OTTAWA — If you have a better idea for what to call the Train transit station when you’ll be able to take a light-rail train to catch a Via train at the non-transit train station, OC Transpo very much wants to hear from you.

The transit agency is putting that and a raft of other questions about the look and feel of the light-rail system it plans to open in 2018 up for discussion this summer. The future of the Train station, which OC Transpo wants to call Tremblay after the road it sits on, may be the most contentious one. Several councillors, in approving the consultation plan at a transit commission meeting Wednesday, asked about the wisdom of getting rid of the Train name.

OC Transpo wants short, snappy names, ideally bilingual ones, that make it clear instantly where a station is. The Via station’s official name, “Ottawa Station,” is useless.

“That doesn’t help us when we’re in Ottawa already,” explained chief planner Pat Scrimgeour. It doesn’t evoke anything, the way Paris’s Gare du Nord or New York’s Grand Central Terminal or even Toronto’s Union Station does. Besides, Ottawa has two Via stations (on Tremblay Road and at Fallowfield in Barrhaven) and will have a total of 18 train stations of all kinds by 2018 when the light-rail and O-Train lines are both running.

The station’s in a no man’s land between Highway 417 and the Via tracks that most people don’t think of as Alta Vista any longer. It used to be called Bannermount, though the name didn’t stick. A nearby residential enclave is called Eastview Gardens, though that’s not widely known.

And anyway we want transit users, tourists especially, to be able to find their way easily to the Via station, don’t we? Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney pointed out.

It’s a knotty one, OC Transpo’s general manager John Manconi admitted. All the more so because Via Rail has actually approached the city about teaming up. “They actually want to do ticket transfers online. So you can buy your Via ticket online and you can buy access to our service,” Manconi told the commission.

Scrimgeour’s best idea is to call the LRT station Tremblay but have the stop called out as “Tremblay, Via Rail!” as the city’s trains pull in.

Your better suggestions on that, and numerous other station names, are welcome at www.octranspo.com and at OC Transpo’s various service counters around the city.

dreevely@ottawacitizen.com

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