Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[WarrenC12]

I like all of the parking lots around Stadium... full of cars no less.

I saw a poster sized picture of the downtown area at the time of Expo. I forgot how surrounded BC Place was with parking lots. One spot for every seat in the dome.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by jlousa

Main and Terminal certainly looks better with no trolley/power lines and no traffic lights. There isn't even a stop sign. Probably a good thing they didn't build it exactly like the render.

It also shows that nobody was expecting tall towers at that intersection back then.
Most of the rendered buildings seem to max out at 6-10 stories.

Funny to see the old Expo photos, and I completely forgot that Canada Lafarge was still operating there (between Main and Quebec) during Expo.

[officedweller]

APTA 2010 Canada Line session @ Buzzer Blog:

http://buzzer.translink.ca/index.php/2010/06/apta-rail-2010-canada-line-session/#more-9933

[nname]

Originally Posted by officedweller

APTA 2010 Canada Line session @ Buzzer Blog:

http://buzzer.translink.ca/index.php/2010/06/apta-rail-2010-canada-line-session/#more-9933

Some interesting points:
- within first two year period an initial service plan will be run
- and capacity initial service plan is 6400 at 400 per car
- ridership is typically within any week ridership ranges from low of 95 000 to 115000 peaking on Friday
- on weekends ridership drops to 65000 to 85000 per day
- took november and compared to april — 9% increase in ridership in that period
- Rider distribution: downtown 32%, cambie st corridor 35%, city of richmond 23%, yvr airport 10%
- airport transit mode split for passengers went from 3% to 15% - a remarkable change
- 58% airline passengers, 20% employees, 16% greeters well wishers, 6% observation deck/other

Hope the presentation slides are posted online so we can see the graphs and charts...

[Whalleyboy]

Originally Posted by deasine

I have a few photos I'd like to share, which are photos of photos found in the SkyTrain OMC.

I recognized that giant flag pole any day hahah
i wish i was born well before the expo so i could have seen it

[CLC]

Originally Posted by nname

- Rider distribution: downtown 32%, cambie st corridor 35%, city of richmond 23%, yvr airport 10%

This leaves only 8% for Bridgeport.

Is Cambie St corridor means boarding from any of Olympic Village, Broadway-Cityhall, King Edwards, Oakridge, Langara, Marine Drive. Would love to know individual station stats.

(I am glad my observation posted in earlier posts were quite right.)

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by CLC

This leaves only 8% for Bridgeport.

Is Cambie St corridor means boarding from any of Olympic Village, Broadway-Cityhall, King Edwards, Oakridge, Langara, Marine Drive. Would love to know individual station stats.

(I am glad my observation posted in earlier posts were quite right.)

Not sure how you came up with that math.

23% of traffic from Richmond would include Bridgeport, no?

the 'rider distribution' doesn't tell me if those riders are starting their trip in Richmond & ending in Vancouver, or starting at YVR & ending in Brighouse, or starting at Oakridge & ending at Olympic. All I know from that number is 23% of the riders started and/or ended their trips in Richmond sometime during the day, some unknown day of the week.

hourly, daily and weekly station -to- station stats are better numbers to figure out what stations are popular at what times of the day & days of the week. ie: is there a correlation between airplane departures and arrivals vs. traffic from/to YVR station from outside the airport area? What are the popular stations to start the trip to the airport? or end the trip from the airport? how many of these airport trips coincide with rush hours? do they flow with or against the rush hour traffic?

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by officedweller

APTA 2010 Canada Line session @ Buzzer Blog:

http://buzzer.translink.ca/index.php/2010/06/apta-rail-2010-canada-line-session/#more-9933

What impressed me was the Olympic tidbits:
- 287,000 passengers in a single day - better than 95% of estimated as-built capacity reached (if only for a few weeks) 20 or 30 years ahead of schedule.

- they could adjust number of trains during the day from 14 to 20 in order to meet anticipated demand or to quickly ramp-up for unanticipated spikes.

- the average wait time in a lineup to get on a train during crush loads was 5 minutes (worst case 20 minutes).

- the planning & operations staff were flexible enough to realise their best-laid plans were wrong on opening day & could make service-level adjustments within a few hours.

- they can run trains for 24 hours (like the day after closing ceremonies) if there is another surge in demand for full-day service.

This doesn't say how well Canada Line would work with 20 trains running 24/7 with over 200K daily riders for months at a time, but I think this pulls the rug from the nay-sayers who b*tch that its under-built & over capacity already.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jsbertram

- the average wait time in a lineup to get on a train during crush loads was 5 minutes (worst case 20 minutes).

Not sure what this means, there were lineups out the doors of many stations around event times.

[Zassk]

Those ridership percentages given are confusing. The way the line was broken down, it seems like most riders will end their trip in a different segment from the one they started on. And the Bridgeport express bus transfers would seem to fall outside of all of the categories.

Anecdotally, it seems inconceivable that only 32% of the line's passengers are actually on the trains when the trains reach downtown. But I'm struggling to understand what else it could mean. Do 32% of the ridership never leave the downtown peninsula? That also seems unlikely.

Anyway, anyone who uses the line can see that the route was very well chosen because it is very well used throughout Vancouver and Richmond, and only the YVR leg occasionally brings back memories of the M-line.

[tybuilding]

The giant flag is at 104th Ave and 152nd Street in Surrey for anyone who would like to see it. At 144th and 104 Ave is one of those expo buildings.

[cabotp]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Not sure what this means, there were lineups out the doors of many stations around event times.

It means that in all those lineups the average wait time was 5 minutes. But at times the wait time did creep up to 20 minutes.

On a personal note I only hit one lineup at the VCC station on CL. And it only started from the ticket machines. So it was at most 5 minutes long if that. Every other time I was downtown I basically just walked right on. Although I was probably just lucky in not choosing the times where everyone else wanted to leave as well.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by tybuilding

The giant flag is at 104th Ave and 152nd Street in Surrey for anyone who would like to see it. At 144th and 104 Ave is one of those expo buildings.

I think a few of the modular pavillions were sent to Scott Paper in New West to be used as warehouse space. You can see them as you zoom by on the Skytrain.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Not sure what this means, there were lineups out the doors of many stations around event times.

Probably you were unlucky enough to show up just as several thousand fans were leaving a nearby venue.

If City Hall was a zoo, I knew that I could roll down Cambie to Olympic & get on quicker.

I learned this on the freebie opening day when City Hall had lineups up Cambie & down 10th, but nobody even knew about the 'hidden' Olympic station. I'm sure I was able to get on at Olympic, ride to Brighouse, back to Waterfront, and back to City Hall & see the same people still in the City Hall lineup waiting to take it for a spin.

[CLC]

Originally Posted by jsbertram

Not sure how you came up with that math.

23% of traffic from Richmond would include Bridgeport, no?

the 'rider distribution' doesn't tell me if those riders are starting their trip in Richmond & ending in Vancouver, or starting at YVR & ending in Brighouse, or starting at Oakridge & ending at Olympic. All I know from that number is 23% of the riders started and/or ended their trips in Richmond sometime during the day, some unknown day of the week.

Hardie has previously mentioned to reporters several times that ~15% of traffic from Richmond below Bridgeport.

It is my naive assumption that Translink uses station boarding count to define 'rider distribution'. I would imagine that most people do 'round-trip', say, if someone rides from Brighouse to Langara, he/she likely travels the opposite way to return home.

[TransitJack]

Originally Posted by tybuilding

The giant flag is at 104th Ave and 152nd Street in Surrey for anyone who would like to see it. At 144th and 104 Ave is one of those expo buildings.

Also some expo buildings (pavilions) are located at Scott Paper plant in New West between 22nd and New West Stn.

EDIT: oops I see jsbertram already beat me to this above. Thanx

We probably all know about the McBarge in Burrard Inlet that you can see when traveling on the WCE.

And I think the giant hockey stick is still in Duncan, outside their main arena.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by cabotp

It means that in all those lineups the average wait time was 5 minutes. But at times the wait time did creep up to 20 minutes.

On a personal note I only hit one lineup at the VCC station on CL. And it only started from the ticket machines. So it was at most 5 minutes long if that. Every other time I was downtown I basically just walked right on. Although I was probably just lucky in not choosing the times where everyone else wanted to leave as well.

I have some land in Florida you might be interested in...

[officedweller]

Average wait time - I would expect that the underused stations (i.e. no Olympic demand) would average out to shorten the "average" wait time over all stations.
i.e. 5 stations with no wait and 1 station with 30 min wait - averages to 5 minutes...
... and would that average be directional?

*********

Another interesting tidbit was the extra work they had to do to get all 20 of the trains turned around and ready for service within the 4 hour overnight shutdown period.

[mrjauk]

Another interesting tidbit was the extra work they had to do to get all 20 of the trains turned around and ready for service within the 4 hour overnight shutdown period.

That prompts me to wonder if it would be possible in the future to run 24-hour Skytrain service. Maybe space them out 15 minutes or every half-hour between say 2:00 and 5:00 am. Has there ever been any mention of this?

[officedweller]

Yeah, there has - the overriding issue raised has been trackwork moreso than time to clean and maintain the trains.