The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by sober2ndthought

Grade separated means it runs either above the road or below the road. Edmonton's LRT runs entirely at grade that means it does intersect with the road.

Just a small quibble. Grade separation actually means it is separated from other traffic (road, pedestrian, or rail) by a difference in gradient. But that separation need only be where the line and the other traffic intersect, not necessarily its full length. For instance, expressways and freeways are often considered grade separated since any other road or railway it intersects with must do so using an overpass or an underpass.

So if Edmonton LRT has any at-grade crossings or shares tracks with any other rail services, then it is not grade separated.

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by logan5

Without being a C Train critic or a Skytrain booster, I find an interesting comparison between West LRT in Calgary and the Evergreen Line in Vancouver which are being built at about the same time.

The Evergreen Line is 11 km long and will cost 127 million/km, which is substantially less than the 174 million/km cost of the West LRT. The Evergreen Line is mostly elevated with a 2 km bored tunnel section and, I believe, about 3 km of at grade sections, which would actually give the Evergreen Line the more expensive alignment. Maximum capacity is 25 000 - 30 000 pph, which is similar to the C Train.

Maybe because of the elevated characteristic of Skytrain, it avoids property acquisition, but can that explain the huge discrepancy in cost?

Yes and No. The expropriation costs on this section of line were particularly high because the area is so densely populated, but also because some of the buildings which had to be torn down were quite valuable. For example, the Science Centre, Ernest Manning High School, a couple of large churches etc. Some have suggested the costs could be as high as $200 million for expropriation.

But there was also a lot of road work which could have otherwise been avoided if the line ran completely elevated until hit the suburbs. That road work also cost the city a ton of money, particularly after Area 2 was changed to grade level.

The underground station at Westbrook Mall is also really expensive just because it uses entirely cut and cover methods and its 800 m in length.

Lets not forget, Vancouver used a lot of temporary foreign workers which reduced the cost of building the Canada Line. Lets not forget this is Alberta where everyone is paid more.

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Just a small quibble. Grade separation actually means it is separated from other traffic (road, pedestrian, or rail) by a difference in gradient. But that separation need only be where the line and the other traffic intersect, not necessarily its full length. For instance, expressways and freeways are often considered grade separated since any other road or railway it intersects with must do so using an overpass or an underpass.

So if Edmonton LRT has any at-grade crossings or shares tracks with any other rail services, then it is not grade separated.

The LRT does interact with traffic at most intersections.

[SFUVancouver]

Originally Posted by sober2ndthought

Lets not forget, Vancouver used a lot of temporary foreign workers which reduced the cost of building the Canada Line. Lets not forget this is Alberta where everyone is paid more.

Virtually all workers on the Canada Line were locals. However Seli, the tunnelling contractor, brought in about 50 foreign workers. These Italian and South American TBM machine operators were paid wages that were comparable to those of local, unionized staff, so that's not the reason the project cost only $110M/km.

[Rusty van Reddick]

The Telus World of Science wasn't torn down- it was relocated but the building is still there, waiting for some re-purposing.

[feepa]

I wonder what MikeToronto would think of the proposed SE to W LRT in Edmonton, or the proposed SE LRT in Calgary

http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/et...-west-lrt-mill-woods-to-lewis-farms.aspx

It will be very similar to Seattle I think.

Edmonton's current system though, is fairly grade separated. In the original section in the NE, it follows a rail ROW, which cross over/under major intersections, and then a lengthy tunnel under downtown and across the river into the university. Along the southern portion, there is still sections of grade separation with the road at major crossings.... It's not completely grade separated like a subway, but it's certainly not like a streetcar that runs in street (in a private row, or with traffic)

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by Rusty van Reddick

The Telus World of Science wasn't torn down- it was relocated but the building is still there, waiting for some re-purposing.

Yep but the city still had to expropriate it and contribute costs to building the new one.

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by feepa

I wonder what MikeToronto would think of the proposed SE to W LRT in Edmonton, or the proposed SE LRT in Calgary

http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/et...-west-lrt-mill-woods-to-lewis-farms.aspx

It will be very similar to Seattle I think.

Edmonton's current system though, is fairly grade separated. In the original section in the NE, it follows a rail ROW, which cross over/under major intersections, and then a lengthy tunnel under downtown and across the river into the university. Along the southern portion, there is still sections of grade separation with the road at major crossings.... It's not completely grade separated like a subway, but it's certainly not like a streetcar that runs in street (in a private row, or with traffic)

He would be opposed to both plans simply because they use low-floor LRVs with street level boarding platforms instead of high-floor lrvs with extensive station structure with level boarding platforms.

Most people seem to call low-floor LRVs streetcars because they resemble streetcars.

[miketoronto]

Originally Posted by feepa

I wonder what MikeToronto would think of the proposed SE to W LRT in Edmonton, or the proposed SE LRT in Calgary

http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/et...-west-lrt-mill-woods-to-lewis-farms.aspx

It will be very similar to Seattle I think.

If it can keep the fast, full priority, rapid transit that the current Edmonton LRT provides, then fine. The details on the website are not enough for me to fully see how they are planning to have this line operate. But from what I gather, this is going to be a dumbed down version of LRT and I question if this is the best way to continue expanding LRT. Street running in downtown also makes no sense, when Edmonton already has underground LRT service downtown. It will just mean having to tunnel latter when LRT's can't handle street running anymore.

Cities starting in the 1900's and earlier built tunnels to get streetcars off the streets downtown. Now we want to just recreate the congestion problem of trying to operate rapid transit on city streets. The in street operation will also delay the service and offer little crosstown benefit for riders traveling through downtown. You will end up with the Portland problem, where it takes almost half an hour to cross downtown.

[Alexcaban]

These are the potential names for the new metro trains.

http://stm.info/English/info%5Ca-nomMPM10consul.htm

In spring 2011, more than 6000 people took part in a public consultation to find a name for the next generation of métro cars. The time has come to choose your favourite one among the five finalist names, which are:

AZUR

Refers to the intense blue colour of the sky. As such, AZUR perfectly brings to mind the colour of the métro’s future cars.

BOOMERANG

The idea behind BOOMERANG is that the métro always returns to its point of departure. The name itself implies reliability and dynamic movement.

VÉGA

VÉGA is relatively close to the Sun. Seen from Earth, it is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. A short, simple name, which makes VÉGA fun. It reminds us of the headlights on a metro as it enters the station.

KRONOS

In Greek mythology, KRONOS (or Cronus) is a ruling god that personified time and destiny. When spoken, the word brings to mind a chronometer, used to keep time accurately. Such an instrument is essential to operating a transit system, the same way a watch is essential to a train conductor. The letter K also gives it more steadiness and strength.

ZÉPHYR

According to Greek mythology, ZÉPHYR is the god of the west wind. A gentle breeze from the west, fresh, light, warm and pleasant… like the métro. Not only are the origins of the word interesting and rich with meaning, but it also gives a solid, credible name to our future metro.

Consultation period
From Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 25, 2012, at 4 p.m.

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by miketoronto

If it can keep the fast, full priority, rapid transit that the current Edmonton LRT provides, then fine. The details on the website are not enough for me to fully see how they are planning to have this line operate. But from what I gather, this is going to be a dumbed down version of LRT and I question if this is the best way to continue expanding LRT. Street running in downtown also makes no sense, when Edmonton already has underground LRT service downtown. It will just mean having to tunnel latter when LRT's can't handle street running anymore.

Cities starting in the 1900's and earlier built tunnels to get streetcars off the streets downtown. Now we want to just recreate the congestion problem of trying to operate rapid transit on city streets. The in street operation will also delay the service and offer little crosstown benefit for riders traveling through downtown. You will end up with the Portland problem, where it takes almost half an hour to cross downtown.

The reason it is running at street level is because they learned from there original mistake of building the tunnel in the first place. Edmonton shoved all its money into an LRT tunnel and was never able to expand its LRT coverage.

Also for the existing tunnel there are two reasons why they do not want to run all the LRVs in the existing tunnel. First it means the city will be stuck using high-floor LRVs which have higher construction costs as opposed to low floor LRVs where construction cost is much lower. But more importantly, once the two new lines are built the existing tunnel will be at capacity and will not be able to handle the additional pressure.

Accordingly the city needs a separate route, the two options are of course to build another tunnel or run it at street level. Building a new tunnel will take valuable resources away from the lines while building it at street level will allow the city to save a ton of money which could be used to massively extend its LRT system.

Calgary on the other hand avoided an LRT tunnel and instead expanded its coverage using the 7th Avenue Transit Mall. Now that the transit mall is at capacity, they can build a new 8th Avenue tunnel where they can run the future lines. But what should be noted is what Calgary gained was significantly greater rapid transit coverage. The coverage was so great that the city was able to avoid expanding street capacity downtown while at the same time the number of people working downtown increased significantly.

The 7th Avenue Transit Mall has served Calgary quite decently it should a similar transit mall should do well for the time being in Edmonton.

[Bassic Lab]

Originally Posted by sober2ndthought

Yep but the city still had to expropriate it and contribute costs to building the new one.

No they didn't have to expropriate it. Both the old and the new Science Centres are municipally owned museums.

Originally Posted by sober2ndthought

The reason it is running at street level is because they learned from there original mistake of building the tunnel in the first place. Edmonton shoved all its money into an LRT tunnel and was never able to expand its LRT coverage.

Also for the existing tunnel there are two reasons why they do not want to run all the LRVs in the existing tunnel. First it means the city will be stuck using high-floor LRVs which have higher construction costs as opposed to low floor LRVs where construction cost is much lower. But more importantly, once the two new lines are built the existing tunnel will be at capacity and will not be able to handle the additional pressure.

Accordingly the city needs a separate route, the two options are of course to build another tunnel or run it at street level. Building a new tunnel will take valuable resources away from the lines while building it at street level will allow the city to save a ton of money which could be used to massively extend its LRT system.

Calgary on the other hand avoided an LRT tunnel and instead expanded its coverage using the 7th Avenue Transit Mall. Now that the transit mall is at capacity, they can build a new 8th Avenue tunnel where they can run the future lines. But what should be noted is what Calgary gained was significantly greater rapid transit coverage. The coverage was so great that the city was able to avoid expanding street capacity downtown while at the same time the number of people working downtown increased significantly.

The 7th Avenue Transit Mall has served Calgary quite decently it should a similar transit mall should do well for the time being in Edmonton.

The difference between Edmonton's tunnel and Calgary's 7 Ave really isn't the reason for Calgary's larger system. Of course it had an affect but Calgary spent significantly more on it's initial system in the 1980s than Edmonton did. The city was more willing to spend the money and took on more debt to do so.

Also, cost really isn't that much of a factor between high floor and low floor vehicles. Making platforms two feet higher just isn't that big of an expense. The real trade off is between ease of integration on one side and reliability and capacity on the other.

[feepa]

Originally Posted by Bassic Lab

No they didn't have to expropriate it. Both the old and the new Science Centres are municipally owned museums.



The difference between Edmonton's tunnel and Calgary's 7 Ave really isn't the reason for Calgary's larger system. Of course it had an affect but Calgary spent significantly more on it's initial system in the 1980s than Edmonton did. The city was more willing to spend the money and took on more debt to do so.

Edmonton stopped building LRT from 92-2006. Calgary continued building during the period. That's the difference. The tunnel, as you said, had little to do with that.

[sober2ndthought]

Originally Posted by feepa

Edmonton stopped building LRT from 92-2006. Calgary continued building during the period. That's the difference. The tunnel, as you said, had little to do with that.

The tunnel had a lot to do with it in fact. Calgary was able to continue to construct during that time period because Calgary still had funds available to construct LRT extension. Edmonton had to stop because the money ran out.

To illustrate the point, in today's dollars, the cost of building Calgary's LRT was 24.5 Million USD per mile while Edmonton is 41.7 Million USD per mile. Today Calgary has 48.8 KM of track while Edmonton has only 20.5 KM. Both cities have basically spent almost the same amount of money to construct the LRT systems but Calgary has more than double the track.

Why largely because of the downtown tunnel. In the Suburban areas both cities used similar techniques for building the LRT. They both used available rights of way where they could be found such as abandoned rail road lines, or previously reserved rights of way etc. However, there is a major difference downtown. The underground infrastructure which Calgary avoided saved the city a considerable chunk of money which it was able to use to invest in further suburban LRT construction. That is important.

In my opinion, had Calgary built the Tunnel as was originally planned, the LRT like would have run from Anderson to Brentwood until 2000 when Crowchild Trial was extended then eventually the NW Line would have been extended to Tuscany and we just would have started discussing building the NE and West Lines now.

See the following from the wikipedia page:
A grade separated system was passed over in preference of a system without significant elevated or buried elements and the trains and stations selected were of the tried and tested, utilitarian variety (for example, vehicles are not air conditioned, storage yards are not automated and stations are in general concrete platforms with a modest shelter overhead). This allowed more track to be laid with the available funds and contrasts with the Edmonton Light Rail Transit which buried the portion of the system in downtown and under the University of Alberta, increasing costs.

Its up to you, personally I would take greater coverage over a downtown subway any day. We can build a downtown subway once the need actually develops.

[MexiQuebecois]

Originally Posted by Alexcaban

These are the potential names for the new metro trains.

http://stm.info/English/info%5Ca-nomMPM10consul.htm

In spring 2011, more than 6000 people took part in a public consultation to find a name for the next generation of métro cars. The time has come to choose your favourite one among the five finalist names, which are:

AZUR

Refers to the intense blue colour of the sky. As such, AZUR perfectly brings to mind the colour of the métro’s future cars.

BOOMERANG

The idea behind BOOMERANG is that the métro always returns to its point of departure. The name itself implies reliability and dynamic movement.

VÉGA

VÉGA is relatively close to the Sun. Seen from Earth, it is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. A short, simple name, which makes VÉGA fun. It reminds us of the headlights on a metro as it enters the station.

KRONOS

In Greek mythology, KRONOS (or Cronus) is a ruling god that personified time and destiny. When spoken, the word brings to mind a chronometer, used to keep time accurately. Such an instrument is essential to operating a transit system, the same way a watch is essential to a train conductor. The letter K also gives it more steadiness and strength.

ZÉPHYR

According to Greek mythology, ZÉPHYR is the god of the west wind. A gentle breeze from the west, fresh, light, warm and pleasant… like the métro. Not only are the origins of the word interesting and rich with meaning, but it also gives a solid, credible name to our future metro.

Consultation period
From Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 25, 2012, at 4 p.m.

I like Zéphyr.... Or maybe Azur.

[vid]

"Voting ends on March 25th, at which time a panel of judges will dismiss the ranking and just go with the name they chose 6 months ago."

[nname]

Originally Posted by sober2ndthought

the cost of building Calgary's LRT was 24.5 Million USD per mile

Source?

Like I said before, beware of any cost figure reported by Calgary Transit. If you used the 600-or-so million figure listed on CT's website before it was being taken down, it is actually the as-spent cost (ie. no inflation) of the track and station work (ie. no land acquisition, train, etc) of initial segments (ie. no extension) for each of the three line. In other word, it is the cost for track and station for the University-Anderson, 10th St-Whitehorn segments in 1981-1987 dollars.

Sadly, so many people believe this figure as the final cost for the system and they're spreading around the internet claiming you can build some kind of LRT for as cheap as 15M/km.

I believe there was a presentation made by CT a few years back state that the total investiment, adjusted for inflation, is actually around 2-3 billions, and WLRT was not included in this.

[feepa]

big cities have multi billion dollar budgets every year. The fact that it costs more to tunnel has nothing to do with how expansive Edmonton system is or isn't compared to Calgary. When you put 0 dollars for LRT expansion in your budget for 15 years, you don't build LRT. Calgary continued to budget money for LRT growth, and built a lot while Edmonton did nothing. Also consider that when Edmonton stopped building LRT in 1992, the whole tunnel was finished, save for the southern portal.
It's my understanding Calgary also borrowed money extensively, where as Edmonton didn't for LRT construction during the lean years (92-2006)

[Metro-One]

Exactly, the same way Metro-Vancouver has been able to continue expanding our grade separated, automated system over the past 25 years. Vancouver has gone from being the only major city in Canada without a rapid transit line, to now constructed our 4th line

[MTLskyline]

Originally Posted by Alexcaban

These are the potential names for the new metro trains.

http://stm.info/English/info%5Ca-nomMPM10consul.htm

In spring 2011, more than 6000 people took part in a public consultation to find a name for the next generation of métro cars. The time has come to choose your favourite one among the five finalist names, which are:

AZUR

Refers to the intense blue colour of the sky. As such, AZUR perfectly brings to mind the colour of the métro’s future cars.

BOOMERANG

The idea behind BOOMERANG is that the métro always returns to its point of departure. The name itself implies reliability and dynamic movement.

VÉGA

VÉGA is relatively close to the Sun. Seen from Earth, it is the fifth brightest star in the night sky. A short, simple name, which makes VÉGA fun. It reminds us of the headlights on a metro as it enters the station.

KRONOS

In Greek mythology, KRONOS (or Cronus) is a ruling god that personified time and destiny. When spoken, the word brings to mind a chronometer, used to keep time accurately. Such an instrument is essential to operating a transit system, the same way a watch is essential to a train conductor. The letter K also gives it more steadiness and strength.

ZÉPHYR

According to Greek mythology, ZÉPHYR is the god of the west wind. A gentle breeze from the west, fresh, light, warm and pleasant… like the métro. Not only are the origins of the word interesting and rich with meaning, but it also gives a solid, credible name to our future metro.

Consultation period
From Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 25, 2012, at 4 p.m.

I don't really like any of the choices... I would prefer a catchy name, not one with some "deep meaning".