Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
Why the heck would anyone living on the south side of False Creek want to take a streetcar downtown when they're just a few minute's walk from a Skytrain station? If we ran the streetcar all the way to Granville Island, does anyone seriously think that downtown-bound passengers who board there would stay on the streetcar and not transfer at the Olympic Village station?
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Lets break that down into two options (if both exist).
1) You leave the Olympic Village and walk to the nearest Skytrain Station and are heading to Waterfront, your trip will take a minimum of 15 minutes (depending on where you leave from and what station you walk to). It will be longer if have to wait a few minutes at the station. You are pretty close to downtown, but it takes less time to go from Granville and 16th to Waterfront on the #10.
2) You walk out your door and take a very short walk to the OV tram station, get on a tram and are at waterfront in less time. Change your destination to Gastown (probably the fastest growing office area in Vancouver) and the advantage is even greater.
And you are forgetting the multitude of other trips the streetcar serves effectively. What about people coming from the Expo Line to Granville Island? What about people going from Canada Line to Chinatown? If the extension is built to Yaletown, it would connect Canada line to BC Place. And I don't think I have to explain the benefit of it going out to Stanley Park instead of the crowded 19.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
With more and more development along the south shore of False Creek I can see the need for some sort of shuttle service along it. I'm not convinced that a streetcar is the most cost-effective means to provide the service, but at least it would be fairly cheap to implement since almost all of the right-of-way already exists.
But I see absolutely no need for a streetcar to run downtown since it already has two Skytrain lines and by far the most frequent and numerous bus and trolley routes anywhere in the lower mainland.
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Skytrain is a regional system, providing a huge time savings when travelling between 2 distant points. The closer the points get together, the less savings Skytrain offers over surface travel.
The streetcar isn't for getting people into downtown, it's for connecting the dots between Skytrain stations and areas that are under served.
Quote:
Originally Posted by logan5
Nope. Downtown is way too saturated with buses. Any rapid transit (Skytrain) is 3 x faster than trolley bus, which is the equivalent of Toronto streetcar.
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The difference here is that the Streetcar would take routes not used by the trolley bus. There are no trolley wires on Water, Cordova, or Columbia and no service at all on W 1st. The 19 goes out to Stanley Park, and it is busy during the summer (standing room only on weekends after Burrard).
The trolley buses are also very busy with long distance travel. People get on downtown and are riding those buses into deep Vancouver. And they all travel on the same route through downtown and bunch up. Every trolley is as fast as the slowest trolley. By having the streetcar take streets with no trolleys on them, it is not held up by their traffic, and thus, can offer huge time savings for people trying to get around the East Side (which is more in demand now than since the 60's). You also segregate travellers. Instead of having the suburban buses slowed down by people getting on and off, they can enjoy more manageable passenger volumes, and downtown travelers don't have to be crammed onto buses with commuters heading home.
To bring it back on topic: Now here is where the test comes in. To see how much it affects travel. I think the streetcar will have a huge impact on the area it serves. I think trips to Granville Island on transit are too low, too many people drive there. During the Olympics, everyone took the tram. Connecting into or out of Gastown is quite difficult, and it is a long walk to get to the OV. That said, I don't think it will compare to Skytrain. There will be time savings off a local bus, but not as much as Skytrain offers. There will be increased capacity, but not as much as Skytrain. It will attract new riders, but not as much as Skytrain ( and Canada Line) has in the past.
Building out the Streetcar as a test is a much cheaper alternative than building out LRT somewhere else. And after its done, it will still be useful instead of us wishing we had build Skytrain to Granville Island.
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