Canada Line | Completed

[mr.x]

Station architects
- Segment One: Downtown (Waterfront, Vancouver City Centre and Yaletown-Roundhouse Stations) – VIA Architecture & PBK;
- Segment Two: North Cambie (Olympic Village and Broadway-City Hall Stations) – Stantec;
- Segment Three: Central Cambie (King Edward, Oakridge-41st Avenue and Langara-49th Avenue Stations) – Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden;
- Segment Four: Fraser River (Marine Drive and Bridgeport Stations) – VIA Architecture & PBK;
- Segment Five: No 3 Road (Aberdeen, Lansdowne and Richmond-Brighouse Stations) – Busby Perkins Will;
- Segment Six: Sea Island (Templeton Station, Sea Island Centre Stations) – Walter Francl;
- Segment Seven: Sea Island/Terminal (YVR-Airport Station) – Kasian Architects.

[racc]

Originally Posted by Zassk

But if it is the difference between being able to build it vs. delaying it for 5-10 years, then I think we should happily take the Evergreen with (e.g.) 50m platforms that max out at 4 x MKII trains. And this is exactly what the situation was with the Canada Line, and how quickly we all forget when we grumble about the short platforms and boring decor. Nobody was willing to pay the extra money for Millennium-like opulence on the Canada Line. At least the Canada Line is easily expandable to the equivalent of 4 x MKII trains. At least we have that.

There is little cost savings for 50 metre stations on the Evergreen Line, There are only 6 stations on the Evergreen line and they are either elevated or surface meaning the additional cost for 80 metre platforms over 50 metre platforms is small relative to the cost of the project. The reason they went for the short platforms on the Canada Line is the cost of building the bigger underground stations which could have been 20 to 30 million per station.

[Metro-One]

Another reason why the project should have been elevated south of Broadway. It would have been cheeper and faster to build with less disruption to Cambie street, and with the money we would have saved the stations possibly could have been built with 80 meter platforms.

[mr.x]

^ or south of King Edward.

[Yume-sama]

I had my first conversation with a real life NDPer today! We talked about the Canada Line, and she was going on about how its a failure and barely used, and should never have been built... every time she sees a train its empty. But has never actually used it. And how if people *are* using it now, she guarantees nobody will once it starts raining (which I can kind of see, who wants to walk blocks with their luggage in the rain). It was fascinating!

[cabotp]

There were too many stupid nimbies and their stupid heritage boulevard for a line above ground south of king edward to happen.

[mr.x]

Originally Posted by Yume-sama

I had my first conversation with a real life NDPer today! We talked about the Canada Line, and she was going on about how its a failure and barely used, and should never have been built... every time she sees a train its empty. But has never actually used it. And how if people *are* using it now, she guarantees nobody will once it starts raining (which I can kind of see, who wants to walk blocks with their luggage in the rain). It was fascinating!

lol, you should have told her off with the Millennium Line...it was "barely used" for the first few years as well.

Originally Posted by cabotp

There were too many stupid nimbies and their stupid heritage boulevard for a line above ground south of king edward to happen.

You plug your ears, yell out "LALALALALALALA..." to drown their protests and start building those columns on the Cambie median.

It really should have been elevated south of King Edward, it made no sense to have tunnel.

[The_Henry_Man]

Originally Posted by Yume-sama

I had my first conversation with a real life NDPer today! We talked about the Canada Line, and she was going on about how its a failure and barely used, and should never have been built... every time she sees a train its empty. But has never actually used it. And how if people *are* using it now, she guarantees nobody will once it starts raining (which I can kind of see, who wants to walk blocks with their luggage in the rain). It was fascinating!

That's why the NDP will remain in the opposition for years to come. There are way too many far-leftie idiots like her, who lack logic and sense to anything in our society (no offense).

Exactly the same can be said for the Burrard Bridge bike lane trial project.

[Yume-sama]

Originally Posted by The_Henry_Man

That's why the NDP will remain in the opposition for years to come. There are way too many far-leftie idiots like her, who lack logic and sense to anything in our society (no offense).

Exactly the same can be said for the Burrard Bridge bike lane trial project.

Hmm, was that something they were against? You wouldn't think

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by lightrail

It's called democracy and occurs wherever governments are freely elected. Get used to it.

Metro One has a point. This article from the WSJ via crosscut seattle echos my sentiments....

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/17204/

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121979742485374943.html?mod=2_1578_leftbox

The objective professionalism needed to balance all those agendas in the interest of a more overriding concept in the greater public interest has succumbed to the myth of an "inclusionary" process that goes beyond appropriate consideration of all relevant factors to the ridiculous denial of priorities.

In one of those extreme pendulum swings that turns reason into nonsense, a reversal of the old, discredited urban renewal policies that ignored community input has become an abdication of all responsibility for a kind of goofy planning populism.

[GoogalieBear]

Okay, I know I am going to get flamed for this, but here it goes. I am a big supporter of public transportation. We actually bought our house in the Cambie area a year ago because we want to be close to the line. I ride the train almost everyday and everytime we go by Marine and Cambie, I can't help but to feel sorry for the people who lives in houses right next to the track, particularly those on the third floor of the high rise on the corner of Marine and Cambie, they all have their curtain drawn or tin-foiled over, same story in Richmond. And for all those who said you have got to sacrifice for the good of society, I can't help but to think of the Hitchiker Guide to the Galaxy where earth was being bulldozed for an intergalactic highway, it's all good when you aren't on the receiving end...

[Metro-One]

Well we are all on the receiving end one day. I, for example, have to listen to cranberry guns going off all summer because the development I live in was built on a hill directly beside farmland. Also there is a training flight path above me, but i don't complain, because I know people need to learn how to fly and people like cranberries, and both of these activities have to happen somewhere!

Projects such as the Canada Line is what happens when little towns grow into big cities, we better get used to it! Having elevated guideways near buildings happens all over the developed world! Also, if the line became elevated south of Broadway or King Edward chances are it could have been built down the middle of the road, therefore not being so close to anyone's apartment. (for the Marine Area) As for Richmond, most for the highrise it goes beside are office & hotel, not residential. And of the few residential it does go beside most of those are currently under construction, and anyone buying into those knows very well the train is there.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by GoogalieBear

...I can't help but to think of the Hitchiker Guide to the Galaxy where earth was being bulldozed for an intergalactic highway, it's all good when you aren't on the receiving end...

It's a bypass! You've got to build bypasses!

[lightrail]

I don't want to see this thread closed!!

Help! Save thew thread.

There's so much Canada Line related still to talk about. I want to see pictures of somebody sitting on one of those Nazi electric chairs, stories of actually managing to pay a fare in the ticket machine, articles on whether people understand "outbound" verse "inbound", observations on how many times a passenger is told "This train is for Waterfront" and wondering where-else it might go, stories about friendly Canada Line attendants that hold doors open for little old ladies and aging drug dealers, speculations on how many people a Canada Line train can really hold and the mysteries of why the trains go so slow over the North Arm Bridge, and pictures of the early morning 4:35am "ghost" trains, other stations around the world that open 45 minutes after the first train is scheduled to leave the station, and anecdotes from people that ran the gauntlet underground "connection" between Granville and Vancouver City Centre Stations - and didn't end up in a stockroom in the Bay's sub-basement in the process.

So much left to talk about - let's keep the thread alive. Please?

[mr.x]

^ i second that!


I really wish there was a second entrance to Yaletown or at least make the main entrance bigger. And hopefully, we'll see a Robson entrance for City Centre down the road...perhaps in conjunction with a Sears site redevelopment.

A second entrance to Broadway-City Hall will of course be built in the future, and possibly a second entrance for Oakridge across the street.

[deasine]

Not happening. Like I said, no one is going to stop you from discussing in the Metro Vancouver thread; I will copy posts from this thread to there to facilitate discussion.

One more word of that and I'll close it now and I'm dead serious.

[deasine]

I'm going to go with Metro One's suggestion earlier about keeping it open until the end of the year but that will be the end of it. There will be no discussions about keeping it open longer, because if there is, I'll just close it without warning.

[NucksFanInVan]

"objective professionalism" - I love it! Great phrase, definitely missing here, especially on the Canada Line.

The elevation of special interest groups to "key stakeholder" status is what makes Vancouver truly unique - we have turned it into an art form. People need to remember that "balanced" does not mean "equal" in terms of listening to everyone's opinion. This goes double for the media. How many times have we seen a newspaper story where one wingnut on a rant with an axe to grind gets as much press as the qualified professional giving the news briefing?

The good folks at savecambie.org and the others that sunk the elevated option are only one example. Remember Mario Lemieux threatening to move the Pittsburgh Penguins to Vegas or KC if the city wouldn't agree to build them a new arena? Naturally the city of Pittsburgh agreed when push came to shove. Well, here in Vancouver we do things different. We say "No thank you Mr. Kerfoot, please don't spend your own money to build us a brand new stadium on an otherwise unused and unusable piece of waterfront right beside the city's biggest transit hub. It might block the view of 15 people who live and work in Gastown."

As a city, we still have a lot of growing up to do.

[SFUVancouver]

It is Port Metro Vancouver that is blocking the Whitecaps stadium, not the City of Vancouver. The City is on board.

[cabotp]

Originally Posted by mr.x

You plug your ears, yell out "LALALALALALALA..." to drown their protests and start building those columns on the Cambie median.

It really should have been elevated south of King Edward, it made no sense to have tunnel.

Yup. Sometimes I think under "certain" circumstances a dictatorship would be what we need. Hell why didn't gordo just tell those cambie people that we are building a line above ground whether you like it or not. Just like he brought in the HST

As for the whole idea of some projects being way over budget. I've always thought that when they are creating these estimates that they create both a low and a high estimate. But then they use the low estimate for the cost of the project. To make it look nice and cheap. Of course once the project has happened this or that happens and the low estimate will gets thrown out the window.