Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, & Intercity Transportation

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by officedweller

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/surrey+...sible+routes+railway/11460500/story.html

Baby steps. Though if the comments on that article are any indication, it won't be an easy change to railroad through.

I think replacing the New West bridge is a higher priority and probably a better use of $500M, but it's definitely a less sexy idea as taking the tracks off the beach.

[ClaytonA]

ARRA project update with all but one, signalling punchlist ongoing, done between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Also landslide mitigation to improve reliability and safety was supposed to be done end of October http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Rail/railmonthlyupdate.htm http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/08/17_raillandslideprojects.htm

The high-speed rail program reached a halfway point, with 10 of its 20 projects now complete. This milestone was reached with the completion of three more projects in August and September – Advanced Wayside Signal System, Mount Vernon Siding Extension, and Blaine-Swift Customs Facility. ...

The trip between Seattle and Portland is 10 minutes faster now per; http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/06/30_AmtrakCascadesschedule.htm

Still waiting for federal parliament to approve the preclearance agreement signed last March; http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/10/19_AmtrakCascadesCanadaevent.htm

[ClaytonA]

http://journalofcommerce.com/Association...-way-to-Silver-for-BA-Blacktop-1010851W/

Complex and much less notriety than the highway projects. Some interesting solutions.

[casper]

Originally Posted by ClaytonA

ARRA project update with all but one, signalling punchlist ongoing, done between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Also landslide mitigation to improve reliability and safety was supposed to be done end of October http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Rail/railmonthlyupdate.htm http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/08/17_raillandslideprojects.htm



The trip between Seattle and Portland is 10 minutes faster now per; http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/06/30_AmtrakCascadesschedule.htm

Still waiting for federal parliament to approve the preclearance agreement signed last March; http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/News/2015/10/19_AmtrakCascadesCanadaevent.htm

If they keep shaving time off the cascadia service what would be good to see in a few years is the Starlight train extended to Vancouver.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/421/523/Coast-Starlight-Schedule-071115,0.pdf

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by casper

If they keep shaving time off the cascadia service what would be good to see in a few years is the Starlight train extended to Vancouver.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/421/523/Coast-Starlight-Schedule-071115,0.pdf

While I suspect that isn't in the cards, unlike most proposals to extend long distance trains, extending the Starlight to Vancouver would be uniquely more plausible thanks to VIA Rail's underutilized facilities in Vancouver which are entirely capable of patching up and turning around a long distance train.

[Political_R]

Seattle-Everett travel times will not change for the forseeable future. We should have some more reliability with the travel time with a Mount Vernon siding but it currently takes 1.5 hours to get from Bellingham-Vancouver. Once the border is crossed, the train trip is quite slow and some of the time is spent waiting at the Fraser River to proceed across. It would be nice if there would be consideration for a new White Rock express service to downtown Vancouver having a Scott Road station along the way to provide a redundancy to Skytrain but this could also use a stop at South Surrey Park & Ride.

The long-range plan identified using the Hwy 99 corridor to build a high speed track and this would free up some space on Canada Line. Although I doubt this is a high priority given UBC Skytrain is a much more pressing matter.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Political_R

Seattle-Everett travel times will not change for the forseeable future. We should have some more reliability with the travel time with a Mount Vernon siding but it currently takes 1.5 hours to get from Bellingham-Vancouver. Once the border is crossed, the train trip is quite slow and some of the time is spent waiting at the Fraser River to proceed across. It would be nice if there would be consideration for a new White Rock express service to downtown Vancouver having a Scott Road station along the way to provide a redundancy to Skytrain but this could also use a stop at South Surrey Park & Ride.

The long-range plan identified using the Hwy 99 corridor to build a high speed track and this would free up some space on Canada Line. Although I doubt this is a high priority given UBC Skytrain is a much more pressing matter.

UBC is a regional concern.

Canada - USA is a provincial/federal.

Let's do 'em both!

Rail is a bit of a chicken/egg problem here.

They need more ridership to increase revenue to justify higher speeds.
They need higher speeds to increase ridership.

If the train was faster than the bus, it would be less of an issue. But it's not.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

They need more ridership to increase revenue to justify higher speeds.
They need higher speeds to increase ridership.

What they really need is a lot more people living in the area to form a market large enough to support it. But I'm not really sure I want to go down that road, the desirability of Vancouver is already causing a lot of problems.

[officedweller]

Just noticed this:

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/3/tourism-operators-applaud-new-canada-us-pre-cleara/

Tourism operators applaud new Canada-U.S. pre-clearance rules
Pact allows travellers to clear customs at train stations, cruise ship terminals
By Glen Korstrom
March 11, 2016, 8:30 a.m

Tourism operators are hailing the March 10 agreement between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama that will expand pre-clearance for visitors to each country from what is currently only at eight Canadian airports.

Pre-clearance will first expand to the rail corridor between Vancouver and Seattle as well as a rail corridor south from Montreal and at airports in Quebec City and Toronto.

The only current place where there is pre-clearance in B.C. is at Vancouver International Airport. The expectation is that pre-clearance will also soon be available for cruise passengers.

....

Unlike Rocky Mountaineer, which has U.S. customs agents board its trains after they arrive in Seattle, Amtrak stops its Vancouver-to-Seattle trains at the U.S. border so customs agents can clear guests in a process that takes about 10 minutes, according to Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham.

“With full pre-clearance, the stop mentioned goes away and all U.S. Customs and Border Protection work is done at our Vancouver virtual border,” she said. “[That] reduces the overall runtime and increases the predictability of the route.”

...

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/3/tourism-operators-applaud-new-canada-us-pre-cleara/

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by officedweller

Just noticed this:

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/3/tourism-operators-applaud-new-canada-us-pre-cleara/


https://www.biv.com/article/2016/3/tourism-operators-applaud-new-canada-us-pre-cleara/

That's pretty exciting! I wonder how much time that will shave off the trip. My guess is that would take at least 20 minutes off the journey. 10 minutes stopped and at least 10 minutes wasted on decel/accel at the border. Next step... replace the New West rail bridge and bypass White Rock!

In other news, how would you like to make the trip in 30 minutes? NHK has a new 30 minute piece on the 500km/h Japanese train under construction. Available for the next month on-demand:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/vod/japanrailway/20160408.html

[Trainguy]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

That's pretty exciting! I wonder how much time that will shave off the trip. My guess is that would take at least 20 minutes off the journey. 10 minutes stopped and at least 10 minutes wasted on decel/accel at the border. Next step... replace the New West rail bridge and bypass White Rock!

In other news, how would you like to make the trip in 30 minutes? NHK has a new 30 minute piece on the 500km/h Japanese train under construction. Available for the next month on-demand:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/vod/japanrailway/20160408.html

Replacing the New West bridge with a double track bridge won't improve much because the track splits 3 ways on the south end and 2 ways on the north. Further, since it is a swing bridge, speed will always be restricted.

As for bypassing White Rock, never going to happen. Not enough people take the train out of Vancouver to make it worth spending lots of money to improve the travel time. I lived in Japan for several years and most people use the train since they don't own vehicles. Their population density also justifies having a super fast and efficient rail network.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

Replacing the New West bridge with a double track bridge won't improve much because the track splits 3 ways on the south end and 2 ways on the north. Further, since it is a swing bridge, speed will always be restricted.

As for bypassing White Rock, never going to happen. Not enough people take the train out of Vancouver to make it worth spending lots of money to improve the travel time. I lived in Japan for several years and most people use the train since they don't own vehicles. Their population density also justifies having a super fast and efficient rail network.

The track splits 2 and 3 ways, but what are the typical conflicting moves? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most freight traffic is North Shore - Thornton Yard in Surrey CN traffic, while all but a few of the passenger trains are Pacific Central-Seattle. With two tracks, you can have a CN North Shore train on the east track and an Amtrak on the west track (provided that you double the northern approach, which is a single track segment of an otherwise double-tracked line) without one of them being in the other's way. Sure, SRY and Annacis traffic might still conflict, but you've got fewer potential conflicts to schedule around, and of course trains going the other direction

see this map I just threw together http://i.imgur.com/neft5EM.png

With respect to there not being enough traffic to justify upgrades, we are kind of in a 'let's not build a bridge because look how few people are swimming the river' situation with regard to the Amtrak Cascades north. That's not to say that White Rock is a worthy idea at this time, but merely that it's hard to make judgements about the value of investing in faster and more efficient service by looking at the current ridership of slow, inefficient service

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

With respect to there not being enough traffic to justify upgrades, we are kind of in a 'let's not build a bridge because look how few people are swimming the river' situation with regard to the Amtrak Cascades north. That's not to say that White Rock is a worthy idea at this time, but merely that it's hard to make judgements about the value of investing in faster and more efficient service by looking at the current ridership of slow, inefficient service

In the case of White Rock/Surrey. Surrey has kinda wanted a stop in Surrey, but I somehow doubt they are willing to do anything more than a combined light-rail stop. Finance and Speed-wise it would make more sense to drop all the intermediate stops on both sides of the border for the VAC-SEA-PDX run.

Since the bottleneck is the bridge, the reasonable answer is to actually "move" the Vancouver terminus to Scott Road station. However most of the existing train runs leave within a half hour of the Skytrain starting up. So the Skytrain needs to start a bit earlier to allow people at Waterfront to get there. The existing Terminus at Pacific Central gives you about 15-20 minutes to board if you take the first Skytrain from either Waterfront or New West.

[Political_R]

Originally Posted by Kisai

In the case of White Rock/Surrey. Surrey has kinda wanted a stop in Surrey, but I somehow doubt they are willing to do anything more than a combined light-rail stop. Finance and Speed-wise it would make more sense to drop all the intermediate stops on both sides of the border for the VAC-SEA-PDX run.

That would only fix one issue of having to stop in places but in places like Bellingham and Everett you already have speed restrictions where the train has to slow down so you might as well stop. Part of the train is interconnecting many areas and not just the main cities. I know SEA-PDX is supposed to get a 5th and 6th round trip next year when the trains move off the coastline and onto the inland rails reducing travel time by about 10-15 minutes.

Originally Posted by Kisai

Since the bottleneck is the bridge, the reasonable answer is to actually "move" the Vancouver terminus to Scott Road station. However most of the existing train runs leave within a half hour of the Skytrain starting up. So the Skytrain needs to start a bit earlier to allow people at Waterfront to get there. The existing Terminus at Pacific Central gives you about 15-20 minutes to board if you take the first Skytrain from either Waterfront or New West.

There was talk of that in the Cascades Long Range Plan to avoid the expenses of rail works north of the Fraser but I am not sure if that would create a hit in ridership due to the downtown proximity of Pacific Central and Skytrain access. The main question is does it take 26 minutes to get from Pacific Central to Scott Road via the Cascades? I think one of the main issues at the River is not only the speed but having to wait for clearance which can take a long time. If it wasn't for the terrible approach on the north side let alone the age of the span, you would likely be able to have a speed increase even to 50 km/h would be nice.

They have replaced the trestles North of White Rock so that should increase comfort let alone reliability but I do think a few simple tweaks can bring travel times down from 4 hours to 3 hours 30 minutes.

[Trainguy]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

The track splits 2 and 3 ways, but what are the typical conflicting moves? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that most freight traffic is North Shore - Thornton Yard in Surrey CN traffic, while all but a few of the passenger trains are Pacific Central-Seattle. With two tracks, you can have a CN North Shore train on the east track and an Amtrak on the west track (provided that you double the northern approach, which is a single track segment of an otherwise double-tracked line) without one of them being in the other's way. Sure, SRY and Annacis traffic might still conflict, but you've got fewer potential conflicts to schedule around, and of course trains going the other direction

see this map I just threw together http://i.imgur.com/neft5EM.png

With respect to there not being enough traffic to justify upgrades, we are kind of in a 'let's not build a bridge because look how few people are swimming the river' situation with regard to the Amtrak Cascades north. That's not to say that White Rock is a worthy idea at this time, but merely that it's hard to make judgements about the value of investing in faster and more efficient service by looking at the current ridership of slow, inefficient service

The other issue is that the bridge is owned by the Feds. The pillars are original from 1904 so a whole new bridge would need to be constructed along with a double track approach (as you said) on the north side. How motivated are the Feds to spend millions of dollars?

It takes too long for the Cascades to get to faster track speed just across the border. The slow section is just getting out of Canada. The border to Seattle is pretty quick.

River traffic also gets priority with the swing bridge. I have seen trains held up for up to 30 mins waiting for a tug to pass through.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by Kisai

Since the bottleneck is the bridge, the reasonable answer is to actually "move" the Vancouver terminus to Scott Road station. However most of the existing train runs leave within a half hour of the Skytrain starting up. So the Skytrain needs to start a bit earlier to allow people at Waterfront to get there. The existing Terminus at Pacific Central gives you about 15-20 minutes to board if you take the first Skytrain from either Waterfront or New West.

WSDOT thought that was a good idea and would attract more ridership in their 2006 higher speed rail report, but I question their conclusions. As the report itself notes, Downtown stations are considerably more attractive than suburban stations according to Amtrak's findings. Few visitors want to be dumped in a parking lot in Surrey, and if their train is late or their departure is early they're going to be a long ways from their likely non-Scott-Road destination. Pacific Central might not be perfect, but it's considerably closer to visitors' destinations and is the location of the intercity bus terminal. Scott Road is attractive for South-of-Fraser motorists, but how many such people are going to take a train in the first place?

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

WSDOT thought that was a good idea and would attract more ridership in their 2006 higher speed rail report, but I question their conclusions. As the report itself notes, Downtown stations are considerably more attractive than suburban stations according to Amtrak's findings. Few visitors want to be dumped in a parking lot in Surrey, and if their train is late or their departure is early they're going to be a long ways from their likely non-Scott-Road destination. Pacific Central might not be perfect, but it's considerably closer to visitors' destinations and is the location of the intercity bus terminal. Scott Road is attractive for South-of-Fraser motorists, but how many such people are going to take a train in the first place?

If there was a daily commuter train from White Rock to Pacific Central via Scott Road station that might justify the existence. Pacific Central isn't quite "downtown" but it's still close enough that a taxi isn't out of the question for people on the north side of the Fraser.

There's a presentation on suggesting re-opening the Blaine,WA station instead, but likely won't be revisited till 2017. (This link doesn't work in Chrome but works in firefox)

Maybe once full pre-clearance is done, so there's no stopping at Blaine for the border check, they could instead have the train pick up passengers in Blaine without as long of a wait.

[Bdawe]

While riding the Millenium Line into Braid Station earlier today, I noted an old passenger coach under tarps on the spur that goes up next the the large old factory next to Braid Station.

Anyone know the story behind those?

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Kisai

If there was a daily commuter train from White Rock to Pacific Central via Scott Road station that might justify the existence. Pacific Central isn't quite "downtown" but it's still close enough that a taxi isn't out of the question for people on the north side of the Fraser.

It makes no sense why the WCE has not been expanded to other routes.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

It makes no sense why the WCE has not been expanded to other routes.

I'd like to agree totally. A White rock Line makes total sense, routed perhaps through New West, then Surrey Central, and down through Newton to White Rock.
So might a forward-looking valley line Vancouver to Cloverdale and Langley, on to Abb/Clearbrook, to Chilliwack, maybe even Hope, "The Squamish of the East."
That one's destined to be a major commuter corridor.