Burrard Inlet Rapid Transit - Park Royal-Metrotown via 2nd Narrows | BRT/RRT?

[chowhou]

Bear in mind that this study was commissioned by my beloved District of North Vancouver who has a vested interest in ensuring that the Ironworkers' is replaced by a higher capacity road bridge. I'm sure that was one of the requirements given to the consultants. The two eastbound only (i.e. GTFO THE NORTH SHORE) collector lanes are a little ridiculous and on the edge of absurdity.

Originally Posted by djmk

A skytrain station at 3rd and lonsdale is 5 long blocks uphill from the seabus.

Nobody lives around Moodyville

Originally Posted by BaddieB

It really would make way more sense for the route to go along Lower Level Road, rather than 3rd, where no doubt they would have to bore it at the cost of a few hundreds of millions more.

There's almost no reason for this line to intersect with the Seabus. I've given my reasons in the Transit Fantasies thread. Basically, this line is about East-West North Shore connectivity funnelled to the Second Narrows, whereas the Seabus is designed for North-South North Shore connectivity funnelled to the Seabus. There wouldn't be very many people given additional service by aligning the Skytrain closer to the waterfront, and you'd be reducing service for a lot of people. The closer to the water the stations are, the more water you're servicing and the less land you're servicing.

Originally Posted by djmk

And 2! 90 degree turns

Why would they do that?

The Evergreen Line has a 90 degree turn at Pinetree and something like a 50 degree turn at North Road. It's definitely doable but I personally think this is an extremely inefficient route. I'm not sure why, but people seem be getting stuck on this big S (Cassiar-Hastings-Willingdon) design.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by djmk

A skytrain station at 3rd and lonsdale is 5 long blocks uphill from the seabus.

Nobody lives around Moodyville

And 2! 90 degree turns

Why would they do that?

And throw in that most of Moodyville has recently been redeveloped with townhomes which makes it even worse for development potential.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

And throw in that most of Moodyville has recently been redeveloped with townhomes which makes it even worse for development potential.

IMO it's not that Moodyville is particularly good, it's that it's the best there is between Lonsdale and Phibbs.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by chowhou

IMO it's not that Moodyville is particularly good, it's that it's the best there is between Lonsdale and Phibbs.

Yeah it would make more sense even for the main node for Lynn Valley traffic through Grand Blvd (avoiding Mountain Highway/Lower Lynn traffic)

[Stainer]

Originally Posted by BaddieB

Willingdon north of Lougheed has a 12 to 20m wide linear park that can provide room for a portal and cut and cover, the easiest place where you could possibly put in cut and cover.

Downside is the park would be disrupted, but the cost savings would be worth it.

The linear park isn't actually park land. The houses along side Willingdon were slowly purchased by the city over many years to provide space for the street to be widened for future expansion. ie, widened so Skytrain pillars can go down the center.

I'm working on a video that will include this that should be out "soon"

[mcj]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

Yeah it would make more sense even for the main node for Lynn Valley traffic through Grand Blvd (avoiding Mountain Highway/Lower Lynn traffic)

Would still have to go a few blocks west to the site between St. Davids and Ridgeway, assuming Translink would utilize the property they already own for the station. A station at Queensbury would have limited development potential to the South and East.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Stainer

The linear park isn't actually park land. The houses along side Willingdon were slowly purchased by the city over many years to provide space for the street to be widened for future expansion. ie, widened so Skytrain pillars can go down the center.

I'm working on a video that will include this that should be out "soon"

Burnaby seems to consider it "park land".

https://www.burnaby.ca/explore-outdoors/parks/willingdon-linear-park

Bear in mind that unlike in the CoV, "park land" is a much less cut and dry proposition. It seems like pretty much all city land that is public use and called a park is "park land", but that can also be taken away at a moment's notice (see Surrey road network work).

[Stainer]

Originally Posted by chowhou

Burnaby seems to consider it "park land".

https://www.burnaby.ca/explore-outdoors/parks/willingdon-linear-park

Bear in mind that unlike in the CoV, "park land" is a much less cut and dry proposition. It seems like pretty much all city land that is public use and called a park is "park land", but that can also be taken away at a moment's notice (see Surrey road network work).

It's called a park, but isn't park land, so there won't be an issue when it gets converted into road/guideway space.

This map is a great resource https://data.burnaby.ca/datasets/a1a896a...location=49.244909%2C-122.944838%2C12.71 and shows all the park land in Burnaby that is actual park land.

[RedArbutus]

Originally Posted by djmk

A few blocks of 4 story townhouses/condos and it's not going to get much denser than that.

Put the station at the bottom of the hill and redevelop that mess around Rona and then there is potential

I mean, I guess you could argue that by the time RRT is built the old industry around Rona could be all 20 storey towers and indeed a lot of density, but you might as well say the same thing about the Translink development at 3rd and St. Davids, what with provincial TOD legistation overriding local zoning. At this rate I doubt that's going to be 4/5 storeys as was intended by the Moodyville OCP.

[RedArbutus]

Originally Posted by chowhou

IMO it's not that Moodyville is particularly good, it's that it's the best there is between Lonsdale and Phibbs.

Exactly.

I think Central Lonsdale/Lions Gate makes more sense to connect to Phibbs/ south of Burrard Inlet, but there's just a whole lot of nothing + land acquisition + huge incline in between that.

Low Level Road would be interesting though.

[djmk]

Originally Posted by chowhou

There's almost no reason for this line to intersect with the Seabus. I've given my reasons in the Transit Fantasies thread. Basically, this line is about East-West North Shore connectivity funnelled to the Second Narrows, whereas the Seabus is designed for North-South North Shore connectivity funnelled to the Seabus. There wouldn't be very many people given additional service by aligning the Skytrain closer to the waterfront, and you'd be reducing service for a lot of people. The closer to the water the stations are, the more water you're servicing and the less land you're servicing.

People on the north shore don't really live east/west. They live north/south. The hospital is 10 blocks north up a steep hill. The Seabus is 5 (or more) blocks south. The seabus also is closer to the Shipyard with the uni and hotels.

The seabus also has a huge bus exchange.

And the seabus will probably still be the quickest and easiest way downtown or airport for anyone living on the north shore. Getting off on Hastings and taking a bus seems like a lot of work.

Unless they are really trying to bypass reserve land, it seems weird.

[BaddieB]

Skipping the seabus is so silly. Although it would make half the walkshed water, the Quay has access to downtown, which compensates for that. Not to mention it would be much cheaper to do above ground along Lower Level before going underground at the quay than tunnelling all the way past Phibbs.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by djmk

People on the north shore don't really live east/west. They live north/south. The hospital is 10 blocks north up a steep hill. The Seabus is 5 (or more) blocks south. The seabus also is closer to the Shipyard with the uni and hotels.

The seabus also has a huge bus exchange.

And the seabus will probably still be the quickest and easiest way downtown or airport for anyone living on the north shore. Getting off on Hastings and taking a bus seems like a lot of work.

Unless they are really trying to bypass reserve land, it seems weird.

So... in other words it doesn't matter much what the North-South alignment of the Skytrain is, because it will generally be faster for people to take the bus North-South to the SeaBus.

In my opinion there are 3 "zones" on the North Shore of people trying to go downtown. Capilano/West, Seymour/Lynn/East, and Lonsdale/CoV.

Anyone living around the Capilano or in West Vancouver will still generally be better off taking the bus across the Lions gate.
Anyone living around the Seymour/Lynn or east of that will still generally be better off taking the bus across the Second Narrows.
Anyone living on or around Lonsdale or the CoV will still generally be better off taking the bus directly to the Quay for the SeaBus.

Someone living at the future Phibbs Station should still just be taking the 210/211.
Someone living at the future Lions Gate Station should still just be taking the 240.
Someone living on Lonsdale should still probably just walk.

It's really just people that are at Moodyville or Cap Mall that might get a small benefit, but the cost + complications + reduced catchment of an Esplanade alignment don't really pass the test IMO.

This Skytrain is not designed to get people downtown.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by madog222

Hastings will have its own line and I think having the interchange station closest to downtown is the right location.

Assuming the Purple Line travels east/west on Hastings at all, I really hope they future-proof it and plan for cross-platform transfers with a Hastings line. Heck, they should just quad track that stretch of the Purple Line to begin with, to avoid disruption later on when the Hastings line is built.

[madog222]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

Assuming the Purple Line travels east/west on Hastings at all, I really hope they future-proof it and plan for cross-platform transfers with a Hastings line. Heck, they should just quad track that stretch of the Purple Line to begin with, to avoid disruption later on when the Hastings line is built.

I'm assuming Hastings to be BRT as Translink has planned.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Hastings isn't going to stay at BRT forever though - eventually we'll need a subway there as well, and it better be compatible with the Purple stations.

At any rate, we now know what TransLink's probably doing next after UBC.

Originally Posted by djmk

A few blocks of 4 story townhouses/condos and it's not going to get much denser than that.

Put the station at the bottom of the hill and redevelop that mess around Rona and then there is potential

It's about as dense as Wesbrook, and the current plan is to dig all the way across UBC to get there. I didn't see anybody complaining when they announced stations at Templeton, Braid or Lake City.

[madog222]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Hastings isn't going to stay at BRT forever though - eventually we'll need a subway there as well, and it better be compatible with the Purple stations.

Sure, but that's on the scale of taking this thread's line into account while designing the Expo Line.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by madog222

Sure, but that's on the scale of taking this thread's line into account while designing the Expo Line.

That's... almost literally what the Gold Line route is.

And I'd strongly argue that thinking a couple more steps ahead (way back then) would've solved a lot of the problems we have with the network now.

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by madog222

Sure, but that's on the scale of taking this thread's line into account while designing the Expo Line.

Hastings is as good a candidate as any to get Skytrain after UBC and the Purple Line. The top candidates IMO would be Hastings, Scott Road, and KGB. Meanwhile, I can't imagine any rail transit between Brentwood and Metrotown was conceived of by the most enthusiastic transit fan back in the 80s.

They don't need to plan track and systems for Hastings when building the Purple Line, but I do hope they build the Purple Line with one eye on the future. For instance, if they are already excavating for the Burnaby Heights station, just build a "basement" for the Hastings Line platforms so they don't need to disrupt the neighbourhood again when that line is built. Or if cross-platform transfers are ideal, stack the Purple Line tracks from the beginning; retrofitting the station will be far too expensive and disruptive later on.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Even adding a few K.O. panels along the mezzanine to connect to a future Gold Line would help. It'd be a parallel station rather than a perpendicular one, which should make integration easier.