Ottawa station

Ottawa station main entrance in 2013

Ottawa station is located at 200 Tremblay Road, which lies directly south of Ontario Highway 417 (known locally as the Queensway) near Exit 117 and east of Riverside Drive (Regional Road 19) in an industrial park area. Its main entrance faces north to Tremblay Road.

Station platforms in 2013

South of the station building, trains call at 1 standard-level side platform and 3 low-level island platforms on 5 tracks. The platforms are connected to the main building by an underground walkway that is accessed by a circular ramp or elevator and escalators. The tracks are bordered on the south by Terminal Avenue.

Northeast of the station main entrance and past Tremblay Station is the Max Keeping Pedestrian Bridge, which crosses Highway 417. It allows access to RCGT Park, a minor-league baseball stadium, as well as the Courtyard by Marriott Ottawa East and Hampton Inn by Hilton Ottawa (temporarily closed as of 23 April 2020) west of the stadium parking lot. These two hotels are the closest to the station, and are linked to each other by the Ottawa Conference and Event Centre. All of these are accessible within a 12-15 minute walk.

The station is also within the vicinity of a number of big box stores, including the Ottawa Train Yards shopping complex south of Terminal Avenue. (However, there is no pedestrian bridge over the tracks, so this can only be accessed on foot or by car via Belfast Road.) An office complex of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is also located to the north east of the station, across the highway cloverleaf and next to the Rideau River.

As of June 2020, Ottawa station is served by 2 domestic routes (with connections). All are provided by Via Rail, the primary passenger rail operator in Canada. Departures have been reduced to 3 trains per day due to the coronavirus pandemic (effective June 3, 2020).[3]

Train	Operator	From	Via	To	Freq.	Service
22	Via Rail	Ottawa	Casselman - Alexandria - Coteau - Dorval - Montreal - Saint-Lambert - Saint-Hyacinthe - Drummondville - Charny - Sainte-Foy	Quebec	1/day	No local service between Québec City, Sainte-Foy and Charny, or Saint-Lambert and Montréal.
53	Via Rail	Ottawa	Fallowfield - Smiths Falls - Brockville - Gananoque - Kingston - Napanee - Belleville - Trenton Junction - Cobourg - Port Hope - Oshawa - Guildwood	Toronto	1/day	No local service between Ottawa and Fallowfield, or Guildwood and Toronto.
59	Via Rail	Ottawa	Fallowfield - Smiths Falls - Brockville - Kingston - Belleville - Trenton Junction - Cobourg - Oshawa - Guildwood	Toronto	1/day	No local service between Ottawa and Fallowfield, or Guildwood and Toronto.[4]

Ottawa station waiting area, 2017

The station is staffed and offers ticket sales, checked baggage and checkroom service, bicycle box service, an ATM, a restaurant, vending machines, wifi (in the station and business lounge), telephones and washrooms.

The station is wheelchair accessible including the ticket office, washrooms and trains. Wheelchairs, an elevator and a wheelchair lift are available.[5]

Waiting in line at Ottawa station

Transit connections

Tremblay station northwest of the main entrance

Ottawa station is linked to local public transportation by OC Transpo's Tremblay LRT station northwest of the main entrance. Located on the Confederation Line, trains travel west to downtown Ottawa and east in the direction of the Blair station terminus.

Ottawa station is an international style building composed of exposed cantilevered Vierendeel trusses supported by massive concrete piers. This creates a spacious open plan interior with a powerful roofline. The station's walls are a non-loadbearing glass skin and extend through the open steel trusses to the roof deck. None of the interior walls extend above the lower chords of the trusses, allowing for an uninterrupted view of the roof structure.[12]

Interior of Ottawa VIA Rail Station including ticket desk

A spiral ramp descends to an underground passageway to the far platforms

Inside, an expansive waiting area features a circular ticket office and a descending circular ramp leading to the far platforms.

For more information on the early history of rail in Ottawa, see Ottawa Union Station.

The present Ottawa station east of downtown and the Rideau River is the outcome of an urban renewal plan by the French urban planner Jacques Greber. The plan was commissioned by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, who sought a re-imagining of the city following World War II. Among the proposals in Greber's city plan was the relocation of railway tracks outside of the downtown core. At that time, many trains were still pulled by steam locomotives which brought their noise and soot to the downtown Union Station and rail yard. In addition, the trains running through Ottawa were not grade separated, meaning there were perhaps 100 level crossings impeding car and pedestrian traffic. Greber sought to clean up the downtown by relocating rail traffic outside of the city center. This would require the construction of a new train station.[13]

The new Ottawa station was built for passenger services of the Canadian National Railway (CNR) and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) companies, and was the last of the monumental union stations to be built in Canada. It was seen as an attempt to project a modern and futuristic image of rail travel in an era when it was being increasingly superseded by other means of transportation. The station was designed by the modernist architect John Cresswell Parkin of John B. Parkin & Associates in collaboration with the Montreal firm Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Michaud & Sise and was completed in August 1966, just a few months prior to the start of Canadian Centennial celebrations. Their design reflects a mix of modernism and Beaux Arts planning principles.[14] It won a Massey Medal for architecture in 1967. In 2000, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada named the station as one of the top 500 buildings produced in Canada during the last millennium.[15]

Ottawa's former Union Station in the 1920s

Ottawa's trains once came into the large downtown Union Station (active 1912–1966), a short distance from the Parliament buildings and south of the Château Laurier Hotel. However, in 1966 the railway tracks beside the Rideau Canal were replaced by the National Capital Commission’s Colonel By Drive scenic parkway as part of the Greber Plan. Initially the former station was converted into a Government Conference Centre before becoming a new temporary home for the Senate of Canada in 2019, as extensive renovations are conducted on their former location in the Centre Block building on Parliament Hill.

Per a sign located inside the station:

"The Ottawa Station was completed in 1966 as part of a plan for the relocation and consolidation of many railway lines built between 1854 and 1916. The new arrangement was based on the plans of the noted urban planner, Jacques Greber, and was constructed by the National Capital Commission. The Canadian National Railway and the Canadian Pacific railway are owners and operators of the new installations." [16]

The station has been protected under the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act since 1996. It "is a glass and steel, International style railway station [...] The VIA Rail Station at Ottawa is one of the finest examples of the International style in Canadian architecture." [17]

A $21.7 million renovation project was undertaken from late 2016 to 2018. The project added an elevator to improve accessibility in the spiral ramp and at tracks 3 and 4. The station's Track 1 side platform was also raised from the previous low-level to a standard level for faster and easier boarding. Maintenance work was also conducted on the roof, and a climate controlled waiting area was built next to Track 1 for departing passengers to wait for their trains.[18][19] The station management also began working to attain a LEED Silver green building certification from the Canada Green Building Council.[20]

Air France–KLM runs a connecting shuttle bus from this station to Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, exclusive for the airline's customers only.[21][22] As of 2016, Air France–KLM has three daily bus services between those cities.[23]

In April 2020, developers Colonnade BridgePort and investment firm Fiera Real Estate acquired the 5 acre industrial site immediately to the east of the station, with plans to develop it into a mixed-use residential and commercial centre.[25][26]

• Ottawa Central Station - Ottawa's main bus terminal
• Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport (IATA: YOW, ICAO: CYOW) - Ottawa's international airport
• List of Via Rail stations

• Media related to Ottawa Train Station at Wikimedia Commons
• Via Rail temporary train schedule with changes due to Covid 19 (Effective 31 March 2020)
• Ottawa Regional Society of Architects — Architecture of the Ottawa Train Station
• Photos of Ottawa Train Station
• Via Rail station page for Ottawa station