The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[SOSS]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Calgary’s soaring transit use suggests high ridership is possible even in sprawling cities

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2014/...ip-is-possible-even-in-sprawling-cities/

I wonder what % of riders are from outside of Calgary. I suspect there are a lot of users that do live in the bedroom communities outside of Calgary that use all those park-and-ride lots.

[SignalHillHiker]

I don't know, sorry - but I imagine it doesn't really matter as long as they use it as part of their normal routines.

Park-and-rides are probably not preferable to actually extending public transit lines as the latter tends to increase density.

[MalcolmTucker]

Park and ride lots are maybe 10% of LRT users, and they are good for recruiting new users. A lot of park and ride spots aren't very near the outskirts anymore. Not that it hurts Calgary to accomadate people from across the border. The province has paid for all the expansions' capital cost for more than a decade, and moving someone onto transit takes them off of city roads.

[ssiguy]

Calgary seems to have struck a perfect balance between urban/suburban transit options. This backed up by some very good planning decisions like very high cost downtown parking rates, serving larger areas with LRT than spending huge amounts of tunnels, providing high quality services to where people need to go, and not making the stupid assumption that if you offer transit people will automatically take it and reduce congestion.

The last point is crucial. While offering alternatives to driving is necessary, this idea that more transit reduces congestion is ignorant at best, pathological lying at worse. Transit will never reduce congestion and to say otherwise shows a complete lack of understanding of transportation fundamentals.

The whole argument against more and bigger freeways is that the more room you give cars on the freeways the more they will take it. Similarly if you build a transit line then road along it may have reduced traffic for a little while but as that traffic is reduced it will entice more people to take that route...................you are right back where you started.

Toronto and Montreal can attest to that as both have large highway and transit systems and the roads are very busy/congested. Vancouver decided to build no roads and expand traffic to "reduce congestion"..............enough said.

[WhipperSnapper]

Love to know what percentage of Calgary's workforce works downtown. The number of people commuting by transit is impressive however, the number of commercial parking spaces is also high and the high price shows a lot more could be built if allowed.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Calgary seems to have struck a perfect balance between urban/suburban transit options. This backed up by some very good planning decisions like very high cost downtown parking rates, serving larger areas with LRT than spending huge amounts of tunnels, providing high quality services to where people need to go, and not making the stupid assumption that if you offer transit people will automatically take it and reduce congestion.

The last point is crucial. While offering alternatives to driving is necessary, this idea that more transit reduces congestion is ignorant at best, pathological lying at worse. Transit will never reduce congestion and to say otherwise shows a complete lack of understanding of transportation fundamentals.

The whole argument against more and bigger freeways is that the more room you give cars on the freeways the more they will take it. Similarly if you build a transit line then road along it may have reduced traffic for a little while but as that traffic is reduced it will entice more people to take that route...................you are right back where you started.

Toronto and Montreal can attest to that as both have large highway and transit systems and the roads are very busy/congested. Vancouver decided to build no roads and expand traffic to "reduce congestion"..............enough said.

in Montréal congestion happens mostly during the peak period, like all big cities in North America. The advantage of having a developed highway system is helpful during the ''off-peak hours'' . to have a bypass highway is also very important.

[Aylmer]

Funny thing about bypass highways - they don't stay bypasses for long. Boulevard Métropolitaine? 401 (aka the Toronto Bypass)? It's a curious thing how no matter how many bypasses and ring roads you build, they always become as congested as the last. The only difference is the money we've thrown out the window.


...Unless it's appropriately tolled.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver decided to build no roads and expand traffic to "reduce congestion"..............enough said.

To be somewhat fair to Vancouver, it's difficult to build a Calgary or Montreal-like freeway system in a region that basically requires multi-billion dollar high clearance bridges or undersea tunnels everywhere, and where land acquisition is the highest on the continent.

Like it or not, we simply are not going to have a freeway into downtown Vancouver. It's either $5 billion for a tunnel, or $5 billion to expropriate 5,000 $1 million homes and dealing with NIMBY lawsuits until kingdom come.

I agree that BC can't build a grade-separated limited access highway to save its life, and that the SFPR was a completely squandered opportunity, but let's not pretend that Vancouver is in a position to build a regional freeway network at this point.

[ssiguy]

The problem with Vancouver is that it could have had a decent highway system without tearing apart neighbourhoods if they applied a little transportation planning.

Vancouver's road planning in the last 50 years has to simply build nothing. If it wasn't for the province building in the suburbs Vancouver still wouldn't even have HWY#1 if it were up to the local politicians.

Those planners should be shot for not putting aside land for a HWY#1 to Downtown freeway. Boundary should have been a freeway as should the Mary Hill "Bypass" and the Langley "Bypass", words Vancouverites use to make it seem like having a four lane road with traffic lights seem impressive. Yes there are natural barriers but Vancouver east to Chilliwack is far flatter than most highways in Ont/Que. Except for a couple small hills near Aldergrove, it's your basic pancake.

Now it's too late and Vancouverites are going to have to suffer thru truly horrid congestion in a relatively small city but with a transit system that is built to absolute minimum standards in terms of capacity.

[Nouvellecosse]

The transit system is not built to minimum capacity standards. That would have been an LRT system like Portland's. I actually can't think of a similar sized metro area in NA (under 3 million) with greater capacity. Yet it's in the top 10 rapid transit systems in NA in terms of ridership and is by far the smallest metro area in that list.

But the most important thing to remember is that just like your point about having more transit not preventing congestion, having more highways doesn't either. After all, there is a lot of congestion in London and Paris just as there is in LA. The fact is, major cities are busy and often congested. That's just a part of life. The difference being that to move the same number of people in private vehicles on roads is a lot more expensive than to move them by rail. Expensive not only for the urban fabric, but also for the environment, for citizens, and for the various tiers of government.

[SkahHigh]

Not having a freeway downtown is not necessarily a bad thing though. Especially if it's elevated like the Gardiner or Bonaventure...

Montreal is going to transform Bonaventure into a boulevard by 2017 because elevated freeways are ugly and have a high maintenance cost...

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

The whole argument against more and bigger freeways is that the more room you give cars on the freeways the more they will take it. Similarly if you build a transit line then road along it may have reduced traffic for a little while but as that traffic is reduced it will entice more people to take that route...................you are right back where you started.

Totally with you. Transit, if well-done and (crucial point) immune to traffic, then it offers an out for people who don't want to sit in congestion, but the fundamental law of traffic will fill up whatever's lost with new drivers and new trips. It's the same fundamental law which has made fools of North American cities and their 'freeways' for over half a century.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Those planners should be shot for not putting aside land for a HWY#1 to Downtown freeway.

Ok, now I'm confused. Transit doesn't decrease congestion but highways do?

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

Not having a freeway downtown is not necessarily a bad thing though. Especially if it's elevated like the Gardiner or Bonaventure...

Montreal is going to transform Bonaventure into a boulevard by 2017 because elevated freeways are ugly and have a high maintenance cost...

Removing the Gardiner would redirect traffic onto other streets. It is ugly but, it still serves a valuable purpose.

[Nouvellecosse]

But of course one can't make the assumption that the total amount of traffic remains constant regardless of the number of facilities that exist to handle it. The real world experience shows this isn't the case and that traffic volumes increase or decrease in relation to capacity. If the Gardiner were removed and not replaced with capacity elsewhere (like rail-based transit) then the surrounding streets would be very congested for awhile and then people would alter their live/work/transportation decisions in accordance. Of course this wouldn't be ideal as it would reduce the options people would have to get around so it would be preferable to combine the removal with the introduction of alternatives.

But the main "purpose" it serves currently is sending the clear message that the preferred way to get to those parts of town is by using automobiles and that we've elevated this transportation medium to the highest level both literally and figuratively.

[WhipperSnapper]

I'm not referring to commuter congestion but the type of traffic that uses the Gardiner to bypass the core. It has certainly diminished over the years as the city has deindustrialized but, it still exists. It is obvious when you visit cities without freeways where this traffic ends up and certainly not in an alternative form.

[Aylmer]

But at peak hours, is the Gardiner significantly faster than any other street or road if you're going from, say, Scarborough to High Park? I don't live in Toronto, but from my limited experience there, I would highly doubt it: you're either waiting on traffic or traffic lights. The times that it is much faster is off-peak.

That's the thing with urban highways: they only work when they're in disuse, but as soon as it's well-used, it's no faster than an urban boulevard. Then the question is how much money we're willing to invest and how much of our cities we're willing to disfigure so that people can speed through at 2am to save all of a few minutes' time.

[le calmar]

You don't have to convert the Gardiner into a boulevard... Boston's Big dig anyone? In Montreal the Bonaventure highway is a very short highway and on top of that a dead end into downtown, and the section that will be converted into a boulevard is a few km long, I'm not even sure it is 3 km total. The Gardiner highway runs through the whole city, hence the comparison with the big dig. It would have to go underground and not disappear.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by le calmar

You don't have to convert the Gardiner into a boulevard... Boston's Big dig anyone? In Montreal the Bonaventure highway is a very short highway and on top of that a dead end into downtown, and the section that will be converted into a boulevard is a few km long, I'm not even sure it is 3 km total. The Gardiner highway runs through the whole city, hence the comparison with the big dig. It would have to go underground and not disappear.

The Gardiner is sort of comparable to the Metropolitan Expressway I'd say.

[Aylmer]

But again the question is whether the benefits justify the (very very) very high costs. Would peak-hour traffic move better on a highway than a boulevard? I think that Toronto estimated that it would add 5 minutes to the average rush hour trip (out of nearly 60 in most cases) on the Gardiner (which seems rather liberal to me), but that it would cost $150M. You could save those 5 minutes for an extra billion dollars plus much higher lifecycle costs for a buried highway.

But for a billion dollars, I can think of many things we could do to save people five minutes.

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

The Gardiner is sort of comparable to the Metropolitan Expressway I'd say.

I'd say that the Gardiner is the Ville-Marie (a downtown expressway) and the 401 is the Metropolitan (started out as a 'bypass', turned into a congested E-W expressway, but doesn't pass downtown).

[ssiguy]

The reason I said Vancouver should have a downtown connector freeway to HWY#1 even though it will fill up because it offers a truck route.

The touchy-feely policy wonks and politicians all live downtown or in some exclusive neighbourhood and certainly never east of Main. They don't know what it's like to have transport trucks barreling down regular roads spewing fumes and deafening noise. It's the same here in White Rock where, due to no highway connection to Langley/Aldergrove the transports take side routes which they are not suppose to in order to try to get around.

HWY#10 thru Surrey, Langley, and Cloverdale is mostly residential/commercial but the transport traffic is oppressive but again the downtown left-wing "I hate freeways" crowd all live downtown and have absolutely no concept of this.

The transports and commuter traffic may only go 20km/hr in rushhour but I would rather them go 20km/hr on a freeway and 20km/hr on regular roads where people live.