Millennium Line - Evergreen Extension | Completed

[madog222]

Originally Posted by red-paladin

Thanks for bringing the thread back on track.

[Millennium2002]

That's a rather... in-your-face way to ensure your video isn't stolen. O.O

[Metro-One]

The shots are great (nice drone footage).

But the editing really needs some work. Far to slow and lingering.

[MIPS]

Who does that video belong to?

[GMasterAres]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

Amen Amen Amen AMEN!!!! Finally some sanity! People have this mistaken impression that just because there is a university that building billion dollar extension for its riders justifies it. But there are far more dynamics behind the ridership of university students and even staff that you cannot just look at simple numbers at face value.

There are reasons why planners, those that studied and worked at such professions all their lives would say Broadway should only be in Arbutus or Surrey should be the priority, why LRT is better than Skytrain, and so on say such things. What they say are far more credible than the arm chair analysts you see in this forums or in blogs like "Skytrain for Surrey". Just because casual observations show Hastings Street having heavy traffic does not mean you need to have a rail line there.

So the next time a planner or even a duly elected municipal politician regardless of party says something that is contrary to the views of some forumers, no matter how counter intuitive and how seemingly politically motivated, I would still give them the benefit of the doubt than those that nitpick over a choice of technology or route because it looks pretty on a map or more fun to ride with...

You went a bit extreme the other way there hope you realize. I don't think BCPhil said anything about Surrey or UBC... he was commenting on SFU and Hastings and he is absolutely right about those two spaces. It's fantasy. Heck most of SFU's expansion in recent years has been out at the Surrey campus which is right next to SkyTrain already.

I don't want to put words into BCPhil's virtual mouth but again I didn't see him state anything beyond the above 2. Right on those for sure, but you stretching it to UBC or Surrey is just the opposite extreme and unfortunately stats don't back you on those assumptions. Millenium Line has ridership #s not far off how many people take transit to UBC every day. UBC isn't served just by the 99-b but by a pile of other buses which are busy too. 41 or 4 for example. Only numbers I can find in searching for 5 minutes are 50,000 transit riders to/from UBC per day in 2004. Is that fact? I don't know, but I know from past experience to UBC back in the early 2000s that there were a lot of people going to and from UBC every day all day.

And Surrey SkyTrain makes sense if just for the dollars and cents given recent numbers from Surrey themselves (the biggest advocates for LRT) show that LRT on the street will be roughly the same tax dollars in cost as SkyTrain but with all the negatives of being at-grade and susceptible to traffic woes like accidents if you just look at the Fraser Highway corridor. I'm pretty certain actual statistics show LRT only makes sense for part of the solution in Surrey but not the main backbone out to Langley.

So please try to not go the other extreme and stretch the reality to suite your motivations. You then become no different than those wanting SkyTrain down Arbutus, Hastings, and to SFU Burnaby.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

The shots are great (nice drone footage).

But the editing really needs some work. Far to slow and lingering.

I didn't mind the pace, as it allowed me to look at everything in the background.

[SOSS]

Can we get a drone through the tunnel?

[nname]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

The shots are great (nice drone footage).

But the editing really needs some work. Far to slow and lingering.

I would just skip around or use the put the playback at 2x speed

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by nname

I would just skip around or use the put the playback at 2x speed

That is exactly what I did

[srperrycgy]

From the Min. of Transportation YouTube channel today:

• Video Link

[SOSS]

just gorgeous. throw me in an elevated track over a subway any day.

[queetz@home]

Originally Posted by SOSS

just gorgeous. throw me in an elevated track over a subway any day.

Indeed. I don't know why people oppose the beauty of the elevated railway when grade separation is needed. Back in the day when a sci-fi writer wants to showcase the city of the future, elevated rail is always part of the backdrop. Even in more recent sci fi movies and TV series they tend to showcase elevated rail when depicting either the future, or advancement in rail technology (i.e. most recently with Lord Technologies in Supergirl).

[Aroundtheworld]

Originally Posted by queetz@home

Indeed. I don't know why people oppose the beauty of the elevated railway when grade separation is needed. Back in the day when a sci-fi writer wants to showcase the city of the future, elevated rail is always part of the backdrop. Even in more recent sci fi movies and TV series they tend to showcase elevated rail when depicting either the future, or advancement in rail technology (i.e. most recently with Lord Technologies in Supergirl).

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.

[officedweller]

Agreed.
The side of road alignment allows a shorter guideway and less imposing stations.

[BCPhil]

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.

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.

[SFUVancouver]

Richmond had the opportunity with the Canada Line to re-organize Number 3 Road and reposition the travel lanes into the former 98 B-Line BRT median right of way. That's a condition that's absent on most major streets. Arguably, the traffic on Number 3 Road in the downtown area exceeds its post-Canada Line/post-98 B-Line median busway capacity during weekend and and seasonal rush-hour periods. So many of the businesses have are street-loading parking lots that use of Number 3 Road is a necessity. In time, I expect that redevelopment of the Number 3 Road strip mall properties along the street will utilize cross streets for their parking access, as opposed to Number 3 Road. It's a shame that commercial lanes aren't present in the Richmond downtown block network.

[nname]

WCE passengers will be routed through the new Moody Centre station starting April 11th

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

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.

Yes, precisely. I gotta admit that the concept of taking grade-separation further than just the train line is really admirable. In major Japanese cities (Sendai and Nagasaki come to mind) there are often large elevated walkways/plazas just outside the main train station, creating an elevated station plaza above the busy drop-off/pick-up/bus exchange areas at street level. They also help with crossing the street in front of the station. It creates a lot of viable pedestrian/plaza space where it would probably otherwise be narrow and confined space or even no space at all (really important in a country as dense as Japan) and the separation from cars turns out to be positive in the end as well.

SkyTrain critics (Especially in Surrey) like to point at Brentwood as the big example of the whole "elevated guideways are ugly" movement they're trying to build, and yet none of them seem to have considered that Brentwood was designed this way on purpose to integrate with future developments in the best way possible, and kind of get over the fact that Lougheed Highway is a highway... there is practically zero potential to make it an at-grade, pedestrian-friendly roadway.

Many SkyTrain projects/proposals, including the Expo Line Langley extension and the Canada Line itself (I recall that the Canada Line once had concept art showing a Brentwood-like setup with taller support columns on No. 3 Rd's median) depict an elevated, roadway SkyTrain extension like this and I don't think that's actually going to be the case when it's done. For one, I'm sure that the side-running end-setup that was done on the C-Line and here on the Evergreen Line can be repeated to other future SkyTrain expansions.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by nname

WCE passengers will be routed through the new Moody Centre station starting April 11th

So, pretty much right on time for the originally planned summer opening of the Evergreen line.

Originally Posted by xd_1771

Yes, precisely. I gotta admit that the concept of taking grade-separation further than just the train line is really admirable. In major Japanese cities (Sendai and Nagasaki come to mind) there are often large elevated walkways/plazas just outside the main train station, creating an elevated station plaza above the busy drop-off/pick-up/bus exchange areas at street level. They also help with crossing the street in front of the station. It creates a lot of viable pedestrian/plaza space where it would probably otherwise be narrow and confined space or even no space at all (really important in a country as dense as Japan) and the separation from cars turns out to be positive in the end as well.

SkyTrain critics (Especially in Surrey) like to point at Brentwood as the big example of the whole "elevated guideways are ugly" movement they're trying to build, and yet none of them seem to have considered that Brentwood was designed this way on purpose to integrate with future developments in the best way possible, and kind of get over the fact that Lougheed Highway is a highway... there is practically zero potential to make it an at-grade, pedestrian-friendly roadway.

Many SkyTrain projects/proposals, including the Expo Line Langley extension and the Canada Line itself (I recall that the Canada Line once had concept art showing a Brentwood-like setup with taller support columns on No. 3 Rd's median) depict an elevated, roadway SkyTrain extension like this and I don't think that's actually going to be the case when it's done. For one, I'm sure that the side-running end-setup that was done on the C-Line and here on the Evergreen Line can be repeated to other future SkyTrain expansions.

I think they could have easily built Brentwood station, and the rest of the guideway through that area, on the south side of Lougheed. At the time, it was entirely parking lots (and car dealership parking lots) lining that side of the street. They bought up a lot of rights to go over property and parking lots all along Lougheed (all the other Lougheed stations are on the side of the roadway).

But I think they were looking ahead to the potential of that location. By putting the station over the roadway, it preserves the property lines so density and build form can be maximized right up to the Lougheed. You can create a urban area that has a vibrant transit focused pedestrian quality while the buildings still have access to a major road. Away from Lougheed you can bring the pedestrian space back down to the streets.

I think the area around Brentwood (from Beta to Gilmore) actually has a better potential to be Burnaby's main "Downtown". It has a more complete street grid with smaller blocks. There are a lot more office jobs close to it (in Still creek and Canada Way area) and even some light industrial and BCIT is about 5 minutes away.

Metrotown is "bigger" today because it is on the main spine of the transit network, from Surrey to Downtown. But with the Millennium line extending to Coquitlam and through central Broadway (sooner or later) and maybe to UBC, that focus could change pretty quickly. Just think of all the employment centers located on a full Millennium line compared to the Expo line.

[officedweller]

Since the scale of Brentwood is going to be so big, I think the tall median station with mezzanine works.
Ditto with Merotown Station - is that a lost opportunity for a mezzanine to extend both north and south of the Expo Line?
I think similar stations in Richmond (with shorter buildings) or to Langley (likewise) would dominate their surroundings too much.

Originally Posted by nname

WCE passengers will be routed through the new Moody Centre station starting April 11th

They couldn't rotate the station diagram to upright?