Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Attention aux Trams!

It would appear that accidents are not a North American phenomenon.

• Video Link

The video explains that in Nantes, France, that there have been 180 accidents involving LRT and vehicles in 2007 alone. That's an accident every 2 days on a system 41km long! Every 2 days there is a service disruption.

Of particular note is that Nantes is where the modern Tram started in 1985, so they have had quite a while to get used to it, and it's a rather small city (800K pop.).

For me, this is just one more concrete example why it's skytrain that is much the best, and long term, most successful and fastest option (not to mention public safety issues)

[DKaz]

Huh, Expo Line weekday ridership was under 65,000/day in its baby years. Where will the Millennium Line and Canada Line be 10, 20 years from now? How overcrowded with the Expo Line be by then? How will the Evergreen Line and UBC Extension further clog up the existing lines? Better order more trains!

[Zassk]

Originally Posted by DKaz

Huh, Expo Line weekday ridership was under 65,000/day in its baby years. Where will the Millennium Line and Canada Line be 10, 20 years from now? How overcrowded with the Expo Line be by then? How will the Evergreen Line and UBC Extension further clog up the existing lines? Better order more trains!

But remember, none of those lines should have been built, because none of them will ever hit 400,000... So it doesn't matter whether Expo ridership grew or not. :-) /sarcasm

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

^ Denver's LRT like many systems in the USA has 15 minute headways, so comparing the system just by mode is pretty much useless.

Not exactly. If $30 million is the base price for 15 minute headways and we want to increase that to 7.5 minute headways, assuming we have enough cars to do it, it's quite the jump in price. 80% of their O&M budget goes to personnel, and unlike Skytrain, that's mostly drivers. So if we doubled the number of trains in service it would be almost doubling that 80%. That would bring the budget up to $50 million for O&M (simplistic I know but it would be a lot higher than 30 million). To achieve the same $1.75 per passenger, the system would need to see a jump in boardings to over 28 million annually from 17 million. I don't know if 7 minute headways but the same travel time would accomplish such a thing (which is why they probably have 15 minute headways, it's the only way to make the economics achievable).

Contrast that to Skytrain, which according to their presentation to Ottawa posted earlier, where changing the headway has no affect on cost. The cost of running 4 car trains every 6 minutes is the exact same cost as running 2 car trains every 3 minutes. So our ridership levels do not need to increase to warrant a change in frequency. Trains can be entered and removed from service to meet demand, and all you need to pay for is the electricity, which is hardly anything per train (and only a bit more per vehicle compared to LRT).

LRT on Broadway would face the same kind of financial constraints as LRT in Denver does. If the frequency of trains needs to be increased for any reason, then more drivers have to be brought in meaning higher cost. The more frequent the service, the more expensive it is. If LRT were on Broadway, we would probably be looking at 10 minute headways with very long trains, just due to the cost.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Zassk

But remember, none of those lines should have been built, because none of them will ever hit 400,000... So it doesn't matter whether Expo ridership grew or not. :-) /sarcasm

The thing I don't get about this magic 400,000 number is what it applies to. It's overly simplistic, and very difficult to achieve. Does he mean 400,000 riders on the single line in question? 400,000 riders on the entire Metro? 400,000 riders on the entire transit system? It's so vague.

If it's per line, I think the only subway in North America that should exist is Toronto's, as most other heavily ridden subways compose of many different lines. Even New Yorks 5 million daily boardings is on 26 different lines, that's an average of under 200,000 per line, so surely many of them shouldn't have been built as most of the 26 lines don't achieve 400,000 boardings. In Mexico City, it's 3.8 million boardings are across 11 lines, meaning the average is 345,000 per line. FAILURE!

If it's 400,000 for the metro system as a whole, well.... we're are very damn close to achieving that right now (and easily will during the Olympics). With Evergreen and a Broadway line, and increasing trends in ridership, our Skytrain would probably eclipse the 500,000 daily boardings mark. Would that suddenly make it a success?

And it makes it sound like the number of riders is the only thing to consider, like it's all that matters. You could spend $1 billion or $10 billion, just as long as it's 400,000 boardings. Both those situations are not the same.

The 400,000 number is so simplistic that it's stupid. So it's an attractive statistic for stupid people to cling on to and spout as if it were the gospel.

[officedweller]

Of interest:

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/...ayor-hannemann-on-honolulu-rail-project/

[trofirhen]

All these LRT systems have merit,espcially if they are adadpted to the city's size; pop. and km2

Amsterdam's LRT went quite fast, but had a fenced-off wide ROW, allowing higher speeds.

Montpelier and Nice go around wide plazas, and down streets with less traffic. All these cities are smaller than Vancouver, except Ams. and Paris.

The Paris LRT is really three main lines encircling the city. The parts visible in the above link are in the south, right adjacent the Perpendicular Road, a busy sunken/tunnel/elevated expressway encircling the city.

The volume of thraffic there requires the LRT to go slowly. On the other side of the city, a north-south LRT links La Défense at a higher speed with a point where these two LRT lines meet. A line on the north, and a developing line up the east, will almost totall encircle the city, providing efficien transport, yet at a relatively local level. Why so?

The surface area of Paris, is only a few single-digit numbers than Vancouver's 44km2 .... something like 48km2.
It is round in shape. And it's not very, very big. Most of the stops are relatively local, though of course there are longer rides which may necessitate changing lines.

BUT they do not form the "backbone" of the Paris rail system. That's done by the traditional subway "Metreo" and by the RER which runs five deep-level limited-stop lines, starting in Paris and branching out to the suburbs often at mid to high speeds.

An LRT-based system in Vancouver could never offer the speed and frequency - and passenger volume of a major metropolitan area transport axis.

It has to be grade seperated rail (preferably underground) using light metro technology. (The other Translink lines all use it in some form.)

The only way you can pick up a sustained speed between stops are if there is no risk of obstruction.

[mrjauk]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

^ Denver's LRT like many systems in the USA has 15 minute headways, so comparing the system just by mode is pretty much useless.

"Denver's LRT like many systems in the USA has 15 minute headways", which makes the operating cost comparison even more favourable for Skytrain. Now, imagine the operating costs if there were 90-second headways (as Zwei-evil-system) seems to suggest is possible on Broadway. I know that the extrapolation wouldnt' be linear (as some of the costs are fixed costs, and increased frequency would presumably result is some increase in ridership), but still, you'd need almost ten times the number of drivers 6 hours of rush hour daily.

[CLC]

The 90 seconds-headway (recent-built?)system found in Europe is likely because of several routes converged together on some street. It is not like they have all the routes running 90 seconds for the whole length.

Operating costs of light rail that need drivers can be sky high. That's why Hong kong MTR light rail once lost near 1 billion HK$ per year.

[mooks28]

In any organization, the cost of labour is almost always the biggest expense. Driverless trains over the 50 (100?) year lifespan of the skytrain will more than pay for the cost of the trains and tracks plus interest from the savings on labour alone.

[Alex Mackinnon]

In nominal (sorry got nominal and real backwards) terms maybe, but after you discount it to find the net present value the cost for so long the labour operating costs 30 or 40 years down the road isn't so significant.

You generally want to limit the scope of an evaluation for this kinds of things to about 25 years.

[tybuilding]

I walked past the LRT in Nice in that stretch at 1:00 min in the video last May, as you can see in the video it doesn't go very fast. There are also very few cars on that street. You can probably go faster on Broadway than in Nice with the traffic than you could through a pedestrian street like this one in Nice.

[CLC]

I finally watched all the videos posted in last 2 pages. To look for more real info about the Paris trams, I found this terrific blog article. (is it written by some SSP member?)
http://voony.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/a-streetcar-named-16-million-desire/

[jlousa]

Some tidbits from our friends at the city.

SUMMARY
Expanding rapid transit to connect Central Broadway (between Main and Burrard Streets, 16th Avenue to False Creek) and the University of British Columbia (UBC), the region’s two largest trip destinations outside of the Downtown, to the regional system is key to the successful achievement of a wide array of policies, plans, and targets. Rapid transit along the Broadway Corridor (roughly 500 metres north and south of Broadway/10th Avenue, from Commercial Drive to Blanca) has long been identified as a priority by regional land use and transportation plans, and is reinforced in many City plans and policies.

Today, the Broadway Corridor has a significant and growing concentration of jobs, residents, and major destinations important to both local and regional interests. The Corridor is a strategic opportunity to implement rapid transit with a guaranteed transit ridership base and growth potential unparalleled in the region.

Today, the Corridor is the location of a significant and growing concentration of residents and jobs. There are approximately 97,000 residents and 86,000 jobs in the Corridor (2006 Census). Based on current zoning and policy there is future growth potential within the Corridor to add an additional 29,000 residents and 19,000 jobs by 2041.

Planning work underway, including the Metro Core’s Central Broadway work and the Mount Pleasant Planning Program, will result in additional potential growth in jobs, residents, and visitors (see ‘Related City Studies’ in Section vi. for details). Rapid transit in the Corridor will lead to further opportunities for growth.

It is important to recognize that the Broadway/UBC Line Rapid Transit extension is a project of regional significance and not just important to the City of Vancouver. This line would pass through Central Broadway, which is a significant regional destination highlighted by the following:

• Central Broadway (between Main and Burrard Streets, 16th Avenue to False Creek) is by far the region’s (and Province’s) largest office district outside the Downtown.
• Central Broadway is the largest trip destination in the region outside the Downtown.
• In the Uptown Office District (Yukon to Oak along Broadway including City Hall) about 50% of the work trips to the area are from outside Vancouver.
• Major institutions in and adjacent to Central Broadway, including City Hall, Vancouver General Hospital (VGH), Vancouver Community College, and the GNW Campus, are not only job destinations, but also major destinations for citizens, students and health-related visits from across Metro Vancouver.

Transit in the Broadway Corridor faces several challenges, including:

• Serving one of the largest transit destinations in the region and one of the busiest bus corridors in North America, Broadway buses currently carry over 80,000 transit trips per day, comparable to today’s Canada Line ridership.
• Frequent pass-bys of passengers and bus-crowding occur even with a bus every 90 seconds. Existing transit service significantly under-serves the corridor during the peak travel periods.
• There is a lower transit mode share relative to the Downtown despite the high concentration of jobs in Central Broadway due, in-part, to limited bus capacity.

• Phase 2-Option Development and Evaluation: (Spring 2010 - Winter 2010) - builds on Phase I to undertake a detailed technical and public review, of a short-list of four to six options for the Corridor. The product is a preferred route, technology(ies), and general station locations.

• Phase 3- Design Development: not included in the current study (timing to be determined). This phase will further develop the detailed design and business case for the UBC Line project approval, including budget refinement, timeline for implementation and any potential phasing. Although the timing of this phase is unknown, the Provincial Transit Plan calls for the UBC Line to be in operation by 2020.

Couple of the principles the city is imposing seem to provide a sizeable advantage for Skytrain. Good to stack the deck early one.

4. Integrate rapid transit with walking, cycling, local transit,
and goods movement needs.

Good movement needs would certainly be impacted by LRT along Broadway.

9. Minimize and mitigate construction and operation impacts.

This one give an advantage to any system using a bored tunnel.

Provide regional travel times that are reliable and competitive to the private automobile;

Hmm what system could provide that?

The Central Broadway Planning Program, now starting up, will deliver changes that intensify commercial and residential land uses and improve the public realm in the extensive C-3A zoned area along Broadway (from Vine Street to Prince Edward Street). This Planning Program will report to Council in late 2010 (using available staff and resources within the Planning Department’s operating budget). The following will feed into this Program:

ONCLUSION
Expansion of rapid transit to connect Central Broadway and UBC, the region’s two largest trip destinations outside of the Downtown, to the regional system is a key to the successful achievement of a wide array of policies, plans, and targets. This report provides principles for Council endorsement to guide rapid transit planning and implementation in the Broadway corridor, including TransLink’s UBC Line Rapid Transit Study. The City is an active partner in the Study and staff will report back to Council at key milestones, namely after stakeholder input on the initial public review of short-listed options identified for detailed evaluation, and the identification of a preferred rapid transit solution for the Broadway Corridor.

There is lots of additional data if someone else wants to go thru it, I've had a long day.

Source:
http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20100119/documents/ttra4.pdf

[red-paladin]

The simple facts that extending the Millennium line requires no transfer for Millennium line riders, doesn't need land for an OMC in Vancouver, and doesn't take away street lanes should always have been sufficient reasons to choose Skytrain. (To say nothing about speed and safety) Where could an OMC for LRT be built in that corridor that NIMBYs would allow?

[squeezied]

A lot of us have been trying to defend the skytrain to UBC against zwei, but is there really even a chance lrt would be built? I can't imagine the people behind the UBC line would ever allow lrt on broadway (for the many reasons mentioned previously), no matter how much cheaper it may be. So do we really need to worry about lrt becoming a reality?

[cabotp]

If LRT happened to be built for whatever reason. Not that I think it will. The people behind the UBC line will go down as the dumbest humans in history.

[CLC]

I also never hear any proposal on where to fit the LRT terminus station near Broadway-Commercial . All heavy-used light rail systems need a rather big terminus station to accommodate lots of customers. Though Broadway-Commercial will likely be the terminus of a single LRT route, it still needs a very LARGE space for terminus based on current situation of huge lineups to board 99-b.

Again, if it is Skytrain, no transfer needed, no trouble!

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by CLC

I also never hear any proposal on where to fit the LRT terminus station near Broadway-Commercial . All heavy-used light rail systems need a rather big terminus station to accommodate lots of customers. Though Broadway-Commercial will likely be the terminus of a single LRT route, it still needs a very LARGE space for terminus based on current situation of huge lineups to board 99-b.

Again, if it is Skytrain, no transfer needed, no trouble!

Not just for customers, but you also need staging area for trains as their drivers take a break. Currently the B line buses line up the length of N. Grandview as drivers rest. If there are going to be LRT trains every 3 minutes, where are they going to rest? The drivers need to first switch ends on the train and have a pee or a coffee. There is a reason that most North American LRT lines operate on 15 minute headways, is because the logistics of turning trains around quicker is expensive. (you need more drivers than trains in service because they overlap at turnaround)

Automated Skytrain cars can be in service 100% of the time (like they are on the Canada Line) or enter or leave service at anytime at virtually no cost.

Central Broadway really should be looked at as an extension of downtown. It's like downtown #2, sub-downtown. It needs rapid transit to bring in the regional riders from Burnaby and Beyond. It's already well built up, but there is still more room and more potential. Construction of Condos and Offices is going to have to take place somewhere, and Central Broadway is the logical place for more densification. Cambie and Broadway could be the Granville and Georgia (2 lines crossing) or Waterfront of Central Broadway. The area just East of Cambie is ripe for redevelopment.

Yes, that means that there will be a bunch of new high end condo construction that will be unfordable by most. But there always will be, and it's better to have them all in the same area (around downtown) than spread to regions further away. Because that spread drives up the prices for everyone and makes affordable housing hard to find anywhere. By building the Broadway line we can focus high end growth near downtown and still allow more affordable growth on other parts of the system further away from downtown. Because of the limited length of Skytrain around downtown, it really has driven up prices for living near Skytrain in places like New West or Surrey. It shouldn't be as expensive as it is, but it is because of limited supply near downtown). So you get Yaletown style condos and prices in Central Surrey instead of Central Broadway.

[Mininari]

I fully support extending skytrain to UBC. No questions or doubts... broadway 99 buses are AT CAPACITY at rush hour. One pulls up immediately as one leaves -- and is filled in moments. Meanwhile the next skytrain arrives, and another 100 people line up for the bus. The b-line 99 probably shouldn't even serve to pick people up along the way anymore... because it usually can't!

Anyways, wrt your comparison of the 480 to c-line/99B.... isn't there another decent bus route that runs along 41st avenue that you could transfer to INSTEAD of using the 99B? I mean, they have the 84 service for M-line traffic to avoid the b-line -- wasn't the C-line supposed to have a transfer point for UBC students someplace else along the line?

There should be one! Reality is there won't be any UBC Skytrain for a while... not unless the province lands another bonanza windfall from resource royalties and suddenly has billions in surpluses again.