Quote:
Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld
It depends how it is done. I think it works fine when it is off to the side like in Richmond and here. I don't think it works too well when it is in the middle of the road like in Brentwood.
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It depends. Building along the side of the street can require more property acquisition, especially for the stations. A lot of roadways have (or should have) a median of some kind (to cut down on the jogs/weaving that result around intersection's left turn bays).
With Brentwood, the station is built entirely over the ROW of the highway. It is actually amazing how few supports the station itself has. Most of the "shadow" is caused by the extremely wide pedestrian mezzanine.
Which is another huge benefit of the station. It's taken a while, but the station mezzanine is finally seeing it's purpose come to fruition. It provides basically a pedestrian overpass over the highway that will connect to the new Amazing Brentwood plaza. And one day, it will be the same on the other side. I'm sure when they designed the station, that they thought Carter GM would have moved on by now. It will be pretty sweet to be able to go from one pedestrian village to another, by crossing Lougheed Highway without having cross the road at street level.
You could change the design to make the mezzanine a lot more narrow, and the station itself is a bit larger than it needs to be (due to the oval shape). You could even build a center of the road station much lower to the ground without a mezzanine and just have access from each platform directly to street level. The sidewalk on the westbound side of the road will have access to the westbound platform.
But at least the mezzanine over the road allows direct pedestrian access to the station from both sides of the street. Whereas for example, Aberdeen mall has direct access to only 1 platform. For the other you still need to access the station from street level.
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