Metro Vancouver Transit Discussion

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by logan5

Every time I get down on Skytrain, I just have a look at LRT projects in other cities. The Orange Line in Portland just opened. At grade, slow as molasses, and long wait times for almost exactly the same price as the Evergreen Line.

Check out Seattle's LRT budgets and timelines. On the one hand I'm shocked that the money is already approved, but it's moving at a snail's pace. Plus has pitiful ridership so far.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by bardak

You could argue that Calgary's downtown has created the same effect as congestion pricing due to the price of parking.

Does this mean a lot of C-Train traffic happens from Park and Rides outside of town?

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Does this mean a lot of C-Train traffic happens from Park and Rides outside of town?

I think you can replace "a lot" with "most", and change it from being a question to a statement and you would be correct.

[andasen]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I think you can replace "a lot" with "most", and change it from being a question to a statement and you would be correct.

Ran an analysis on this for a school project a few years back. Ctrain ridership dwarfs the number Park'n'Ride Stalls by magnitudes. Feeder buses are the systems bread and butter.

[SOSS]

The entire C-Train system reaching to the outskirts of the city encourage urban sprawl. It has also created very large bedroom communities just outside of the city. I would love to see the stats on users being Calgary residents versus non residents.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by SOSS

The entire C-Train system reaching to the outskirts of the city encourage urban sprawl. It has also created very large bedroom communities just outside of the city. I would love to see the stats on users being Calgary residents versus non residents.

Which Calgary are you referring to? Calgary has practically no exurbs. Almost the entire metro area is encircled by the city limits, and there is very little development outside of them

[SOSS]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

Which Calgary are you referring to? Calgary has practically no exurbs. Almost the entire metro area is encircled by the city limits, and there is very little development outside of them

Yes, Calgary covers a huge area. But that doesn't prevent people from far and wide driving or busing in. If I'm not mistaken, there is even bus service from Cochrane, Airdrie and Okotoks into their nearest C-Train stations. These below communities are mostly bedroom communities. The main ones that come to mine:

• West - Cochrane: 23,084
• North - Airdrie: 58,690
• East - Chestermere: 17,203, Strathmore: 12,352
• South - Okotoks: 24,511, High River: 12,920

[Millennium2002]

Not related to current topic, but I noticed that at the Canada Line side of Waterfront Station, they have modified the signage to include more directions on the platform...

[deasine]

Originally Posted by allan_kuan

Not related to current topic, but I noticed that at the Canada Line side of Waterfront Station, they have modified the signage to include more directions on the platform...

Got any pictures?

[red-paladin]

I wrote to city hall and asked them to consider requiring an underground passage between the Waterfront Canada Line platforms and the existing basement entrance to the under-cordova passage to the Expo Line platforms in any new renovation of Sinclair Centre.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by red-paladin

I wrote to city hall and asked them to consider requiring an underground passage between the Waterfront Canada Line platforms and the existing basement entrance to the under-cordova passage to the Expo Line platforms in any new renovation of Sinclair Centre.

By the time you're in the passageway north of the Canada Line platforms heading towards Waterfront mezzanine and station, you're already under Cordova.

Its easier to make the connection by having the Canada Line south mezzanine (under Hastings St) cut into the food court in Sinclair Centre.

[Sheba]

Update on the Downtown Bus Service Review

In the next one-to-five years we plan to do work in two focus areas:

Immediate: implement over the next one-to-two years

* Extend the 6 Davie/Downtown to connect the West End, Yaletown and Gastown.
* Consolidate the C23 Davie/Main and C21 Yaletown/Beach services.
* Determine route for the 5 Robson/Downtown to improve consistency and reliability, based on an expected City of Vancouver decision regarding frequency and duration of road closures of the 800-block of Robson Street.

More here

[Reecemartin]

Does anyone have thoughts on the following?
What do you think will be done when capacity on the Current Skytrain Lines in particular the underbuilt Canada line falls below acceptable levels. This seems to be quite possible for the Canada Line because of its ridership growth and small trains and little room for increased capacity. With limited or no new funding what do you think will be done?
Do you think the system will eventually be superseded by heavy rail?
Do you think the Canada Line would ever be converted to an ART system to increase efficiency and capacity?

I feel that though the obvious answer to increased demand would be new lines I doubt Translink will be able to afford this so how do you think Skytrain capacity will be increased beyond the 5/6 car and 3 car options?

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Does anyone have thoughts on the following?
What do you think will be done when capacity on the Current Skytrain Lines in particular the underbuilt Canada line falls below acceptable levels. This seems to be quite possible for the Canada Line because of its ridership growth and small trains and little room for increased capacity. With limited or no new funding what do you think will be done?
Do you think the system will eventually be superseded by heavy rail?
Do you think the Canada Line would ever be converted to an ART system to increase efficiency and capacity?

I feel that though the obvious answer to increased demand would be new lines I doubt Translink will be able to afford this so how do you think Skytrain capacity will be increased beyond the 5/6 car and 3 car options?

Current peak demand on the Expo trunk is 16,000 pphpd. Peak on the Canada line is 6,000 or so.

Both lines could add another 10,000 pphpd before the signalling and platforms could not fit more, and potentially more on the Canada line if trains can be short turned short of the single-tracking. Both lines can be upgraded by more space-efficient seating.

In the event that Vancouver is massively up-urbanized (which would be great) and these lines congest any time soon, I suspect the response would be to build more parallel lines. Main-Fraser, Victoria-Commerical, Arbutus, and the like, which would relieve pressure on the existing lines.

Would the Canada line ever be converted to ART? ART wouldn't increase capacity, and I suspect that there are many other things that could be done to the Canada Line before laying reaction rail becomes the low-hanging fruit of efficiency (like the fact that the Canada Line cars are considerably heavier than the BBD cars). The Canada Line is of a different loading gauge than the other lines, so there isn't too much efficiency to be found in common rolling stock

Heavy Rail? Arguably, the Expo line has sufficient spare capacity that it could be regarded as on the lighter end of a heavy rail system, similar to the Paris Metro. But increasing capacity beyond the hard platform length limits becomes monumentally expensive and disruptive. Much more productive to just build new lines, which if need be can be built to heavy rail capacities

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Does anyone have thoughts on the following?
What do you think will be done when capacity on the Current Skytrain Lines in particular the underbuilt Canada line falls below acceptable levels. This seems to be quite possible for the Canada Line because of its ridership growth and small trains and little room for increased capacity. With limited or no new funding what do you think will be done?
Do you think the system will eventually be superseded by heavy rail?
Do you think the Canada Line would ever be converted to an ART system to increase efficiency and capacity?

I feel that though the obvious answer to increased demand would be new lines I doubt Translink will be able to afford this so how do you think Skytrain capacity will be increased beyond the 5/6 car and 3 car options?

I think you're looking at least 50 years off before anything is "done" with the existing Canada Line. Translink's own "lifespan" notes on the Surrey LRT already suggest that the RRT (ART) options were for 60. So it's only been running for 6 years (While the Expo line has been running for 30.) The only tangible difference between the ROTEM EMU's and the Bombardier ART (aka Innovia) from this perspective is that the Canada Line was built "cheaper", so the corners cut on the platform lengths, car lengths and single-tracking are just going to be much more expensive to rectify than having done it properly or with the induction track to begin with.



The fact that the Canada Line wasn't done with the induction track meant that larger tunnels had to be built. We're actually lucky that someone actually read the alignment documents for the Evergreen line and it got built as an extension instead of a self-contained LRT, because it would have cost far far more to build from the tunnel alone (due to the height being doubled, and in hindsight the delays would be much worse.) The Canada Line theoretically could have cost less from having smaller tunnels. But since nobody has a time machine, we needn't argue about that. What was most disappointing was being unable to share the same rail vehicles, thus requiring an entirely separate OMC and new staff to maintain them. Even then... it wasn't a huge disappointment since it was still automated, so the net cost per train is likely comparable to a two-car Expo-line train.

Come to think of it, running the Broadway subway can only be cost effectively done as an extension of the Skytrain, because of the smaller tunnel requirements.

This is one of those reasons why Seattle's light rail is far more expensive than the Skytrain, much larger tunnels are required. Though it's not a fair apples to apples comparison either, as the entire Everett to Tacoma area is considered part of the Seattle Metro area ( 15,209.3 sq km) vs Vancouver's Metro area (2,877.36 sq km), Metro Vancouver would have to include Whistler and Chilliwack and 30% more population to have a an equal comparison.

[Reecemartin]

So going back to my last post with Skytrain aging how can we really increase capacity much short of building new lines? As adding more cars to trains is a pretty limited option,
As well do you think Translink would ever consider replacing guideway segments to increase speed and realign? Riding the Expo line from DT today I noticed that the train had to slow down while the guideway weaves under the viaducts, if these are removed wouldn't it make sense to fix this portion of the line to increase speeds?
THoughts?

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

So going back to my last post with Skytrain aging how can we really increase capacity much short of building new lines? As adding more cars to trains is a pretty limited option,
As well do you think Translink would ever consider replacing guideway segments to increase speed and realign? Riding the Expo line from DT today I noticed that the train had to slow down while the guideway weaves under the viaducts, if these are removed wouldn't it make sense to fix this portion of the line to increase speeds?
THoughts?

Increasing capacity on the Expo line is pointless beyond current design specs because it's putting even more eggs in a single basket. We've seen how downtime on that line cripples the entire transit system.

It slows down around the viaducts on purpose due to noise complaints from residents in neighbouring towers.

[Rico]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

So going back to my last post with Skytrain aging how can we really increase capacity much short of building new lines? As adding more cars to trains is a pretty limited option,
As well do you think Translink would ever consider replacing guideway segments to increase speed and realign? Riding the Expo line from DT today I noticed that the train had to slow down while the guideway weaves under the viaducts, if these are removed wouldn't it make sense to fix this portion of the line to increase speeds?
THoughts?

There is an entire document online somewhere about potential Expo line Capacity upgrades. Long and the short is they can run all 5 car trains on the Expo line which would increase capacity to something like 25,000people per hour per direction from the current 16,000 (or all new 4 car trains for a capacity of 20,000). Some caveats station flow would need to increase or the stations would just clog up (and hence the Station upgrades). Anyways the study costs it out at about 1 billion dollars including capital works/rolling stock and additional operating costs (for the 5 car option). That said we likely don't need that for a long time, especially if we build the Broadway line. The Expo line is most congested North of Broadway/Commercial if the Broadway line is built it is expected to divert about 2,000 people per hour per direction away from the Expo line North of Broadway/Commercial keeping Expo line capacity below 20,000 for the next few decades. Also note for the Expo line it is feasible to run 90second headways and they currently run 108 second headways but reducing headways too much will impact reliability as any glitch will compound through the system...

[ssiguy]

I don't really think the Mill/Expo lines have capacity issues.

They could certainly due with longer platforms/trains and why they aren't doing it with the renovations is anybody's guess but the potential increase in capacity is certainly there and the stations were designed to roughly carry 3 MK11 trains. With the newer SkyTrains that will offer more flexibility in lengths I think they will do fine.

The line that stands out is of course the Canada Line.

It was built with absolutely no vision except to survive the Olympics. The stations can be "extended" to a miniscule 50 meters.............probably the lowest capacity full Metro system built on the planet in the last century. I've never seen or even heard of a Metro line with such small stations. This is not only a capacity issue but also a safety one. The stations are not only short but also dangerously thin. At Bridgeport the lines to get on the trains actually go from one side of the platform to the other.

Contrary to what Translink and other Canada Line supporters say, the line is already over capacity with it's current frequency. When calculating capacity they use standard "crush" loads which are a farce. They do not take into account that very few people actually travel without a knapsack or brief case. This is particularily true of students and the Canada hooks up 3 large college campuses and other schools downtown.

To make this MUCH worse is that this line also serves the airport. How many people travel with only one little knapsack? The "capacity" used by Translink and company doesn't take that into account. Of all the lines the Canada Line is the one most effected by people carrying baggage yet it has the lowest capacity.

You last PROPER transit lines to last 100 years but the Canada Line was built for just 2 months vision.........just enough to make it thru the Olympics. Despite what Campbell and Translink say this was very much an Olympic line and everyone is paying the consequences.

[Reecemartin]

Which is why I was questioning How the Canada line can ever possibly be properly expanded for increased capacity. Even though it could potentially have its capacity tripled this doesn't seem like it will be enough . Remember that there's a massive amount of development occurring in the general area where the catchment of the line especially in Richmond which unfortunately is only served by a spur, as well new development on Broadway, downtown and a long Cambie should have the capacity to generate massive increases in ridership which is already growing quite a bit every year when you finally factor in the connection of the millennium line to the Canada line at Mainstreet it seems that the amount of people flowing in would certainly be more than 15,000 per hourbecause as it was noted above the Expo line currently runs at 16,000 per hour and the route of the Canada line probably Similar populaces specially when you consider the four stations they're talking about adding.
That's why I suggested above that they might want to eventually consider changing the technology on the Canada line as this seems like a much less expensive route and building a whole new parallel line which will probably cost quite a bit more than a Canada line.