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Originally Posted by ssiguy
Rapid transit does not have to be grade separated to be fast or efficient. Calgary`s CTrain is very fast except thru the downtown core and most trips are going to downtown and not thru it.
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I think that's pretty much a given. And you can take it from me, I spent most of this year in Japan where many of the years-old suburban rail transit systems are still operating on their at-grade alignments, where trains are expected to travel at 110km/h or so through several and sometimes frequent grade crossings.
Yet, at the same time, even Japan understands the concept of grade-separation and why it's such a great investment. Many of these existing lines are being moved partially or entirely onto elevated viaducts or tunnels. It's happened on several of Tokyo's suburban lines and it's getting started in Osaka as well. Even in smaller cities such as where I lived (Nagasaki), the commuter railway is being moved onto an elevated viaduct to avoid grade crossings and allow for service improvements, so as to not impede the community with constant train crossings.
Grade separation (and the resulting ability to use train automation) is what gives us our world-famous <2 minute peak service and results in train waits of less than 5 minutes even during weekends and late nights (when there is no maintenance). C-Train doesn't even hold a candle when it comes to off-peak train frequencies. Perhaps this might have to do with why Calgary has been so slow at moving from its sprawling, single-city-centre form into a multiple-centre urbanized one (which we rushed into from the moment we opened the Expo Line).
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Considering Calgary`s CTrain ridership is higher per-capita than Vancouver`s SkyTrain yet cost much less, I`m not sure Vancouver is in a position to talk.
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I'm gonna have to step up and say that ridership per capita (on the rapid transit network only) isn't really a fair way of establishing the performance of a transit system. Metro Van may still have less rapid transit km per capita but it still
expanded at a faster rate than Calgary, and I see that as fair because you really can't expect rapid transit expansion progress to have a linear relation with the amount of people in a city. There are differences in density, placement and urban form (i.e. Calgary having a single, concentrated city-centre vs. our Vancouverism and multiple city centres) and political realities that can dictate how much transit you can build to service the people. At the end of the day, we built it at a faster rate and a smaller network doesn't mean that even people in, say, Langley aren't experiencing the benefits of having SkyTrain as far as King George Station.
At the end of the day if you want to compare two cities' transit networks, you need to include the entire transit network which includes the region-wide bus system. In this metric Vancouver is beating Calgary with 157 riders/capita, the
3rd highest in North America.
And if you want to compare rapid transit systems, it should be a measurement of riders per km, not per-capita. Again, Vancouver and SkyTrain is winning in this metric - it is higher than Calgary and beating out every other LRT system in Canada and the U.S.
With this said I can't see how Vancouver isn't in a position to talk best practices. We are in a better position to talk than arguably any other city.
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observed, ...and rather leaves big cities such as Houston, with LRT-only systems waaay down there, and, sadly, that rather goes for Seattle and Portland, too.
Anyway for what it's worth, here it is ...
Linear Mode
