Vancouver Downtown Streetcar | Proposed

[Migrant_Coconut]

Doesn't help that only City Hall wants a tram... and as a slow, partially street-running line like Ontario's. At close to a billion for the downtown segment alone, if it's not even semi-rapid transit, the ROI goes negative.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Doesn't help that only City Hall wants a tram... and as a slow, partially street-running line like Ontario's. At close to a billion for the downtown segment alone, if it's not even semi-rapid transit, the ROI goes negative.

A streetcar is the obvious transit system to put onto the route - there's no realistic way to put SkyTrain segregated transit through the Downtown part of the route (and even on the reserved median it would be hugely disruptive to have at grade interchanges with the street network for a higher speed system). If you start talking about tunnelling you're describing a much more expensive proposition, competing against other future SkyTrain routes.

The business case would be different these days than it was some years ago. Senakw has added a large additional population, as will the Broadway Plan along the northern part of the plan area. In Mount Pleasant you're seeing thousands more jobs being added with the changes to zoning density, and uses, and the northern part of the industrial area is closer to the streetcar route than the new SkyTrain line. The new St Paul's isn't so far away either. I doubt TransLink will want to take the idea up any time soon, and I don't think the City should try to build it themselves, but reserving the right of way for a possible future system seems like a sensible thing to do - until all the vehicles are Robocabs, anyway.

[Migrant_Coconut]

In which case I suspect streetcar advocates will have to wait another five decades, or pray for a massive influx of federal money. Selling it as semi-rapid transit (possibly relieving the Canada Line) might've let the tram take priority, but at just over $1 billion for less than 15k riders - especially when TransLink's running a heavy deficit - this is a non-starter.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

In which case I suspect streetcar advocates will have to wait another five decades, or pray for a massive influx of federal money. Selling it as semi-rapid transit (possibly relieving the Canada Line) might've let the tram take priority, but at just over $1 billion for less than 15k riders - especially when TransLink's running a heavy deficit - this is a non-starter.

It seems to be a repetitive theme that we ought to run transit along some route just because we happen to have a right of way. The streetcar was one example of this, the Arbutus corridor is another.

The availability of a right of way is great, and I'm all in favour of preserving them so that they're there when the time comes that we need them. But let's not put the cart before the horse - you don't build transit because there's a right of way, you build transit because there's a demand that needs to be met. If the availability of a corridor helps to bring down the cost, then that's terrific. But without the demand it's just a waste of money.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

It seems to be a repetitive theme that we ought to run transit along some route just because we happen to have a right of way. The streetcar was one example of this, the Arbutus corridor is another.

The availability of a right of way is great, and I'm all in favour of preserving them so that they're there when the time comes that we need them. But let's not put the cart before the horse - you don't build transit because there's a right of way, you build transit because there's a demand that needs to be met. If the availability of a corridor helps to bring down the cost, then that's terrific. But without the demand it's just a waste of money.

That's true, but there's often a debate between 'serving' or 'shaping' development, when a new transit route is proposed. When the possibility of a RAV line, (as it was called then) was being planned in the early 2000s, there were actually more people, and jobs, within 400m of the likely station locations on the Arbutus route than there were along Cambie. It picked up the jobs in the industrial area by the Fraser River, the Kerrisdale centre (which wasn't so different from Oakridge in terms of jobs, and greater in terms of population), Broadway retail and office jobs near Arbutus, (and more residents than Cambie and Broadway) and Granville Island. At the time it was expected to be LRT, not the system we got with the Canada Line.

Cambie had more potential for adding people and employment because it picked up underdeveloped opportunities like Oakridge, as well as the already high employment and retail node that includes VGH and City Hall, that still had potential to densify.

With the addition of Senakw, and the densification that's coming from the Broadway Plan and other City policies, the numbers of potential riders who might use an Arbutus tracked transit route would probably be more than even the relatively recent estimates of ridership that Migrant quoted.

[GenWhy?]

Increased concentration of jobs in Mount Pleasant Industrial and the Burrard Slopes is another factor brewing slowly.

The 84 largely mimics the line, and having it terminate at Pacific Central via Emily Carr Station would give us fairly accurate ridership numbers for a streetcar along that segment.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Increased concentration of jobs in Mount Pleasant Industrial and the Burrard Slopes is another factor brewing slowly.

The 84 largely mimics the line, and having it terminate at Pacific Central via Emily Carr Station would give us fairly accurate ridership numbers for a streetcar along that segment.

The number of key destinations along the route (the full one), is just crazy to me. At least build a bus route around the big "U" shape and see what happens. Granville Island, OV station and seawall, Science World, Main St station, New SPH, Chinatown, Gastown, Waterfront hub, Stanley Park, Aquarium. It's a who's who of tourist and local destinations. Notably GI and the Aquarium/Stanley Park have 🞵🞵🞵🞵 transit connections as is.

[jollyburger]

I think a bridge-level connection/bus stop down to Granville Island would be my pie in the sky wish. The Granville Street corridor pretty much has enough bus traffic to make it high frequency. And find room for a new Vancouver Art Gallery building on the Island.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Changing City

With the addition of Senakw, and the densification that's coming from the Broadway Plan and other City policies, the numbers of potential riders who might use an Arbutus tracked transit route would probably be more than even the relatively recent estimates of ridership that Migrant quoted.

Originally Posted by GenWhy?

Increased concentration of jobs in Mount Pleasant Industrial and the Burrard Slopes is another factor brewing slowly.

The 84 largely mimics the line, and having it terminate at Pacific Central via Emily Carr Station would give us fairly accurate ridership numbers for a streetcar along that segment.

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

The number of key destinations along the route (the full one), is just crazy to me. At least build a bus route around the big "U" shape and see what happens. Granville Island, OV station and seawall, Science World, Main St station, New SPH, Chinatown, Gastown, Waterfront hub, Stanley Park, Aquarium. It's a who's who of tourist and local destinations. Notably GI and the Aquarium/Stanley Park have 🞵🞵🞵🞵 transit connections as is.

Reposting the 2019 study for posterity. Even with all the tourist spots, they estimated just >15k passengers for $1+ billion; in that same year, we were also promised up to 191k passengers for $2.9 billion and 80k for $3.1 billion.

I have no doubt that Senakw, St Paul's and the Broadway Plan redevelopment will increase projected ridership, but unless that projection reaches 30-40k or more, it's not jumping ahead of UBC or Lonsdale or Newton; hell, at 18km/h average every 8 minutes, it's likely a trolley line could do the same job.

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I think a bridge-level connection/bus stop down to Granville Island would be my pie in the sky wish. The Granville Street corridor pretty much has enough bus traffic to make it high frequency. And find room for a new Vancouver Art Gallery building on the Island.

The elevator from last decade sure seems like it'd solve many of the Island's problems for cheaper. I know the engineers said that punching a hole through the centre of the bridge is a no-go, but IIRC a freestanding structure off to the side would still be on the table.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

I have no doubt that Senakw, St Paul's and the Broadway Plan redevelopment will increase projected ridership, but unless that projection reaches 30-40k or more, it's not jumping ahead of UBC or Lonsdale or Newton; hell, at 18km/h average every 8 minutes, it's likely a trolley line could do the same job.

Sure.. put one in there. As I said, GI and Stanley Park in particular have 🞵🞵🞵🞵 transit options.

[mcj]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

I think a bridge-level connection/bus stop down to Granville Island would be my pie in the sky wish. The Granville Street corridor pretty much has enough bus traffic to make it high frequency. And find room for a new Vancouver Art Gallery building on the Island.

Such a shame that was scrapped from the Granville Street bridge upgrades. I would really like to see that be a reality.

Upgrading the False Creek Ferries/Aquabus could also serve a lot of that Granville Island to Main Street Station/Olympic village traffic at a fraction of the cost of a Streetcar.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Sure.. put one in there. As I said, GI and Stanley Park in particular have 🞵🞵🞵🞵 transit options.

Question is, where would you put them? AFAIK the 50 and 19 already cover the only practical bus routes in and out - best you could do is increase service and capacity, or maybe add a shuttle that loops around Stanley Park.

[GenWhy?]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Question is, where would you put them? AFAIK the 50 and 19 already cover the only practical bus routes in and out - best you could do is increase service and capacity, or maybe add a shuttle that loops around Stanley Park.

The 84, 19, and 23 all transferring at Main-Terminal would solve almost every issue

[Stainer]

Just chiming in numbers wise, but what I've seen/have written down is 12.8- 18.8 million boardings per year by 2050 on line 1 (Arbutus to Stanley park entrance) and 3.6 to 5.2 million for line two.

45,000 to 65,000 daily boarding for realistically 2 is pretty decent. Plus the economic growth and community building benefits are well worth it. It's a great project before we even look at including the whole Arbutus corridor down to Marine Station.

But as always funding is the problem. We have to use our limited capital resources in a way that benefits the highest possible number of users. Some day though...

[jollyburger]

Other elephant in the room is COV deciding to redevelop all the co-ops on South False Creek.



https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/false-creek-south.aspx

[mcj]

Originally Posted by Stainer

But as always funding is the problem. We have to use our limited capital resources in a way that benefits the highest possible number of users. Some day though...

The City of Vancouver has the means to acquire the capital required for a project like this, the 2024 capital budget for the city is $782 million and the operating budget is $2.2 billion. Compared to most of the world we have easy access to capital, we just choose not to take more advantage of that than we already do.

The bigger issue here is that across the country we've developed a hybrid model for any and all capital investments in transit. Where it's sort of defacto required to have both the feds and the province chip in for a significant portion of any project. Going against that model with the CoV solely funding this project (which they could do) would result in political consequences, which is really the issue with any capital investments in transit in Canada.

We have limited political "resources" more than we do limited capital resources.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by Stainer

Just chiming in numbers wise, but what I've seen/have written down is 12.8- 18.8 million boardings per year by 2050 on line 1 (Arbutus to Stanley park entrance) and 3.6 to 5.2 million for line two.

45,000 to 65,000 daily boarding for realistically 2 is pretty decent. Plus the economic growth and community building benefits are well worth it. It's a great project before we even look at including the whole Arbutus corridor down to Marine Station.

But as always funding is the problem. We have to use our limited capital resources in a way that benefits the highest possible number of users. Some day though...

How much of those boardings would you get just by operating the Stanley Park to Gastown segment? It just seems a bit of we have a ROW so how do we use it.

I think a giant circular routing around the downtown peninsula makes more sense if you just want to dump $1 billion into LRT.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by mcj

The bigger issue here is that across the country we've developed a hybrid model for any and all capital investments in transit. Where it's sort of defacto required to have both the feds and the province chip in for a significant portion of any project. Going against that model with the CoV solely funding this project (which they could do) would result in political consequences, which is really the issue with any capital investments in transit in Canada.

We have limited political "resources" more than we do limited capital resources.

The bigger picture is that the provincial and federal governments don't see a downtown streetcar as a project worth putting money into. Given that, why would Vancouver taxpayers want to foot the bill?

Yes, capital is ultimately limited by taxpayer acceptance. That's the way it should be.

[logicbomb]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

Other elephant in the room is COV deciding to redevelop all the co-ops on South False Creek.



https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/false-creek-south.aspx

Saw countless renderings. The most popular idea a few years ago was to build new co-op/affordable housing units closer to Granville Island over city property and sell off the current lots to developers. The leases were apparently renewed so the whole idea has been shelved for now.

With regards to the South False Creek ROW. Many renderings showed the ROW being used to widen Charlson Dr, and also being developed West of Alder Crossing. I think the streetcar/LRT idea is dead and will probably never happen in our lifetime.

[jollyburger]

Originally Posted by logicbomb

Saw countless renderings. The most popular idea a few years ago was to build new co-op/affordable housing units closer to Granville Island over city property and sell off the current lots to developers. The leases were apparently renewed so the whole idea has been shelved for now.

With regards to the South False Creek ROW. Many renderings showed the ROW being used to widen Charlson Dr, and also being developed West of Alder Crossing. I think the streetcar/LRT idea is dead and will probably never happen in our lifetime.

I guess into the 2060s but then they are also stratas that will start to face huge bills to repair aging buildings. It's probably better that they aren't redeveloped right away since the longer the delay the more dense you'll end up seeing it develop.