Millennium Line - Broadway Extension | u/c

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by biketrouble

One last thing, before the long weekend.

My advice to this group is that you need to have better projections of the capacity that is going to be required in the Broadway corridor. I asked this question a couple of days back, and the responses I got were along the lines of "I don't have hard numbers but it's obvious this area will grow like crazy." This is not going to be good enough, if you are advocating spending billions of dollars. It should be possible to do some estimates based on the plans the city already has for the corridor. If you can show that the population or the number of jobs in an area is set to expand by (for example) 30% in 10 years then you should be able to extrapolate from current ridership. You could also factor in converting some of the people currently travelling by car. In addition you can factor in some growth that is driven by the expansion of capacity. The important thing here is to have a plausible model that explains why capacity will need to expand, and by how much.

Without numbers like this, it's not all that productive to be debating the finer points of headways and car lengths with the likes of MJ. The thing that I find somewhat ironic is that much of the debate has been centered on a 20K pphpd figure that actually comes from MJ, almost certainly because it's the maximum plausible capacity of an LRT!

..Mark..

I would refer to the COV study on skytrain vs rapidbus vs LRT. I refer to pages 43, 49 and 51 (unable to post them, but click the link). Among other things, they use 1999 projections of growth to 2021 from COV, base a a 1% per year growth in enrollment at UBC, and assume that 'skytrain-like' rapid transit is running along cambie. Instead of giving pphpd figures, the give annual rides number and annual passengers new to transit. And of course, the skytrain analysis only ran until Arbutus, with rapidbus to UBC.

Interestingly, they predict similar numbers of high ridership for LRT and skytrain to arbutus (42 mil for lrt, 43 mil for skytrain/arbutus), meaning that LRT should be able to keep up with needs up until 2021. However, this is LRT in a semi-exclusive ROW and 3 minute headways on the surface - with its attendant effects on neighbourhood impacts. and of course, one has to wonder what demand would be like after 2021. They also report Skytrain will be able to attract more new riders than LRT.

For comparison, there were 33 million annual rides on the E and M lines in 2003.

Therefore, demand will be strong with either LRT or skytrain. Future growth past 2021, and other considerations (capital cost, neighbourhood impacts, etc) are the differences.

[Spork]

Fancy trick & sidenote:

Originally Posted by mezzanine

I would refer to the COV study on skytrain vs rapidbus vs LRT. I refer to pages 43, 49 and 51 (unable to post them, but click the link).

Page 43

Page 49

Page 51

[nname]

From the south of fraser transit plan (page 39):


So unless they put a big fence in the middle of Broadway, it would be Light Rail: On-Street Section, right?

Just a comparision - Skytrain between Broadway and Waterfront have passenger load of 11000 pphd (2007) and theoretical capacity of 12000 pphd (2007) or 13300 (2010).

[nname]

Originally Posted by red-paladin

I guess it all depends on what is the cost-benefit analysis. I agree that LRT vehicles might get a lot more damage though.

Calgary had retired 4 LRVs due to accidents, but all 4 are one of the oldest cars they have. I guess repair and let them run for a few more years just doesn't worth it.

[deasine]

Originally Posted by nname

So unless they put a big fence in the middle of Broadway, it would be Light Rail: On-Street Section, right?

It would still be On Street even if there is a fence. There are intersections remember =P

[Metro-One]

To me the biggest issue is why do people want to make regional and local services dependent on the same system? Is there not a saying "don't put all your eggs in one basket"? Good transportation comes from diversity. For those traveling longer distances and/or wishing to get to their destination quickly sky-train is the right choice. And if we have underground sky-train then we can still operate our trolly bus service at streets level! (although i do use sky-train for short 1 to 2 station trips often). If we have a street grade LRT running along Granville (that will function poorly as a cross regional commuter) we wont have any trolly buses, and if the LRT gets into an accident (which it will) then we have no east west commuting along broadway (there is no direct back up system). An underground sky-train will not have these accident delays, but if there are problems commuters could then fall back onto the trolly buses, and vice versa (not to mention trolly buses can navigate around an accident). Of course there will always be alternatives even with a LRT, but they will be much weaker alternatives then we could have if we have both sky-train and local trolly buses running.

To me it is a no brainer.

Organisms survive through diversity (not becoming a mono culture) and the same goes for strong transit (not relying on one mode of transport).

[mr.x]

^ sorta like the arteries, veins, and capillaries of any animal.

[mr.x]

Track facts – Modern light-rail track
May 15, 2009 by zweisystem


The recently built tramtrain line in Heilbron Germany

There has been much debate about the cost of track laying and the cost for new tracks for light rail or streetcars. The following will hopefully shed some light on how modern LRT (streetcar) tracks are laid on-street. With the interurban, of course, the majority of the route will be shared with other railways and the costs would be to upgrade existing tracks (relaying) and adjustments to switches. Portland Ore. give good insight on modern track laying principles.

The Portland streetcar is laid with girder rail, set in concrete, which is sturdy enough to handle the larger MAX LRV’s. The main problem is that the streetcar line has tighter turning radius, which the larger LRV’s can’t negotiate.

The continued nonsense about relocating utilities has more to do renewing utilities on the back of light rail construction, and making work for municipal employees than anything else.

Many alignments of new LRT systems are increasingly placed in public thoroughfare rights-of-way (on-street). For example:

· Portland – over 28%
· Sacramento – nearly 23%
· San Jose – nearly 56%
· Dallas – over 20%
· Salt Lake City – nearly 19%
· Tacoma – 100%
· Houston – 100%
· Minneapolis – nearly 22%
· Phoenix (planned) – over 95%
· Seattle (planned) – over 32%

As much as possible, construction methods and practices which have significant potential for lowering costs should be considered. For example, in the case of the Portland Streetcar, the shallow-slab construction method (see Figure 3) proved to be a major cost-saving technique for in-street construction. Instead of digging three and four feet deep, disrupting utilities, and rebuilding much of the street in the process, builders use a quick “cut and cover” European-style track system that goes down between 12 and 18 inches and is 6 to 7 feet wide. A pad is laid down, followed by a light layer of gravel, and then a special dual rebar side frame is laid into this shallow trench.

Each running rail is encased in a “rubber extrusion rail boot” to provide electrical isolation as a corrosion control measure. This covers the rail entirely wherever there is ground contact, and is then attached to the specially shaped rebar frame with dielectric fasteners. The boot also provides some basic level of noise/vibration attenuation. The boot-encased rails are held only by the concrete between anchor plate assemblies, which are placed at 3.0-meter intervals on straight track and broad curves, or at 1.5-meter intervals on curves sharper than 300 meters in radius. The fastener assemblies remain separated from the running rails by the rubber boots to maintain electrical isolation of the rails. There are no gauge bars.

A major advantage is the minimization of subsurface utilities relocation. Instead, a kind of “bridge” (the slab, carrying the guidance rails) is installed over utilities. This enables utilities workers to make an adjacent excavation, as necessary, to access under-street utilities for repairs or other servicing.

Slab depths are 300 mm (about 12 in) for the RI 52 girder rail used on streetcar construction for cars weighing about 30 tons empty, and 360 mm (14 inches) for RI 59 girder rail used where streetcar and “interurban” tracks cross. Prudent planning would suggest designing and building for future use of heavier, interurban-type vehicles, since these might ultimately be needed if the original system is successful. It’s far more difficult to upgrade under-designed trackage than to upgrade stations and procure larger vehicles. To accommodate the possibility of heavier, “interurban”-style LRT in the future, a slab depth of 18 inches is sufficient. If the design of the rail line is to be in a raised median, then a depth of 12 inches can be maintained, with the slab, rising in a media, six inches above the roadway.

Seems a whole lot simpler and cheaper than tearing up entire streets and moving utilities, but then, this is exactly what the SkyTrain lobby wants!

He describes the construction process, but doesn't really address the issue at hand which is the construction cost.

Not sure why he listed the stats of LRT being built in city streets, we never really did deny that. And again, perhaps the worst examples being used: American.

[Whalleyboy]

I found this quite intresting. This makes me think even more an underground skytrain is the way to go. we wouldnt need to do what calgary is and try and fix it later if we made an at ground lrt

Underground infrastructure

In addition to numerous tunnels to allow trains to pass under roadways, geographic features, and mainline railways, there are other notable underground portions of Calgary's C-Train system.

Part of the system through downtown is planned to be transferred underground when needed to maintain reliable service. Given this, portions of the needed infrastructure have been built as adjacent and associated land was developed.[26] As a result of this original plan, when the City of Calgary built a new Municipal Building, it built a short section of tunnel to connect the existing CPR tunnel to the future tunnel under 8th Avenue S. The turnoff to this station is visible in the tunnel on Route 201 entering downtown from the south, shortly before City Hall. However, after urban explorers discovered the tunnel and visited it during a transit strike, the city walled off the spur tunnel with cinder blocks.

As the population of metropolitan Calgary increases and growing suburbs require new lines and extensions, the higher train volumes will exceed the ability of the downtown section along 7th Avenue S to accommodate them. To provide for long-term expansion, the city is reviewing its plans to put parts of the downtown section underground. The current plans allow the expanded Route 202 (Northeast/West) to use the existing 7th Avenue S surface infrastructure. The expanded Route 201 (Northwest/South), currently sharing 7th Avenue S with Route 202, will be relocated to a new tunnel dug beneath 8th Avenue S. The future Southeast/Downtown route will probably enter downtown through a shorter tunnel under one or more streets (candidates include 2nd Street W, 5th Street W, 6th Street W, 8th Avenue S, 10th Avenue S, 11th Avenue S, and 12th Avenue S). The future North line will probably share track from the Zoo through downtown with the existing Northeast line (Route 202), avoiding the cost of a tunnel until passenger volumes grow.[20] Although Calgary City Council commissioned a functional study for the downtown metro component of the C-Train system in November 2007, the city is unlikely to complete this expansion before 2017 unless additional funding is received from provincial or federal governments.

right from wikipedia

[Alex Mackinnon]

I wonder how well an 18" slab depth would hold up to seismic loads. It seems like the kind of thing you use under ideal conditions.

We're not dealing with soil that's as bad as stuff out in the valley or in low lying areas. I doubt we'd get away with just going that deep though, Broadway already has some pretty good differential settlement in spots.

[MalcolmTucker]

^ He is doing apples and oranges again. You don't need to do utility relocation with the Portland street car because it is slow and very light. You cannot run even the normal Portland LRT on the street car tracks or the track would be destroyed.

The Portland streetcar has 12,000 boardings a day, with 12-15 minute headway, and a max speed (governed on the vehicles) of 50 kph to prevent track damage.

[Xerx]

found this blog entry talking about Honolulu's debate over LRT or elevated but i think his arguments could also be used for the ubc skytrain.

is elevated acceptable?

The Transport Politic has an excellent post on the debate over the plan to build Honolulu's proposed light rail system elevated through downtown, as opposed to at the service as a group of architects want.

Everyone is prone to reduce the complexity of urbanism to a problem solvable by their own profession, and risks being dismissive of the expertise of other professions' points of view. (See here, for example.) When a group of architects proposes that a major new transit investment should be made slower and more expensive to operate in order to foster a better streetscape, as is happening in Honolulu, one hopes that they have thought through the urbanist consequences of all the people who'll be in cars instead of on transit because the transit is too slow, infrequent, and unreliable. Let me clarify each of those words:

* Slow, because a system running at street level has to interact with traffic or pedestrians.
* Infrequent, because a system running at street level will require human drivers, while a fully grade-separated system can be driverless. Human drivers imply a cost structure dominated by the cost of labor, which in turn means that high frequencies are just not affordable in the late evening, for example, as demand goes down. Vancouver's driverless SkyTrain runs extremely high frequencies to past midnight, because without drivers the incremental cost of more frequency is very low. Note that poor evening transit service is bad for nightlife, which is something all urbanists care about.
* Unreliable, because street operation, even in an excusive right-of-way, exposes the service to many random and unpredictable causes of delay.

I support the notion that locally-oriented transit systems (such as streetcars and local bus services) should be integrated into the streetscape, because those systems are by definition designed to serve short local trips where station access time is more important than travel time. Honolulu's proposed LRT is not such a line. It is intended for very long trips, and for trips that go across downtown (Airport to Waikiki for example). If you could find the money, you could follow Vancouver's example and run the line underground through downtown, but running it on the surface would defeat too much of the purpose of the line.

Yes, Portland's famous light rail system, MAX, is on-street through downtown. Does it stimulate the downtown? You bet it does. Is it a time-competitive way of making a long trip from one side of the city to the other, say Beaverton to Gateway? Well, that's not its strong suit, as the long downtown Portland segment is very slow. But the important difference with MAX is that it was never designed with an eye toward driverless operation. It is mostly at-grade all through the system, and will always have drivers, while the Honolulu system is designed to be fully grade-separated, and hence driverless, everywhere. It's hard to overstate what a difference this will make to the frequencies the service will be able to offer.

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/05/...cceptable.html

[officedweller]

From the Seattle Times (note the costs are NOT adjusted for inflation - presumably in US dollars?):



http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...review17m.html

[Metro-One]

Wow, what a surprise, how strange it is that the automated grade separated metro system has by far the largest ridership numbers, not to mention both Portland and Denver have more miles than Vancouver, and the cost of none of those LRT street grade systems (such as Phoenix) match the 10 mil per km number, hehe.

It is almost as if speed and frequency attract customers.....

[mrjauk]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Wow, what a surprise, how strange it is that the automated grade separated metro system has by far the largest ridership numbers, not to mention both Portland and Denver have more miles than Vancouver, and the cost of none of those LRT street grade systems (such as Phoenix) match the 10 mil per km number, hehe.

It is almost as if speed and frequency attract customers.....

No, what attracts customers is being able to see into shops as they go past at an average of 30km/h.

[mr.x]

^ bahahahahaha.

[Kwik-E-Mart]

Originally Posted by mrjauk

No, what attracts customers is being able to see into shops as they go past at an average of 30km/h.

We have a winner!

[usog]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Wow, what a surprise, how strange it is that the automated grade separated metro system has by far the largest ridership numbers, not to mention both Portland and Denver have more miles than Vancouver, and the cost of none of those LRT street grade systems (such as Phoenix) match the 10 mil per km number, hehe.

It is almost as if speed and frequency attract customers.....

Quick put a sarcasm tag on that before people get the wrong idea!

[DKaz]

I wonder why they didn't include Calgary's C-Train in that mix since they are one of the more successful LRT systems in North America. I wonder if the huge Park-n-Rides at the C-Train stations have anything to do with its success.

[amor de cosmos]

Originally Posted by officedweller

From the Seattle Times (note the costs are NOT adjusted for inflation - presumably in US dollars?):



http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...review17m.html

so in order of # of riders/weekday
1. vancouver - 240000
2. portland - 107600
3. denver - 72100
4. slc - 44800
5. phoenix - 34400
6. minneapolis - 30200
7. seattle - 26600

vancouver has more than double the track of minneapolis, for example, so it might make sense that Vancouver has twice the riders. however, even if the (passengers/weekday)/track-mile is considered, which negates the fact that vancouver has more lines, vancouver is still far ahead of the rest on the list:
1. vancouver - 7742 (riders/weekday)/track-mile
2. minneapolis - 2517
3. portland - 2445
4. slc - 2240
5. denver - 2060
6. phoenix - 1720
7. seattle - 1663