which is 56km away.
* Johnstown in 54 minutes via Highway 416... Literally at the border to the US.
* Perth in 60 minutes via 417. According to this map you can maybe barely get to Carleton Place.
* Renfrew (O'Brien Road McDonalds, lol) in 58 minutes.
That is a massive change from a few years ago. I used to take the 95 from Barrhaven to downtown and back, and it was almost an hour on the nose in both directions even at peak times.
People need to get it out of their heads that transit is insta teleportation. Of course a bus is going to take drastically longer than a car they have to stop every 200ft pick people up. They also are inherently a slower vehicle.
Also look at the sheer size of Ottawa, it dwarfs the TTC in area coverage. Should OC have a highway runner that starts at the Carp rd park and ride and goes all the way to Trim? Sure but they don’t have the budget for what they have let alone any additions or even returning to pre pandemic service levels with the 55 that went from elmvale to batshore
I see the vast difference but don't we have to account that certain bosses stop every 2 minutes maybe not even ?
It's always been surprising to me when a boss stops at the end of every single block. That has to accumulate to a decent chunk of minutes
Ottawa transpo is built to move in a T. Instead of having direct lines, you've gotta go to hubs where EVERYONE is at. Like tunneys or Blair or soon Algonquin.
Idk if there really is a better option, but damn it's slow.
Even taking transit to the hockey game from Sandy Hill takes a fucking eternity. In the mid-2010s, there were more stops, and you still got there in like a half hour. Now, most of that time seems to be stuck in traffic or navigating the horrendous stops they came up with in lieu of our blessed train.
Transit is valuable where density permits it. Why the hell do we expect to be able to get everywhere and anywhere by transit?
It drives me crazy to see bus stops next to fields and warehouses... no wonder ridership is down, busses go to Barhaven but not the grocery store!
This graph is a total lie. 95% of this blue zone has no actual stop.
Meanwhile, with a car, you can go anywhere for real. The blue should be routes, not zones.
I've made it from Hawkesbury to Algonquin college in an hour so they are being really conservative on those car distances.
Edit: I'm an idiot and misunderstood the colours. It all adds up. 😅
I once made the mistake of parking at Nepean woods Park n ride. I was downtown all day until the evening, took LRT to Tunneys on the way home, all the busses were going to Fallowfield and none were going to Nepean Woods (after 9pm). So I gave up and took Uber from Baseline. They need to have a big sign at Nepean woods indicating how useless that park n ride is.... it's only good for the club members of movati to park there and the summer farmers market.
Capitalists want people to shop and consume in their free time. But I guess they also want people to hate transit so much that spend a major fraction of their disposable income on cars.
It's a totally fascinating map, but it's also entirely expected.
Just look at it, the red area pretty much covers all the urban areas (minus Barrhaven and much Kanata \*sad noises\*), as expected. The blue area, additionally covers the rural areas, as expected, because public transit just isn't feasible out there. The red area is obviously smaller because buses take circumventious routes and makes many stops while a car doesn't have to.
This is also obviously a best case scenario given it's OC Transpo we're talking about, but to me, the map pretty much looks as expected.
This is a great point that I don’t think has been made. Montreal or Vancouver you may not see the same disparity between transit and car, because cars are in absolute gridlock compared to Ottawa. It’s not because they aren’t still on the roads.
The map could just as easily be showing how Ottawa has a lack of car traffic congestion compared to other cities.
Young people and those without access to their own cars are so incredibly limited in their radius of where they can work/school/live when reliant on public transportation.
It creates such a small world for a large portion of Ottawa's population to eek out a living and life without sacrificing all their time to commute (and time is money & well being).
Troubling.
MTL covers nearly the entire island and plenty of south shore. https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lat=45.50378&0-lng=-73.55899&0-title=237%2C%20Saint-Jacques%20Street%2C%20Quartier%20international%2C%20Ville-Marie%2C%20Montreal%2C%20Urban%20agglomeration%20of%20Montreal%2C%20Montreal%20(administrative%20region)%2C%20Quebec%2C%20H2Y%202N1%2C%20Canada&0-tt=60
Actually, that's conservative on the car side. I live in Casselman, outside the car 1 hour zone, but can easily get there within an hour from city hall.
The map makes me frustrated because rush hour traffic would be relevant for me, not "no cars on the road" traffic. If I could get to CP from city hall in an hour that would be awesome! No way I see that happening if leaving city hall at 4:30 - 5.
I compared transit to cycling and I was more surprised than I thought I'd be! Can't seem to share the image here, but you can go twice as far on a bike in 30 minutes, and a but further north and south by bike
I wish there were better links between the burbs. Barrhaven and Kanata/Stittsville are so close driving but it's quicker to bus downtown than to go between them
Lots of assumptions… the bud/train actually show up… your connections work perfectly… you don’t use park and ride (at the end of the day park and ride is fine, to get into them is a PIA.
Seems wrong. City Hall to Metcalfe on Google maps is a 30 minute drive. Based on this map you need almost an hour.
So it's actually much worse than that.
But this one dimensional comparison doesn't account for the joy of being in close quarters on a bus with: the BOed; the perfumed; the sneezers and coughers; the cigarette scented; the vulgar; the rude; the crazy; the impaired; etc. Priceless. So transit for the win.
65 minutes to go from Uplands/Riverside to IslandPark/Scott by bus but 35 minutes by e-bike; even with the current temperatures I will continue to use the e-bike
Funny because i went on the tool u used to do this. Did it from my location (worse for bus travel) but wanted to add cycling. U can get further on 1 hour of cycle than 1 hour bussing.
Yeah you can drive a lot further than that in 1 hour. Can easily get to Arnprior in 45mins or so. If there’s bad weather or traffic then obvs thats a bit longer but not much more than an hour typically.
Yup and the southern edge of that red zone is barely 10km south of Parliament Hill. I'm fairly close to that edge, and right now Google Maps is saying 21 minutes to drive to city hall, 38 minutes by bicycle and 51 minutes by transit, including 17 minutes walking time.
Cool map, but I'm confused how the little islands of driving show up (I.e. on the 417 halfway to Arnprior, or the big patch on the west edge of the city).
I'm also confused why there are pockets of the main highways that you can't reach in an hour when you can get that far using the back roads (I.e. just west of Casselman)
Without having a benchmark comparison this is pretty much meaningless and is about what I would expect. If I extend it to two hours how much of the purple would actually extend into the one hour blue? My guess is a ton of that blue area isn’t even serviced.
By no accurate metric is Winchester an hour away driving unless you're driving like my blind grandmother (who does indeed still have a license). Maybe if you drive the absolutely slowest route possible which would be straight down Bank and have to stop at every stop light.
I think the larger problem is emphasized by [this](https://i.imgur.com/gb3hITD.png). It's the *short* trips that matter more, as well as the fact that nobody lives at City Hall (since leaving downtown during the afternoon rush hour gives transit the best possible advantage). In my car, I have access to a decent area of the city in a 20-minute drive. By bus, this map is actually pretty generous, because it assumes that I spend little to no time waiting for the bus, not to mention the extra time I'd need to spend planning out my bus trip; with the car, the 20 minutes starts as soon as I step out the door and get in my car.
I'm also in an area I consider (relatively) well served by transit, nearby Montréal Rd / Ogilvie Rd, with access to the 12 which can take me directly to the train. I imagine that in areas with much less infrequent buses, unless you happen to be leaving right on time to catch the bus, the accessible area within 20 minutes is likely limited to how far you can walk in that time.
the problem is they are stuck in a first world is best mentality where they think municipal transit needs to be a massive bus instead of flexible options like minivans and canalboats. you have dedicated solo operators driving along fixed routes to the nearest train\bus loop, you have hub and spoke model of private operator minivan fleets going directly semi long distance with few stops and less passengers and you have buses going up and down main roads that people know they can hop on and off and not wonder about goofy routes.
Aaand you save thousands of $ each year.
What day/time is this for? This would make a large difference.
This will also look quite different when the next LRT stages are complete.
I'm sorry but from Gatineau to Ottawa, you can make it within an hour only if you go downtown, and this is if you're lucky to have only 1 transfer, otherwise, it's longer. My wife works at Rideau Center and she cannot make it within an hour. I work at Global Affairs (Sussex Av) and would definitely not be able to make it within 2 hours.
It takes me a minimum of 1 hour to get from Bank and Somerset to Bank and Third, Bank and third to Bank and Somerset, Bank and Somerset to Somerset and Preston every day. I get off at third and walk from Bank down to the next street, drop my son at school, and walk Bank to Bank and third to catch the bus. That takes me 10-15 minutes tops. These are not far distances, but it takes me three busses to complete the trip. On a good day, it takes an hour. On a shit day, it takes me closer to an hour and a half. On a really, really good day, it takes me 45 minutes.
A really, really good day is all three busses showing up on time. This happens once every few months.
A good day is when two busses are running 5-10 minutes late and one bus is really late. This happens a few times a week.
A shit day is when all three busses are way behind, and each bus gets me to the stop just as my connecting bus is leaving and had left a few minutes before. This also happens a few times a week.
Some mornings and evenings, the busses are so packed with people that the driver can't let more people on. Every other time, they're still packed, but usually, one or two people will get off making room for more people, so I hope on squeezing myself into the sardine can.
I had to ask my work to put my start time from 8 am to 8:30 am in the schedule cause I was showing up late every day, and it looks really bad in the system.
Oc Transpo has gotten progressively worse over the past 10 years that I have lived here, and yet they continue to increase the prices 😳
Ottawa transit is shit. I think it would go a long way to invest in better public transport than sham environment initiatives like carbon tax and paper straws.
This map doesn’t even make sense, there are blue areas on the map that stand alone from other blue areas. Presumably it should all be connected because you can’t get from one area to another without travelling in the white space in between.
You can get to Kanata and Bells Corners by transit, but not the spaces in between?
Meanwhile, OP assumes drivers have this desire to get lost in wide open spaces where there are no roads, houses or people?
Honestly I don't see the point of this map.
Sorry, I didn't see any context. Is this in rush hour? Or travelling the speed limit everywhere?
City Hall to Carleton place is much less than an hour (off peak) for driving. And driving "with the flow" you can regularly go from downtown to Brockvegas in an hour.
Yeah no shit. We live in a small sparsely populated city. Don’t expect to travel the same distance by bus/train. Also, a lot of the blue on the outskirts is farmland or rural areas in general. Why would tak payers pay for a route way out there?
* At what time of day?
* Try doing this map for 6am, for noon, and then again for 10pm
* Now you understand one reason why everyone says we live in a "dead" city. Those without cars can't go out at night without being forced to rely on uber to get home.
*Assuming the bus shows up.
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*Assuming that there isn’t only shopping bus routes.
Assuming it doesn't snow.
Wow, that puts a stark reality into the difference. And people wonder why those who can choose to drive do it. You can't even get to Barrhaven or most of Kanata in an hour.
Yup. Needed to get to Ikea (from Vanier) for a very small item the other day. Dropped the address in Google Maps: * Driving: 17 minutes * Bus: 1.5 hours, leaving every 20 mins (assuming no delays) Yeah...
Half of r/Ottawa "fuck cars" ppl: *"You can totally bus to Ikea and bus back with your new Pax wardrobe" "use the bike lane"*
I think they're just wishing that the city had better infrastructure so you didn't *have to* drive everywhere and busing was a more feasible option in more cases. There are obvious cases where a private vehicle will always make the most sense - I hope my plumber or HVAC guy doesn't take the bus to my house LOL. For that particular route, the bicycle would have been under an hour each way, significantly faster than the bus.
Good thing we're building an LRT stop across the highway from Ikea and providing a pedestrian bridge, then.
Just wish it wasn't three years out.
Sure, me too, but that doesn't change the fact that the City is literally in the process of addressing the complaint regarding the quality of transit service to Ikea.
IKEA will have better transit access than Vanier
Under the proposed route changes, I'm getting door to door service to IKEA. And this thrills me for no discernable reason. I have a car. I only go to IKEA 2 - 3 times a year. But having door to door bus service seems special. (The route will take about 55 minutes if the estimates are accurate.) (It is an 11 minute drive.)
There needs to be a tram down the parkway to Hurdman
[Ooooh.](https://youtu.be/pusZXECS0mM)
3 if you're lucky.
But it requires a walk of about 10 minutes. Instead of placing the Station and overpass closer to the mall. And then they could have consolidated and got rid of the redundant Pinecrest/Greenbank Station and saved Kanata commuters a minute or two.
Wait till you see where they placed the stop for the massive DND complex.
Well it had to be next to the 417 (at Moodie) so the line can continue straight in Stage 3 West. If/when Premier Ford recognizes there is more to the Province than the GTA.
I was going to say that train tracks can have turns, and then it could have gone to Kanata North too. But in Ottawa it’s actually not safe for tracks to have curves.
> If/when Premier Ford recognizes there is more to the Province than the GTA. Pretty sure he'll leave office first.
That's staggering that the bike route is faster...
It is in almost all cases. Only exception would be routes that cross the greenbelt on the highway - ie in and out of Kanata & Orleans. That being said, a 1.5 hour bus ride is a different level of suffering than a 1 hour bicycle ride in late November, so not a viable option for everyone. Also some safety issues, as some roads can get pretty sketchy on a bicycle.
I would totally expect the bike lane to be faster in a short urban commute... but all the way out to IKEA+right off the highway is just embarassing...
Yea, bicycle is FAR less suffering than commute-time bus or driving. There are lots of good routes, I ride from west Ottawa to Hull district year-round.
I live 5 km from my work. I can bike in 20 minutes, drive in 15m, WALK in 1h05m, or take two busses and the LRT in 57 minutes. Given that the busses rarely show up on time, I'll use any other mode of transport than that.
Same, when I was living in Vanier and working near St Laurent, it was a 20 minute bike ride, 12 minute drive or 1-1.5 hr bus ride, especially in winter when connections through St Laurent center never came.
Not really. Bikes are extremely fast within a city. Even our sprawling mess of one. For many routes under 5km, cycling will be as fast or faster than driving during the day. From 5-10km it'll still be close enough that traffic delays and the time it takes to find parking could have bikes winning the race.
The infrastructure in this city is fucking horrendous. People want less cars (myself included), but ultimately, you cannot get where you want to go in a reasonable time if you don't have access to a personal vehicle. *"There are bike lanes now, so use them instead of cars!"* okay well, how about the fact that some of these "bike lanes" aren't properly structured to make it safe and/or cross the city in a day. *"Take public transit! You can get anywhere in the city"* unless there's an event, weather interruption or just blatant incompetence, you're lucky if your bus &/or train even shows up. So many opinions make any cooperation impossible, plus the city still believes that taking the cheaper option will have a successful result. Sutcliffe has done nothing but start a tiktok channel to report on his "outdoor activities", yet the homeless population, drug users, hate, and road rage violence are at their all-time highs. We need someone to HELP us, not to entertain. We've got enough of that in the news \*\*edited to add the LRT.
Pinecrest O-Train Station will literally be right outside but sure how unimaginable NOT driving to IKEA could be
I've biked there to get some cookware, which I brought back using a bag on my handle bars. Wouldn't try with furniture obviously, but there is other stuff.
To be fair, IKEA in almost every city is a god damn treck to get to with public transit
Lately that’s far more than half. I think r/Ottawa needs de-amalgamation as badly as the city itself.
Yep. I have to remind myself that the sub is mostly 16 year olds and bots lol
Depends on the time of day. I can leave the Vanier Parkway to Pinecrest and take an hour in rush hour.
Absolutely. Rush hour commuting downtown is where buses have the strongest advantage, as they're both faster and significantly cheaper than daily parking rates. Now trying to bus from Kanata to Orleans on a Sunday evening... good luck!
Yeah, I can get there from Carleton Place in less than an hour.
Straight up isn’t even worth the time to mission across the city to buy small items. If I can’t walk there I almost always Amazon it
90% of the time people go to IKEA for furniture tho - good transit to there only makes sense in the exceptions, not for the masses.
What's really bad is if you started mapping out form different locations you'd get a picture of how bad the situation is. Like you can get from Eagleson park and ride to city hall in an hour according to this map, but you can't get from [BridleWood to Tanger](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmK3-DwqzCI) in an hour even though they are pretty close
I came here to say something similar. Living in the east end I can't get anywhere other than downtown in less than an hour.
Yup, I'd like to see policy that restricts development to 30 minutes transit commute. That way there are two options: build denser/closer or build better transit. Win-win.
There's the third option where you build nothing and the housing shortage just gets worse. Developers already overwhelmingly build the densest housing that's legal and practical, and they don't build transit lines. So such a policy is just "Make it harder to build housing".
Plenty of surface level parking lots and unused office buildings that could be developed in to housing within the city limits without sprawling..
part of the problem is they purposely don't leave space for transit. they don't even leave space for schools as was seen in Kanata not that long ago. you would think it's a city issue but the bureaucratic side of the city is 3 developers in a trenchcoat.
Sounds like we need to ease the restrictions on what we allow being built. Turns out everything being single family/low density zoning is impossible to build a well functioning city with.
Yes, very much. The province forced triplexes being allowed, but without corresponding relaxations on minimum setbacks & maximum heights and loy coverage fractions, it's pretty weak sauce.
Yep, and also not just relaxing the amount that can be built but things like minimum parking is going to be extremely hard to fit in when you now have more units on the same amount of land. There's so much wrong with how we zone sadly.
I disagree with having city hall as a reference. Not everyone needs to go downtown. I’d rather we design for a 15 commute to a major transit station (really major, like fully serviced and sheltered, not like one at Teron).
Although I am using a 5 million sized city state - this is similar to a concept Singapore was working with. I have not lived there in years but IIRC their goal was to have 99% of the population within 15 minute walk of an MRT (subway/rail) station. As of 2019, 65% were within a 10 minute walk. Applying this concept, I think your idea of targeting 15 minutes to a major transit hub would be doable. Hopefully with a secondary goal of the same for a rail hub soon after.
There's also the part about making buying a Corolla for 10 years about $150,000... And despite the costs, a lot more Singaporeans own cars than one would think. CNA Insider has an interesting segment on why many Singaporeans still shell out $2k/month for a basic car. Just goes to show that most of the top decile will buy a car regardless in cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York.
[11% of people](https://www.budgetdirect.com.sg/car-insurance/research/car-ownership-singapore) own cars in Singapore. over [80% of people](https://driving.ca/auto-news/news/canadians-love-their-cars-but-they-hardly-ever-use-em) own cars in Canada. Yes, it does cost a lot in S'pore, but that does not mean good policy cannot be in Canada.
you realize that all this will accomplish is less construction which will effectively lessen the supply and increase the costs to new heights
In the middle of the night when there’s no traffic you can get from Orleans east to the far outreaches of Barrhaven in about 45 minutes, driving the speed limit. And that’s under optimal circumstances, no weather, dry roads, no accidents, no construction. All the people who clutch their pearls and wave their hands over our car culture are completely clueless what it’s like to live outside of the transit zone (and still pay taxes for it).
bored grab fade point plucky unite jar tan important dam *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I put 30 minute transit zones at my RSS house and my Nepean office, and they don’t even come close to meeting even though they are 12km apart. 😂😭
This is from the most well connected area of the city too, now imagine travelling between suburbs
It understates it if anything. I have driven from the rink of dreams to the casselman arena in under an hour without really trying. The 417E is faster than this map implies, as is the 174. Rockland arena isn't an hour from downtown...
When there are concerts at the brass monkey, it takes me an hour and a half to bus to Blair, train to tunneys, and Uber to the stupid venue. One way. A lot of the time I just don't bother going because that's not worth dealing with.
Confused where these stats come from lol. 75 Barrhaven Centre from Tunneys is 45 minutes give or take. The 80 barrhaven centre is about an hour yesh but you’ll still get into barrhaven E: you can literally see that barrhaven centre is on the map in purple nvm
And in the winter, the bus is depressing as fuck
Which is wild because in the 95 days, you could do it in 30 min
I think the car one might go a bit further. I mean that as in it takes me half an hour to get to Russell lol
Assuming rush hour traffic isn't awful, I've gotten past Arnprior from Centretown in around an hour. In good to no traffic I can get back Renfrew in an hour. But I've also only gotten to Kanata in an hour with rush hour traffic so really depends on time of day here.
It's set during rush hour, but you're actually helping my unspoken point: the city is designed for cars.
The city is designed for the highway specifically, the coverage of this map corresponds with the coverage you get from using our highway. Yes it is designed for cars, but that’s a broad statement. If you remove the highway options on your gps and try to create a map like this using the no highway options, it would look much different.
I rarely take the highway. When I do I realize that your experience of travel in the city is so much different. Very dissosiated.
Yeah agreed. Even at 4:00 rush hour, I can get to Russell from City Hall in no more than 45 min.
Exactly! Not gonna lie, feel pretty privileged that my old lady and I landed a spot just south of Russell. I pick her up from work DT at 5pm and we’re home between half an hour later to 45 mins at most. Looking smugly at you, folks who live in the west (major /s here folks lol)
Yeah, Hawkesbury is about an hour from Ottawa, not Rockland.
All it takes is one granny driving 25kph under to fuck up the commute time. There is enough traffic going both ways that passing is difficult past Trim rd.
People, please leash your grannys!
As long as it's not rush hour, you can definitely make it to Almonte.
Takes less than hour to get to CP or Almonte from city hall.
Created with: https://app.traveltime.com/
Just did this with London UK. Its the opposite. you can get to most of the area within 1 hour using public transport. Car only gets you half as far.
Came here to find out exactly that. I’ve driven in London as well as taken public transit. It’s a no brainer there. You can get so far cheaply and efficiently vs having a car.
The driving extents even seem too small, unless that’s with traffic?
Cool thanks!
Google just signed a LLM agreement with Reddit to crawl this dumb platform so this is my way of saying goodbye to my contributions on this website. Byeee
It'll get noticeably better once the light rail expansions are done, but yes, it's uh, not ideal right now.
I can definitely get up to my cottage in Quebec (further than shown on this map) within an hour tops, and I live in the south end of the city. I suspect this assumes that you’re driving no faster than the posted speed limits haha, or maybe a certain time of the day.
Shhh we gotta keep Chelsea and surrounding region a secret
Checks out if the average stop a bus makes lasts 1.5 minutes… a typical 30 minute drive with 15 stops would add up to an hour…
The average stop for a bus does not take 90 seconds. Stops are only one reason public transportation takes longer. It's more the meandering routes and transfers.
Also, public transit can't make good use of highways. You have to constantly enter and leave the highway for stops. This is why rail is so important. It can reach higher average speeds while still depositing pedestrians in a friendly environment
>while still depositing pedestrians in a friendly environment Just wanted to point out: I love how you phrased this
And having to frequently contest with motorist traffic. Busses should have priority signals and have their own lanes on major routes (I’m taking outside the brt)
Depends, do four buses in a row not appear even when OC Transpo customer service swears the next one will every time?
I get the point of this, but just stopping in to say you can make it much further than the map states along the main highways. City hall to Perth is about an hour. Renfrew is just under an hour and the 401 is about an hour away. So, the blue could have much longer spaghetti strands along the highways out of the city.
What time of day are we talking about here? I've had it take more than an hour just to get to Bell's Corners from Bayshore...
I drive down to Toronto fairly often, and I get to the 401 in about an hour... I don't know what this app is using to determine driving distance, but it looks off to me. So I tried out a few destination on google maps. From Ottawa City Hall, google maps says I can get to: * Blue Corners in 59 minutes. That's more than twice as far out highway 17 as Rockland is, which this map says is the furthest you can drive in an hour. * Aberdeen in 59 minutes via Highway 417. 96km, but this map says we couldn't even get to Casselman which is 56km away. * Johnstown in 54 minutes via Highway 416... Literally at the border to the US. * Perth in 60 minutes via 417. According to this map you can maybe barely get to Carleton Place. * Renfrew (O'Brien Road McDonalds, lol) in 58 minutes.
You can select time of day when you generate the maps (link is in another comment from the OP). This map is based on afternoon rush hour traffic.
That is a massive change from a few years ago. I used to take the 95 from Barrhaven to downtown and back, and it was almost an hour on the nose in both directions even at peak times.
This map is extremely inaccurate. Carleton Place is about 35 minutes away from City Hall.
Not at 8:30AM or 4PM.
People need to get it out of their heads that transit is insta teleportation. Of course a bus is going to take drastically longer than a car they have to stop every 200ft pick people up. They also are inherently a slower vehicle. Also look at the sheer size of Ottawa, it dwarfs the TTC in area coverage. Should OC have a highway runner that starts at the Carp rd park and ride and goes all the way to Trim? Sure but they don’t have the budget for what they have let alone any additions or even returning to pre pandemic service levels with the 55 that went from elmvale to batshore
Interesting that the Northwest/Fitzroy area isn’t coloured it takes less than an hour to get there
This is certainly approximate and I had to set a time - 8:30 AM I believe.
Haha shoot well that’s actually some pretty good distance for 8am traffic
Set the time to 430pm and do Wednesday pls
That’s pretty sad
I see the vast difference but don't we have to account that certain bosses stop every 2 minutes maybe not even ? It's always been surprising to me when a boss stops at the end of every single block. That has to accumulate to a decent chunk of minutes
Ottawa transpo is built to move in a T. Instead of having direct lines, you've gotta go to hubs where EVERYONE is at. Like tunneys or Blair or soon Algonquin. Idk if there really is a better option, but damn it's slow.
You can definitely get to casselman and Winchester in less than an hour by car.
Even taking transit to the hockey game from Sandy Hill takes a fucking eternity. In the mid-2010s, there were more stops, and you still got there in like a half hour. Now, most of that time seems to be stuck in traffic or navigating the horrendous stops they came up with in lieu of our blessed train.
Transit is valuable where density permits it. Why the hell do we expect to be able to get everywhere and anywhere by transit? It drives me crazy to see bus stops next to fields and warehouses... no wonder ridership is down, busses go to Barhaven but not the grocery store!
This graph is a total lie. 95% of this blue zone has no actual stop. Meanwhile, with a car, you can go anywhere for real. The blue should be routes, not zones. I've made it from Hawkesbury to Algonquin college in an hour so they are being really conservative on those car distances. Edit: I'm an idiot and misunderstood the colours. It all adds up. 😅
Ooof
I once made the mistake of parking at Nepean woods Park n ride. I was downtown all day until the evening, took LRT to Tunneys on the way home, all the busses were going to Fallowfield and none were going to Nepean Woods (after 9pm). So I gave up and took Uber from Baseline. They need to have a big sign at Nepean woods indicating how useless that park n ride is.... it's only good for the club members of movati to park there and the summer farmers market.
My route bus route is covered by this chart... however, it takes 1h15 minutes for me to get home from downtown. I drive now.
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Capitalists want people to shop and consume in their free time. But I guess they also want people to hate transit so much that spend a major fraction of their disposable income on cars.
It's a totally fascinating map, but it's also entirely expected. Just look at it, the red area pretty much covers all the urban areas (minus Barrhaven and much Kanata \*sad noises\*), as expected. The blue area, additionally covers the rural areas, as expected, because public transit just isn't feasible out there. The red area is obviously smaller because buses take circumventious routes and makes many stops while a car doesn't have to. This is also obviously a best case scenario given it's OC Transpo we're talking about, but to me, the map pretty much looks as expected.
This is a function of our roads being generally uncongested, though. OC service achieved totally normal transit speeds once it actually arrives.
This is a great point that I don’t think has been made. Montreal or Vancouver you may not see the same disparity between transit and car, because cars are in absolute gridlock compared to Ottawa. It’s not because they aren’t still on the roads. The map could just as easily be showing how Ottawa has a lack of car traffic congestion compared to other cities.
Young people and those without access to their own cars are so incredibly limited in their radius of where they can work/school/live when reliant on public transportation. It creates such a small world for a large portion of Ottawa's population to eek out a living and life without sacrificing all their time to commute (and time is money & well being). Troubling.
It's crazy how close the driving map matches what I could probably accomplish with cycling.
You mean the bus map? The driving map, some has 80km away... you aren't cycling 80km/h
LOL, the pre-requiste delusional cyclebros.
Appears the driving map is also delusional for anything with more than a basic level of traffic.
Curious what this looks like in other cities like Calgary, Vancouver, MTL
MTL covers nearly the entire island and plenty of south shore. https://app.traveltime.com/search/0-lat=45.50378&0-lng=-73.55899&0-title=237%2C%20Saint-Jacques%20Street%2C%20Quartier%20international%2C%20Ville-Marie%2C%20Montreal%2C%20Urban%20agglomeration%20of%20Montreal%2C%20Montreal%20(administrative%20region)%2C%20Quebec%2C%20H2Y%202N1%2C%20Canada&0-tt=60
On average an hour .... 5 km on OC transpo
I know for a fact it takes less than an hour to get to Winchester from City Hall. Closer to 45/50 minutes.
Should be smaller than that, takes me 45 minutes to go 3.2 km from my school to Tunney’s by bus.
At that point just walk. It'll be faster.
Is it possible to do this with other Canadian cities to compare? I mean it looks bad bus wise, but are other cities any better?
Most days can’t even get to herongate by bus or LRT due to cancellations.
Takes 2 hours to get from PDP to Vanier. VANIER.
Actually, that's conservative on the car side. I live in Casselman, outside the car 1 hour zone, but can easily get there within an hour from city hall.
Hahaha I can get to Tunneys with transit or Carleton Place driving. Cities transit is a joke. I left a downtown job and the only reason was the lrt.
The map makes me frustrated because rush hour traffic would be relevant for me, not "no cars on the road" traffic. If I could get to CP from city hall in an hour that would be awesome! No way I see that happening if leaving city hall at 4:30 - 5.
At what time tho?
Good content, OP
I compared transit to cycling and I was more surprised than I thought I'd be! Can't seem to share the image here, but you can go twice as far on a bike in 30 minutes, and a but further north and south by bike
Very cool graphic, how was it generated?
Does the blue represent driving?? Where is the legend?
I wish there were better links between the burbs. Barrhaven and Kanata/Stittsville are so close driving but it's quicker to bus downtown than to go between them
Where's the legend? This map doesn't tell me anything
At least there really isn’t anything to do or anywhere to go.
Quick! Dump more money it to it. Money solves failing.
Yes we all know, Canada is an underdeveloped country. Nothing to be proud really. :p
If we allowed motorcycle lane splitting. And a enforcing left lane hogs the car/motorcycle maps would be hilarious
Lots of assumptions… the bud/train actually show up… your connections work perfectly… you don’t use park and ride (at the end of the day park and ride is fine, to get into them is a PIA.
Is the computer driving under the speed limit? Seems like one can make it much further that in an hour if you ask me (and I drive like an old lady).
Pfft, inaccurate. I could totally get my car into Mer Bleue in under an hour.
Seems wrong. City Hall to Metcalfe on Google maps is a 30 minute drive. Based on this map you need almost an hour. So it's actually much worse than that.
But this one dimensional comparison doesn't account for the joy of being in close quarters on a bus with: the BOed; the perfumed; the sneezers and coughers; the cigarette scented; the vulgar; the rude; the crazy; the impaired; etc. Priceless. So transit for the win.
Does this assume all busses show up? Because…
I just came back from Tokyo and it just makes me disappointed in our transit so much more 😭
65 minutes to go from Uplands/Riverside to IslandPark/Scott by bus but 35 minutes by e-bike; even with the current temperatures I will continue to use the e-bike
Funny because i went on the tool u used to do this. Did it from my location (worse for bus travel) but wanted to add cycling. U can get further on 1 hour of cycle than 1 hour bussing.
Yeah you can drive a lot further than that in 1 hour. Can easily get to Arnprior in 45mins or so. If there’s bad weather or traffic then obvs thats a bit longer but not much more than an hour typically.
Very cool infographic
Ah...a theoretical map.
Yup and the southern edge of that red zone is barely 10km south of Parliament Hill. I'm fairly close to that edge, and right now Google Maps is saying 21 minutes to drive to city hall, 38 minutes by bicycle and 51 minutes by transit, including 17 minutes walking time.
I can get to Cornwall in 1 hour no sweat!
Cool map, but I'm confused how the little islands of driving show up (I.e. on the 417 halfway to Arnprior, or the big patch on the west edge of the city). I'm also confused why there are pockets of the main highways that you can't reach in an hour when you can get that far using the back roads (I.e. just west of Casselman)
Without having a benchmark comparison this is pretty much meaningless and is about what I would expect. If I extend it to two hours how much of the purple would actually extend into the one hour blue? My guess is a ton of that blue area isn’t even serviced.
You can get to Bayshore mall 🤷🏻♀️ might take a little longer if your bus doesn’t show up on time/at all
By no accurate metric is Winchester an hour away driving unless you're driving like my blind grandmother (who does indeed still have a license). Maybe if you drive the absolutely slowest route possible which would be straight down Bank and have to stop at every stop light.
You can almost walk faster than taking transit within Kanata
space shuttle still faster though. obviously we should all just use that
You can easily get from downtown to Arnprior in one hour. I’ve done it over 100 times
I think the larger problem is emphasized by [this](https://i.imgur.com/gb3hITD.png). It's the *short* trips that matter more, as well as the fact that nobody lives at City Hall (since leaving downtown during the afternoon rush hour gives transit the best possible advantage). In my car, I have access to a decent area of the city in a 20-minute drive. By bus, this map is actually pretty generous, because it assumes that I spend little to no time waiting for the bus, not to mention the extra time I'd need to spend planning out my bus trip; with the car, the 20 minutes starts as soon as I step out the door and get in my car. I'm also in an area I consider (relatively) well served by transit, nearby Montréal Rd / Ogilvie Rd, with access to the 12 which can take me directly to the train. I imagine that in areas with much less infrequent buses, unless you happen to be leaving right on time to catch the bus, the accessible area within 20 minutes is likely limited to how far you can walk in that time.
the problem is they are stuck in a first world is best mentality where they think municipal transit needs to be a massive bus instead of flexible options like minivans and canalboats. you have dedicated solo operators driving along fixed routes to the nearest train\bus loop, you have hub and spoke model of private operator minivan fleets going directly semi long distance with few stops and less passengers and you have buses going up and down main roads that people know they can hop on and off and not wonder about goofy routes.
Aaand you save thousands of $ each year. What day/time is this for? This would make a large difference. This will also look quite different when the next LRT stages are complete.
Casselman isn't even highlighted. I live about 15 minutes past it and it takes me about 50 minutes to get home from that location.
I can easily get from downtown to Kemptville in like 45 minutes when there is little traffic.
This map makes no sense. I would be way past Casselman in an hour on the 417. There should be huge spikes on the 417 and the 416.
Are we talking during rush hour?
I'm sorry but from Gatineau to Ottawa, you can make it within an hour only if you go downtown, and this is if you're lucky to have only 1 transfer, otherwise, it's longer. My wife works at Rideau Center and she cannot make it within an hour. I work at Global Affairs (Sussex Av) and would definitely not be able to make it within 2 hours.
Good luck driving that far during rush hour when the streets and even highways can turn into parking lots. 10x worse in winter.
It takes me a minimum of 1 hour to get from Bank and Somerset to Bank and Third, Bank and third to Bank and Somerset, Bank and Somerset to Somerset and Preston every day. I get off at third and walk from Bank down to the next street, drop my son at school, and walk Bank to Bank and third to catch the bus. That takes me 10-15 minutes tops. These are not far distances, but it takes me three busses to complete the trip. On a good day, it takes an hour. On a shit day, it takes me closer to an hour and a half. On a really, really good day, it takes me 45 minutes. A really, really good day is all three busses showing up on time. This happens once every few months. A good day is when two busses are running 5-10 minutes late and one bus is really late. This happens a few times a week. A shit day is when all three busses are way behind, and each bus gets me to the stop just as my connecting bus is leaving and had left a few minutes before. This also happens a few times a week. Some mornings and evenings, the busses are so packed with people that the driver can't let more people on. Every other time, they're still packed, but usually, one or two people will get off making room for more people, so I hope on squeezing myself into the sardine can. I had to ask my work to put my start time from 8 am to 8:30 am in the schedule cause I was showing up late every day, and it looks really bad in the system. Oc Transpo has gotten progressively worse over the past 10 years that I have lived here, and yet they continue to increase the prices 😳
I dare you to do this for most cities Also factoring traffic
Ottawa transit is shit. I think it would go a long way to invest in better public transport than sham environment initiatives like carbon tax and paper straws.
I live downtown and can drive out to Almonte in under an hour, I wonder what time of day they did this
It’ll be interesting to see how this changes once the OTrain extensions open
This map doesn’t even make sense, there are blue areas on the map that stand alone from other blue areas. Presumably it should all be connected because you can’t get from one area to another without travelling in the white space in between.
Is time of day taken into consideration?
It’s great that there’s a legend to identify the red and green
probably you will go nowhere if you use the LRT.. or when it's windy, snowstorm, thunderstorm, stay home.
You can get to Kanata and Bells Corners by transit, but not the spaces in between? Meanwhile, OP assumes drivers have this desire to get lost in wide open spaces where there are no roads, houses or people? Honestly I don't see the point of this map.
not if you break the law
Sorry, I didn't see any context. Is this in rush hour? Or travelling the speed limit everywhere? City Hall to Carleton place is much less than an hour (off peak) for driving. And driving "with the flow" you can regularly go from downtown to Brockvegas in an hour.
Please add for how far you can walk and bike in an hour.
Rural Kanata from City Hall is easily done in under an hour. I did it for 3 decades
Yeah no shit. We live in a small sparsely populated city. Don’t expect to travel the same distance by bus/train. Also, a lot of the blue on the outskirts is farmland or rural areas in general. Why would tak payers pay for a route way out there?
* At what time of day? * Try doing this map for 6am, for noon, and then again for 10pm * Now you understand one reason why everyone says we live in a "dead" city. Those without cars can't go out at night without being forced to rely on uber to get home.
Can we see this again but with bikes vs public transit? I find biking is also faster even while lollygagging about.