This discussion has come up in the Sister's site thread about streetcars in and around SGR. We started out talking about commercial corridors (someone123 had an idea of making sure the SGR commercial corridor reached from the main strip from South Park to Barrington but also there was a component going from Robie to South Park).
Anyway, that began a discussion of alternate commercial corridors and creating them using transit - streetcars. This is a long post - sorry about it, but I wanted to explain my proposal.
This lead me to go back to the streetcar map which I created and have been updating with further discussions in the different threads. So
here is the map of my 4 streetcar routes.
A couple things that lead to the routings I've shown:
- I tried to incorporate routes that hit major employment centres or trip generators (downtown, universities, schools, tourist sites);
- I tried to make sure there was interconnection of streetcar routes with other transit modes (conventional routes and BRTs) at major transit stations;
- Wherever possible, I liked the idea of using a 'joint' service corridor - where 2 streetcar routes could share the same track and then branch off. This is true in downtown Halifax, as you can see on the map; and
- I wanted to try to focus on areas that were under utilized in terms of 'what they could be' scenarios (I'll explain in a momment).
There are 4 proposed routes: 501, 502, 503 and 504.
The 501 route is a loop starting at the NSIT following Agricola and North Park inbound to downtown, via Cogswell and then down Hollis to the train station, down Barrington under the railway tracks and back into downtown via the Seaport and Lower Waterstreet. Then back out of the downtown via Cogswell, North Park, Agricola to the Hydrostone and finishing up on Novalea drive up to NSIT.
Route 503 starts out at Mumford, going through the HSC and down Connaught ending up on Windsor street. From Windsor, inbound to Downtown via Cunard into the shared downtown segment with the 501, via Cogswell and Hollis Street. The 502 branches off to the universities at Morris Street, heading down Morris, onto University Avenue (past the IWK) and then turning left at Robie ending up at SMU. The route backtracks along the same route but continuing along Morris to Lower Water street where it rejoins the shared segment through downtown and then following the inbound route in reverse back to Mumford.
The 502 streetcar is a Dartmouth route but is a loop starting at the Waterfront NSCC campus (it could start at Woodside too, but I chose the NSCC for now), heading inbound to Dartmouth DT via Pleasant and Portland street, onto Alderney past King's Wharf and Alderney Landing, up the hill to the new Dartmouth Bridge Terminal. Then leaving DBT via Wyse Road, down to Windmill and then turning into Shannon Park (assuming a redevelopment similar to the Commonwealth plan, with a looproad). This is where the route is a bit "assumed' since there is no redevelopment plan for SP yet, but following a loop road through the site, up to DFO and into Wallace Heights to do a loop back to SP and back outbound through DT Dartmouth to NSCC.
The 504 streetcar starts at the Bridge Terminal (transfer point) then follows Victoria road up into Highfield Park and then into Burnside via Burnside drive and then along Commadore down into Dartmouth Crossing. This is where the route follows Findlay Drive to Wright Avenue and then turning left at Ilsley, then left again onto Commadore and then back onto Burnside Drive to head back via the same route to the Bridge terminal.
The shared portion of downtown Halifax allows the office crowds to be serviced with a streetcar much more often, depending on the time of day and frequency of service. So if both lines run every 10 minutes at lunch hour, the downtown stops would see a streetcar roughly every 5 minutes.
The Halifax lines incorporate some major tourist spots during the summer months and also provide better service to the farmers market (which can help with the parking problem). The Dartmouth lines hit some major areas that could see redevelopment (Shannon Park, Highfield Park, Victoria Road and Wallace Heights) as the city grows.
I've also tried to provide service to some of the major school/hospital sites (Dal, SMU, NSIT, NSCC) because this could push up transit numbers. If I use the Portland Streetcar as a starting point - late night and very early morning service would be every 20 minutes and then any other time of day every 12 minutes. So in shared downtown areas, the stops would see a streetcar every 6 minutes (plenty of headway).
The only risk with a shared portion is that if the city sees a huge growth spurt and the streetcar expands big time, there may eventually be a capacity issue.
Here are the types of streetcars I'm thinking could be used:
Vancouver 2010 Streetcar (Bombardier)
Portland Streetcar (Skoda)
Photo - was too big to include in thread
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