Wednesday, October 2, 2013

What's to come with the Richmond Underground: New Orchard Station

Earlier in the week I posted some photos and concept images of Cleary Station, one of two proposed stations that would be incorporated into the City of Ottawa's Richmond Underground LRT plan. The second of those stations is New Orchard, which would be located at the intersection of New Orchard and Richmond Road in the Woodroffe North community. The indicator on this map indicates roughly where the station will be:


Below is a photo from ground level on Richmond Road of roughly where the New Orchard Station will be; it's basically right at the spot that transit shelter (which serves the 2 bus route) stands today.


 The station will be right in the middle of Byron Linear Park, an extremely popular narrow strip of greenspace separating Byron Avenue and Richmond Road. This is a close-up of the bus shelter that currently stands where New Orchard Station is proposed, looking along the linear park:


And below is a concept image of the station from the middle of Richmond Road. As you can see, it seems to occupy the full width of the park; I'll be curious to see how the city makes space to allow dog-walkers using the park to get from one side of the station to the other without having to walk on Richmond or Byron.


Finally, a look at the station from Byron Avenue looking to the east.


New transit stations are always interesting, especially when they're added onto an existing and very popular transit corridor. We might be 15-20 years away from seeing these stations actually built, but they present a very good way of improving transit access and, hopefully, increasing its use.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait... first it's said that the station will be on the north side of Richmond road (as even stated in the City's presentation documents)... and then I'm reading here a belief that it will be on the south side of Richmond Road??

Peter Raaymakers said...

Anon@1:03: I'm not sure where it says that New Orchard Station will be on the north side of Richmond Road, but the concept images sure seem to indicate that the station will be on the south side of Richmond and the north side of Byron.

Cleary Station, on the other hand, will be on the north side of Richmond Road.