Quote:
Originally Posted by officedweller
There's a trade off though with a one-way loop - between serving areas and causing too long a detour for others.
If the above is one-way southbound at Lansdowne, a passenger will have to traverse 4 stations to get out of downtown Richmond headed to Vancouver.
You'd also never have anyone ride from Lansdowne to Alderbridge (a 4 station ride) when walking would be faster (that's a problem that Detroit faces due to the one-way loop).
A smaller loop that returns via Westminster Highway or Cooney (i.e. joins in south of Lansdowne Station) may be manageable.
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True but if you run some trains from Waterfront straight to Landsdowne and short turn them then the only station that would be impacted that is used today would be Brighouse. I am not sure how much time this would add to a trip to it, maybe a extra 4-5min for trains from Waterfront? (expo takes 39 min to pass 18 stations so about 2 min per station, since the station next to WCB would be paralel to Brighouse and there would only be one more stop between them then I assume 4-5min would be the added travel time)...Sure it would 🞵🞵🞵🞵 but doubling up the single tracked section could be pretty costly and this loop would better distribute riders and service more areas.
Now the station parallel to Landsdowne would have more like 7 min added to its trip heading towards water front so that would be pushing it but its close to Landsdown so people heading north can either go the extra distance or sit on the train for a extra 7min (only for people heading north and out of the loop). Another option would be to double track to that station as well and also short turn some trains there, because only some trains would short turn at Landsdowne and the station parallel to it then the cross switch for the two would not be a problem because it would be so lightly used.
So if that is done then all your left with is losing 4-5 min at Brighouse and its parallel station depending on the direction of travel and the furthest south station would be unaffected (for travel to and from the loop).
As for trips within the loop, well I agree there would not be too many and they would only make sense between some of the stations (i.e. yor not going to go from Brighouse through the whole loop to get to the station right before it, but you might to get to the station parallel to it or the olympic oval station and vice versa).
480 second frequency for the train running the loop only
360 second frequency for trains short turning at Landsdowne
360 second frequency for trains short turning at its parallel station
240 second frequency ruining the loop
If my math is correct that would give a frequency of 84 seconds in the loop and 103 seconds out of it towards Bridgeport, it can then be adjusted and lowered a bit to work well with the airport route. For Landsdowne and its parallel station which would have previously been effected the most now people save a minute or two even if they just miss the train that is short turning, on average people would lose I guess around 3 min( in one direction only), assuming the times they enter the station are evenly distributed. So not too bad while having a full loop through Richmond center.
Only problem is the added complexity.
*but if you want to add even more complexity then you could in theory have a train do the loop and from Bridge port head to the airport instead of Waterfront and then back. This would require allot of work though but I assume would allow higher theoretical frequency on the airport and Richmond segments and increase connectivity...(probably doesnt make sense, but I haven't thought over it much). To do this though you would need a third platform at Bridge port and either another fly over...or switch if the train frequencies on the airport segment is low enough in comparison to the Richmond segment. That means crossing tracks for Richmond center to airport bound trains on the airport segment just west of Bridgeport.
Anyways the loop has flaws but it also has its benefits and depending on the difficulty of double tracking the final segment could be a viable alternative which would for the majority improve access to the Canada line.
***Really quick and ugly illustration of the concept, and the switching as well.
*the purple squares are supposed to illustrate the added travel distance TO Brighouse from outside the loop and FROM its parallel station to outside of the loop...
But like I said it adds complexity and I hate complexity, any system should be designed for as little complexity as possible...sometimes people pay too much attention to physical functionality and forget about the importance of ease of use. Just because someone can get from point A to B faster doesn't mean much if the person cant figure out how to actually do it. and by person I mean all people as one group, like a bucket of water, not a h2o molecule 
and just to rant on a bit more...making something easy to use is usually significantly more difficult to do then to make it functional. (and I think I prove this point in my post rather well)
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