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Originally Posted by Dado
For the purposes of comparison, the current works at Bayshore station (adding a new platform, 4 lanes of busway and an overhead walkway) will cost $7-8M.
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Yup. The
TEMPORARY Baseline Station will be a surface station, similar to the current one. As I mentioned, it will be built to permanent standards because it will be active from summer 2009 to spring 2013 (when
Algonquin wants its other parcel of land). I have not heard whether they will be 'cloning' the existing station and re-using the steel and glass from the current one. I have my doubts since they will want to completely finish the new station before shifting the service to it. Even though they could use some temporary shelters during the transfer. Too bad since it could lower the cost of the 4-year station.
The over-head walkway over Woodroffe is a separate cost. Although the Council offered $5M
gross, the contract that Staff wrote up simply states that the City is responsible for building and maintenance of the pedestrian bridge
s. There is no cost cap, and there could be up to four bridges if
Algonquin builds all of its buildings.
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Can you blame them for not wanting a surface transit station though? This was all planned when Option 4-unaltered Scenario 3 was the way-it-was-going-to-be; remember that there would not have been LRT for another 14-15 years, so they were looking at the prospect of another decade-and-a-half of something like the current station, and even after that there still would have been buses aplenty.
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Absolutely! I would like most of the transit and road system buried. Think of the bike-paths and parkland we could have. The problem is that there should be a reality-check on the amount we can spend vs. what would be nice.
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That poor creek... it's been done-in so many times it's not funny. And the NCC went along last summer trying to 'restore ecological function' in a few places.
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I'm concerned that they will find that burying the creek that deep will adversly affect its flow. It is used as a SWM feature so it is important to have a proper flow.
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...When I look at the plan (2A) it looks to me as if the tunnel will be a drive-through tunnel for BRT and will only be put in use as a station once LRT is operational (there even appears to be a central platform). Maybe it'll be made five lanewidths wide . The BRT station is as you say at College Ave....
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As I understand it, the tunnel will be four lanes wide + a row of columns along the centre. There are
NO doors planned from the adjacent buildings into the tunnel. It is only four lanes of Transitway. It is four lanes because it is in close proximity to the four lanes at the new College Station and can not be narrower if buses are running through the tunnel.
Notice that there is NO provision for running
both trains and buses through the tunnel. It looks as if there is to be no bus link from Baseline to Lincoln Fields, according to this plan. Besides, if there is a station within the tunnel, do you want all those diesel buses going through it?
The rails will eventually replace the two outside bus lanes and the two inner lanes will be converted into the central platform. The only access to this central platform will be vertically to the courtyard above or vertically into the College Station. People will need to walk outdoors from the stairs/escalator/elevator in the courtyard to the buildings. Once the City builds more bridges, the connections will be to these.
How will the rail conversion be done? The buses will need to be removed from the tunnel and run on the surface. There is nowhere for the buses to run. Maybe they could come up the ramps at College, loop out through the traffic along Woodroffe and come in Navaho to the ramps down to the Transitway again. OH, WAIT! There are no ramps from Navaho. There is currently no conversion plan as far as I know.
Also, by 2031, the prediction is that Baseline/College Station will be a 10,000 passenger per hour facility. The station will require 6 bus bays and 12 lay-up bays: I just don’t see that capacity in the presented design. Maybe the ramps could be widened so that they act as lay-up spaces as well.
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But wait, it gets better... they're going to build a new Archives down the road at Tallwood/Meadowlands, where there will be another bi-level station. And guess what that station will have? A bus ramp! Yes, that's right! A space-consuming, land-sterilizing bus ramp right next to the new Archives building! Nevermind the fact that the Transitway will have de facto ramps at Norice just down the way AND also at Baseline.
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I agree 100%. At the very, very least, the station should not be under College, but under Navaho to try to balance the spacing a bit.
Yes, the Park & Ride (P&R) will be gone from 2013 until a shared Algonquin/P&R multi-story parkade is built.
For me, this is just a bad plan. It is not well thought out. The cost tables gives a good indication of how little work has been put into this plan.