Quote:
Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby
If I was writing this report, I would probably not have used these specific metrics in this specific way, but numerical metrics are useful and these do make some sense. They specifically account for development along the line ("TOD" = Transit Oriented Development) and five of the eight metrics use overall ridership. The reduced travel time is also specifically accounted for. So yes, every single one of the benefits you talk about are present in these rankings.
The SE has a huge amount of job growth, but most of that is in the industrial area. Which is a long way away from the SETWAY and has such low density it is always going to be difficult to service by transit. Some of the industrial job growth is further away from the SETWAY than the industrial growth north of the airport is from the NC corridor, yet the latter is not counted as being in the NC corridor (nor should it be).
There are two employment nodes in the SE worth talking about; actually one, the south Hospital/Seton area. (The first phase of the SETWAY would only go to Douglas Glen, so Seton won't have it's transit accessibility change by much.) But people won't shut up about Quarry Park, which is a small office park with around 5,000 jobs in five-story and shorter buildings. It's nice to see some denser development with mixes of use, but it's denser compared to the warehouses elsewhere in the SE; if all the buildings were stacked up and built downtown, it still wouldn't be the tallest building. (The Bow has the same amount of floorspace as all of Quarry Park. If people were talking about servicing The Bow with dedicated transit, they would be just as  .)
Fundamentally, the SE is a hard market to serve with transit. You have Inglewood/Ramsay, who are just as likely to walk or bike to downtown and who don't gain much travel time savings since they're so close. Then you have a huge industrial area, which won't get much transit ridership. (Go to 39th Avenue and Franklin one morning, and count all the people getting off to walk into the industrial areas. You will not need two hands.) Then Ogden/Riverbend/Quarry Park, which are nice places, but are small communities and won't generate much ridership. Then more industrial areas, then finally the growing residential communities -- except that they are so much closer to the jobs in the industrial area that they are less likely to commute to downtown.
You may question the ridership, but you're the one suggesting that people are raring to buy expensive properties in the East Village, within walking distance of 125,000 jobs, just to commute for half an hour by transit to the 5,000 jobs in Quarry Park. |
Oh, I think there is some very valuable information here, on the whole, but I think they’re very incomplete and not something you could base any kind of overall ranking on. Just to quickly underline how nonsensical the rankings are, if any one of the proposals ranked ahead of the SETWAY would have had a time saving of 0 they still would have ranked ahead of the SETWAY. Talk about screwed up priorities. As it is the 17th Ave Transitway only lists a time savings of 3 minutes, and it ranked ahead of the SETWAY.
I also don’t think this takes into account the potential impact of the SETWAY. Wouldn’t you say that Quarry Park has the
potential to become much denser, including both residential and commercial developments? And if we want it to become a TOD then we need to put in the appropriate level of public transit first, don’t we? And what about CP's new head office in its Ogden Yards? There seems to be some other development going on there as well. What about the Crossroads Market area? What about the Glenmore Inn area? Even if none of these areas developed into a full blown TODs I suspect that the impact of increased development around all of these hubs combined would be significant. Keep in mind that the SETWAY would cut transit time almost in half, and it would transform the ride experience from what must be one of the worst bus rides in the city to the best. I think the difference the SETWAY would make to that area would be huge.
As another example, you mentioned that many of the other jobs are further away from the line, but the huge time savings offered by the SETWAY would surly cause the city to redo many of its routes to take advantage of it, don’t you think? If you were traveling from downtown to Seton I would bet the SETWAY would be part of the quickest route. I’m sure the QP/Douglas Glen terminus would become a transfer point for a significant number of the buses in the SE, in fact. There is literally a maze of railways, freeways, and a sizable river between QP and downtown. A dedicated roadway like this would cut right through all of that and take you right downtown. Beautiful. If there was enough volume you might even be able to run express busses directly from QP to downtown non-stop. A smooth dedicated roadway with superelevation and a higher design speed in many parts, and you’d never stuck in traffic, and you’d have very few lights. Zoom! That might be only 10 minute trip. How would that change things for QP and the SE in general?
The East Village example was just an example, but it was in response to the comments here that IOL would have trouble retaining employees who would prefer to be downtown. With its almost half hour per day reduced commute time I think the SETWAY would change that picture quite a bit. If I've got the numbers right, with 13 minute time savings it would only be about a 15 minute trip one way, and maybe only 10 if there was an express bus.
There are other very odd things about that analysis as well. The most disappointing finding for me was that the 17 Ave. SE transitway would only reduce the one way time by 3 minutes. Pretty clearly that’s not worth doing. The proposal for the South Crosstown BRT also seems odd, give that there is already a BRT from Westbrook to Heritage. What does the cost for this proposal represent, then? Does it just cover the leg between QP and Heritage? Is that also where all the time savings come from? Without the specifics it’s very hard to evaluate this option. I’m sure very few people would take the BRT from Westbrook to QP, as it would almost certainly be quicker to take the train downtown, and then take the SETWAY to QP. The nonsensical rankings aside, however, there is lots of interesting information there, even if it is incomplete.
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