The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[MalcolmTucker]

^ Hahahahahahaha. I mean come on, a private company being given a property transfer tax to pay for transit? Basically taking property value uplift from one private company to another on a non-voluntary basis?

More power to them, but they would need both the province and city on side to pass enabling legislation, and then withstand a likely Supreme Court challenge.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Fantastic news. Calgary really is such a forward thinking city in many ways. The term "world class' is thrown around too much but in this instance it's true...........for it's size Calgary really does have a world class system.

While we should be proud of the system we have, it is not World Class for a city of our size. It punches well above its weight in North America but it is well behind many European cities of the same size or smaller. If our forward thinking was World Class, why wasn't this the original plan for the North Central LRT?

The recent leadership has been excellent but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[FFX-ME]

Originally Posted by Riise

While we should be proud of the system we have, it is not World Class for a city of our size. It punches well above its weight in North America but it is well behind many European cities of the same size or smaller. If our forward thinking was World Class, why wasn't this the original plan for the North Central LRT?

The recent leadership has been excellent but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It isn't fair to compare North American and European cities in terms of transit. European cities are far denser meaning that less money is needed for road maintenance (let alone snow removal) and more money is available PER KM. Calgary has a wonderful core but there is pretty much no densification outside the core, it's all houses. If you have an LRT station every KM then you are relying on less than 2000 people to pay for that km.

[Trans Canada]

Even without the new line Calgary's system stacks up pretty well against the big 3:


http://www.pembina.org/pub/fast-cities - Sept. 5, 2014

[SkahHigh]

^this is stupid though. Calgary and Ottawa's systems are much cheaper to build than Montreal or Toronto... And Calgary doesn't have actual "rapid transit" from what we discussed in the last three days.

[raggedy13]

Originally Posted by Trans Canada

Even without the new line Calgary's system stacks up pretty well against the big 3:


http://www.pembina.org/pub/fast-cities - Sept. 5, 2014

Something seems off with these numbers. For example, how is it that Vancouver and Montreal have similar overall lengths (68km & 69km respectively), and yet Montreal, with a much larger population, has a longer length per million residents?

I guess they're comparing the City of Montreal to Metro Vancouver? Seems odd.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

It isn't fair to compare North American and European cities in terms of transit. European cities are far denser meaning that less money is needed for road maintenance (let alone snow removal) and more money is available PER KM. Calgary has a wonderful core but there is pretty much no densification outside the core, it's all houses. If you have an LRT station every KM then you are relying on less than 2000 people to pay for that km.

Due to forward planning on the part of these cities. Even if you discount the older areas of the European cities that qualify we shouldn't forget that after WWII many European cities adopted the same planning principles as us but reverted to their traditional planning paradigms before we readopted such forward planning.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

^this is stupid though. Calgary and Ottawa's systems are much cheaper to build than Montreal or Toronto... And Calgary doesn't have actual "rapid transit" from what we discussed in the last three days.

What if the creator of the image used the term 'high frequency transit' instead of 'rapid transit'?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Riise

What if the creator of the image used the term 'high frequency transit' instead of 'rapid transit'?

Then the results would look unimaginably different due to all the high frequency bus and streetcar routes.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by Riise

What if the creator of the image used the term 'high frequency transit' instead of 'rapid transit'?

The costs between an LRT and a subway are simply not the same though. No wonder Calgary has been expanding it's system... Montreal and Toronto have to pay $250 million per km to expand their RT networks.

[Riise]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Then the results would look unimaginably different due to all the high frequency bus and streetcar routes.

Fair play.

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

The costs between an LRT and a subway are simply not the same though. No wonder Calgary has been expanding it's system... Montreal and Toronto have to pay $250 million per km to expand their RT networks.

If we use the alternative definition of Rapid Transit for a moment and categorise metros as Heavy Rapid Transit and LRT & BRT as Light Rapid Transit, you can most definitely compare RT strategies. By choosing to go with a lower capacity network to provide fast and frequent transit service, a city sacrifices capacity for coverage. It's not that Calgary doesn't have to pay $250M per km for a fast and frequent network, it decides to pay less for a lower capacity version.

[Nouvellecosse]

Yes that's true.

Personally I'd argue that the relevant categories would be the percentage of residents living within 1km of a line, and the trips per capita. If you start talking about total length and length per capita, it makes low density cities with lower capacity at grade systems look artificially better just because they're longer, when there's no reason to think it's better for a city with double the density to have a system of double the capacity and 1/2 the length. If the city is much denser, you can still have just as many people living in close range of a station even if the system is shorter.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by Riise

If we use the alternative definition of Rapid Transit for a moment and categorise metros as Heavy Rapid Transit and LRT & BRT as Light Rapid Transit, you can most definitely compare RT strategies. By choosing to go with a lower capacity network to provide fast and frequent transit service, a city sacrifices capacity for coverage. It's not that Calgary doesn't have to pay $250M per km for a fast and frequent network, it decides to pay less for a lower capacity version.

It's fine for Calgary to go with LRT (the right choice given the urban context), but comparing it with Montreal and Toronto's systems is comparing apples and oranges.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Personally I'd argue that the relevant categories would be the percentage of residents living within 1km of a line, and the trips per capita. If you start talking about total length and length per capita, it makes low density cities with lower capacity at grade systems look artificially better, when there's no reasons to think it's better for a city with double the density to have a system of double the capacity and 1/2 the length. If the city is much denser, you can still have just as many people living in close range of a station even if the system is shorter.

Exactly. The more density you have, the less length you need.

[GreaterMontréal]

and you can't compare a subway-métro, which is only covering the downtown-inner-city to a system that covers the entire metropolitan area.

even within the same city

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Yes that's true.

Personally I'd argue that the relevant categories would be the percentage of residents living within 1km of a line, and the trips per capita. If you start talking about total length and length per capita, it makes low density cities with lower capacity at grade systems look artificially better just because they're longer, when there's no reason to think it's better for a city with double the density to have a system of double the capacity and 1/2 the length. If the city is much denser, you can still have just as many people living in close range of a station even if the system is shorter.

Or even just percentage of residents living within 1km of a high frequency (10 min or less) line whether rail or bus.

[ssiguy]

I don't understand the difference between Calgary's Options B & E.


The elevated option is stupid and sharing the Centre Street Bridge is impractical and too much interaction with the bridge and the downtown core.

It will basically come down to the tunnel/bridge combo or a complete tunnel from Centre Street to the tracks. The bridge option would basically be the same speed and reliability than the total tunnel and at that point it comes down to esthetics.

They can make the bridge quite an attractive one but it won't change the fact that there will be a major bridge over Princess's Island. I don't think Calgarians will be too enamoured with that idea. I think the citizenry at that point might just say bite the bullet and built a complete tunnel from centre to the tracks.

[SkahHigh]

Delete

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by FFX-ME

Not many people are talking about this but it seems that Ottawa may beat Halifax and become the fourth city in Canada to have a commuter rail service. A consortium called MOOSE is working to get commuter rail to the national capital region by 2017. The most interesting part of this is that the project will be 100% privately funded and, unlike all other transit projects in Canada, will require no funds from municipal governments.

www.letsgomoose.ca

Unfortunately, the city of Ottawa is trying to undermine this project as it would compete with their expensive LRT network and would promote sprawl outside the city of Ottawa.

Why should the private sector have to operate commuter rail in Ottawa-Gatineau when the GTA gets GO Transit which receives government funding from all Ontarians, including the 900,000+ people of Ottawa?

Due to the transprovincial nature of this plan, this should be a federal venture, perhaps through VIA Rail, or at least jointly run between GO Transit and the Quebec government. Private transportation solutions end up being way too expensive (see Highway 407).

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

The costs between an LRT and a subway are simply not the same though. No wonder Calgary has been expanding it's system... Montreal and Toronto have to pay $250 million per km to expand their RT networks.

I don't think costs should matter and Calgarians should be proud of what they built. That said, comparing "number of kilometres" doesn't reveal much about the transit systems.

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

I don't think costs should matter and Calgarians should be proud of what they built. That said, comparing "number of kilometres" doesn't reveal much about the transit systems.

Never said they shouldn't be! Like I mentioned earlier, LRT is the transit technology which suits Calgary best.