Expo Line - Surrey Langley Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by Bobert

This is a good perspective that many people on the forum simply lack. We've had quite a few expansions, and fairly major expansions if I might add.

I just calculated this - the original Millennium Line, Canada Line, and Evergreen Extension totaled around 47 km of the approximately 80 km of SkyTrain infrastructure. A system that's been around for about 31 years has had around 60% of it built within the last 15. That's pretty huge.

[Reecemartin]

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[scryer]

Originally Posted by Colin4567

I just calculated this - the original Millennium Line, Canada Line, and Evergreen Extension totaled around 47 km of the approximately 80 km of SkyTrain infrastructure. A system that's been around for about 31 years has had around 60% of it built within the last 15. That's pretty huge.

The most important thing is to keep growing the system. If you look at Toronto and Montreal they also had similar booms in growth on their systems, but look at them now from the 70's to present neither has seem a significant expansion. Lets hope thats not Vancouver.

I think that sometimes we forget that Canada is a huge country with its population very widespread. Hell, we have provinces larger than most countries. It's good to be thankful for what BC has, and what we have achieved; in fact I feel that BC has some of the most forward-thinking politicians in the game (not including this Surrey LRT buuullllshiiiit) when it comes to transportation.

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by scryer

I think that sometimes we forget that Canada is a huge country with its population very widespread. Hell, we have provinces larger than most countries. It's good to be thankful for what BC has, and what we have achieved; in fact I feel that BC has some of the most forward-thinking politicians in the game (not including this Surrey LRT buuullllshiiiit) when it comes to transportation.

The limiting factor is our population. Of course when you're in Europe in some densely-packed cities (I remember reading something on Steven Resse's blog, or maybe Gordon Price's, that showed Atlanta has the same population as Barcelona but all within 160 km2) your transit ridership is way up due to the sheer number of people, so a standard bus route here would almost have to be a streetcar or LRT line there. Same thing with Japan and bullet trains - it's 100 million people packed onto a tiny island. How we think we can afford a $60 billion bullet train from here to Seattle, with only like 6 million people in the combined metro areas, I don't know.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Well frankly forward thinking is definitely not true for pretty much anything besides the Expo Line. The Millenium Line was built mainly to serve political gains, the Canada Line was painfully underbuilt, etc.

Agreed, Millennium Line would have been better off going along Hastings then through downtown and out to UBC that way. Only now (17 years later) are we seeing the benefits of development along the Lougheed Highway corridor that the Millennium Line parallels.

Side note, anyone else find it funny how Surrey wants low-rise (like 6 story) residential-commercial real estate along its line, the exact kind of development occurring along Hastings with only a B-line?

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Colin4567

Agreed, Millennium Line would have been better off going along Hastings then through downtown and out to UBC that way. Only now (17 years later) are we seeing the benefits of development along the Lougheed Highway corridor that the Millennium Line parallels.

Side note, anyone else find it funny how Surrey wants low-rise (like 6 story) residential-commercial real estate along its line, the exact kind of development occurring along Hastings with only a B-line?

There are a lot of areas that still haven't been built up along the Expo Line and it's been around for a lot longer. Cambie isn't building that tall either with the Canada Line. I think we can cut Surrey some slack in that department.

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by Sheba

There are a lot of areas that still haven't been built up along the Expo Line and it's been around for a lot longer. Cambie isn't building that tall either with the Canada Line. I think we can cut Surrey some slack in that department.

My point was simply that LRT is not a necessity for growth along a corridor. It's an interaction of many, many variables.

[djmk]

Originally Posted by scryer

I think that sometimes we forget that Canada is a huge country with its population very widespread. Hell, we have provinces larger than most countries.

BC is 1.5 times the size of France with about 6% of the population

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Colin4567]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

I don't know if Hastings is really a good comparison. Nothing with regard to what is developed is hard and fast either. Toronto has a Subway with 4 times the capacity of the Canada Line serving a route which carries the same number of people as the 96 B-Line. And its a big regret.

I'm aware of Sheppard. Again, my point is that transit is only ONE PART of the puzzle to create growth.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

I don't know if Hastings is really a good comparison. Nothing with regard to what is developed is hard and fast either. Toronto has a Subway with 4 times the capacity of the Canada Line serving a route which carries the same number of people as the 96 B-Line. And its a big regret.

The Sheppard subway isn't a terribly good comparison either - too short to be of any use on Sheppard itself, and it only connects to the rest of the network on one side, making it basically a spur.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Bdawe]

The Sheppard example is somewhat confounded by Toronto's twin ills of self-sabotaged staffing costs and a refusal to elevate (where Vancouver would use an automated train, Toronto would use two-man trains, and while they've finally 1-manned the sheppard line in 2016, a lot of the impression of a too-expensive line came before.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

If Sheppard were placed on King George Boulevard it would be virtually the same distance as the LRT Line planned there. You also have to know that Toronto's subways rarely succeed on the corridor alone but, usually dependent on buses coming from populated neighboring areas oh which Sheppard has a lot. Nonetheless, a good case of an area where demand for 30'000 pphd never materialized.

The Sheppard's only 5.5 km long, half the distance of the SNG route. Even then, a hypothetical SkyTrain would have more demand by virtue of geometry, having the Expo connection in the middle (instead of just one end) and being anchored at both termini by Newton and Guildford; at last check, Don Mills isn't exactly a "town centre."

It's not like the SkyTrain isn't mostly fed by buses too. That's how rapid transit works - you can't have express service everywhere at once, so you set up a few express routes and have everybody on the local grid funnel their way to the fast option.

Originally Posted by Bdawe

The Sheppard example is somewhat confounded by Toronto's twin ills of self-sabotaged staffing costs and a refusal to elevate (where Vancouver would use an automated train, Toronto would use two-man trains, and while they've finally 1-manned the sheppard line in 2016, a lot of the impression of a too-expensive line came before.

That, plus it's not very well synced to the rest of the metro network. If it ran west from Sheppard-Yonge to Sheppard West, it would serve as a connector line for all Yonge-University riders instead of just a branch line for people on the east section.

[Reecemartin]

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[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Yonge and University are for all intents and purposes. Sheppard goes through highly populated areas of North York.

Thing is, rapid transit is an intra-urban network; a BRT/LRT/RRT/whatever can’t just be built for commuters who live and work on the corridor, it also needs to serve commuters who use it to get to other places beyond it.

It needs a useful “hub” terminus on both ends as well. To quote the experts:

This is a particular issue when we’re talking about ending the line... That’s because the end of the line needs to be an especially high ridership generator, or what transit planners call an “anchor.”

As you get near the end of a transit line, the vehicle tends to empty out because it’s going fewer places and therefore attracts fewer boardings. This can lead to permanent wasted capacity near the end of the line, what we call a “weak anchor.” A “strong anchor” is a big destination right at the end of the line that compensates for this problem by giving lots of people a reason to use the line all the way to its endpoint.

And Don Mills doesn’t seem to be very good at that. If Line 4 went from Sheppard West to Sheppard-Yonge, it’d get a whole lot of traffic at each end with people transferring from one branch of Y-U to the other - similar to all the Expo-Canada transfers that the 99 B-Line gets. Right now, the east end terminates in what's basically the middle of nowhere.

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

The important thing is making sure demand exists.

Absolutely. It’s just easier to make sure it exists (or will exist) by looking at the "geometry" of the area rather than just the composition.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Thing is, rapid transit is an intra-urban network; a BRT/LRT/RRT/whatever can’t just be built for commuters who live and work on the corridor, it also needs to serve commuters who use it to get to other places beyond it.

The Expo Line end hub in Surrey right now is Surrey Central Station - King George Station is more a relief station for the King George buses and a place to drive up to to drop someone off (Surrey Central Station is a nightmare for that). It would make way more sense to extend it one more stop over to the Outpatient Centre and RCMP headquarters (which has acres of surface parking... ).

Note: this doesn't mean I don't think Expo shouldn't be extended along Fraser Hwy. I am a big supporter of that - I just think we're going to have to wait a long time for it for happen.