Millennium Line - Evergreen Extension | Completed

[MIPS]

I'm totally okay with it terminating there for the next 30 years. We already have a spur roughed in a few stations back.
That being said, greening up around that stub behind Douglas where they will likely park trains during off-peak hours so it's not as obvious as say Richmond/Brighouse station would be nice.

[mrtinvan]

I find it strange that the spur out to PoCo splits before Coquitlam Central station. Won't they have to either build another stationhouse/half platform, or will trains just skip Coquitlam and head down to PoCo?

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by mrtinvan

I find it strange that the spur out to PoCo splits before Coquitlam Central station. Won't they have to either build another stationhouse/half platform, or will trains just skip Coquitlam and head down to PoCo?

there will be new platforms at Coquitlam Central to go to/from Mission when that eastern extension is built.

Traveling between Mission and Lafarge will require going down to the concourse and up to other platform to change trains Coquitlam Central.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jsbertram

there will be new platforms at Coquitlam Central to go to/from Mission when that eastern extension is built.

Traveling between Mission and Lafarge will require going down to the concourse and up to other platform to change trains Coquitlam Central.

Mission? Let's start a little closer.

What is a natural spot in Maple Ridge for a line to reach/terminate?

Whenever that is built, the Lafarge stub will seem a bit silly IMO.

[MIPS]

Well then if you wanna think crazy we could consider it one day to be the spur that will eventually loop back to North Vancouver.

[GlassCity]

Yeah, I don't see Mission ever happening as there's just too much farmland in between. Maple Ridge, however, I think it probably will happen one day. The current bus loop would be a logical terminus.

[mrtinvan]

Hard to say what the booming growth out there will bring but currently I think stops along this extension if it follows Lougheed Hwy would probably be:

Shaugnessy Street (Port Coquitlam)
Coast Meridian Area
Harris Road (Pitt Meadows)
Maple Meadows
224th / Lougheed Terminus

[mrtinvan]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Well then if you wanna think crazy we could consider it one day to be the spur that will eventually loop back to North Vancouver.

I'd put money on a Hastings St. rapid transit line doing a dive under Burrard Inlet and popping up on the north shore. Maybe around 2075 at our current rate of infrastructure investment.

[red-paladin]

Originally Posted by mrtinvan

Hard to say what the booming growth out there will bring but currently I think stops along this extension if it follows Lougheed Hwy would probably be:

Shaugnessy Street (Port Coquitlam)
Coast Meridian Area
Harris Road (Pitt Meadows)
Maple Meadows
224th / Lougheed Terminus

This makes sense to me, in about 20 extra years.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by mrtinvan

I'd put money on a Hastings St. rapid transit line doing a dive under Burrard Inlet and popping up on the north shore. Maybe around 2075 at our current rate of infrastructure investment.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by mrtinvan

I'd put money on a Hastings St. rapid transit line doing a dive under Burrard Inlet and popping up on the north shore. Maybe around 2075 at our current rate of infrastructure investment.

Why not a bridge? They built one going over the Fraser River.

[mrtinvan]

Why not a bridge? They built one going over the Fraser River.

Since the Lions Gate is already too low to allow larger/taller cruise ships into the harbour, and its only going to get worse as Post Panamax ships come into service. I'd be willing to bet that a tunnel would be built before a new bridge.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by mrtinvan

Since the Lions Gate is already too low to allow larger/taller cruise ships into the harbour, and its only going to get worse as Post Panamax ships come into service. I'd be willing to bet that a tunnel would be built before a new bridge.

I highly doubt that the Lionsgate Bridge will be torn down any time soon. If the Skytrain bridge was built as high as the Second Narrows Bridge is, it would future proof the bridge.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I highly doubt that the Lionsgate Bridge will be torn down any time soon. If the Skytrain bridge was built as high as the Second Narrows Bridge is, it would future proof the bridge.

The problem is that there are only two places you can reasonably build a bridge across the inlet, and both of them mean that the Skytrain would have to take a reasonably circuitous route to the centre of North Vancouver. That, plus the extra stations that would inevitably have to be built along that route mean that it would take pretty much as long to get from downtown to Lonsdale Quay as the Seabus does. So while it may benefit a few people who live pretty far east or west of Lonsdale Quay (depending on the routing), there isn't that much of an incentive for most people to make Skytrain worthwhile. Particularly not if we get a third Seabus that increases frequencies to 10 minutes.

Heck, we could afford to build four more Seabuses so as to provide 5-minute service and pay to operate them for a few decades for less than the cost of building Skytrain to the North Shore. People seem to forget that Seabus itself is essentially grade-separated rapid transit because there's almost nothing that can interfere with it's pretty expeditious schedule.

I love Skytrain, but we need to be realistic about where it makes sense to run it, especially when we have so many other transit projects that would provide far more overall benefit.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The problem is that there are only two places you can reasonably build a bridge across the inlet, and both of them mean that the Skytrain would have to take a reasonably circuitous route to the centre of North Vancouver. That, plus the extra stations that would inevitably have to be built along that route mean that it would take pretty much as long to get from downtown to Lonsdale Quay as the Seabus does. So while it may benefit a few people who live pretty far east or west of Lonsdale Quay (depending on the routing), there isn't that much of an incentive for most people to make Skytrain worthwhile. Particularly not if we get a third Seabus that increases frequencies to 10 minutes.

Heck, we could afford to build four more Seabuses so as to provide 5-minute service and pay to operate them for a few decades for less than the cost of building Skytrain to the North Shore. People seem to forget that Seabus itself is essentially grade-separated rapid transit because there's almost nothing that can interfere with it's pretty expeditious schedule.

I love Skytrain, but we need to be realistic about where it makes sense to run it, especially when we have so many other transit projects that would provide far more overall benefit.

You are right, the cost to build the bridge would be quite high.

The travel time is not bad on the Seabus, yet. I could see a Line going through North Vancouver being built. It could simply connect the Seabus Terminal to the other places on the North Shore. Lonsdale Quay could become what the Waterfront Station is today.

[Genauso]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I highly doubt that the Lionsgate Bridge will be torn down any time soon. If the Skytrain bridge was built as high as the Second Narrows Bridge is, it would future proof the bridge.

Lions Gate Bridge won't close to cars, city and province say
04.16.2015 by Sinoski & Shaw, Vancouver Sun

The statements followed media reports that the Park Board would decommission the bridge in 15 years, if a third crossing was built across the Burrard Inlet, as per an agreement signed in 2000 with the city, province, TransLink and ICBC.

Former Park Board Commissioner Allan De Genova said he made the initial pitch to close the Lions Gate Bridge and replace it with a bored tunnel under Main Street to Marine Drive. “It never got to that actual ink deal” that a third crossing would be built by 2030, he added, but there was a lot of talk -- and memos -- back then that the issue would have to be revisited in the next 30 years.

There will be tunnel(s), but today's class of politicians are likely to just hold on for as long as possible. see: 2000 Lion's gate refurbishment, 2017 Patullo repairs

There isn't a clear or good example for the path forward. The Lion's Gate bridge itself was a privately built tolled bridge, built by the Guinness family who became involved in developing 'The British Properties' in West Vancouver, because they were among the few who could bypass the eastern Canadian establishment whose interests were in maintaining a Canadian Pacific monopoly on real estate development in Vancouver.

The Gordon Campbell era Public-Private-Partnerships did build large projects of adequate quality, but the private-only financing component inflated costs (aka corruption & magic accounting for public finances) beyond what is affordable on a continuous basis. Furthermore, it's not clear they did anything better in soliciting/communicating/organizing the team of contractors who do the actual work.

The one era where large infrastructure was built while disposable income grew, were under the Bennett dynasty (the Socred party. Rose out of the depression, destroyed by arguably the worst BC premier in history Bill Vanderzalm. Vanderzalm's major backers are the group who anointed Christy Clark, and they recently cooperated in dumping the HST), in those golden years the economic ledger and global context was very different.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

I love Skytrain, but we need to be realistic about where it makes sense to run it, especially when we have so many other transit projects that would provide far more overall benefit.

Indeed. About the only logical reason to replace the seabus would be if fuel prices climb exponentially again, or carbon taxes make it nonviable.

Getting the Skytrain over there would have to be combined with another crossing being built/replaced, and at this point it would more likely have to be a second-narrows/highway-1/boundary-rd type of skytrain extension.

As far as priorities are concerned the only bridge that would make sense to be converted to Skytrain-only is the Lions Gate. So Perhaps if Vancouver wanted to completely remove highway 99 from going through downtown and instead go under/around it, maybe there would be some incentive there, but that also seems like a redicious expense and CoV would probably rather just end highway 99 at Broadway.

[Marshal]

Skytrain will not be going to the North Shore while any of us are alive. Seabus works conceptually: the North Shore needs good transit radiating out from lower Lonsdale to feed boats to downtown. Seabus capacity has a lot of room to grow. There could be many more of them with a much higher frequency, and when that becomes insufficient, bigger boats/ferries can be used.

I think Skytrain has extended itself out far enough (minor exceptions accepted) and now needs to be further developed primarily in Burnaby and the City of Vancouver: up Granville with a bend to run out Hastings, Willingdon from Brentwood to Metrotown and then west into Vancouver, Broadway all the way - these should be the next priorities. (Its a waste of time arguing the details of the routes, so just consider the Scope or Zone I am discussing.)

Past this, in the true suburban surround, we need to find more creative solutions with the aim of feeding the main spokes of Skytrain and extensions of the West Coast Express into a GO Train kind of network.

I think we have little use for light rail with a big exception: streetcars. Streetcar networks would work great to feed the faster, more far-reaching train networks. Streetcars would work for the North Shore, for Surrey, definitely for downtown, for central Richmond, to link Coquitlam with PoCo, maybe even in New Westminster and central Burnaby. And please note: all streetcars need not be the same . . . for example, Surrey could run higher speed streetcars with fewer stops, essentially replicating what they currently want to do with LRT, but with the added flexibility of much more variability in schgedules/frequency, and also with vehicles capable of running more traditional scaled routes.

[Bdawe]

It's worth noting that Lonsdale is not the only destination on the North Shore, and that a North Shore rail line would be able to serve more of them more rapidly even if it only equaled the Waterfront-Lonsdale speed of the Sea Bus

[logan5]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The problem is that there are only two places you can reasonably build a bridge across the inlet...

What 2 places are you referring to?

A bridge connecting Main Street and Lonsdale (or thereabouts) makes the most sense. Using causeways at both approaches solves a few problems and it seems reasonably doable.

The problem with a tunnel is that the approach would be some distance away from the shore and the main arteries into the DT core. The entrance/exit on the Main Street side of a tunnel would be around science world.

If and when a bridge is built, it would probly have bus lanes which would make the trip as fast or faster than the 20 km/h Seabus.

That's my take. --- Copied/Pasted to appropriate thread.