The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by milomilo

They have less room inside, awkward layouts and are not automated.

Automation in most cases requires not only an exclusive right of way but also grade separation. This pushes costs to a whole level higher. Much of Ottawa's LRT is at grade. If Ottawa was to require a line that mostly underground or elevated, it would have been unaffordable. Furthermore, there are only limited advantages to automation.

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by milomilo

They have less room inside, awkward layouts and are not automated.

They can be fully automated, they have full ATC. I'd also note that for the Alstom cars at least the layout is just as good as what the Skytrain is using.

Make sure you do your research before making arguments about something like this.

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Automation in most cases requires not only an exclusive right of way but also grade separation. This pushes costs to a whole level higher. Much of Ottawa's LRT is at grade. If Ottawa was to require a line that mostly underground or elevated, it would have been unaffordable. Furthermore, there are only limited advantages to automation.

You have confused at-grade and grade separation here. Ottawas Line runs at-grade for a large portion of its routing but this simply means at ground level. Significant portions of the Toronto Subway and Skytrain in Vancouver are at-grade.

Grade separation means the tracks do not intersect crosswalks, roadways, or other railway tracks. Hence a ground level train can be grade separated as long as rodes crossing it are elevated or tunnelled and the same for pedestrian crossings and other rail lines. Nonetheless Ottawas trains are 100% capable of running fully automated just like Vancouvers Skytrain. The driver is only present to press the GO button and handle the doors.

[mintzilla]

^time for me to apply to be a driver of one of those trains then.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by mintzilla

^time for me to apply to be a driver of one of those trains then.

Same as in Montréal, they're called metro operators and not drivers for a reason.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by milomilo

From what I have seen of the process of the Green Line in Calgary being designed, I don't think that is true. City Council in Calgary really wanted an at grade streetcar style line the whole way, which is why it was decided to be low floor before the route was even set. They really believe the lie that putting rails in the street would turn the whole corridor into an urban paradise. They spent a long time trying to see if they could run at grade through downtown, but it was obvious from the start this was impractical for many reasons - elevation changes, the CP railway, direction changes, block sizes, impact on traffic etc.

So after years of deliberation, the line was put underground because that was the only place they could. If the option to put it at grade was available, they definitely would have chosen that, I have no doubt. They don't care that all the places on the existing LRT that interact with traffic correlate exactly with the places where the most problems are.

That explains why it's at grade for long stretches outside of downtown.

Originally Posted by milomilo

Just don't believe that if money was no object an at grade LRT would ever be chosen over a grade separated mass transit system.

Calgary chose LRT because part of the system will run at-grade outside of downtown (unless that has changed since the I've seen the plans).

Ottawa chose LRT partly because they wanted to leave the option of at-grade outside downtown, but that has since changed. But they're are other reasons (official or not); 1. LRT can go up and down steeper grades and take tighter turns, which helps reduce costs of the downtown tunnel. 2. A low-floor LRT also requires less space, which means smaller tunnel and lower ceilings at stations. 3. The system also travels outside for most of the route and in such conditions, overhead wires are better than third rail AFAIK. 4. We also need to consider the BRT corridor conversion; the trains we chose have to fit through the existing corridor, and that was especially true for St-Laurent Station where much of the existing infrastructure had to be used. Clearance and platform height had to be compatible with an overhead walkway and the existing stairs. Digging to lower the right-of-way was not an option because of a major sewer line/watermain under the corridor.

In the case of Ottawa, LRT was much cheaper than heavy-rail would have been.

The only disadvantage with low-floor LRT is the limitations of interior layouts, but considering our system will be used mostly to shuttle suburbanites to their downtown offices, that's not such an issue because we want more seats. The max capacity of our system will be 24,000 phpd, matching Vancouver's Expo and Millenium Lines and significantly better than Canada Line.

Originally Posted by milomilo

They have less room inside, awkward layouts and are not automated.

Our trains are wider than Montreal's and they are fully automated, though we will have conductors, at least at first (no word on if and when we will eliminate them). Not sure if this is a regulation for low-floor vehicles or a City decision.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Cars spew exhaust into the air and also by their very nature are unpredictable. Trams running on tracks are the very definition of predictable.

Again it should be clear why this doesn't apply to buses, they aren't very accessible and also don't follow rails.

I'd also hardly call a tramway a railroad (that's evoking something like a freight train).

It's not developer nonsense that reliable and permanent transit DOES make people want to be downtown, the fact that it's at grade is secondary to this. You are missing the point of Urban Transit if you think it needs to fly through downtown at 60+ km/h. Of course, if you have a massive metropolitan area then having that type of service is a good idea but when the plan is to improve the livability of the core of your city then a tram is fine as it will still be much faster than walking around the core for people and as has been mentioned the Valley Line speeds up a lot outside of Downtown Edmonton given its longer stretches of ROW

So now these LRTs are tram ways? That sounds like a pretty poor choice for a back bone system.

I am not fully against LRTs with at grade segments, for example Vancouver’s proposed Arbutus LRT, but that will be a more local relief line, not the primary line for the general area.

I agree that reliable permanent transit does want to make people want to live downtown / near stations, but in an urban setting far more people will ditch their cars / choose to do so if that system can compete with driving speeds and have high frequencies.

If this approach to LRT is so ideal then why does Vancouver’s lowest capacity line, the Canada Line, have a higher daily ridership than the entire Portland LRT Max system? (which has nearly 100km of rail vs. the Canada Line’s 19km...)

Edmonton isn’t building some complimentary system to an existing metro network, this is the heart of their system, and to handicap it like this is a major mistake.

There is a lot of truth to the saying, you get what you pay for.

Is grade separation more expensive? Yes. Is it more versatile and likely to generate higher ridership levels? Yes.

So what is your benchmark population for grade separation? If I recall you are in support of the Broadway Subway? Why doesn’t Edmonton deserve similar?

This will probably be the last I comment on the Edmonton LRT because I am honestly not that invested in their projects (unlike Vancouver where I will fight to the end for grade separation) and I also don’t want to get into a circular argument with you. We may just have to agree to disagree.

PS, besides large trucks in need of a tune up (or full replacement) I actually haven’t really noticed car exhaust to the level of actually bothering me in years along a major downtown street

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

They can be fully automated, they have full ATC. I'd also note that for the Alstom cars at least the layout is just as good as what the Skytrain is using.

Make sure you do your research before making arguments about something like this.

Don't tell me to do my research when you're purposely ignoring the point of my posts. Yes, a low floor vehicle could be automated, but you'd have to grade separate the whole system, and if you've done that what benefit would low floor vehicles give? Absolutely nothing. That's what Ottawa has done, built a system that gives zero benefit to low floors yet used them anyway, and also has the stupidity of wasting money on unnecessary operators.

Calgary is slightly different, we are building a line where the claimed benefits of using that technology have been touted, but will have almost no value as the line is almost entirely grade separated and in it's own ROW. The platforms being a few inches lower does nothing. And it will only, maybe, be a small future benefit if they run a future phase down the middle of a street. A scenario everyone hopes they don't do.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Our trains are wider than Montreal's and they are fully automated, though we will have conductors, at least at first (no word on if and when we will eliminate them). Not sure if this is a regulation for low-floor vehicles or a City decision.

They will likely keep the conductors, they'll unionize and it will be politically impossible to get rid of them, even though they are 100% a waste of money.

Yes you can make a low floor vehicle as wide as a high one, but it would still be compromised. Again, don't get me wrong, it's a fine compromise in the right context, if there is extensive street running it makes sense. But in cases like Calgary and Ottawa the only benefit you gain (slightly lower platforms) is not there, so using it was pointless.

Honestly, I'm making more of a big deal about this than it really is, but it annoys me that this argument is constantly misrepresented, especially by my City's administration. Saving money is fine, but I don't like my city to throw up bus shelters and run dinky trains at exorbitant costs and tell me it's better.

[MalcolmTucker]

To get rid of conductors you need platform intrusion systems, or a system where the train can see something on the tracks that is unusual. Not just automatic train control.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Well I'd consider that a reversible argument. Time saved by decreased travel time is taken by increased access time and vice versa. One would need to actually measure specific scenarios to see which actually resulted in the lower overall trip times. But even if the overall trip was longer due to slower transit speeds, the aspects related to the transit leg of the trip are an aspect of the transit service rather than the pedestrian experience. So even if the total trip time is increased it doesn't mean the benefit to the pedestrian leg of the trip is untrue.

In terms of waiting indoor vs out, if you're waiting so long for an LRT vehicle that you freeze your balls off, I have to wonder if the service is even frequent enough to justify underground stations to begin with. Besides, you're ignoring that if the stations are further apart, it takes longer to get to one to begin with (which often means a longer walk outside in the cold).



We've already established that there are pros and cons to both options. I can definitely think of scenarios in which I would consider surface rail integrated into the streetscape to be the superior option even if funds were available for a tunnel because of the improvement to, and integration with, the public realm, the visibility, accessibility etc. I can certainly accept if someone prefers an underground route over a surface option in a given scenario or even in general, but claiming that there is absolutely no benefit to surface transit other than cost is not a "truthful" way to present the argument.

Yep I agree with most of this, thank you for treating the argument rationally.

You are actually right, if money was no object then building surface rail would be good in some situations, so I was wrong to say that. If they were free, I'd love to have a network of streetcars. However, in most cases the LRT lines we have built have been longer distance lines with a heavy focus on commuters, so for that purpose you don't want it slowed down with at grade running. There are definitely pros and cons to both, but my issue is when the cons are presented as pros and the benefits don't exist in reality.

Off peak our LRT here runs every 15 minutes, although it always seems like it is always delayed on the coldest days. That's certainly long enough for me to not want to be waiting outside.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

If this approach to LRT is so ideal then why does Vancouver’s lowest capacity line, the Canada Line, have a higher daily ridership than the entire Portland LRT Max system? (which has nearly 100km of rail vs. the Canada Line’s 19km...)

So what about Calgary? Similarly sized as Portland with an at grade LRT like Portland but less expansive than Portland.

We can't compare ridership in the U.S. with Canada. Other than NYC, ridership in the U.S. is dismal. Washington D.C. has a metro population of 6 million, 188 kilometer subways and a daily ridership of only 829,200 and Chicago metro has a population of 9.5 million, 166 kilometers of El's and a ridership of 763,000. While in Canada, Toronto has 6 million/76.9 km/1.1 million and Montreal 4.1 million/69 km/1.25 million.

If were looking at mid-sized cities, take for example Baltimore 2.8 million/24.9 km/48,000 or Cleveland 2 million/31 km/17,000. Those are some embarrassing figures.

EDIT: this graphic, posted here time and time again, tells the whole story.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_No...ia/File:NorthAmericanPublicTransport.png

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by milomilo

They will likely keep the conductors, they'll unionize and it will be politically impossible to get rid of them, even though they are 100% a waste of money.

Yes you can make a low floor vehicle as wide as a high one, but it would still be compromised. Again, don't get me wrong, it's a fine compromise in the right context, if there is extensive street running it makes sense. But in cases like Calgary and Ottawa the only benefit you gain (slightly lower platforms) is not there, so using it was pointless.

Honestly, I'm making more of a big deal about this than it really is, but it annoys me that this argument is constantly misrepresented, especially by my City's administration. Saving money is fine, but I don't like my city to throw up bus shelters and run dinky trains at exorbitant costs and tell me it's better.

I listed a whole bunch of other reasons why Ottawa went with lrt. In Ottawa's case, it lrt was much cheaper than heavy rail.

As MalcolmTucker pointed out, having conductors means we don't need platform doors, saving the city hundreds of millions in construction costs on top of the smaller tunnel with a more flexible route.

At the end of the day, technology won't matter to daily users.

[MalcolmTucker]

The average speed of the Bloor–Danforth subway is 32 kilometres per hour. Average in Vancouver is 45 kph. Montreal metro is 40 kph. Calgary’s LRT averages 30 kph. Ottawa’s will average 35 kph.

Edmonton’s Valley line? 27kph. 5 kph higher than Toronto’s projected ground level segments of the Eglinton Line. Toronto’s streetcars, 15 kph in mixed traffic. I think Toronto people are allergic to LRT thinking that since their city council won’t make the sacrifices needed to speed it up so assume that other cities similarly won’t.

A big difference is that in Edmonton your trip length is likely to be shorter because the city is a prairie city - radiating from a central point - it will be comparable to get to west Edmonton mall from downtown Edmonton as it is from downtown Toronto to Yorkdale . Also all of Edmonton’s big trip destinations that aren’t directly on the new line, are on the old one. So the likelihood of a bus-train-train-bus trip is lower.

But as anyone who has looked at systems, the big constraint on trip time is frequency, especially when you need to transfer. Edmonton’s existing LRT runs at low frequencies, partly because they can - they can run longer trains and save operator wages. So you can’t look at average speed in isolation. Edmonton’s line running in the tunnel averages 35 kph but the frequencies make one look at suburban bus services in Toronto with envy. A trip that requires a train train transfer in Edmonton will suffer more from low frequencies than from one of the trains not being in a tunnel.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I listed a whole bunch of other reasons why Ottawa went with lrt. In Ottawa's case, it lrt was much cheaper than heavy rail.

As MalcolmTucker pointed out, having conductors means we don't need platform doors, saving the city hundreds of millions in construction costs on top of the smaller tunnel with a more flexible route.

At the end of the day, technology won't matter to daily users.

Fair enough. If it truly was cheaper to go the low floor route, then fine that is a good reason.

You don't need platform edge doors - Skytrain doesn't. I'd be interested to know if the cost of the additional intrusion detection was more than the cost of drivers for the next 30 years or century.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by milomilo

Yep I agree with most of this, thank you for treating the argument rationally.

You are actually right, if money was no object then building surface rail would be good in some situations, so I was wrong to say that. If they were free, I'd love to have a network of streetcars. However, in most cases the LRT lines we have built have been longer distance lines with a heavy focus on commuters, so for that purpose you don't want it slowed down with at grade running. There are definitely pros and cons to both, but my issue is when the cons are presented as pros and the benefits don't exist in reality.

Off peak our LRT here runs every 15 minutes, although it always seems like it is always delayed on the coldest days. That's certainly long enough for me to not want to be waiting outside.

I didn't realize that off-peak frequency dropped that low. Based on the ridership figures and other characteristics I was expecting peak to be under 5 min and off peak to be at least 7-10 min. Does the city have any shelters with infrared heat lamps? That's one thing that's been introduced in some busier transfer point shelters here and people seem to enjoy them.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I didn't realize that off-peak frequency dropped that low. Based on the ridership figures and other characteristics I was expecting peak to be under 5 min and off peak to be at least 7-10 min. Does the city have any shelters with infrared heat lamps? That's one thing that's been introduced in some busier transfer point shelters here and people seem to enjoy them.

There's a mix, there are some full on stations with heated interiors, but some places have only unheated shelters. Seemingly the closer you get to downtown the worse they get. Peak frequency is about every 6 minutes, which is fine and the max it can be, but yeah off peak is pretty awful, every 15 minutes. Off peak frequency is where a system like Vancouver's really pulls ahead because they only have to pay for the electricity and extra maintenance and not the driver.

[Dengler Avenue]

For the longest time, I’ve been wondering why intercity public transit (I.e. Go Bus) runs coaches or even double deckers when there are less than 10 people on the bus.

Then it occurred to me that the fuel tank of a conventional bus won’t be big enough for the bus to travel hundreds of kilometres.

Is that right?

[Innsertnamehere]

It's for fleet consistency. They need the big buses for peak times, but aren't going to buy different buses for off peak periods. Thus 10 people on a 50 person bus.

The additional fuel costs for a larger bus are also marginal at best - there is almost no difference.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

The average speed of the Bloor–Danforth subway is 32 kilometres per hour. Average in Vancouver is 45 kph. Montreal metro is 40 kph. Calgary’s LRT averages 30 kph. Ottawa’s will average 35 kph.

Edmonton’s Valley line? 27kph. 5 kph higher than Toronto’s projected ground level segments of the Eglinton Line. Toronto’s streetcars, 15 kph in mixed traffic. I think Toronto people are allergic to LRT thinking that since their city council won’t make the sacrifices needed to speed it up so assume that other cities similarly won’t.

A big difference is that in Edmonton your trip length is likely to be shorter because the city is a prairie city - radiating from a central point - it will be comparable to get to west Edmonton mall from downtown Edmonton as it is from downtown Toronto to Yorkdale . Also all of Edmonton’s big trip destinations that aren’t directly on the new line, are on the old one. So the likelihood of a bus-train-train-bus trip is lower.

But as anyone who has looked at systems, the big constraint on trip time is frequency, especially when you need to transfer. Edmonton’s existing LRT runs at low frequencies, partly because they can - they can run longer trains and save operator wages. So you can’t look at average speed in isolation. Edmonton’s line running in the tunnel averages 35 kph but the frequencies make one look at suburban bus services in Toronto with envy. A trip that requires a train train transfer in Edmonton will suffer more from low frequencies than from one of the trains not being in a tunnel.

I wouldve liked to see the Eglinton line tunnel underneath the intersections in the aboveground areas. Or elevate the line onto pillars like the Skytrain. I think sitting in traffic is a major dangerous mistake for somthing thats supposed to be express service.