Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[DKaz]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Which is precisely why it's successful at least as long as people are smart enough to realize that TransLink was not in the wrong neither when they introduced the 555 service at 9 mins peak, but when the 156 stop wasn't originally built. At the end of the day, both are issues of the province unwilling to step up and finish the package (the 156 St stop ended up being built with Surrey footing the bill).

I believe the 555 started out with 10 minute peak and 30 minute off peak capacity.

Original service: http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Document...0Vault/2010s/2012/Buzzer_2012_12_07.ashx

I unfortunately cannot find the announcement when they increased the frequency to 9 minutes.

[ssiguy]

The Canada Line and less so the Expo & Millenium, capacity issues have put the city in a bit of a pickle.

For it's size, Vancouver has very long commutes but this is not just due to the lack of urban freeways. The city, like Montreal, is basically surrounded by water which requires all traffic funneling onto a limited number of bridges. What is unique about Vancouver is that the city basically is in the tiny top corner of a peninsula shaped commuter shed. In many ways it's like a cone shape and the fastest growing areas are at the base of the cone.

Not only does this make commutes long in cars but also for transit users. This is a real negative for Vancouver because most cities which challenging typography make use of commuter rail but Vancouverite doesn't really have that option.

The WCE is a very nice service and I have taken it several times. It really is first rate and the fares are reasonable for the high quality service you get. It's one issue is of course it's speed. Although not having stops between PoCo and Waterfront helps things along that section is really quite slow and much slower than most commuter rail systems. That's not Translink's fault but just the curves of the route and the huge slowdown near Commerical.

Arbutus is a right off for commuter rail due to the political power of the Westside and even the route from Broadway to the Valley will be both expensive and a logistical nightmare. The bridge over the Fraser is old and slow and there are almost no bridge flyovers in the valley. Cloverdale should be shot for allowing development right up against the rail corridor making frequent service nearly impossible.

These are things that Translink {nor especially the province} took into account when considering capacities. Most large cities have not only Metros but also major commuter rail systems. They help make commutes much faster and also take the load off the regular Metro lines. For example, some of the Toronto GO trains are of a truly massive 12 bi-level coaches................2000 passengers per train.

I think after that after Broadway, Surrey, and Hastings, Vancouver is going to have to focus much more on getting an effective commuter rail system up and running. In Vancouver there really is no where to grow but east deeper into the valley. In most cities people as far out as Langley would never commute just a Metro line but board a commuter rail and this is how Vancouver is going to have to go long term. It will require a lot of money and basically total grade separation of the lines but there is a limit on how far rapid transit goes to where even your trip on rapid transit is not very rapid.

[red-paladin]

I agree that at least one more commuter rail line should be part of the medium-long term Translink vision.

[queetz@home]

Isn't there a plan somewhere to have a commuter rail from Scott Road and service the Fraser Valley (up to Chilliwack)?

Plus its too bad commuter rails seem to only go one way in these parts. A commuter rail that goes two ways regardless if its morning or evening would go a long way in spurring businesses on both sides of the line (reducing pure "bedroom" communities).

[logicbomb]

Commuter rail is a good idea, but pretty much CP and CN own the main corridors. I think it's a darn shame we didn't preserve the CP tracks that led down to Steveston. Would have provided a connection from Bridgeport Stn to the rest of Richmond, Steveston, Ladner (perhaps via a swing bridge) and following Hwy 99 down to White Rock.

[DKaz]

The province still owns the old Interurban route from Scott Road out to Chilliwack. The Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society runs a train between Sullivan and Cloverdale every weekend this year until October 12, 2014. I believe their next project is to extend the line west to Newton.

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by DKaz

I believe the 555 started out with 10 minute peak and 30 minute off peak capacity.

Original service: http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Document...0Vault/2010s/2012/Buzzer_2012_12_07.ashx

I unfortunately cannot find the announcement when they increased the frequency to 9 minutes.

There probably wasn't any - I remember when nname touched on it and found it to probably be a result of layover-related efficiencies.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Most large cities have not only Metros but also major commuter rail systems. They help make commutes much faster and also take the load off the regular Metro lines. For example, some of the Toronto GO trains are of a truly massive 12 bi-level coaches................2000 passengers per train.

Skytrain is commuter rail. Metro lines serve a cities densest neighbourhoods. Once the Broadway line gets done, we'll finally have a subway serving dense neighbourhoods like Kits, Mt. Pleasant, and Fairview. Can't wait actually. At that point the Broadway corridor should start to look like a real downtown, especially the Cambie/Broadway area.

[ssiguy]

SkyTrain is NOT commuter rail. SkyTrain is in every way a standard Metro service.

It's grade separated, extremely frequent, runs all day and night, and stations are about a km a part. WCE is commuter rail............primarily rush hour service geared towards long haul transit.

Yes, the railway to Chilliwack would be a real asset but if it's terminus is at Scott Road there will be big problems. Can you imagine 1000 people getting off at Scott Road station and then filling the SkyTrains.......well beyond it's capacity. It would certainly get people to the SkyTrain faster but the SkyTrain couldn't handle the passenger load.

There should absolutely be a station there but to be effective it has to go downtown. That means a new rail bridge over the Fraser and follow the rail line to downtown. By doing that you would relieve some of the capacity issues on the Expo line but if the train's terminus is there you've made a bad situation worse.

Vancouver does have a very well thought out and pre-planned freeway HOV system which could be used extremely well for bus commuter system like GO's which use double deckers. The buses wouldn't have to go all the way downtown but rather drop off at Broadway. The Fraser Valley is by far the fastest growing area of Metro Vancouver and that will continue for ever and there is a limit on how many people can pack onto a SkyTrain even 3 MK111 cars has it limitations.

Montreal and Toronto even with their huge capacity subway/Metro system would be unable to cope without their large commuter rail systems. Metrolinx in Toronto has slowly but surely buying the lines off CN/CP, twinning all track and getting rid of all at grade crossings and now are entering a system like many of Europe's cities with Metro and very frequent commuter rail.ie U-Bahn/S-Bahn in Berlin and Paris Metro/RER.

Toronto by 2016 will own and have complete grade separation of it's entire Lakeshore and Georgetown rail corridors in the city.

As the city grows eastward and commutes become longer, commuter rail is something Vancouver is going to have to embrace in a large way or transit commutes will become far too long and the SkyTrain far beyond it's capacity.

[bardak]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

SkyTrain is NOT commuter rail. SkyTrain is in every way a standard Metro service.

It's grade separated, extremely frequent, runs all day and night, and stations are about a km a part. WCE is commuter rail............primarily rush hour service geared towards long haul transit.

Yes, the railway to Chilliwack would be a real asset but if it's terminus is at Scott Road there will be big problems. Can you imagine 1000 people getting off at Scott Road station and then filling the SkyTrains.......well beyond it's capacity. It would certainly get people to the SkyTrain faster but the SkyTrain couldn't handle the passenger load.

There should absolutely be a station there but to be effective it has to go downtown. That means a new rail bridge over the Fraser and follow the rail line to downtown. By doing that you would relieve some of the capacity issues on the Expo line but if the train's terminus is there you've made a bad situation worse.

Vancouver does have a very well thought out and pre-planned freeway HOV system which could be used extremely well for bus commuter system like GO's which use double deckers. The buses wouldn't have to go all the way downtown but rather drop off at Broadway. The Fraser Valley is by far the fastest growing area of Metro Vancouver and that will continue for ever and there is a limit on how many people can pack onto a SkyTrain even 3 MK111 cars has it limitations.

Montreal and Toronto even with their huge capacity subway/Metro system would be unable to cope without their large commuter rail systems. Metrolinx in Toronto has slowly but surely buying the lines off CN/CP, twinning all track and getting rid of all at grade crossings and now are entering a system like many of Europe's cities with Metro and very frequent commuter rail.ie U-Bahn/S-Bahn in Berlin and Paris Metro/RER.

Toronto by 2016 will own and have complete grade separation of it's entire Lakeshore and Georgetown rail corridors in the city.

As the city grows eastward and commutes become longer, commuter rail is something Vancouver is going to have to embrace in a large way or transit commutes will become far too long and the SkyTrain far beyond it's capacity.

Vancouver does not have the proper low use railways that can be used for high quality commuter rail. We either have high intensity commercial railways(Grandview cut/CPR mainline), Short abandoned/low use railways (Arbutus and Railway ave in Richmond) that are better used for something more local, or the fraser valley railway that ends at scott road.

We're lucky that we even have the track for the west coast express as it is. I think the best we will get is an extension of the current west coast express to Abbotsford and more track time east of coquitlam station.

As for using the highways for more commuter coaches Translink already does this using the 601, 351, and the 555. There does need to be more service for the eastern fraser valley and that is already planned. I think a lot of the transit needs of the valley could be taken care of with absorbing them into translink as was the plan under Campbell.

[Tetsuo]

Originally Posted by DKaz

The province still owns the old Interurban route from Scott Road out to Chilliwack. The Fraser Valley Heritage Railway Society runs a train between Sullivan and Cloverdale every weekend this year until October 12, 2014. I believe their next project is to extend the line west to Newton.

Isn't that route owned by the Southern BC Railway, BC Hydro sold their rail assets (except the ROW below the Skytrain) back in the 80s/90s

[GMasterAres]

I think it would make more sense to do a rail line from Scott Road out to Abbotsford and Chillwack connecting the airport for the simple reason of we _DONT_ want people out there going to Downtown Vancouver. The entire purpose of sustainability is to develop the suburbs into core hubs to reduce overall commute time and traffic insanity.

Honestly I think it Surrey had a direct link from central to Abbotsford especially the airport, you'd see even more commercial development in the central Surrey area and far less people that some think would be "overloading" SkyTrain.

The numbers I don't think would be there.

WCE for example is 15 years old and has 11,000 daily ridership. 15 years to get to 11,000. If some sort of Abbotsford line started day 1 at 25% of that which I think is overly optimistic, that would be 2750 daily ridership. Granted if it is commuter rail it would be hovering around the morning and evening commute but say that is 1500 in the morning and 1500 in the evening. For a system that handles over 250,000 daily ridership numbers, I don't think Expo Line would explode into a ball of flames with 1500 extra people added to it.

And if it does start to get stuffed, take the darned tiny Mark I trains and move them over to Evergreen and run exclusively Mark 2/2.5 and the 3 trains when they arrive.

I think we need to get away from everything terminating in Downtown Vancouver as a region. It is just too difficult and quite frankly not how the region is developing these days where Vancouver has gone from 70% of the regions jobs to now under 30%. And I still think Surrey and Abbotsford could benefit a lot down the road with a commuter real line that connects Surrey Central to the airport because quite frankly Surrey --> YVR is ridiculously stupid via transit even with Canada Line and you're almost always better off still getting in a car and driving. I can drive from my door in Surrey Central to the YVR terminal in 45 minutes. If I wanted to take Transit it would take be 1.5 hours not to mention at least one transfer.

[rsxstock]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

As the city grows eastward and commutes become longer, commuter rail is something Vancouver is going to have to embrace in a large way or transit commutes will become far too long and the SkyTrain far beyond it's capacity.

Vancouver is not building eastward any time soon. there are still many undeveloped and redevelopment opportunities in the core and tricities that there's no reason to build so far out

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by rsxstock

Vancouver is not building eastward any time soon. there are still many undeveloped and redevelopment opportunities in the core and tricities that there's no reason to build so far out

Exactly.
The commuter rail systems in Montreal and Toronto - and, come to think of it, every other very large city in North America - have been deployed as a way to deal with how those cities have built out, how they have become large. The thing about Vancouver is that being a medium sized city, we aren't even there yet. We can choose to build out in a way that doesn't require that kind of extensive commuter rail investment.

I like to think we're well on our way already. Abbotsford and Chiliwack are already kind of like separate entities - I reckon more people in those cities commute within the local area and not to downtown Vancouver. If we need to deal with growth here, building our SkyTrain system and associated density definitely help - not just creating denser residential cores, but also in spreading out the major job cores, speeding up transit access to reach job centres like industrial parks that may not be on the SkyTrain, and just generally giving people choices. SkyTrain and - more importantly - its ability to be successful, has been and will be a major part of the puzzle for building this metro sustainably.

[DKaz]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

There probably wasn't any - I remember when nname touched on it and found it to probably be a result of layover-related efficiencies.

Some people have mentioned that this new increase is also a result of layover related efficiencies. If that's the case, I may have to hang low for awhile with the bus drivers.

[officedweller]

The other thing re: commuter rail in Metro Vancouver, is that our commuting patterns are not all "in and out of the downtown core" like many head office cities - it's much more spread out than that.

****************

Big Bend may finally be getting a bus.

Article from 24hrs:

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2014/09/14/burnaby-has-huge-transit-gap

Burnaby has huge transit gap

By Jane Deacon
Sunday, September 14, 2014 2:52:45 PDT PM

Transit service could reach an additional 2,400 workers if Burnaby council approves the extension of the route 116 bus at a meeting today.

By adding service to the Big Bend area, the extension would address “the largest gap in coverage in Burnaby’s transit network,” says a staff report.

Council has pushed TransLink for service to Big Bend for over a decade after significant industrial development, said Coun. Nick Volkow, chair of the city’s Transportation Committee. Usage of nearby routes increased from 50 boardings per day in 2002 to 880 in 2009, says the report.

...

With TransLink now on board, council’s approval would extend service to new sections of North Fraser Way and Marine Way along the Burnaby Business Park and Glenwood Industrial Estates.

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2014/09/14/burnaby-has-huge-transit-gap

[red-paladin]

Originally Posted by officedweller

The other thing re: commuter rail in Metro Vancouver, is that our commuting patterns are not all "in and out of the downtown core" like many head office cities - it's much more spread out than that.

This is why a WCE station in North Burnaby would still be good.

[officedweller]

From Heritage Vancouver - proposed elevated streetcar station at Brockton Oval grandstand circa 1905(?)


https://twitter.com/HeritageVan/status/492043304121683968/photo/1

[GlassCity]

^That's incredible. What a damn shame they got rid of it.

[officedweller]

Edit - that was a proposal - don't think it was ever built.