The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Nouvellecosse]

Yeah it's a delicate balance. You want high frequency for the passenger convenience, but want lower frequency for the reduced operational complexity and costs. For buses, my personal view is that 5 minutes peak and 10 minutes off-peak is a good balance. If you have enough ridership that you can reasonably justify those frequencies you should, even if you could reduce them. But if you need buses more frequently than every 5 minutes I'd prefer that that be avoided as well. Too much bunching, too many drivers to pay, and enough ridership that LRT might be an option. Or at least electrify the route with trolley buses.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Yeah it's a delicate balance. You want high frequency for the passenger convenience, but want lower frequency for the reduced operational complexity and costs. For buses, my personal view is that 5 minutes peak and 10 minutes off-peak is a good balance. If you have enough ridership that you can reasonably justify those frequencies you should, even if you could reduce them. But if you need buses more frequently than every 5 minutes I'd prefer that that be avoided as well. Too much bunching, too many drivers to pay, and enough ridership that LRT might be an option. Or at least electrify the route with trolley buses.

That level of service was done away with long ago in Ottawa except on the Transitways. That coincided with mass introduction of articulated buses 20 years ago or so. The platinum standard in Ottawa for off transitway service is 10 minute in peak hours and 15 minute in off-peak and 20 or 30 minute in the evening. So service has increasingly become focused on the transitways and less and less on local neighbourhoods. then they wonder why ridership is declining.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

I have not seen whether those savings extend beyond operating costs, which is mainly derived from eliminating bus driver positions. It is an interesting question whether their are savings elsewhere but I don't remember any discussion on that point.

Savings come from several areas:
1) Reduced number of drivers needed, as you mentioned
2) Use of electricity over diesel; electricity is a cheaper source of energy than a combustion engine. The cost of electricity required to travel a given distance is only about a tenth of the cost of gasoline required for same (it only takes $8 worth of electricity to get a Tesla to travel 400km, for example)
3) LRT trains are mechanically simpler than buses; electric engines have far fewer moving parts than combustion engines, for example. Results in lower mechanical costs

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

The real risks for Ottawa is that the resulting LRT line does not improve frequency over the current system and the potential speed improvement will be nullified for most passengers because of added transfers. The latter particularly depends on the efficiency of transfers and alternate routes into and across the city. Rapibus across the river (although BRT but used a trunk line model similar to LRT) demonstrated how badly this can be botched.

Confederation Line frequencies have already been set and they're generally higher than the existing Transitway service but not dramatically so (ie. from 7 minutes to 5 minutes, that sort of thing).

The Rapibus was a bad case because there were literally no actual speed improvements; even ignoring transfers (ie. assuming they are instant when doing the math) travel time was slower. At the very least, the Confederation Line offers in vehicle travel time speed improvements due to grade separating the downtown section, faster acceleration out of stations, and reduced dwell time*. I'm not saying the Confederation Line is guaranteed to be a great success (of that only time will tell), but it can't be as bad as the rapibus rollout was.

*This is a point that is rarely brought up in the BRT vs. LRT discussions. Buses can take quite some time to unload and load their passengers even with all door boarding. At major Transitway stations like Hurdman, it can regularly take buses up to a full minute or two to pull up, load and unload everyone, and get going again. By contrast, a metro/LRT train almost never has to stay stopped for more than ten seconds. This is a combination of the much higher number of doors on trains, and the fact that there's no need for fare collection on board (although, in fairness, that second one is achievable with buses too).

[1overcosc]

Another factor to the operating savings issue in Ottawa is that with LRT costs grow more slowly than BRT costs do. While the city saves $18M right away, system operating costs will also grow more slowly after that. So that $18M number really gets bigger over time.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

*This is a point that is rarely brought up in the BRT vs. LRT discussions. Buses can take quite some time to unload and load their passengers even with all door boarding. At major Transitway stations like Hurdman, it can regularly take buses up to a full minute or two to pull up, load and unload everyone, and get going again. By contrast, a metro/LRT train almost never has to stay stopped for more than ten seconds. This is a combination of the much higher number of doors on trains, and the fact that there's no need for fare collection on board (although, in fairness, that second one is achievable with buses too).

I'm pretty sure they'll be staying stopped for more than 10 seconds. That's about enough time for five people to get out each door, assuming the doors open and close while the train is moving.

Based of how other subways and rail transit go I'm guessing it would be something more the 40-60 seconds ballpark at the less busy stops and a fair bit longer at the busy ones. Each train will have a lot more people getting on and off than any one bus would at the major stations. Each bus going through downtown right now is picking up maybe 10-20% of the people waiting while the trains will have to pick up 100% of them.

[Aylmer]

Actually, the Montreal Métro only stops for about 10 seconds at the less busy stations. At busier stations at busy hours, it can be up to 25-30s on occasion. I've only seen the metro stop for longer than that when someone gets stuck or something.

And the doors actually do open a little before the train comes to a full stop.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

Actually, the Montreal Métro only stops for about 10 seconds at the less busy stations. At busier stations at busy hours, it can be up to 25-30s on occasion. I've only seen the metro stop for longer than that when someone gets stuck or something.

And the doors actually do open a little before the train comes to a full stop.

That really surprises me. I mean people take a while to get on and off the train. Especially when it's rather crowded and you have to squeeze past people. Toronto's definitely seem to sit around longer, the closing jingle has to be pushing 10 seconds long at least.

[ssiguy]

Electric transit, including electric trolleys, does have the long term advantage of being able to budget with more certainly, operationally speaking.

Diesel prices can fluctuate greatly {as we have seen in the last 18 months} which can be great for transit authorities when prices are low but conversely create havoc when prices spike. Electrical costs are far less volatile and the predictability makes long term budget planning more precise.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by Beedok

That really surprises me. I mean people take a while to get on and off the train. Especially when it's rather crowded and you have to squeeze past people. Toronto's definitely seem to sit around longer, the closing jingle has to be pushing 10 seconds long at least.

It looks like the train only stops for about 13 seconds or so. The dwell time is obviously longer during peak periods and at busy stations. It really doesn't take very long for a few people to jump on or off.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

It looks like the train only stops for about 13 seconds or so. The dwell time is obviously longer during peak periods and at busy stations. It really doesn't take very long for a few people to jump on or off.

Yup, off-peak and especially on the Bloor line it's not uncommon to hear the closing chimes pretty much as soon as the doors are fully open.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

It looks like the train only stops for about 13 seconds or so. The dwell time is obviously longer during peak periods and at busy stations. It really doesn't take very long for a few people to jump on or off.

Well if we're talking about only of peak low traffic stops then buses when there. Rail has to always stop because there's no way to ring the bell, but with a bus if no one rang and there's no one moving to catch the bus it just zips past.

Also I think the best thing to compare Ottawa's transit-way to is the C-Train. Both go from fully grade separate in the suburbs to more integrated in the downtown. Calgary's is less integrated than Ottawa's, but it also has worries about bottlenecking from what I've heard on here. If it went full streetcar like Ottawa's buses go on normal streets it would probably be just as backed up.

[caltrane74]

Walk through the new crosstown subway stations !!

• Video Link

Mount Deniss to Kennedy Fly Through

• Video Link

Walking through the stations

• Video Link

[GreatTallNorth2]

London city council tonight voted 15-0 to move forward with Shift London's plan for a combo of LRT & BRT. The next step is going to the upper levels of government for funding as Londons contribution will be $125 million of the roughly $900 million total cost. One step closer to better transit in London.

[Metro-One]

Why did they not elevate the eastern half of the Crosstown LRT.

Seems like a great project until it cheaps out on the eastern half.

Looks low a wide / suburban style road, no reason why it could not have been fully grade separated.

[ssiguy]

Great news for London!

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Why did they not elevate the eastern half of the Crosstown LRT.

Seems like a great project until it cheaps out on the eastern half.

Looks low a wide / suburban style road, no reason why it could not have been fully grade separated.

I think a lot of people are put off by the aesthetics of the concrete guideways they use nowadays. And for a service that's intended to have a high stop density (I believe they're only 300m apart in the surface sections) not only is having all the surface stations be elevated not feasible economic relative to the number of users expected for these stations, but it's less convenient for local users since they have to go up a flight of stairs or escalators. And when a system has such a short stop spacing, the average speeds aren't going to be that high anyway that grade separation isn't going to be that big a time savings compared to surface in dedicated ROW.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Why did they not elevate the eastern half of the Crosstown LRT.

Seems like a great project until it cheaps out on the eastern half.

Looks low a wide / suburban style road, no reason why it could not have been fully grade separated.

extra cost and low ridership figures, plus the suburban road isn't as wide as you would think. Stations would require much more ROW than is available. Really, cost. The project is already the largest public transit project in Canada's history, adding another billion or two to elevate it would have made the project stupidly expensive.

There is also an issue of NIMBYism, Metrolinx tried to bury a stretch of it between Laird and Don Mills and locals freaked out at the lack of local station stops, locals want the closer stop spacing that the surface LRT provides.

Ultimately it doesn't matter too much as the frequencies on the surface part will be half of that than for the underground part, meaning that service reliability shouldn't be affected by it.

[nname]

I thought the close stop spacing is the result of running at-grade, not the other way around.

From what I've heard, running it elevated was never considered to be an option. The options were running it underground vs. at-grade. From what I heard over the years, the underground option was ruled out due to some or all of these:
- Lack of ridership demand to run the section underground (it will cannibalize ridership on the existing B-D line)
- Loss of "neighborhood" stops
- Difficult (and costly) to construct the tunnel across Don Valley
- Not enough funding from the province (it was 100% paid for by the province and the City was unwilling to pay for anything beyond the approved funding)

[nname]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Really, cost. The project is already the largest public transit project in Canada's history, adding another billion or two to elevate it would have made the project stupidly expensive.

I still don't get why it is so much more expensive to build the line compared to anywhere else. If we use the same cost estimate as Vancouver's proposed Broadway Line, it would've cost only 4.5B instead of 6.64B, entirely underground. If we use the figure for Spadina Extension and its huge subway stations, it would've only cost 5.8B all underground....

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think a lot of people are put off by the aesthetics of the concrete guideways they use nowadays. And for a service that's intended to have a high stop density (I believe they're only 300m apart in the surface sections) not only is having all the surface stations be elevated not feasible economic relative to the number of users expected for these stations, but it's less convenient for local users since they have to go up a flight of stairs or escalators. And when a system has such a short stop spacing, the average speeds aren't going to be that high anyway that grade separation isn't going to be that big a time savings compared to surface in dedicated ROW.

This is my biggest beef with surface LRT, and why such designs IMO are not RRT.

If you want stops every 300 meters or less, use a bus.

Rail transit should average 500m to 700m at minimum.

This is what is generally planned for the Broadway subway (skytrain). RRT with wider distances between stations, but there will still be a surface bus for high stop density service.

Seriously, how is this project so expensive?

It makes the fully grade separated automated 11km long Evergreen Line look like such a bargin at only 1.4 billion.

Again, the western half looks great, but the Crosstown LRT looks like the rail transit version of the movie Sunshine, a fantastic well thought out first half, and a wtf second half.