Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[MIPS]

Originally Posted by Kisai

Yet the RT is the most reliable piece of transit infrastructure the TTC has ever had, even through they ran it in the least efficient manner and made it cost more to operate than it needed to.

The Vancouver Skytrain is the same technology implemented "as designed" and thus runs far more efficiently.

Not really what I was getting to there.
TTC originally designated the SRT route to be CLRV but halfway through construction the government told them to switch to ICTS or......else their project funding would be pulled.
So nearly finished stations had their platforms raised and the alignments were slightly modified but they in turn were still never designed for ICTS and there's a number of turns in the line, notably the Kennedy loop, which had major wear and noise problems, if not entirely derailing trains.

In comparison, yeah it is similar to how most of not all the Expo line stations were never designed for faregates and how they had to get them installed anyways or else translink lost a good chunk of their government funding.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Kisai

Faregates however...

You probably won't find many defenders of it, like yes, it does have the potential to save money in the long run, but since the Expo line was never designed for them, some of the stations need to be rebuilt (eg Metrotown, Main Street) and other stations like Burrard don't have the space to efficiently use them. So a huge expense is being incurred and covered up with "oh we need to renovate anyways"

Grandville has enough space, because there is an entire concourse between the escalators and the trains, where as Burrard has one tiny space that they cut across, so that is going to be a major issue during rush hours.

And Vancouver isn't the first city to get these Faregates and readers, nor is it the last. The only thing that seems unique about the Compass card system is that the contractor was unable to deliver a system as promised, be it slow/poor hardware radios, wireless service, or connectivity.

I actually like the faregates. Initially, I was worried about what they would be like. They were really hammering the public safety angle the gates would provide, so I was picturing something like New York or Paris, where the gates are floor to ceiling fences with tight turnstiles people can barely fit through and you feel like a cow being prodded through the slaughter house on the way to the butcher.

But the gates they installed are modern and only waist height and don't block sight lines and are all glass so they don't darken the stations or feel like oppressive prison equipment.

The stations you mentioned needed upgrades regardless.

Main street and Metrotown have/had accessibility problems. They were hard stations to use if you had mobility issues, luggage, strollers or bikes.

At Scott Road, there was no elevator access to the bus loop. If you needed to use an elevator and then ride a bus, you would have to take the elevator to the Park and Ride side, and then use a phone to call a handy dart to come and take you to the bus loop!!!!

A lot of stations had/have odd quirks like that that have been/are being fixed. Like stations would have small lobbies, or have a couple stairs to to enter, or not offer great access to buses. A lot of those issues that were left lingering for decades have been fixed.

Many stations also had flow problems. Metrotown has been horrible to use for at least the last decade and they have been talking about fixing it for at least as long. It isn't a Compass or faregates issue, it is a this station was designed when nothing but some apartments were in the area and nobody cared about wheelchairs issue.

EDIT::::

Also, when was the last time you actually rode Skytrain? Because there are like 20 gates at Burrard station. It is probably going to be the best out of all of them.

Originally Posted by jsbertram

Calgary killed the project after several years of trying to get it to work as expected.

The contractor returned saying the problems were fixed, want to try again?

Calgary spent another year or so futzing with the "new and improved" system, and killed it again.

The contractor in Calgary also had no (or very little) experience implementing a fare card system for transit. But they do have a lot of experience in the oil fields, so it won't surprise me very much if in time it is found out that some wheels were greased to get them the job. They also low balled the offer, giving them almost no cash to actually execute what they promised.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I don't get why people have to tap out, what the hell is the purpose?

They have to tap out so that you know how far they went, so you know how much to charge them. When they tap in, you don't know if they are going 1 zone, or 2 zones or 3 zones.

Under the old system, the onus was on the customer to pre-buy the proper fare before entering the system. It is the honor system, as in it completely relies on people being honorable (and to a degree, knowledgeable).

With Compass, the customer doesn't need to know how far they will go when they board. They just get charged at the end for how much they use. You don't have to know that Metrotown is in a different zone, you just tap and it charges you. Simple.

This also applies to monthly pass holders. If you have a 1 zone pass, you can still go to Metrotown, you just need an add fare. Under old system, you would have to go to a machine and waste your time buying a ticket. With compass, the add fare is deducted from your stored value automatically. Simple.


Please, join us in the Compass thread. We have gone over this kind of stuff in great detail there.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

It will be interesting to see what happens when the fare gates are closed. 2 stations that I frequent (Yaletown and Waterfront-Canada Line) do not have nearly enough gates for the routine rush-hour traffic. I think the problem is worse when they are 2-way, as people will be lining up and fighting over who gets to use which gate in which direction.

I don't think there will be much of an impact. As CanSpice said, the gates stay open between tap, and close if someone tries to go through without paying, or close after not being used for a couple seconds.

So you don't have to stand there in line and wait for the person in front of you to tap, go through, then wait for the gate to close before you can tap. You can follow them through as fast as you can tap yourself. So the flow will pretty much be exactly like it is now.

You also don't realize there are actually existing bottlenecks at most stations: stairs/escalators.

Like in Yaletown. The bottleneck isn't the fare gate, the bottleneck is the stairs up from the platform. Today if you aren't first off the train, you pretty much have to wait in line just to use the stairs or escalator. People come off the stairs or escalator in single file (1 or 2 at a time) so only 1 or 2 people will get to the faregates at a time. So you only need a few gates.

The line up on the VCC platform to use the escalator is already longer than any line to use a faregate will ever be. And I hear few people saying that that is the end of the world. "Canada line is a disaster because it takes me 30 seconds to get to the escalator" is a phrase I don't hear much. But "It might take a few seconds to get through a faregate: Compass is a disaster" is one I hear often.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Many stations also had flow problems. Metrotown has been horrible to use for at least the last decade and they have been talking about fixing it for at least as long. It isn't a Compass or faregates issue, it is a this station was designed when nothing but some apartments were in the area and nobody cared about wheelchairs issue.

EDIT::::

Also, when was the last time you actually rode Skytrain? Because there are like 20 gates at Burrard station. It is probably going to be the best out of all of them.

The point I was making about Burrard Station is that it was clearly not designed for gates, and creates crush zones between the escalator and the gates, and the gates and the inbound train that is also shared with people trying to get to the outbound train. The gates already slow down flow of people.

I happen to live at Metrotown and take the skytrain when I need to leave Burnaby

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Kisai

...creates crush zones between the escalator and the gates...

BCPhil is right - it's those escalators that are the real bottleneck. Burrard has well over a dozen faregates but only a maximum of two escalators going in any one direction. Even if only half the faregates are used for a given direction (unlikely in the rush hour) they can still accommodate more people per second than the escalators can.

[st7860]

" https://twitter.com/scanbc #Vancouver Police are responding to W 18th & Dunbar for reports of a naked male at the bus stop with his finger up his rectum"

[dpogue]

New station announcements were live on all trains this morning. The chime before is noticeably more ear catching than before, but still using the original door chimes for now.

I'm a bit sad that the glorious "Commercial-Broadway, transfer to the Expo Line across the overhead walkway: platform 3 to downtown Vancouver, platform 4 to Surrey" has been reduced to "Commercial-Broadway. Change here for the Expo Line"

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by st7860

" https://twitter.com/scanbc #Vancouver Police are responding to W 18th & Dunbar for reports of a naked male at the bus stop with his finger up his rectum"

If I was in BC I'm sure I would be responding to that as well. So who can blame them.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by dpogue

New station announcements were live on all trains this morning. The chime before is noticeably more ear catching than before, but still using the original door chimes for now.

I heard the old station announcements at least once this afternoon.

[Express691]

Originally Posted by Sheba

I heard the old station announcements at least once this afternoon.

I heard the new announcements on trainset 064 when I saw them at Waterfront this evening. The implementation seems faster than expected to me.

Now the main problem lies in the scripting in and around Columbia on the inbound side. I was on an Expo line train this afternoon coming in off the SkyBridge and it told people to change to Expo line trains at platform 2 upon arrival. It was supposed to tell people to change to millenium line trains.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Express691

I heard the new announcements on trainset 064 when I saw them at Waterfront this evening. The implementation seems faster than expected to me.

Now the main problem lies in the scripting in and around Columbia on the inbound side. I was on an Expo line train this afternoon coming in off the SkyBridge and it told people to change to Expo line trains at platform 2 upon arrival. It was supposed to tell people to change to millenium line trains.

Aaah - jumping the gun on the new line designations!

The spur from Columbia to Production Way will, after Evergreen is integrated, be called part of the Expo Line
(like Canada Line has 2 branches)

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Aaah - jumping the gun on the new line designations!

The spur from Columbia to Production Way will, after Evergreen is integrated, be called part of the Expo Line
(like Canada Line has 2 branches)

I think it is just a glitch in the Matrix because every once in a while I would hear that too, dating back months and months.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by st7860

" https://twitter.com/scanbc #Vancouver Police are responding to W 18th & Dunbar for reports of a naked male at the bus stop with his finger up his rectum"

just another odd election protest?

[Klazu]

Interesting idea on today's Metro News. I have always found parking along Georgia Street being ridiculous even during weekend. Those lanes could well be full-time transit lanes.

How bus lanes would smooth your Georgia St. transit commute

With a proposal for funding transit improvements failing to pass in this spring’s plebiscite, what hope is left of making any kind of progress in the region’s bus situation?

A local urban design and planning group called Slow Streets has pulled together a report with their own research, looking at the merits of one such solution for busy, congested Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver: bus-only lanes.

Their main logic: Land in the downtown core is expensive and scarce, so travel that most efficiently uses existing roads should be given highest priority.

Georgia Street’s 11 bus routes carry 16 per cent of all trips on transit downtown, connecting travellers going to and from the North Shore with the rest of the region.

As a street, Georgia has a lot more going on than most. It’s part of the provincial highway network, but also a busy pedestrian street and destination — up to 16,000 people walking on it per day, many of whom are transit riders themselves.

Slow Streets found the average delay experienced by buses on Georgia Street during rush hour is two minutes long, but can sometimes get up to an excruciating five minutes, and can mostly be attributed to vehicles turning right being held up for multiple lights by pedestrian crosswalk traffic.

Done right, they argue, bus-only lanes mean a bigger mobility bang for our existing transit buck. Slow Streets backs this up with observations from New York City, where bus-only lanes on seven bus service lines have reported travel time improvements of between 15 and 23 per cent, as well as boosting ridership by 10 per cent.

Those numbers may sound like modest gains for what seems like a major change.

But back to that land problem — the average car in our region carries 1.24 passengers while taking up 18 times more space than they do on a bus at regular capacity. Those gains look pretty good compared to the price tag on expanding new roadway downtown, or continuing to stand still on Georgia.

Meanwhile, growing businesses mean more demand for road space for goods and services movement, even as other businesses need their employees to be able to get to and from work reliably and on time.

The most attractive selling point of bus-only lanes is they can show benefits relatively quickly. But although bus lanes don’t require regional transportation funding, they do require teamwork and political will — bus lanes are described in the City of Vancouver’s Transportation 2040 plan as a transit priority measure, which will be worked out with neighbouring municipalities and in partnership with TransLink.

For people on and off buses on Georgia alike, starting the talk that leads to action and real change is, like so many of our buses, long overdue.

http://www.metronews.ca/views/vancouver/...vancouver-georgia-st--transit-rides.html

[Meraki]

I've found particularly on the Mk Is that the new announcements are noticeably quieter (albeit more clear) than the old ones. Travelling home today I was having to pay attention for when they were being made.

I'd imagine they're aware about it, because they have an RFP out to fix station and train announcements. http://www.translink.ca/en/About-Us/Doin...ing-Opportunities/Open-Bids/Q15-098.aspx

[Express691]

Originally Posted by Meraki

I've found particularly on the Mk Is that the new announcements are noticeably quieter (albeit more clear) than the old ones. Travelling home today I was having to pay attention for when they were being made.

I'd imagine they're aware about it, because they have an RFP out to fix station and train announcements. http://www.translink.ca/en/About-Us/Doin...ing-Opportunities/Open-Bids/Q15-098.aspx

http://globalnews.ca/news/2173015/noise-...tPostID=1c3f896a6f65aacd9a9541f294a42094

Related to the problem of soft announcements is trains inside the Dunsmuir tunnel. I wonder how they could fix such a ptoblem.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Interesting idea on today's Metro News. I have always found parking along Georgia Street being ridiculous even during weekend. Those lanes could well be full-time transit lanes.

Can anyone share or point to a description of how those right turn delays would be mitigated by a bus lane? Do they give the buses and pedestrians an advance green so they can get through the intersection before people start trying to turn right?

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Can anyone share or point to a description of how those right turn delays would be mitigated by a bus lane? Do they give the buses and pedestrians an advance green so they can get through the intersection before people start trying to turn right?

It'd be akin to the left turn off Seymour onto Georgia, so yes, advance green arrow to turn right, then it goes yellow, then pedestrians can cross and cars can still turn right if there aren't any pedestrians.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

It'd be akin to the left turn off Seymour onto Georgia, so yes, advance green arrow to turn right, then it goes yellow, then pedestrians can cross and cars can still turn right if there aren't any pedestrians.

But the thing is that the bus lane would be the curb lane, right? So you couldn't allow right turns from a traffic lane across the bus lane unless the buses had a red light. So it seems to me that the sensible thing to to is to let the buses and pedestrians go first, not the cars.

[officedweller]

Right turning cars would share the bus lane, not cross over the bus lane (i.e. not like crossing a curbside LRT track).
The problem with letting pedestrians go "first" is that they'll trickle and the slow poke walkers will take up the right turn cycle.