Southeast Transitway/Southeast LRT | ~17 Stations | $2 Billion | Proposed

[Allan83]

Originally Posted by artvandelay

I'm not crazy about this proposal. I'd prefer that the city build LRT right away rather than going with this high op-cost stopgap solution (also, nobody wants to ride on stinking buses). I can see this busway being built and stagnating for years before the LRT conversion - as has happened in Ottawa.

With a $52 million debt service over 20 years, the City should be able to borrow $725 million at current rates (or $900 million over 30 years). Is this not enough to get started on LRT construction?

This won't be quite as nice as an LRT ride, but it’ll be a whole lot nicer than a regular bus ride. Remember that these are smooth, dedicated, roadways designed for higher speeds with proper superelevation. This is not the crashing and banging at 50 kms/h over normal city streets, and hanging on for dear life while your bus careens around a 90 degree corner, experience that you get with regular busses.

[sim]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

Do I understand your scenario correctly -- there's an unforeseen capacity crunch on the new Green Line one day, so we just run a Blue Line train into the yard at the OBMF, call in a crane, lift the train cars onto a series of trucks and secure them, then drive them to the SE LRT maintenance facility, bring in another crane and lower the train onto the tracks there, then bring it into service? That seems like a pretty difficult way of solving a short term crunch.

Recently Houston and Salt Lake City partnered to bring in new LRVs together; our existing high floor trains prevent us from partnering with the vast majority of North American operators, including Seattle, Portland, Denver, Ottawa and Toronto. If we don't think that our $200 million deals aren't big enough to attract bids (for some reason; we've been doing fine so far), then surely the answer is to be able to partner with most other agencies, as opposed to Edmonton and... Edmonton.

And of course high floor platforms are more expensive to start with; they'll always have that cost problem starting from day one. In fact, from before day one, with the plan to build a busway and then convert it -- unless you want to have a special fleet of high floor buses to run on the line before the conversion, which takes you back into all of your procurement problems and flexibility problems times two.

From a higher level perspective, there would seem to be pretty substantial trade-offs for disadvantages and advantages in either case. Berlin, for example would love to not have had and not have two different sized U-bahns. The more cost effective constructability for low-floor / Trams is obviously a huge plus.

Your first paragraph seems a bit reactionary though. There are other ways to do things: It's not like the two lines could not be connected in at least one of the two points where they are currently planned to intersect. I conceptualized something on here about 1.5 yrs ago regarding this. Yes, yes, I know, increased capital costs, better to have something built than nothing at all, etc, etc..

My point: There's something to be said for a flexible, robust, adaptable and harmonized system.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Allan83

This won't be quite as nice as an LRT ride, but it’ll be a whole lot nicer than a regular bus ride. Remember that these are smooth, dedicated, roadways designed for higher speeds with proper superelevation. This is not the crashing and banging at 50 kms/h over normal city streets, and hanging on for dear life while your bus careens around a 90 degree corner, experience that you get with regular busses.

Trains are for capacity. Dedicated lanes, limited stops and off-vehicle fare payment for speed, regardless of vehcile. Transit improvements to the SE with a busway will be exactly the same as they will with an LRT. The only reason to convert to LRT is to be able to move more people on less vehicles. If we build a transitway and buses are only 60% full, we don't need to upgrade to LRT.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by fusili

Trains are for capacity. Dedicated lanes, limited stops and off-vehicle fare payment for speed, regardless of vehcile. Transit improvements to the SE with a busway will be exactly the same as they will with an LRT. The only reason to convert to LRT is to be able to move more people on less vehicles. If we build a transitway and buses are only 60% full, we don't need to upgrade to LRT.

Jarrett Walker would be proud of you; well put.

[Fuzz]

Just curious, how much capacity do you loose on low floor? I assume the wheels take up space, or am I picturing this wrong?

EDIT:

OK, after watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hzZgO8hjG0

I don't see this having nearly as much capacity as our current trains. When the camera goes to the front, their are no doors there. Given how cramped our current trains are, not having that extra standing space, and the loss of standing space int he "bendy" part looks like as significant loss of capacity.

They also still need an elevated platform. I was picturing "low floor" like the ones in Amsterdam. So what exactly are the benefits of these things?

[s211]

Originally Posted by Allan83

This won't be quite as nice as an LRT ride, but it’ll be a whole lot nicer than a regular bus ride. Remember that these are smooth, dedicated, roadways designed for higher speeds with proper superelevation. This is not the crashing and banging at 50 kms/h over normal city streets, and hanging on for dear life while your bus careens around a 90 degree corner, experience that you get with regular busses.

Tried Boston's BRT and it was a pretty bouncy ride, so don't expect to feel like you're riding rails.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Just curious, how much capacity do you loose on low floor? I assume the wheels take up space, or am I picturing this wrong?

EDIT:

OK, after watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hzZgO8hjG0

I don't see this having nearly as much capacity as our current trains. When the camera goes to the front, their are no doors there. Given how cramped our current trains are, not having that extra standing space, and the loss of standing space int he "bendy" part looks like as significant loss of capacity.

They also still need an elevated platform. I was picturing "low floor" like the ones in Amsterdam. So what exactly are the benefits of these things?

A elevated platform thats about 12" tall vs 36", quite a difference in cost.

Just looking at the LRV's in Amsterdam, the S70 is a bit higher off the ground than the Combino but still a nearly third that of the U2/SD160/SD200 (36" vs 14" for the S70 vs 12" for the Combino).

As for capacity, having ridden the S70's in Portland they fit quite a few people. The capacity quoted by Siemens is lower (166 vs 226 for the SD160NG and 200 for the SD160/U2) but in reality if its built to 4 or 5 LRV length for the stations that won't make much difference and even now there are limited times that there are actually that many on the existing CTrain LRV's anyways.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by sim

From a higher level perspective, there would seem to be pretty substantial trade-offs for disadvantages and advantages in either case. Berlin, for example would love to not have had and not have two different sized U-bahns. The more cost effective constructability for low-floor / Trams is obviously a huge plus.

Your first paragraph seems a bit reactionary though. There are other ways to do things: It's not like the two lines could not be connected in at least one of the two points where they are currently planned to intersect. I conceptualized something on here about 1.5 yrs ago regarding this. Yes, yes, I know, increased capital costs, better to have something built than nothing at all, etc, etc..

My point: There's something to be said for a flexible, robust, adaptable and harmonized system.

Intersect is a pretty strong term for two lines that pass over top / underneath each other, with 20 feet of concrete and soil between, in the heart of the city. The lines don't intersect any more than the upper deck of the Centre Street Bridge intersects with Memorial Drive.

It would be hundreds of millions of dollars to intersect the Green Line with either of the other lines. All of the touted harmonized fleet benefits (flexibility, combined orders, whatever) are only benefits because they save money. Spending, say, $60 million extra on stations so that we can save $5 million on a hypothetical future LRT order is ridiculous. So is spending $500 million on tunnelling and property ROW for the flexibility to run trains between the Green and Red/Blue lines; we could buy dozens of extra trains to sit around as spares on every line for that price which would give far more flexibility.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

Intersect is a pretty strong term for two lines that pass over top / underneath each other, with 20 feet of concrete and soil between, in the heart of the city. The lines don't intersect any more than the upper deck of the Centre Street Bridge intersects with Memorial Drive.

It would be hundreds of millions of dollars to intersect the Green Line with either of the other lines. All of the touted harmonized fleet benefits (flexibility, combined orders, whatever) are only benefits because they save money. Spending, say, $60 million extra on stations so that we can save $5 million on a hypothetical future LRT order is ridiculous. So is spending $500 million on tunnelling and property ROW for the flexibility to run trains between the Green and Red/Blue lines; we could buy dozens of extra trains to sit around as spares on every line for that price which would give far more flexibility.

Not that we'd ever necessarily want to connect the Green line to existing system, but your valuation is insane. A connection, built purely for transferring rolling stock, as opposed to one allowing passenger operation between something like the NW and SE, would need to be a single track tunnel just long enough to climb something like 5m. Depending on the way the SE LRT travels on 10th, a 200m spur, that's mostly open trench, would probably do it. Ten million dollars would be a conservative estimate.

Subways are generally expensive because of utility relocation and stations. There isn't much in the way of utilities under the CP ROW and there would be no stations. For 500 million we could build the 8th Ave subway in its entirety if we were willing to live with three frugal stations that only had 100m long platforms.

[Allan83]

Originally Posted by s211

Tried Boston's BRT and it was a pretty bouncy ride, so don't expect to feel like you're riding rails.

If you’re on a transitway it shouldn’t be bouncy. If you’re on a BRT but off the transitway then all the deficiencies of the regular roads do apply.

[Allan83]

Originally Posted by fusili

Trains are for capacity. Dedicated lanes, limited stops and off-vehicle fare payment for speed, regardless of vehcile. Transit improvements to the SE with a busway will be exactly the same as they will with an LRT. The only reason to convert to LRT is to be able to move more people on less vehicles. If we build a transitway and buses are only 60% full, we don't need to upgrade to LRT.

While it’s a transitway it can also be used by emergency vehicles, so the police will be able to zip right into Ogden. Busses can also get on and off the transitway at various points. You can also run express busses, which you can’t really do with LRTs. So a bonus to the transitway option is that it can be quite flexible and multi-functional, but as volumes increase I’m sure it makes more sense to switch to the LRTs.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

Do I understand your scenario correctly -- there's an unforeseen capacity crunch on the new Green Line one day, so we just run a Blue Line train into the yard at the OBMF, call in a crane, lift the train cars onto a series of trucks and secure them, then drive them to the SE LRT maintenance facility, bring in another crane and lower the train onto the tracks there, then bring it into service? That seems like a pretty difficult way of solving a short term crunch.

Recently Houston and Salt Lake City partnered to bring in new LRVs together; our existing high floor trains prevent us from partnering with the vast majority of North American operators, including Seattle, Portland, Denver, Ottawa and Toronto. If we don't think that our $200 million deals aren't big enough to attract bids (for some reason; we've been doing fine so far), then surely the answer is to be able to partner with most other agencies, as opposed to Edmonton and... Edmonton.

And of course high floor platforms are more expensive to start with; they'll always have that cost problem starting from day one. In fact, from before day one, with the plan to build a busway and then convert it -- unless you want to have a special fleet of high floor buses to run on the line before the conversion, which takes you back into all of your procurement problems and flexibility problems times two.

So the scenario is we find ourselves really needing two more rush hour trains on the green line and less congestion, or better yet free reserve vehicles, on the red and blue. Maybe we had bad luck and a string of car crashes total a few LRVs or alternatively the Harvest Hills @ 96th Ave employment centre is built and we're shocked to discover that it acheives a transit commute share similar to downtown. Yeah, transferring rolling stock would be difficult without connecting track but it's a lot easier to fill the gap by moving trains than by calling up Siemens and placing an order for a handful of LRVs and living with the shortfall for a year or two.

We would also always have the option of building connecting track if we wanted it at some point. I recall Boston either did something similar or wanted to, between two of their disconnected subway lines because, decades after each lines construction, it made sense to be able to move trains. With incompatible systems, it would forever restrict our options.

There are more high floor LRT systems in North America than just Calgary and Edmonton. We wouldn't be anywhere close to as alone as you make it out to be. Missing the opportunity to piggy back on a Houston order, hoping the manufacturers don't laugh when half the order needs sanders and heaters while the other half needs AC that can deal with a humid 40c day, isn't much of a loss.

I will guarantee you that the green line BRT will not be built with 100m long 12"-14" inch platforms. Platforms will be built when it's converted to LRT. The difference in cost isn't that large, doesn't apply to elevated stations, and is reversed when it comes to below grade stations. The WLRT wouldn't have been any cheaper with shorter platforms. The Green line could have a lot of below grade stations depending on what happens on Centre.

[ByeByeBaby]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

Not that we'd ever necessarily want to connect the Green line to existing system, but your valuation is insane. A connection, built purely for transferring rolling stock, as opposed to one allowing passenger operation between something like the NW and SE, would need to be a single track tunnel just long enough to climb something like 5m. Depending on the way the SE LRT travels on 10th, a 200m spur, that's mostly open trench, would probably do it. Ten million dollars would be a conservative estimate.

Subways are generally expensive because of utility relocation and stations. There isn't much in the way of utilities under the CP ROW and there would be no stations. For 500 million we could build the 8th Ave subway in its entirety if we were willing to live with three frugal stations that only had 100m long platforms.

I would appreciate some sort of a diagram that shows how the SE LRT would connect to the other lines for $10M, keeping in mind that you can't cross the CPR, and that the ROW in the area is extremely limited and mostly already built up.

And I would sign a contract with you today if you promised to build the 8th Ave subway for 500 million.

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

There are more high floor LRT systems in North America than just Calgary and Edmonton. We wouldn't be anywhere close to as alone as you make it out to be. Missing the opportunity to piggy back on a Houston order, hoping the manufacturers don't laugh when half the order needs sanders and heaters while the other half needs AC that can deal with a humid 40c day, isn't much of a loss.

Absolutely, there are more high floor LRT systems than Calgary and Edmonton (although I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Buffalo or St. Louis to expand any time soon).

High floor LRT operators in US/Canada:
Calgary
Edmonton
St. Louis
Los Angeles
Buffalo

Low floor LRT operators in US/Canada (note this includes every system built in the last 20 years, and that I've not bothered to list the streetcar systems, which are all low floor):
Toronto
Ottawa
Seattle
Portland
Sacramento
San Jose
Oceanside
San Diego
Phoenix
Denver
Salt Lake City
Dallas
Houston
Charlotte
Minneapolis
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Baltimore
Philadelphia
Trenton-Camden
Newark
Hudson-Bergen (NJ)
Boston

MUNI in San Francisco is dual-height, and it's possible I missed some others.

[sim]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

Intersect is a pretty strong term for two lines that pass over top / underneath each other, with 20 feet of concrete and soil between, in the heart of the city. The lines don't intersect any more than the upper deck of the Centre Street Bridge intersects with Memorial Drive.

Well to be fair, using the term pass in present tense is perhaps even stronger: We don't fully know how that will play out in the 3rd dimension at this point.

It would be hundreds of millions of dollars to intersect the Green Line with either of the other lines. All of the touted harmonized fleet benefits (flexibility, combined orders, whatever) are only benefits because they save money. Spending, say, $60 million extra on stations so that we can save $5 million on a hypothetical future LRT order is ridiculous. So is spending $500 million on tunnelling and property ROW for the flexibility to run trains between the Green and Red/Blue lines; we could buy dozens of extra trains to sit around as spares on every line for that price which would give far more flexibility.

I'm with Bassic Lab on this one. You seem to be throwing around numbers rather liberally and definitively here.

I don't feel there is much value into going into depth about how to connect two lines when it hasn't even been fully established (concretely) where exactly it will enter the core and at what elevation, not to mention how exactly a future 8th Ave tunnel would change things. But my loose conceptualization would see this connection take place around 10th Ave and not DT were it to.

I'm not saying this is right or optimal, the point was to elucidate that you don't have to load TUs onto cranes to allow them to change lines.

[Calgarian]

I think they should just stick with the LRT system we have now. I realize there is higher initial cost, but I think it's better to be able to use the same trains on all tracks, just seems better for the system as a whole.

[DizzyEdge]

It makes sense, but I wonder if it really matters. If we assume that existing lines won't get less busy, so existing cars will always be in use, there might not be much ability to swap cars from one line to another just because the 'parent line' of those cars will always be screaming for them, meaning that capacity will need to be increased by buying new cars, which will be whatever type matches the line that needs them.

[CTrainDude]

Originally Posted by Calgarian

I think they should just stick with the LRT system we have now. I realize there is higher initial cost, but I think it's better to be able to use the same trains on all tracks, just seems better for the system as a whole.

But the tracks won't be joined at any point, and they need a new garage anyway, so you wouldn't be using the same trains on ALL tracks, you'd be using the same type of trains on different tracks - why not make a well-thought out choice, rather than getting the same trains without exploring the possibilities?

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

I would appreciate some sort of a diagram that shows how the SE LRT would connect to the other lines for $10M, keeping in mind that you can't cross the CPR, and that the ROW in the area is extremely limited and mostly already built up.

And I would sign a contract with you today if you promised to build the 8th Ave subway for 500 million.





Absolutely, there are more high floor LRT systems than Calgary and Edmonton (although I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Buffalo or St. Louis to expand any time soon).

High floor LRT operators in US/Canada:
Calgary
Edmonton
St. Louis
Los Angeles
Buffalo

Low floor LRT operators in US/Canada (note this includes every system built in the last 20 years, and that I've not bothered to list the streetcar systems, which are all low floor):
Toronto
Ottawa
Seattle
Portland
Sacramento
San Jose
Oceanside
San Diego
Phoenix
Denver
Salt Lake City
Dallas
Houston
Charlotte
Minneapolis
Pittsburgh
Cleveland
Baltimore
Philadelphia
Trenton-Camden
Newark
Hudson-Bergen (NJ)
Boston

MUNI in San Francisco is dual-height, and it's possible I missed some others.

8th Ave and 2nd St SW is built up and extremely limited. The area around where 3rd St SE and the CPR tracks is parking lots and nothing. A connection would all depend on how the SE LRT runs along tenth. If it's on the surface or below grade the spur would leave the westbound track just west of 4 St E, curve toward the north roughly where 3rd St would be under the CPR tracks and join the northbound track either with in the existing tunnel or on the surface just after the existing portal. If it's elevated, it would be substantially cheaper, just follow the same path but bridge over the CPR and then descend towards 8th to do the same. That might be more problematic though; I haven't done the math to see if there is room for the descent before the new library.

500 million for an 8th Ave Subway is pretty realistic given the specs I outlined (three stations, 100m platforms, bare bones design). We would likely want something more expensive (probably four stations (one much more complicated for transfers at 2nd st that is itself built over another tunnel), 125m platforms, and some nice designs) but research some costs. A budget of 100 million dollars per station and ~200 million per mile for cut and cover tunnel isn't just realistic, it's a significant increase over comparable projects.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by mersar

A elevated platform thats about 12" tall vs 36", quite a difference in cost.

Just looking at the LRV's in Amsterdam, the S70 is a bit higher off the ground than the Combino but still a nearly third that of the U2/SD160/SD200 (36" vs 14" for the S70 vs 12" for the Combino).

As for capacity, having ridden the S70's in Portland they fit quite a few people. The capacity quoted by Siemens is lower (166 vs 226 for the SD160NG and 200 for the SD160/U2) but in reality if its built to 4 or 5 LRV length for the stations that won't make much difference and even now there are limited times that there are actually that many on the existing CTrain LRV's anyways.

So the trade off is more expensive platforms for high floor, vs 25% reduced capacity? So you will need to go to 4 or 5 car trains sooner, isn't that just going to eat up the savings on platforms? If it goes up north centre, its going to need all the capacity it can get. Not sure about SE. Does that tradeoff makes sense, unless there are other benefits?

[Calgarian]

Originally Posted by CTrainDude

But the tracks won't be joined at any point, and they need a new garage anyway, so you wouldn't be using the same trains on ALL tracks, you'd be using the same type of trains on different tracks - why not make a well-thought out choice, rather than getting the same trains without exploring the possibilities?

Yeah that occurred to me after I posted that. I suppose they could always join them somewhere where the SELRT and SLRT pass close to each other (highfield Industrial).