Ottawa residents and tourists will have four colour-coded routes to keep track of as they navigate 41 stations on the second stage of the city’s light-rail transit system, the layout of which was finalized in a new map released Thursday.
The map, shared in a Twitter video by Mayor Jim Watson, shows four distinct route numbers for the Stage 2 LRT system, doubling the number of routes on the existing north-south and east-west lines.
When construction wraps on the LRT extensions, the existing Line 1 will stretch from the new Trim Station in the east to Lincoln Fields Station in the west before turning south to Algonquin Station, the new name for Baseline Station.
Line 3 will mirror Line 1 service through the east end and downtown core but will instead continue west past Lincoln Fields to Moodie Station.
Line 2, which before construction began connected Bayview Station to Greenboro Station, will now continue south to Limebank Station.
Line 4 will begin as a branch off of Line 2 at South Keys Station to connect out to the Ottawa International Airport.
While the east-west line will still be called Confederation and the north-south line will still go by Trillium in the near term, these names will be phased out in favour of the numerical routes, according to a memo sent by Ottawa transit boss John Manconi on Thursday.
A few existing stations will also receive new names when they join the LRT line.
In addition to Baseline’s switch to Algonquin, Dominion Station will become Kìchì Sìbì and Carling Station will become Dow’s Lake.
A few stations are also changing their branding from the early days of Stage 2 planning: Gladstone Station will instead be called Corso Italia, Cleary Station will instead go by Sherbourne and Orléans Boulevard Station will instead be called Convent Glen.
LRT station names were chosen based on nearby geographical references, ease of pronunciation in French and English and distinctness from other location/station names in the city.
Full service on Stage 2 is expected to begin in 2025.