Technically speaking, the LRT and via are using it, so, it could be labeled a "union" station. Maybe it should be called "Ottawa Union Station" on all services that go to it.
No. The O-Train uses a different station in a separate building adjacent to the Ottawa Station. The land the O-Train is using is mostly owned by the NCC (though they are using a corner of VIA Rail's land) and the land Ottawa station is on is owned by VIA Rail.
I'm not sure why you point this out, but the name of transit stations usually reflects what they are built next to rather than who owns the land they are built on...
I was replying to
micheal_can's suggestion that it is still a union station since "the LRT and via are using it" (they aren't). My post had nothing to do with the
naming of the O-Train station, but the
usage of the VIA Rail station (it is no longer a union station).
...and following some debate which our little dispute has sparked on groups.io, I have to concede that even though "Union Station" seems to have been the intended name for the new rail station built on Tremblay Road, the name was changed to "Ottawa Station" before it was opened. The full debate can be accessed directly on
groups.io, but I'm just quoting the two older posts with which Tom Box introduced the debate:
View attachment 276959
Very interesting! So as you can see, there is no way OC Transpo could have called the station "Union" or "Union Station" as you suggested. The name "Train" for a train station is as strange as naming a bus depot "Bus" or an airport "Airplane." The name "Ottawa Station - Gare d'Ottawa" is rather long and cumbersome and OC Transpo was trying to avoid double, translated names as people would abbreviate it to their language, which would cause confusion for a transit system. The name "VIA" "VIA Rail" could have worked, but it relies on VIA Rail being the name of the only user of the station.
Furthermore, Tom Box points out that this change in name seems to have been causing confusion from the day of opening and I'm kind of reluctant to hold the editors of the "European Rail Timetable" to higher standards than "The Globe and Mail":
https://groups.io/g/Canadian-Passenger-Rail/message/90359
I don't see how a Toronto based newspaper getting the wrong name
2 days prior to the station opening is analogous the editors of the "European Rail Timetable" using the wrong name
50 years after the station opened. Besides, newspapers tend to be more concerned about meeting publication deadlines than getting fine details accurate, so I would hold editor of a timetable to a higher standard than the editor of a newspaper. If I had to guess (and it is just a guess) by the wording of the article, it was the Editor changing the case in the author's article from "The capital's new union station" to "The capital's new Union Station." There is no doubt that it was a union station and without the title caps, the article would have been perfectly accurate.
I'm almost certain that
@roger1818 is correct and that the passenger tunnel connects to that building. However, opening that tunnel as a pedestrian thoroughfare would cause severe crowding and crowd control issues and could consequently be highly problematic...
I am not sure about crowding, but it is certainly a controlled access area since the platforms are narrow so they want to wait until the train arrives before allowing passengers on them. It looks like part of the elevated platform design is to widen the platforms, thus making it possible for people to wait on the platforms.
Yes, that's much more trickier than I thought, now that we know that "Union" doesn't work in French...
Yup. I challenge you to find a better station name than "Tremblay" for the "O-Train" station that is bilingual without having to repeat yourself. I have never said "Tremblay" was a good name. I have just said that the proposed alternates don't work. They could have called it "Gare d'Ottawa Station" (following a common practice of merging French and English names), but it is still kind of messy.
Visitors don't necessarily leave a city the same way they arrived in it: during my first two visits to Canada, I landed at Ottawa Airport and I started my first ever trip with VIA Rail at Ottawa Station (note the correct use of name!
).
While possible, I feel is unusual. Ottawa doesn't have nearly as many international flights as either Montreal or Toronto, so the odds of someone choosing to fly into Ottawa as part of a tour of Canada is not common. It would certainly be more convenient to fly into Montreal and out of Toronto (or vice versa) and stop in Ottawa along the way since it is between the two.
Also tourists are quite likely to just jump into the first taxi they see after arriving in a new city (thus paying little attention to where the terminal of their arrival is located), leaving the task of figuring out the city's transit network for after they've checked in at their hotel and stored their luggage.
I would expect the type of tourist to take a taxi from the station would likely take it back to the station. If they are going to use transit, they will likely do it both ways. Even if they did this, as you said, they have time to figure out the transit system.
