Transit Fantasies

[Echowinds]

The OP was written more than 5 years ago...

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by The_Animal

It is an interesting viewpoint that you've taken here. I'm trying to look at it from an ecological impact POV while still putting the Skytrain through an area that will benefit from the transportation linkage.

(I'm sure there will be rolling eyes going "Oh...God, here's one of those damned "tree-huggers"!!) Unfortunately, for me, the King George Skytrain route that you have put has come uncomfortably close to the "Serpentine Fen Migratory Bird Sanctuary". Loud noises such as the Skytrain's wheels on the rails can interfere with the birds at that sanctuary. Perhaps a detour through 72nd Avenue and down 152 straight down towards White Rock might perhaps be a better route.

http://www.venturevancouver.com/image/serpentine-fen-map-of-bird-sanctuary


screencap from Google Maps.


Wikipedia Commons attrib. Creative Commons.


(my image) - photographed by Haruo Chikamori (me), FalconRose Photography.

The proximity of the Skytrain would be way too close to the sanctuary to be viable. It is a two lane highway going down King George and there is no leeway for Skytrain pillars without Serpentine Fen being affected. And the ALR is on the opposite side of the King George Hwy.

Any attempt to put the Skytrain through King George Hwy. will cause an deafening hue and cry from the local wildlife and conservation people.

The viable option is 152nd Street.

I guess you haven't been down there in a few years, because King George is 4 lanes wide now past the Serpentine Fen, from Colebrook to hwy 99. (with a decorated median wide enough for left turn lanes in places, so really a 5 lane wide ROW). They spent a good 3 or 4 years working on it with preloading and twinning the bridge over the Serpentine River. Don't believe me? Check street view, it is more up to date.

In fact, the median looks wide enough to support Skytrain pillars. But I'm sure there is still plenty of room to the east of the road for either Skytrain or light rail if we ever decide it is necessary to send it to South Surrey. And it might be necessary one day. The population of South Surrey is already 80,000 and projected to reach 133,000 by 2041. One day, down the road rapid transit to South Surrey is going to be a serious consideration.

Also, Skytrain is pretty quiet is pretty quiet compared to other things. Because of the stearable bogeys it does very screeching. Decibel wise, trucks make more noise than Skytrain (and don't forget about sirens from emergency vehicles that frequent the area), and just up the street is one very busy stretch of rail way. If birds couldn't cope with Skytrain, how come the whistles and really loud screeching of heavy trains drive them away?

And as for soft soil, we learned how to deal with that from building the Canada line. Much of the guideway in Richmond and out to the airport is built on unstable land.

[logan5]

I wonder if Vancouver would've been better off serving its most densely populated neighborhoods - spend the same amount of money on rapid transit, except direct it towards its most densely populated areas. Ridership in my approximation would certainly be higher (even though the system would be shorter at 48.5km), which would result in more cars off the road, and far more buses off the road. The suburban areas would see the benefits of this more urban system in the form off less car and bus traffic on inner city streets

The Metro systems in Canada's 3 largest cities are virtually identical in length (about 69 km), with the Montreal and Toronto systems serving their urbanized and densely populated areas, while Vancouver's system serves its suburban areas. To put it into perspective, the Montreal Metro, in a city of 4 million people, extends outwards from the city centre 11 km's. Toronto's subway, in a city of 5.5 million people, extends out as far as 15 km's. Vancouver's Skytrain on the other hand, with a metro population of only 2.5 million, has its system extend a whopping 23 km's from the downtown core - more than 6 km's further than Toronto, a city twice its size.

My alternate Skytrain system has been reduced from 68.6km to 48.5km, due to increased cost to build underground track while the number of stations is almost the same. To make it easy I converted 2.2km of elevated track into 1km of subway.

Red Line - obviously the alternate Expo Line. As is up to Burrard, then Waterfront Station is bypassed and runs as a tunnel up until just passed Broadway, where it becomes elevated and at grade. (I forgot Granville Station on the map)

Blue Line - as is up to Broadway, then underground to Arbutus.

Green Line - totally revamped Canada Line. All underground.

I've shown a Red Line extension to New West as an alternative to the Evergreen Line.

[trofirhen]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I really like the green line going up Hastings, (though I think it should go to at least Kootenay Loop or even Willingdon), and I think putting the Canada Lines under the West End and down Arbutus (as long as it still goes to the airport: a stipulation for me) is a ok idea, especially as it serves more surace area in the CBD plus the West End.

However, I do not agree with truncating the Millenium Line eastward, even if it connects with Arbutus to the west.

The Lougheed station (absent here) is major connection point, and given the ever-growing apartment clusters in the northeast sector, I still believe strongly in the Evergreen Line, as well as the existing line to Surrey, (where there are already station-related developments happening, big time.

Also, one point you may have overlooked is that there is population growth at UBC itself (see the photos in the thread), that there is expected to be a large population centre (###? someone please) there in the next two decades, and that the UBC line will open up and dynamize the Broadway corridor.

All in all, I like best the green line, and perhaps the reconfiguration of the Canada Line under Arbutus makes sense, given the proximity of Kerrisdale and Kitsilano, both fairly dense.

***However, one of them would have to (IMO) connect to the airport, and the other developments I mentioned would seem necessary for balanced, inclusive, metropolitan rail transit development.
__________________________________________________________

... movin' back to where things stand in spatial and temporal reality; the Canada Line DOES go down Cambie to Richmond/YVR; the Expo Line DOES go to north Surrey; The Millenium Line circles off and joins at Lougheed; and the Evergreen IS under construction.

§§§ The element I would take most readily from your concept is the green line, going through downtown and east along Hastings, only a bit further, and the western end of the green line being routed perhaps down Arbutus or Granville (dunno which; ... others will, I should think)

[splashflash]

Canada Line northeast extension - is this possible? The line might not have the room to make a cure to the east. Skytrain does, so extending east would be easy. Could the Skytrain split at Burrard with one line going down Alberni? And why not interline with the Millennium line at Arbutus for a circle route between downtown and Broadway. A busway could serve Arbutus south of Broadway and then turn west along Broadway to go to UBC.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by splashflash

Canada Line northeast extension - is this possible? The line might not have the room to make a cure to the east. Skytrain does, so extending east would be easy. Could the Skytrain split at Burrard with one line going down Alberni? And why not interline with the Millennium line at Arbutus for a circle route between downtown and Broadway. A busway could serve Arbutus south of Broadway and then turn west along Broadway to go to UBC.

I would rather say alternate reality than dream. I kept the timeline of each line and cost of each line the same. So for the Expo Line when it was built in the late 80's early 90's, instead of extending past Metrotown, I put the same amount of money it would cost to to build out to Surrey and put towards Skytrain in the West End, through Kits and up Arbutus. Exact same cost to build, except serving far higher population density. Extensions from Marpole to Richmond Centre/YVR would only be 3.5 km's each.

Same idea with the Millennium Line. Same cost, different route - Brentwood to Arbutus.

The Canada Line is completely different. Main St. instead of Cambie, up Davie, down Burrard, then an easy curve to align with Hastings.

For the same cost to build, ridership would surely be higher than 400 000 per day. Likely we would get 550 000 Skytrain passengers per day.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by splashflash

Canada Line northeast extension - is this possible? The line might not have the room to make a cure to the east. Skytrain does, so extending east would be easy. Could the Skytrain split at Burrard with one line going down Alberni? And why not interline with the Millennium line at Arbutus for a circle route between downtown and Broadway. A busway could serve Arbutus south of Broadway and then turn west along Broadway to go to UBC.

By this are you saying that the proposed Broadway line to UBC is unecessary? Are you saying that busses can carry UBC-bound traffic adequately? Even in the future?

[MIPS]

Canada Line northeast extension - is this possible?

Quick answer: no.

Long answer: Canada Line's Waterfront station sits about 50-75' away from the tracks of the Expo Line which intersect at almost 90 degrees. If you go into the garage under Waterfront you'll notice a very low overhang. That's the walkway connecting Waterfront to the platform. You might be able to do some thing like the SkyTrain does under the viaduct but you'll be forced to gut the floors under Waterfront to make room and ultimately because Rotem cars lack articulating bogies they can't make the tight corner you'll be left with and either derail or make a LOT of noise.

The only semi-practical thing to do is add another set of switches before Waterfront that branch off down Hastings.

[red-paladin]

It would make way more sense to send the Expo Line eastwards. I hope we never build more Canada Line style metros, except perhaps to extend it south to Steveston, and build 'real' Skytrain everywhere else.

[xd_1771]

@logan5: Well, that's the thing.
If you don't bring quality rapid transit out to at least some of the growing suburban areas like Surrey and others, you're just leaving them to grow inevitably as completely car-oriented areas with no hope of ever changing. If Surrey didn't have its 4 SkyTrain stations, most citizens would be stuck in a myriad of congestion, roads would still need to be wider, communities less safe, etc. and there would be no huge transformation in Whalley.

And, the fact that more cars would be off the road in Vancouver would not help this - as you said, less cars and buses on Vancouver city streets mean better conditions for driving to work from outer areas than otherwise. So, the streets would instead be filled more with commuters from those outer cities, and congestion levels could theoretically no better than otherwise. Vancouver would need to commit to keeping roads wide, and the transit benefits can be outweighed.

So, maybe we'd have a subway service on Central Broadway now - but at what cost? In your perfect world, we would have a dense inner city, but at the same time we have opened up the door for huge and huge amounts of completely car-oriented sprawl in the outer areas, enroaching more agricultural areas and the like.

You only have to look at Toronto and Montreal to see this in action. Greater Toronto, in particular, has become a huge victim of automobile-oriented sprawl development in outer areas - the inner city, on the other hand, has become one of the most congested places in North America.

(This is one of the reasons I really like our SkyTrain arrangement; it keeps rapid transit attractive, fast and high-quality [as opposed to alternatives like LRT] while costing much less than full-scale subways).

[twoNeurons]

Also remember that Toronto's system is quite a bit slower overall, which makes it less competitive with the car.

If we had concentrated only on the inner suburbs of Vancouver, we also may have had stations closer together. Overall trip time isn't affected as much with more frequent stops. If you don't think that would happen, think about the Canada Line which was primarily marketed as a 21 minute trip to the airport.

People think in terms of time, not distance.

There are other factors, but station spacing is a MAJOR indicator of speed. Toronto's stations average under 1km between stations with 14 (of ~35) stations less than 600m apart. Vancouver averages 1.5km between stations with the longest being 2.9km (22nd - New West).

Vancouver's overall trip speed is 50% faster than the TTC subway! I know it's newer technology, but that's a definite win for Vancouver. It means that we're more mobile here and can cover 50% more distance in the same time. This suits Vancouver's development which is a set of communities with no true strong central government that can plans things.

Toronto's average speed between stations:


Vancouver's average speed between stations:


Another thing to remember is that while Toronto's system only stretches 15km from its core, the city sits in the geographical center. Vancouver may stretch 23km from its core, the population density center is somewhere around Metrotown/South Burnaby.

[xd_1771]

Wow, those are really awesome charts. Did you make those??

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by logan5

I would rather say alternate reality than dream. I kept the timeline of each line and cost of each line the same. So for the Expo Line when it was built in the late 80's early 90's, instead of extending past Metrotown, I put the same amount of money it would cost to to build out to Surrey and put towards Skytrain in the West End, through Kits and up Arbutus. Exact same cost to build, except serving far higher population density. Extensions from Marpole to Richmond Centre/YVR would only be 3.5 km's each.

Same idea with the Millennium Line. Same cost, different route - Brentwood to Arbutus.

The Canada Line is completely different. Main St. instead of Cambie, up Davie, down Burrard, then an easy curve to align with Hastings.

For the same cost to build, ridership would surely be higher than 400 000 per day. Likely we would get 550 000 Skytrain passengers per day.

I think it is a little naive to assume that Skytrain's ridership is that dependent on density. Every day, people ride buses from their homes to Skytrain stations. For example, there are a lot of towers built up around the Surrey City Center area, but the majority of Skytrain riders from Surrey arrive by bus, not foot. Same with Lougheed. Quite a bit of density in the area, but the bus loop handles more transfers than there are people walking home. Even at Metrotown, the station is busy not just because people live there, but because the bus loop is one of the busiest in the system.

There are not many Skytrain stations that do not have a busy bus stop/loop located at them.

And focusing growth in a concentrated area also overlooks another major factor affecting density in the region: cost. If you focused growth basically inside Vancouver city limits, you would be forcing ONLY the MOST expensive properties to redevelop. That creates a limited supply of properties, already expensive, to skyrocket in price, as demand for this small area goes up. Which results in wealthier people buying them, the kind of people that can afford cars and an expensive home.

You then end up with a majority of people still living outside walking distance to these stations. Now instead of being a 10 minute bus ride from the station, the majority of people in the region are a good hour away from a station. So they have to drive. Which means you need to have far more lanes out to the burbs, many of them across the river. You now have to spend billions on new bridges and motorways.

Which in turn can cause a collapse of the city, resulting in noone wanting to live there, and all the jobs moving out to where people live in the Burbs, and we get a disconnected, sprawling city where the rich live downtown and the working class live and work in disparate parts of the city, where no transit system can possibly work. Like LA.

Look at Montreal. A great subway system, but the Metro doesn't reach very far. So the city needs massive investments in Roads and Bridges (and commuter rail) to keep commuters from the burbs coming in. Yes, their Metro is more effective in that it has more riders than ours. But that is not the only statistic worth measuring. Ours has kept us from having to build multiple expressways and bridges throughout the region, keeping our total infrastructure costs down, while helping control the cost of living.

If we didn't build the Canada line to Richmond and instead built a stub line down Main street for the same cost, we for sure would ALSO have had to build a new freeway crossing into Vancouver. No Skybridge in the 90's? We would have had to replace Pattullo 15 years ago and be looking at another crossing and upgrading the Queensburough and Knight and twinning the Alex Fraser.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Also remember that Toronto's system is quite a bit slower overall, which makes it less competitive with the car.

If we had concentrated only on the inner suburbs of Vancouver, we also may have had stations closer together. Overall trip time isn't affected as much with more frequent stops. If you don't think that would happen, think about the Canada Line which was primarily marketed as a 21 minute trip to the airport.

People think in terms of time, not distance.

There are other factors, but station spacing is a MAJOR indicator of speed. Toronto's stations average under 1km between stations with 14 (of ~35) stations less than 600m apart. Vancouver averages 1.5km between stations with the longest being 2.9km (22nd - New West).

Vancouver's overall trip speed is 50% faster than the TTC subway! I know it's newer technology, but that's a definite win for Vancouver. It means that we're more mobile here and can cover 50% more distance in the same time. This suits Vancouver's development which is a set of communities with no true strong central government that can plans things.

I don't know what's wrong with Toronto but that's a little slow. With 1 km station spacing, Vancouver's Skytrain average speed is around 39 km/h. In one Translink UBC Line Rapid Transit Study document, they have Skytrain doing the 13 km run from Commercial Drive to UBC in 17 minutes. That's with 1.3 km station spacing and average speed of 45.9 km/h. I guess they plan to accelerate hard out of the stations and then slam on the breaks 100 feet away from the stations.

[nname]

Expo and Millennium Line's average speed is 44km/h. Canada Line is 36km/h. Evergreen is expected to be 48km/h. Broadway Line's 46km/h is about right since its pretty much a straight line anyways.

Toronto's subway, on the other hand, is 32km/h on average.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by nname

Expo and Millennium Line's average speed is 44km/h. Canada Line is 36km/h. Evergreen is expected to be 48km/h. Broadway Line's 46km/h is about right since its pretty much a straight line anyways.

Toronto's subway, on the other hand, is 32km/h on average.

Any stats on Montreal?

[Klazu]

I mostly ride Skytrain on the Canada Line, but at least there they should increase the operating speed. The ride never feels fast and especially in curves it feels down so much.

I remember reading that they might be increasing the speed of Canada Line once more stations are built to keep the total traveling time the same. That would be nice.

What's the maximum operating speed Skytrain could practically do without beginning to feel uncomfortable to ride?

[Rico]

Originally Posted by Klazu

I mostly ride Skytrain on the Canada Line, but at least there they should increase the operating speed. The ride never feels fast and especially in curves it feels down so much.

I remember reading that they might be increasing the speed of Canada Line once more stations are built to keep the total traveling time the same. That would be nice.

What's the maximum operating speed Skytrain could practically do without beginning to feel uncomfortable to ride?

For some unknown reason (probably to save 5 cents) the curves on the Canada line are not superelevated, so trains have to go slower through the curves than they should.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

@logan5: Well, that's the thing.
If you don't bring quality rapid transit out to at least some of the growing suburban areas like Surrey and others, you're just leaving them to grow inevitably as completely car-oriented areas with no hope of ever changing. If Surrey didn't have its 4 SkyTrain stations, most citizens would be stuck in a myriad of congestion, roads would still need to be wider, communities less safe, etc. and there would be no huge transformation in Whalley.

Vancouver relied on a good network of buses for decades before finally getting rapid transit in 1986. Before Skytrain though, Vancouver became a densely populated, walkable city, with neighborhoods like the West End, Kits, and Commercial Drive.

Originally Posted by xd_1771

And, the fact that more cars would be off the road in Vancouver would not help this - as you said, less cars and buses on Vancouver city streets mean better conditions for driving to work from outer areas than otherwise. So, the streets would instead be filled more with commuters from those outer cities, and congestion levels could theoretically no better than otherwise. Vancouver would need to commit to keeping roads wide, and the transit benefits can be outweighed.

Yes, more cars and buses would be off the road in Vancouver which would benefit suburban commuters that use the arterials once they're off the freeway, but there's something else that would benefit the suburbs with a more urbanized metro system...

Everyday during the evening rush hour, 192 buses per hour head out of the Metro Core (Downtown Vancouver and Central Broadway). That's 1 bus every 18.75 seconds transporting people out of the Metro Core. With a more urban intensive rapid transit system, you could easily eliminate 60% of those transit hours. That's 115 buses per hour or equivalent transit dollars that could be focused on all of Surrey, and once Surrey has a frequent, reliable bus network, there will be more people taking transit and less cars on Surrey streets.

Originally Posted by xd_1771

So, maybe we'd have a subway service on Central Broadway now - but at what cost? In your perfect world, we would have a dense inner city, but at the same time we have opened up the door for huge and huge amounts of completely car-oriented sprawl in the outer areas, enroaching more agricultural areas and the like.

During rush hour their are 36 (according to the Translink schedule) packed buses per hour running along Broadway. That's only counting the 009 and 099. (The 099 B-Line are articulated). Along one of the proposed routes for a Surrey extension, Fraser Hwy, there are a peak of 9 buses per hour (non articulated?), then along KGB there's the 321 which runs a peak of 4 buses per hour. It looks like it would cost far more to run more Skytrain in Surrey because Skytrain in Surrey focuses too much capacity and cost on too few people. At this point, frequent bus service is needed to serve low density Surrey.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

People think in terms of time, not distance.

There are other factors, but station spacing is a MAJOR indicator of speed. Toronto's stations average under 1km between stations with 14 (of ~35) stations less than 600m apart. Vancouver averages 1.5km between stations with the longest being 2.9km (22nd - New West).

Vancouver's overall trip speed is 50% faster than the TTC subway! I know it's newer technology, but that's a definite win for Vancouver. It means that we're more mobile here and can cover 50% more distance in the same time. This suits Vancouver's development which is a set of communities with no true strong central government that can plans things.

But that's only talking about the trip speed once you get onto the rapid transit system, which is typically only one part of the trip. If Vancouver's stations are on average 50% further apart than Toronto's, then Greater Vancouver residents are going to have to travel 50% further to get to those stations, often having to use slow connecting buses traveling in mixed traffic for an extra 1/2 km on average.

Overall, long distances between stops is better for systems catering to people traveling large distances through lower density areas (such as commuter trains), but rapid transit systems intended to serve dense urban areas can often provide faster overall trip times by having more convenient stop spacing.