Halifax Transit

[scooby074]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

OHHHHHHHHH

Then,yes, I agree. Container traffic should not be allowed on any city streets. There should be somewhere, near the highway that allows the on and off loading of containers to transfer to trucks.

While I like the idea and think it'd be great if it happened, I cant see it. It'll add an additional cost to do business in Halifax the very competitive shipping market.

It would be nice to not have massive trucks on confined city streets though. Maybe there is another option.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by scooby074

While I like the idea and think it'd be great if it happened, I cant see it. It'll add an additional cost to do business in Halifax the very competitive shipping market.

It would be nice to not have massive trucks on confined city streets though. Maybe there is another option.

Build the Halifax portion of the Circ? It would connect the MacKay Bridge, the North End shipping terminal, Highway 102, the South End shipping terminal and a tunnel under the harbour.

That would take traffic off the city streets.

[Drybrain]

A look at the possible layout of a commuter rail network from tonight's open house.

Encouraging, but I'm really uncomfortable with extending service past Sackville. That defeats much of the purpose of improving regional mobility and getting commuters out of cars, and just provides an incentive for sprawl. There's more than enough suburban land for development closer in.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

A look at the possible layout of a commuter rail network from tonight's open house.

Encouraging, but I'm really uncomfortable with extending service past Sackville. That defeats much of the purpose of improving regional mobility and getting commuters out of cars, and just provides an incentive for sprawl. There's more than enough suburban land for development closer in.

I think it is a good idea because a lot of commuters do come from Enfield.

[curnhalio]

I had never heard of service to Beaverbank being considered. There is a large and growing base of population out that way, but man, that WHC track needs some work.

If CN says no to use of their track after all of these reports, then what?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Encouraging, but I'm really uncomfortable with extending service past Sackville. That defeats much of the purpose of improving regional mobility and getting commuters out of cars, and just provides an incentive for sprawl. There's more than enough suburban land for development closer in.

Is the sprawl so bad if it's based around taking the train to work? Commuting by train from Beaver Bank is probably better for the city than driving in from Clayton Park or Cole Harbour. A Wellington station could also have shuttles to and from the airport (mostly for employees).

I'm still a bit irked at how prominent the irrelevant "no other Canadian city under 1 million" thing is (complete with gratuitous bar charts), but this study seems a lot more complete than the old ones. They're considering different types of rail cars and if I remember the old ridership projections correctly, these ones are much higher and more realistic looking. I don't think the old studies considered re-routing transit at all. This study still doesn't seem to mention the potential for transit-oriented development, which is enormous near some of these stations.

Originally Posted by curnhalio

If CN says no to use of their track after all of these reports, then what?

I'm not completely sure on this one but I have heard that in some recent court cases in Canada rail line operators have been essentially forced to carry new services unless they are incompatible with existing operations. This makes sense; the rail lines are really public amenities that were handed over, and cities often have no viable alternatives. In Halifax, CN also isn't pushing their rail corridors anywhere near their capacity.

[Nouvellecosse]

I went in around 6 and looked around and didn't see much happening and noticed that all the exact same content was available on the website so I left. There didn't seem to be any speakers or anything there while I was there anyway.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

Encouraging, but I'm really uncomfortable with extending service past Sackville. That defeats much of the purpose of improving regional mobility and getting commuters out of cars, and just provides an incentive for sprawl. There's more than enough suburban land for development closer in.

I think there should be both. A really low frequency option that serves far out with maybe 3-5 trips per day in peak direction and 1-2 reverse peak trips. The immediate metro area would have all day service of 1/2 hour throughout most of the day and dropping to hourly in really quiet times. Would basically be like route 80 on rails. Or something like Austin Captial Rail or San Diego Sprinter.

[spaustin]

Just browsing through the report this this evening and it doesn't leave me feeling that this is a good use of money. Wellington and Enfield appear to make little sense since there are few potential passengers and they would cost big bucks to include. Beaverbank appears to have some unknown costs, but it would at least be used. Maybe Enfield would be a bit more viable in terms of riders with an airport shuttle connection? Assuming that we went forward with the Cobequid option and attracted the higher end of potential passengers, we would be moving about 3,500 people a day at a cost of $50 million. That's a big chunk of change for not a whole lot of riders. For the same money, we could buy over 100 Metro Transit buses! That would increase the existing fleet by 1/3rd!!! That would sure make a difference in terms of frequency and coverage in the system and would be a lot more flexible (buses can be reorganized, redeployed, rerouted while trains can't). The biggest problem with commuter rail that I see is it doesn't really go to any of the big destinations. It doesn't touch the hospitals or business parks, only skirts the universities and stops well short of Downtown. Buses can run a lot more directly. If we wanted to spend $50 million, another idea would be to invest in bus priority infrastructure to make the existing transit system more effective (like a reversing bus lane on the Bedford Highway for example). A train might have a wow factor, but my hunch is, based on the latest consultants report, that its not a great use of scarce dollars.

[worldlyhaligonian]

There is enough room for a paved section to be installed next to the existing track in the railcut (as the other track has been torn up). BRT and container trucks could be running along that.

Problem solved.

[Drybrain]

I'm somewhat persuaded by Sam's post--but it reinforces my initial thought that extending service too far out will be counterproductive. It will inflate the cost, most obviously, but a piece of infrastructure like this can also be used not just to serve existing populations, but to direct population where we want it to go. Much as I'd love to see all our growth on and near the peninsula, I know suburban growth is still going to happen at a good clip. So let's direct it to the suburban areas that have a shot at densifying and urbanizing themselves. A rail line will increase the desirability for developers and residents wherever it goes. I think we want to avoid doing that in Enfield/Hants County--some of the new residents there will commute by rail, but we'll still be creating demand for very far-flung and mostly auto-dependent areas that might otherwise be built closer to the core. And frankly, Enfield isn't even in HRM. They'll raise a stink about not getting service, but so what?

Sam makes a good point that the cost per rider will be high, so my gut says not only minimize cost, but build it where we have a chance of diminishing those costs over time.

Of course, I'd still rather see a great LRT ROW serve the peninsula, Clayton Park, Bedford and Dartmouth.

[Keith P.]

Seems to me that a limited commuter rail service Bedford/Sackville to DT makes some sense. Figure out if it works, what the issues are, etc., before getting into the grand design to service Enfield and the like.

Comparing the cost to more buses is really not very sensible. Buses cannot move without significantly upgraded roads and HRM is allergic to doing that.

The real shame is the sacrifice of the rail ROW to Timberlea and beyond for a dumb trail. That would have logically been phase 2.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Seems to me that a limited commuter rail service Bedford/Sackville to DT makes some sense. Figure out if it works, what the issues are, etc., before getting into the grand design to service Enfield and the like.

Exactly my thoughts. Why not start it up servicing the areas that will have the most usage and leave the other areas open for future consideration? If the need increases to the point to make it viable, then add extra infrastructure and service later... and if it's outside "Halifax", then make the province and/or the feds finance/maintain the additional infrastructure required. Don't see why HRM taxpayers should have to pay for infrastructure outside of HRM... errr Halifax.

Comparing the cost to more buses is really not very sensible. Buses cannot move without significantly upgraded roads and HRM is allergic to doing that.

I agree. It's not a straight-up comparison. Ok, buy 100 buses. Then you have to hire 200 drivers to drive them, you have to pay for fuel for 100 buses. You have to service and maintain 100 buses - which means you have to expand your service facilities, hire more technicians, or contract it out. You have to replace those extra 100 buses when they are at the end of their lifespan, which I believe to be less than the lifespan of a train. Road infrastructure is another huge cost, as mentioned.

Regardless, it's much more involved than just buying buses.

[spaustin]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I agree. It's not a straight-up comparison. Ok, buy 100 buses. Then you have to hire 200 drivers to drive them, you have to pay for fuel for 100 buses. You have to service and maintain 100 buses - which means you have to expand your service facilities, hire more technicians, or contract it out. You have to replace those extra 100 buses when they are at the end of their lifespan, which I believe to be less than the lifespan of a train. Road infrastructure is another huge cost, as mentioned.

Regardless, it's much more involved than just buying buses.

Yes of course. It’s a simplification, but let’s just continue the exercise because it’s fun and, I think, illustrative of the scale of the investment needed to get rail off the ground.

Instead of focussing on rail in isolation, we should be weighing what is the best bang for the buck in terms of transit. So, if we have $50 million for capital and $16 million for O&M that could buy us a railway to Cobequid or what in terms of conventional transit? Buying more buses would probably require an expansion of the garage space. Ragged Lake cost $27 million so the capital equivalent of rail is probably more like 50 buses and a new garage rather than just a straight up 100 buses. In terms of O&M, the top salary for drivers is approximately $50,000 a year before any overtime. Let’s just use that figure and assume we need 4 drivers for each bus (again generous since some would likely be peak hour service). 50x4 = 200 x $50,000= $10,000,000. That would leave $6,000,000 to cover all the other costs of having employees such as additional administration, benefits, pension obligations etc that isn’t captured in the straight up salary figure. Probably would need to some mechanics in there too Rail would probably ultimately come out ahead in terms of O&M on account of fuel.

In the spend it on conventional transit scenario, the real unknown would be how many riders could 50 new buses move? If they were deployed efficiently they could probably move more than the 3,500 rail is projected too. They could even improve ridership on existing routes by upping the frequency and making the whole over all Metro Transit service more attractive. I won’t even venture to make a guess at this one.

The other thing we could do is spend a chunk of the $50 million on bus priority infrastructure. I have no sense of how to even begun making a stab at that one, but presumably we could do something with the Bedford Highway which would largely improve the same corridor that rail would serve for quite a bit less. If we really want to get into rail, replacing the overcapacity number 1 with LRT might make more sense than the railcut since, as noted, the railcut doesn't actually go to many places that people are trying to get too.

Obviously all of this is quite rough. My point is just that we shouldn’t be looking at rail in isolation. If we’re going to make a significant investment in transit, we should try to make the most of that money by weighing all the options, not just jumping to using the existing tracks because they're there.

[swimmer_spe]

Have you ever sat in traffic to go to Enfield? I never lived out there, but have friends that do. Once you get to Fall River where both the 102 and 118 meet up the traffic gets quite heavy.

Yes, Sackville and Bedford residents likely will use it.

But...

Dream Big.

If they spend the money now to go to Enfield as apposed to just Sackville/Beaverbank, you will draw more people. Also, then, you show the people of HRM that you are serious about Commuter rail.

When they put int he MetroX, they went all the way to Upper Tantallon. They could have done it even further, to Chester, but they didn't. I know of a few people who live beyond Chester, some as far as Bridgewater who commute to downtown every work day.

The problem the HRM seems to be caught in is not dreaming big and implementing big.

This plan is big.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by spaustin

Yes of course. It’s a simplification, but let’s just continue the exercise because it’s fun and, I think, illustrative of the scale of the investment needed to get rail off the ground.

Instead of focussing on rail in isolation, we should be weighing what is the best bang for the buck in terms of transit. So, if we have $50 million for capital and $16 million for O&M that could buy us a railway to Cobequid or what in terms of conventional transit? Buying more buses would probably require an expansion of the garage space. Ragged Lake cost $27 million so the capital equivalent of rail is probably more like 50 buses and a new garage rather than just a straight up 100 buses. In terms of O&M, the top salary for drivers is approximately $50,000 a year before any overtime. Let’s just use that figure and assume we need 4 drivers for each bus (again generous since some would likely be peak hour service). 50x4 = 200 x $50,000= $10,000,000. That would leave $6,000,000 to cover all the other costs of having employees such as additional administration, benefits, pension obligations etc that isn’t captured in the straight up salary figure. Rail would probably ultimately come out ahead in terms of O&M on account of fuel.

In the spend it on conventional transit scenario, the real unknown would be how many riders could 50 new buses move? If they were deployed efficiently they could probably move more than the 3,500 rail is projected too. They could even improve ridership on existing routes by upping the frequency and making the whole over Metro Transit service more attractive. I won’t even venture to make a guess at this one.

The other thing we could do is spend a chunk of the $50 million on bus priority infrastructure. I have no sense of how to even begun making a stab at that one, but presumably we could do something with the Bedford Highway which would largely improve the same corridor that rail would serve for quite a bit less. If we really want to get into rail, replacing the overcapacity number 1 with LRT might make more sense than the railcut since, as noted, the railcut doesn't actually go to many places that people are trying to get too.

Obviously all of this is quite rough. My point is just that we shouldn’t be looking at rail in isolation. If we’re going to make a significant investment in transit, we should try to make the most of that money by weighing all the options, not just jumping to using the existing tracks because they're there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_BiLevel_Coach

One bilevel car can carry 136-162 people. that equates to about 4 buses.
Some of GO Transit trains run 6 cars. That's 24 buses. Other trains are as long as 12 cars. That is as much as 48 buses!

This is for ONE TRAIN!!

Of course, the ridership may not reach that for decades, if ever, but, the point remains the same:
To move the most people along the same corridor, rail is the way to do it.

[ns_kid]

Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian

There is enough room for a paved section to be installed next to the existing track in the railcut (as the other track has been torn up). BRT and container trucks could be running along that.

Problem solved.

Absolutely not.

This is the same Bill Black/Rodney MacDonald-inspired fantasy that was rejected during the last heady days of minority government.

Aside from the incongruity of hundreds of heavy cabs belching their way through the south end all day and night, one should consider that a number of North American cities have spent billions over the last decade to build what Halifax has had for a century: a completely grade-separated rail line through the city core.

The notion of moving containers by rail to a central marshalling area is neither fantasy nor revolutionary. Terminal and belt railways have been common in major port cities for generations. Removing heavy truck traffic from downtown streets would add immense value to this city and it should have been achieved years ago.

If Halifax is failing as a container port one need look no farther than our rail infrastructure for some explanation. Virtually every other major container port on the continent has upgrading its rail infrastructure in the last 15 years. Not a dime has been invested here -- not by CN and not by government.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Have you ever sat in traffic to go to Enfield? I never lived out there, but have friends that do. Once you get to Fall River where both the 102 and 118 meet up the traffic gets quite heavy.

Yes, Sackville and Bedford residents likely will use it.

But...

Dream Big.

If they spend the money now to go to Enfield as apposed to just Sackville/Beaverbank, you will draw more people. Also, then, you show the people of HRM that you are serious about Commuter rail.

Yeah, but the cost per rider rises precipitously the further out you go. It's a tremendous cost to serve very few people. I'll put it this way: Enfield has 5,000 people. Probably 3/4 are working age. Probably only a few hundred work in Halifax. Probably many will still choose to drive. So how many people will a train really serve?

Plus most of Enfield isn't even inside HRM, and I don't think we should be building transit infrastructure that will encourage Enfield, or any similarly far-flung place, to grow. We should be discouraging Enfield's growth as a commuter suburb, not encouraging it, and a rail line out there will make the cheap property up there more attractive to developers and buyers. If people insist on living in Enfield and working in Halifax, okay, but the city and province don't have to make it easier. There's lots of suburban land available for building on closer to the city.

Transit building is partially about shaping the city you want. Do we want an even bigger and less sustainable urban footprint, or are we serious about crating a compact urbanized region?

[curnhalio]

One question I'd love an answer to is does the new Transit service boundary have anything to do with how far rail service can go? Seems kind of silly to have train service to Wellington and Enfield when the city legally can't offer shuttle bus service to access the train station.

If you followed the transit boundary to the letter you could have a station at Rocky Lake/Duke St and one at Beaverbank Rd wrapping around the boundary but no stations in between.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Have you ever sat in traffic to go to Enfield? I never lived out there, but have friends that do. Once you get to Fall River where both the 102 and 118 meet up the traffic gets quite heavy.

Yes, Sackville and Bedford residents likely will use it.

But...

Dream Big.

If they spend the money now to go to Enfield as apposed to just Sackville/Beaverbank, you will draw more people. Also, then, you show the people of HRM that you are serious about Commuter rail.

When they put int he MetroX, they went all the way to Upper Tantallon. They could have done it even further, to Chester, but they didn't. I know of a few people who live beyond Chester, some as far as Bridgewater who commute to downtown every work day.

The problem the HRM seems to be caught in is not dreaming big and implementing big.

This plan is big.

While I agree with this sentiment, in this case I see dreaming big as doing the well-used areas "right", and leaving options open to go further in the future. Doing it "right" means bringing in a high-quality system from the start, with comfortable trains and a system that is efficient right from the get-go. In order to sell this as a viable alternative, it has to be taken seriously by potential users, which means spending a little more money up-front in order to make sure it is a quality system.

If you bring in a physically larger, but half-assed system at first hoping to upgrade the service later, you will be fighting an uphill battle. The reputation it gains in the first few months will stick with it for years (or decades), and any improvement to reputation will substantially lag any actual improvement in quality and service while the "trust factor" filters down into the psyche of the customer. This has been proven out in other industries and I'm sure it applies here. So, this has to be done "right", from day one, no compromises - which will not be cheap.

Then, later this same level of quality can be expanded as it becomes more "normal" for people to use this type of transit in this area. Again, I feel quite strongly that for service outside of "Halifax", the costs should be covered provincially or federally and not compensated by municipal taxpayers within Halifax.