As debate over Ottawa's light rail expansion continues, officials from other cities that have met with wild LRT success say the key to a well run railroad is not hard to find.

Portland, Denver and Salt Lake City have all exceeded their loftiest projections in ridership and traffic issues.

The braintrust behind those systems were asked how they stack up against Ottawa's extension plan and for their thoughts on how to get commuters to give up their cars.

While Ottawa has yet to offer up its game plan to get cars off of the road and fill the LRT once it's built, these cities south of the border that have met with success cite a number of factors, illustrating the complexity of the issue.

Electric LRT trains, downtown routes at street level, no tunnels, and constant expansion. Those may be the obvious common bonds those cities share, but closer examination reveals every system has been built either on budget or under budget. They also all connect to airports or other major transport hubs and major universities and they've all seen development soar along the train's route. This emphasis on connecting major hubs within a city has considerably reduced automobile traffic in all three cities.

Reducing automobile traffic is a key objective of the City of Ottawa, yet the proposed LRT east-west route skirts around the west end's largest population centres. Kanata residents, for example, will either have to take local buses to the far north end of the former city, or take an eastbound express bus, to catch the train. Once on the train, they must head southeast to the Greenboro station and make another transfer onto the northbound train to get downtown.

At this point, Ottawa's LRT expansion plans also do not include direct links to the University of Ottawa or Algonquin College and a rail link to the airport is only planned for the latter stages of the expansion still years away.

The City of Ottawa has also found itself under fire for deciding against putting the downtown leg of the LRT underground. In the end, however, Portland, Denver and Salt Lake City also decided against the expense of digging tunnels.

In Portland, Ore., Mary Fetsch was amazed that Ottawa has no immediate plan to connect the track to the airport or many other major hubs. The communications director for TriMet, the regional transit agency for Portland, emphasized that every kilometre of the track should be accounted for as far as development is concerned.

"The important thing is you have to have it connected to something. You have to ask what the long-term strategy is: Will you connect directly to the airport and at least one of the universities? If the track runs over grassy fields where currently there is little development, what is planned for that land? You have to figure out where your riders are going to be coming from."

Portland, with a population of about 1.5 million, uses electric trains. Its LRT attracted almost 30 million riders in 2004.

In downtown Portland, the train runs at a slower speed and there's a controlled signal system in place. Traffic isn't an issue, and although it gets cool and rainy there the municipal government also decided tunnels were not in the cards.

"A tunnel was debated," Ms. Fetsch said, "but it would've cost a lot of money. We ended up putting the money we had into making the system run as efficiently as possible."

The City of Denver's director of public affairs, Scott Reed, said the number of LRT commuters is continuously rising in a system that's similar to what's being planned here. Electric trains that run through the downtown core share the road with traffic and have caused no more congestion. In fact, just the opposite has occurred.

"In the last fiscal, from March 2004 to this past March, approximately 10 million people rode the LRT," Mr. Reed said. "An average weekday sees 230,000 riders, and it has continued to increase for 10 consecutive months."

That increase, by the way, is 70 per cent above expectations.

"There are always different theories as to what the cause is, but it's a combination of many factors," Mr. Reed said. The economy is better so more people are working, the gas prices force people to leave their cars at home and there's been a steady growth in the population."

All that may be true, but there seems to be more to it than luck.

"The main thing to do is to build a better mousetrap," Mr. Reed explained. "People see that it's an easier, more economical way to commute. All the lines were constructed on time and within budget and the trains run right through downtown at street level contra flow, which means against the traffic, and the traffic signals are synchronized with magnetic detectors under the track bed so it never gets a red light. If anything, congestion has been reduced rather than increased because of the synchronization and the number of riders. We've taken thousands of people a day out of single-occupant cars."

Mr. Reed said the thought of tunnels had been bandied about, but in the end they were discounted for both cost and efficiency reasons.

"We don't have tunnels because the cost would have been many times what it was and because it runs fine downtown as it is. Sure, there was debate, there are always critics of every plan. Some people make a career out of telling you what you can't do. But in the end, we're very happy with the entire system."

Head west to Utah, where Salt Lake City has seen ridership levels double forecasts. Salt Lake uses the same trains as Denver and the route also runs through the inner city without tunnels. Utah Transit Authority spokesman Justin Jones said convincing people to use the system proved to be less difficult than telling them they couldn't when maintenance was needed.

"We projected that in 2025 we would average 22,000 riders a day. We just had our fifth anniversary last December with 44,000 riders a day ... In fact, there was a public outcry because we had to pull some cars out of service because they were getting older and needed maintenance. They were so packed people complained."

He said there are about 900,000 people in the Salt Lake region – as compared to the City of Ottawa's approximate 800,000.

An interesting strategy to boost ridership was sliding a flat rate into the tuition of University of Utah students, which allows them to ride for free all the time without the expense coming directly out of their pockets.

Beyond that, though, Mr. Jones said common sense must prevail.

"The trick is a very simple one. Make it fast and efficient and get people where they're going as fast as if they drove. We do that here. The track downtown runs at street level and the LRT shares the road with traffic for a couple of blocks before it has its own street, but there are no traffic problems at all. In fact, the biggest problem we have is the amount of open parking spaces. So much parking is being unused."

By Scott Taylor

scott.taylor@transcontinental.ca