Introduction
As part of the Transportation Master Plan process, the City commissioned a study into travel called the "Transport Trends Report", which analyzes transportation across town. This document can be found on the City of Ottawa website.
These surveys are a gold mine of data, and TRANS conducts other transport surveys with semi-regularity. I recommend anyone reading this blog to read both the report and at the TRANS surveys.
To our interest today is the Origin-Destination survey, which analyzes travel destinations for all trips in Ottawa. The last of these was conducted in 2011, coincidentally when Network Optimization fossilized the bus route network.
I will look at the report at a high-level, analyzing the large-scale markets that OC Transpo could serve.
A cautionary note, the O-D survey was conducted in 2022, when many peoples' travel patterns were in flux; the dust had not yet settled from the fallout of the pandemic. Transit ridership is about 40% higher than it was at the time, and no doubt some of the O-D survey data is already obsolete.
The O-D survey splits the city into 14 districts (seen in the map above), as well as Quebec and non-Ottawa regions. The data provided provides origin-destination data for every combination of districts, which is a fairly high granularity. However, as a focal point of analysis, that is hundreds of combinations, a lot of data to analyze and process.
For the purposes of this piece, I have split them into four markets: downtown, outer urban, inner suburban, and outer suburban. Downtown consists of the TRANS Ottawa Centre districts; outer urban consists of Ottawa East, Ottawa Inner Area, and Ottawa West; the inner suburban area includes Bayshore/Cedarview, Merivale, Hunt Club, Alta Vista, and Beacon Hill; and the outer suburbs encompasses Orleans, South Nepean, Bayshore/Cedarview, and South Gloucester/Leitrim.
By splitting them into four broad categories with fairly similar urban form, I hope to provide some insight into the travel patterns in the entire city, and the feasibility of serving large groups of trips by transit.
While a decade out of date, the 2016 Employment Survey gives the best overview of employment in Ottawa. Keep in mind that while office jobs generally got work-from-home-ed, jobs of an industrial or service nature did not, and the O-D survey does capture those trips.
On the data captured in the analysis below, all trips are double counted: a departing trip and a return trip. Trips between different zones get double-counted between the analysis, so the percentages presented will not add up to 100%. Additionally, keep in mind I show percentages in the images, but the change figures are in absolute numbers.
Downtown
Historically, downtown has been the city's biggest driver of transit ridership. Containing about 1/5 of the city's jobs in just 10 km2, and with transit service designed for it, downtown is vital to the health of transit.
So let's look at total trips to and from downtown.
In 2022, 7.33% of trips made in Ottawa were to or from downtown, which totals 185,700 daily trips. In 2011, the equivalent figure was 293,900 trips/day, or 11.5% of trips, representing a decrease of 36% (note - the absolute number of trips citywide between 2011 and 2022 stayed fairly constant).
Within these 185,000 trips, 11.7% of trips were within the downtown area, 37.8% from the outer urban area, 19.1% from the inner suburbs, and 14.1% from the outer suburbs. The downtown area is the only one where the plurality of trips are not internal.
These trips are all relatively well-served by transit.
Outer Urban Area
The Outer Urban Area is just as important to OC Transpo as the downtown area. Many of OC Transpo's frequent routes run through this area, and coverage is fairly complete, resulting in high (and all-day) ridership on the bus routes.
Unlike the downtown core, rail coverage is sparse and not indicative of travel patterns.
This area's employment is, according to survey data, dominated by "mainstreets" and urban arterials (think Bank Street in the Glebe or McArthur Avenue in Vanier). Both the University of Ottawa and Carleton University have their campuses in the Outer Urban Zone, while the federal government has major campuses at Tunney's Pasture and on Sussex Drive.
In 2022, an average of 790,500 trips were made to or from the Outer Urban Area everyday. This is 31.2% of all trips in Ottawa. The equivalent figure for 2011 is 867,400 trips, a 34.0% tripmaking rate.
Of the outer urban trips, 37.2% were made within the Outer Urban Area, 8.9% to the downtown core, 31.7% to the inner suburbs, and 12.5% to or from the outer suburbs.
Trips within the urban area and downtown are well-served by frequent bus. Service to the inner suburbs is generally okay, with many urban routes continuing to the suburbs, but many large suburban employment zones have patchy service, either infrequent or requiring transfers. Service to the outer suburbs can be quite bad, though some of the aforementioned urban bus corridors do connect to outer suburban bus hubs.
The Inner Suburbs
The Inner Suburbs see more variable in transit service than the inner city. Frequent routes still run, sometimes dedicated to the inner suburbs and sometimes the tail of an urban route, but holes begin to appear in coverage. While we do not have data for total (ie. including leisure and amenity trips) mode share at a level lower than the city overall, commuting mode share here is strong as the outer urban area, driven by longer commute distances and weaker active transportation.
Employment access is mixed. There are some campuses friendly to transit, such as the Algonquin College and surrounding cluster or Confederation Heights, but parking begins to appear in greater numbers here. There are also less transit-friendly areas such as the large industrial cluster at St. Laurent or on the south end of Merivale. The box store typology appears here as well.
1,112,800 daily trips are made to or from the Inner Suburbs. This is a decrease from 1,243,900 trips in 2011. As a percentage of trips in Ottawa, this is a fall from 48.7% in 2011 to 43.9% in 2022.
3.2% of inner suburban trips are to or from downtown; 22.5% to the outer urban area; 44.4% within the inner suburbs; and 20.8% to the outer suburbs.
Trips to downtown and the outer urban area are better served than the outer suburbs, for which there are many coverage and travel time gaps; service within the inner suburbs is inconsistent and sometimes with coverage or service gaps.
Serving the suburbs will be crucial to capturing mode share, with so many trips being made to and from here. What's more, the majority of trips in these districts (and in the outer suburbs) are suburban-only trips, with no relation to the transit-rich urban areas. For transit to become a viable option for all Ottawans, we must rethink how we structure the network to serve these trips.
The Outer Suburbs
The outer suburbs have largely been shafted on transit service. Despite having a population of 400,000 on a first-order guesstimate, the outer suburbs certainly do not receive 40% of service hours and what service they do receive is oriented towards the inner city.
Employment here is dispersed, with many jobs scattered across work-from-home; disparate shopping districts with winding streets and sprawl that are difficult to serve with a single hub in contrast to a shopping mall; office campuses with challenging road layouts; and jobs that are entirely beyond the Urban Transit Area, such as the Amazon facility on Boundary Road or the 4000 jobs located on Carp Road. Amenities are similarly dispersed, and unlike the inner suburbs, new construction will further disperse them.
To properly serve the outer suburbs, we will need both better practices imported from other cities/countries, as well as a strong push from the City to centralize destinations, a push which is more important than residential density.
In 2022, 1,075,500 daily trips were made to or from the outer suburbs, a share of 42.4% of trips. In 2011, the outer suburbs generated 937,700 daily trips, a share of 36.7% of travel.
Trips within the outer suburbs (almost always within the same suburb) consisted of 55.6% of trips; trips to the inner suburbs were 21.5% of travel; the outer urban zone generated 9.2% of trips; and travel to downtown was 2.4% of travel.
The outer suburbs are the fastest growing travel market, and we will continue to see more growth here. To stay a useful service, the City and OC Transpo needs to consider travel patterns in the suburbs and look at how to serve that 75% of the market which travels to the suburbs.
Rural Areas, Gatineau, and other trips
There are about 228,800 daily trips to or from rural areas in Ottawa, representing 9.0% of the transport market. Of these trips, 1/3 are to rural areas or outside Ottawa; these are essentially impossible to serve by transit. However, the remainder are to or from the UTA.
There is more travel to the (more difficult to serve) outer suburbs, thinning out towards the urban core. This suggests that the strategy of express buses to downtown is outdated, but also that these trips are often to or from activity centres; low-cost, hourly buses from the larger villages to the nearest transit hub, which are usually located with activity centres, may be feasible in the present day, running non-clockface if necessary to lower costs.
Of note, the Kanata-rural segment is much larger than any other urban-rural market. I believe this has to do with the 4000 jobs on Carp Road, which do not receive transit service but could support it.
About 153,400 trips are made to or from Quebec everyday (it's unclear if this definition uses only Gatineau or not, but the number of trips to non-Gatineau Quebec is not large). This is 6.1% of the travel market. The majority of trips are to the urban core, with about 27,300 trips daily to the downtown, probably Gatineau commuters who work in Ottawa; and to the outer urban area, whose attraction is admittedly harder for me to fathom (Ontarians working at Terrasses and Portage?).
There is a bump for trips to Alta Vista, suggesting that truck trips to St. Laurent or work trips to the same location are more common as well.
Trips outside of Ottawa consists of 2.1% of all trips in Ottawa. By far the largest segment is to rural Ottawa, followed by trips to Kanata and Orleans. Traffic to downtown is minimal, at under 1000 trips/day. This suggests that exurban commuters are not a large market, and those who are commuting do so to access suburban jobs or amenities. There may also be rural dwellers who cross outside Ottawa for services as well.
Conclusion
A majority of trips stay within their district. 48.2% of all trips stay within their TRANS district, and if we expand to use my own divisions, that number is 58.0%.
Frequency is more important for shorter trips, as wait time makes up a larger proportion of total travel time. Connections must emphasize local destinations and employment, even at the expensive of connections. Longer distance service should serve suburban employment where possible, or provide frequent connections to it.
The train remains an important connector, but we should be mindful not to prioritize concrete over organization, which has been the M.O. at OC Transpo with disastrous results.
Observe that intrazone trips increases in prevalence outwards from the urban core, so that the outer suburbs have a majority of travel to the other outer suburbs. This is partly due to larger district sizes, but also due to more contained travel patterns.
Ottawa's travel patterns are changing, and it will continue to shift towards the outer suburbs as new activity centres are built. What transit does with these trips will determine its viability, both as a mode of transportation to an ever-increasing proportion of people, as well as its political future.
Until next time.
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