Calgary Public Transit II

[shogged]

Originally Posted by mersar

less material for the stations

this is the biggest reason, you go from the stations we see today, to literally a slightly elevated curb if you so choose. Calgary will likely have a little more flare, but you certainly won't see anderson/crowfoot style stations!

cool example...

[CorporateWhore]

I prefer the aesthetic of low-floor trains anyway. They look more human-scaled and friendly in an urban environment (for pedestrians and cars). High-floors always look a little too commuter-trainy, especially along a 7th-ave type of situation where it's integrated into the street. I always wished that we had low-floor throughout the entire system.

[mersar]

Originally Posted by CorporateWhore

I prefer the aesthetic of low-floor trains anyway. They look more human-scaled and friendly in an urban environment (for pedestrians and cars). High-floors always look a little too commuter-trainy, especially along a 7th-ave type of situation where it's integrated into the street. I always wished that we had low-floor throughout the entire system.

Yep, the low floor are a lot more human scale.

That said, the newer 7th Avenue stations are a ginormous improvement over what we used to have in terms of improving the scale of them and fixing their integration into the pedestrian realm. I'm looking forward to when 4th Street reopens as well, its been making good progress but still a ways to go until it reopens early 2011.

[fusili]

Don't get me wrong, I love low-floor trains. But my understanding is that they are not as fast and they are a little more expensive. Considering the SELRT does not have a single street-side station (at least in my understanding), I do not see the point of low-floor trains.

But a good thing is that the low-floor trains can be used as streetcars as well. Things like the SELRT could run proper multi-car consists, maybe 4-5, while any streetcar system could run the same vehicles, but with single car consists. Maintenance facilities can be shared in that way.

[CorporateWhore]

Low-floor does seem more ideal for denser areas.... whereas the SE line feels like it would be more of a commuter type of situation compared to the others.

Low-floor would be perfect to run up Centre Street if the North line gets realigned (which frankly, it better), and as you suggested, in some sort of street-car scenario.....I could see it running from Eau Claire and down 4th.

[CorporateWhore]

Not news of course, but I like that Edmonton is going that way as well....

[MalcolmTucker]

Besides station scale, the big difference is in internal layout - when capacity gets tight you can't just eliminate seats and have all side seating like we have with the new LRV order. Also, you usually end up with a little less capacity per meter of train, but that can be played with it you use longer vehicles instead of standard for germany 25 m models.

They are more expensive, but just as fast, and can usually do tighter turns, which might contribute to people's impression of a lower speed.

One of the bigger costs of the se line with low floor lrvs is needing a new heavy repair shop. I know a new line would need a new shop already, but would it require the full kit, or more just light maintenance and storage if it was a standard high floor.

[Innersoul1]

Sorry, I seem t be missing something. Is Calgary planning on going Low-Floor?

[MalcolmTucker]

For the SE LRT.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by CorporateWhore

Low-floor does seem more ideal for denser areas.... whereas the SE line feels like it would be more of a commuter type of situation compared to the others.

Low-floor would be perfect to run up Centre Street if the North line gets realigned (which frankly, it better), and as you suggested, in some sort of street-car scenario.....I could see it running from Eau Claire and down 4th.

That makes sense for the non-subway portion of it. I think once you get north of 40th avenue, or maybe even earlier, you could use an at-grade option. That is where the low floor would fully be utilized.

[Northski]

In the future, city and the province should be required to do cost benefit studies to justify the choice between various infrastructure investments. Here are some past decisions that may have been made incorrectly.
Stony trail versus building out LRT.
Martingale/Tuscany/4 car trains versus 8th avenue subway.
SELRT versus NCLRT
Nose creek alignment versus Center street alignment for NCLRT
Choosing LRT versus grade separated BRT or ALRT.
West LRT versus 8th ave subway, SELRT, NCLRT.
Various changes to grade separation and route for West LRT.

In British Colombia, due to the larger infrastructure backlog, cost benefit studies are done for most new projects to decide which projects get advanced and scope of the project. For example, ALRT was choose over BRT or LRT for the evergreen line because it had twice the ridership half the travel time, 40% lower operating cost for 40% more capital cost.
Part of the problem stems from a lack of long term stable financing from the province and so projects in Calgary are done in a piecemeal fashion without proper planning.

[MalcolmTucker]

Neither lack of planning nor lack of stable funding is true. It is just we act like we have neither. The amount of studies needed can be bad - in Ontario they just exempted transit from full environmental assessments which included things like you said (technology choice, routing, cost benefit between the options) because they couldn't get anything done with the formal study process taking two years. It is now scaled back to 6 months and focuses only on environmental factors internal to the project.

[MalcolmTucker]

City Council refers the Green Trip report back to LPT.

[Dado]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Neither lack of planning nor lack of stable funding is true. It is just we act like we have neither. The amount of studies needed can be bad - in Ontario they just exempted transit from full environmental assessments which included things like you said (technology choice, routing, cost benefit between the options) because they couldn't get anything done with the formal study process taking two years. It is now scaled back to 6 months and focuses only on environmental factors internal to the project.

Actually, there were two changes that came one after the other.

The first was the inclusion of whole classes of transit projects in the "Municipal Class EA". To make a long story short, the Ontario EA Act allows for the creation of 'Class EA's, which is fancy way of saying a process to carry out assessments for numerous activities/project types, or even to exclude whole classes of projects from requiring an assessment at all (the way the OEAA was written, you'd be doing well if you could repair a washout without an EA). This allowed, for example, the MTO to have its own Class EA which features different processes for assessing highway improvements, new highways, twinning of highways to freeways, and new freeways, based on the types of impacts those activities typically have. Theoretically, each municipality could create its own Class EA for anything it might want to do, but what the Municipal Engineers of Ontario did was create one themselves for general use. It was initially road and sewer-focused, so transit projects continued to require individual EAs. That changed in the latest update of their Class EA, so now just about every conceivable transit project type is included in one of three categories, requiring no assessment, some assessment, or "full" assessment (but still less than that for an individual EA).

The second change was by the Province itself, which is the change noted earlier, the so-called 6-month process. What happens now is that the proponent does their planning study and towards the end they start the assessment portion of it and after a bit of "consultation" where the input of the public is noted and ignored, the assessment is filed (within 4 months of starting the EA process), and after a further month or so of opportunity for people to bitch to the ministry, the ministry has another month to yay/nay it, and its possible rationales for naying are pretty limited.

The thing is, the planning study portion that precedes the assessment portion basically looks like a regular EA study anyway because it requires all the usual assessment-y stuff to be done. What the 6-month process has done is cut down on the time the ministry has to approve a project and remove the requirement to assess the "do nothing" and "alternatives to", but the real savings in terms of time taken to carry out the studies came from the changes to the Municipal Class EA.


Frankly, you guys are lucky in Alberta not to have any of this stuff relating to transit projects. Just look at how much text it took me to make a basic explanation of a change in Ontario. Calgary Council can apparently just change the routing of, for example, the West LRT at will without any complicating assessments. The public consultations in Ontario are completely bogus (they seldom change anything) so they just end up wasting everyone's time. In Ottawa, we can't do anything without running into federal land, so we need to conform to the CEAA as well, though in practise that doesn't prove to be as much of a PITA - the OEAA is so involved that you basically can't do the latter without meeting the requirements of the former.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by CorporateWhore

Low-floor does seem more ideal for denser areas.... whereas the SE line feels like it would be more of a commuter type of situation compared to the others.

Low-floor would be perfect to run up Centre Street if the North line gets realigned (which frankly, it better), and as you suggested, in some sort of street-car scenario.....I could see it running from Eau Claire and down 4th.

I'd say the opposite is true, that low floor is ideal for areas with lower density. At least along corridors that are the backbone of the entire system. Low floor trains seem like streetcars to me whereas high floor trains seem more like a light metro. I would use low floor trains on an at grade line with frequent stops, something meant as much for intra-community travel as inter-community travel; they can function the same way as busses and with less impact on the community than a high floor. So I guess I kind of agree with your distinction but would change it by adding a third layer. It would be:

1) Suburban areas where the line functions like a commuter system and there is little urbanity to integrate with. Use High Floor

2) Urban areas where the line does not justify grade separation and community integration is vital but capacity is not the major concern. Use Low Floor.

3) Urban areas where capacity is a major concern and grade separation is seen as required. This type is likely the urban component of a line that travels to the suburbs, where it is type 1, and is meant for traveling long distances as much as short ones. Community integration is less of a concern as regards platform height because the platform is never supposed to function as a sidewalk. Use High Floor.

If we built a N-SE Line, that included a Centre Street Subway, there would be no urban areas where the line can pleasantly integrate with sidewalks; it would be under ground every where that mattered. Capacity would be a major concern for the line. High floor trains simply have better capacity given a certain maximum length, as dictated by station platforms.

Sure, if we ever decide to reintroduce a Beltline or Marda Loop, then low floor all the way. I just don't particularly see how a sidewalk type station in Douglasdale or thirty feet under Centre Street is a goal to strive for. This is especially true when it can lead to capacityissues. First with the reduced capacity of low floor trains. Second with the inability for the city to allocate resources, as in extra trains, to whichever line needs the additional capacity. If all six mainlines are high floor then the city has one pool of trains that can be utilized wherever the need is greatest without waiting for a new order. If one is low floor then we have two distinct systems and capacity issues on either one will require an expensive order of new trains.

I have been curious about the ability of a single line to utilize both high floor and low floor trains. I wonder if it could work to have larger stations with a high floor island platform and low floor side platforms, or vice versa. It would allow one expensive piece of infrastructure to be used by two different types of lines. Like the Centre Street Subway could function as a downtown gateway for both the high floor mainline North LRT and low floor Spur lines (say a 16th Ave N streetcar system) that would depart from the main tunnel, quickly return to grade, and then function as trams in mixed traffic.

[fusili]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

1) Suburban areas where the line functions like a commuter system and there is little urbanity to integrate with. Use High Floor

2) Urban areas where the line does not justify grade separation and community integration is vital but capacity is not the major concern. Use Low Floor.

3) Urban areas where capacity is a major concern and grade separation is seen as required. This type is likely the urban component of a line that travels to the suburbs, where it is type 1, and is meant for traveling long distances as much as short ones. Community integration is less of a concern as regards platform height because the platform is never supposed to function as a sidewalk. Use High Floor.

You said exactly what was on my mind. To me the SELRT is never in condition 2.

[MalcolmTucker]

Simple solution - tender the project as non-specific technology but with a specific capacity. See what gets bid, and buy it.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by Sir.Humphrey.Appleby

Simple solution - tender the project as non-specific technology but with a specific capacity. See what gets bid, and buy it.

How is that really a solution? It is just exporting the decision from City of Calgary planners and politicians to a corporation's planners and management. If anything, in a design-build-operate wouldn't SNC-Lavalin be more likely to pick whatever option was cheapest for the city's capacity requirement with no concern for any problems that might arise in twenty years when the system is handed over to the city. Interoperability would initially be of no concern to either partner. No politicians will care about problems some council, seven elections later, will have to face when the city runs both and the private corporation will care even less.

If we were to add requirements for high floor platforms, easily expanded to 125 meters, we would then have options to utilize the line have ever we want to when we inherit it. Then the winning bid might even pick some technology we would want to replace the U2s and SD-160s with. It doesn't really make much sense to have multi car consists with cabs in the middle.

[that_twisted_cm]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

How is that really a solution? It is just exporting the decision from City of Calgary planners and politicians to a corporation's planners and management. If anything, in a design-build-operate wouldn't SNC-Lavalin be more likely to pick whatever option was cheapest for the city's capacity requirement with no concern for any problems that might arise in twenty years when the system is handed over to the city. Interoperability would initially be of no concern to either partner. No politicians will care about problems some council, seven elections later, will have to face when the city runs both and the private corporation will care even less.

If we were to add requirements for high floor platforms, easily expanded to 125 meters, we would then have options to utilize the line have ever we want to when we inherit it. Then the winning bid might even pick some technology we would want to replace the U2s and SD-160s with. It doesn't really make much sense to have multi car consists with cabs in the middle.

So maybe say..."married" pairs of trains?

If that is what you mean: THANK YOU! I had totally forgotten about those!

KCRC in Hong Kong had the same issues back before the yellow-fronted Metro Cammells were refurbished. The idea of 3-5 cars, merged (or "married" into one another) to form a train, with passageways in between cars.

It may be a heavy rail idea, but for capacity, it may not be a bad idea for Light Rail as well.

[You Need A Thneed]

The tender for Southland Station's 4 car extension is now out.

The project is supposed to be done by the end of June 2011.

Includes:
Extended platform
New south end platform access, much bigger than the current one
Partial replacement of the existing platform.
I think some renos inside the station head.
Concrete repairs to existing grade beams and deck.