The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[someone123]

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.

I guess this is fairly obvious but in many cases people focus exclusively on the "marketing" term for the technology or brand (LRT vs SkyTrain/AMT or subway) when there are a huge number of implementation details that in aggregate will have a bigger impact on the quality and cost of the service.

It would be really interesting to see an LRT or BRT service with some at-grade crossings that is fully automated. You could even have buses designed for a mixed system; either you put them in service in automated mode along an upgraded corridor or you put a driver on to drive them along a normal route.

LRT running along a street can be an awful service where it's stopped at a red light half the time or it can have priority and run as fast or faster than a SkyTrain on an elevated track.

[Nouvellecosse]

While it's true that a street-based LRT service with signal priority could be pretty fast, saying it could be as fast or faster than Skytrain might be pushing it since street-based operation always tends to have its max speed limited to the speed limit of the road even if using a dedicated, physically separated lane. So instead of vehicles reaching a top speed of 80km/h between stations, it would reach 50km/h unless it was on some type of highway. The only way around that tends to be if it not only had priority, but had crossing gates that came down like on parts of the C-train.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

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

That graphic really shows that our major cities, even without rail (Halifax and Victoria) have good ridership. I wonder how we could improve those numbers even further.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

That graphic really shows that our major cities, even without rail (Halifax and Victoria) have good ridership.

It's only good if we compare our cities to the bottom of the barrel, the United States. 10-20% public transit share isn't anything to brag about. It's good that we're not last but it makes far more sense to compare ourselves to the best. That would be European/Japanese cities and in north America, Mexican cities.

Canadians need to move beyond their perennial US tunnel vision.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by isaidso

It's only good if we compare our cities to the bottom of the barrel, the United States. 10-20% public transit share isn't anything to brag about. It's good that we're not last but it makes far more sense to compare ourselves to the best. That would be European/Japanese cities and in north America, Mexican cities.

Yes although most of the difference between Canada and Mexico is that Mexico is less wealthy, not that it has nicer transit systems. Guadalajara is a metro of 5 million people and it is served by 24 km of light rail. Mostly it has a lot of buses that people have to take because they have no alternative.

The US is on the other end where they spent tons of money on transportation infrastructure and making it easy to drive around.

I think the main questions to ask are whether or not there are affordable ways to improve transportation options in Canada, and whether or not there are specific technologies or planning approaches that could be imported. Ridership on its own doesn't mean much.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

While it's true that a street-based LRT service with signal priority could be pretty fast, saying it could be as fast or faster than Skytrain might be pushing it since street-based operation always tends to have its max speed limited to the speed limit of the road even if using a dedicated, physically separated lane. So instead of vehicles reaching a top speed of 80km/h between stations, it would reach 50km/h unless it was on some type of highway. The only way around that tends to be if it not only had priority, but had crossing gates that came down like on parts of the C-train.

I was talking on a more abstract level than whether the lights change or an arm comes down to block traffic. I meant that you can make an at-grade right of way that is not impeded by intersections if you want. It does come at the cost of less hypothetical traffic throughput on the cross streets or tracks, but maybe this is the right trade-off.

You can also take a fine-grained approach and decide that in one spot you want a signal arm, in another there will be a normal stop light, in another there will be an overpass or long elevated section, trench or tunnel, etc. Link light rail in Seattle is like this.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Except that the half line we are getting is almost as long (22 km) as the total length of both phases of the Valley Line (combined 27 km). It does look good though, I don't have a problem with the Valley Line's treatment of 102 Ave, it's certainly an improvement.

However, 7th Ave isn't really that bad either. The two are just incomparably different. 7th is a transit and emergency services route that bisects the entire downtown core of the nation's third largest city and fourth largest metro area.

It's a bit of a mess visually, but I found 7th pretty convenient and easy to use from a visitor's perspective. After about a minute observing the street it becomes obvious that trains stop at the "high" blocks and buses at the "low" ones. Presumably this system was designed before the popularity of low-floor trains so it's a fairly creative and effective way of dealing with the constraints that would have been present at the time. The retail along 7th is nothing special but not exactly "bad" either. In retrospect it's a bit surprising that Calgary went with in-street tracks while Edmonton buried their original downtown section since at first glance Edmonton seems to have wider streets on average (and therefore more space for in-street tracks) than Calgary. Both systems seem to work fairly well though (with the exception of Edm's Metro Line from what I understand).

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

I was talking on a more abstract level than whether the lights change or an arm comes down to block traffic. I meant that you can make an at-grade right of way that is not impeded by intersections if you want. It does come at the cost of less hypothetical traffic throughput on the cross streets or tracks, but maybe this is the right trade-off.

You can also take a fine-grained approach and decide that in one spot you want a signal arm, in another there will be a normal stop light, in another there will be an overpass or long elevated section, trench or tunnel, etc. Link light rail in Seattle is like this.

I think all that was clear to begin with. Yes you can have one option, the other, or a mix, but it sounded as if you were suggesting that one could be as fast as the other and I'm simply pointing out that this isn't the case. The for legals and safety reasons, transit cannot operate at as high of speeds with simple signal priority as it can if physically separated. This wouldn't apply if the stops were close enough together that the train never reached those higher speeds to begin with, but then it would never be as fast the Skytrain either way. Maybe as fast as Bloor though.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I think all that was clear to begin with. Yes you can have one option, the other, or a mix, but it sounded as if you were suggesting that one could be as fast as the other and I'm simply pointing out that this isn't the case. The for legals and safety reasons, transit cannot operate at as high of speeds with simple signal priority as it can if physically separated. This wouldn't apply if the stops were close enough together that the train never reached those higher speeds to begin with, but then it would never be as fast the Skytrain either way. Maybe as fast as Bloor though.

I actually never wrote "signal priority", I just wrote "priority". I was talking about "waits for crossings" vs. "does not wait for crossings".

The SkyTrain average speed is 45 km/h and the West Coast Express average speed according to the schedule is 55 km/h (75 minutes to go 69 km). The WCE has at-grade crossings. I'm not sure it's true that LRT would have to go slower than the WCE.

Some people have a nuanced view of different technologies, the toolbox of options, and detailed designs, but right now there's a public debate raging about LRT vs. SkyTrain in Surrey and it's mostly a war of sound bytes. I would guess that a lot of people with strong opinions on which option should be chosen don't know details and just have an opinion on surface vs. elevated or LRT vs SkyTrain (e.g. I saw this style in Calgary, I saw that style in Vancouver). I wish these debates focused more on qualities like comfort, frequency, travel times, and integration with the urban environment, and less on technical terms that are used as buzzwords. I have read or listened to plenty of media stories about Surrey transit that mentioned $X or Y billion, LRT vs. SkyTrain, and Justin Trudeau or various politicians doing this or that, but didn't talk about simple things like how long trips would take with either option.

[White Pine]

Originally Posted by someone123

The SkyTrain average speed is 45 km/h and the West Coast Express average speed according to the schedule is 55 km/h (75 minutes to go 69 km). The WCE has at-grade crossings. I'm not sure it's true that LRT would have to go slower than the WCE.

I suspect these averages include the times where the train is stopped and at 0 km/h. Having ridden SkyTrain, I think the crosstown's station spacing alone would inhibit it from acheiving these average speeds, and I highly doubt that they would send a train down the middle of eglington at 80+ km/h.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by someone123

The SkyTrain average speed is 45 km/h and the West Coast Express average speed according to the schedule is 55 km/h (75 minutes to go 69 km). The WCE has at-grade crossings. I'm not sure it's true that LRT would have to go slower than the WCE.

Yes, at-grade crossings would allow it to reach higher speeds. If that's what you were referring to when you said "priority" then my apologies.

[Truenorth00]

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.

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

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.

Actually you guys have grade separation confused with right-of-way segregation...thought they sort of go hand-in-hand. You don't need grade separation to have automation. What you need is ROW segregation. Not just exclusivity. The latter tells you who can use your ROW. The former tells you who can cross your ROW at-grade.

Ottawa's Confederation Line is highly unusual. It's Light Rail, in nothing but name. In reality. It's a light metro. It's got a fully segregated, fully exclusive right-of-way. There's no other traffic operating on these tracks (exclusivity). And no level crossings (segregation). I don't think any other light rail corridor in Canada, approaches this standard in its build.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

That graphic really shows that our major cities, even without rail (Halifax and Victoria) have good ridership. I wonder how we could improve those numbers even further.

Originally Posted by isaidso

It's only good if we compare our cities to the bottom of the barrel, the United States. 10-20% public transit share isn't anything to brag about. It's good that we're not last but it makes far more sense to compare ourselves to the best. That would be European/Japanese cities and in north America, Mexican cities.

Canadians need to move beyond their perennial US tunnel vision.

Sure. But what is most telling about that graph is New York City. It's on the same trendline as Toronto and Montreal. Slightly above maybe. In theory, those cities would have ridership closer to NYC as they approached that size. I don't think you'd say this wasn't an accomplishment.

Also, I've said this in other threads. Ottawa is a gem in this story. It has decent ridership for a city of its size. It's got a public that is highly supportive of investment, and a political class that favours professional transit planning. Compare Ottawa and the GTA. Ottawa had to pay for a third of its transit plan. The province is paying for 100% of LRT construction in the GTA. And the projects it isn't fully funding, having become massive political headaches. Ottawa ratepayers have mostly rewarded politicians who've raised their taxes to pay for transit. Toronto is struggling to simply pay a top up on provincial and federal funding for the Scarborough Subway with a much larger taxbase, who have the lowest milrates in the province.

I grew up in Toronto. And it'll always be the hometown for me. But I'm damn proud of what Ottawa has accomplished and will accomplish as a city in the decade to come. All because of a mature public and politicians who aren't reactionary.

[J.OT13]

One of our posters on the Ottawa board, sseguin started a website a few months ago dedicated to the O-Train, informing those who are "fans" of recent news and general info on the trains, the stations and the lines. He also posts quite a few progress pictures. Below, you will find some of his recent work, all from his website;

https://www.otrainfans.ca/

uOttawa, serving the University of Ottawa and part of the Rideau Canal.











Lees and what I believe is our first nearly completed light box, which is a design feature to easily identify station from a far.













Hurdman, the transfer point between the Confederation Line and the South-East Transitway.









Trembay, serving the VIA Rail station and across a pedestrian bridge over the Queensway, RCGT Baseball Park and a hotel complex. Unfortunately, the office building we see behind the station are not served because there is currently no way of crossing the VIA Rail tracks.









St-Laurent, which was a three level BRT station, with local bus platform on the upper level, a concourse connected to the St-Laurent Shopping Centre (once the city's premier mall, it has lost favour over the last decade+) and lower-level serving the Transitway. This is the station that has seen the least change through conversion.







The O-Train Fan website can be, in many ways, more informative than anything the City or the Confederation Line's builder have to offer.

http://www.ligneconfederationline.ca/
http://www.octranspo.com/ready4rail

[Metro-One]

So tonight Surrey officially cancelled the LRT plan. All preparation work is being suspended as of tomorrow and Surrey will begin talking with Translink for Skytrain.

Every community this project directly affects is in support of this change (Surrey of course and both Langley City and Langley Township).

Fantastic day. Now all we need is for the mayors’ council’s approval. Given the optics above, not allowing this to pass would though a major wrench into regional cooperation and planning.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

So tonight Surrey officially cancelled the LRT plan. All preparation work is being suspended as of tomorrow and Surrey will begin talking with Translink for Skytrain.

Every community this project directly affects is in support of this change (Surrey of course and both Langley City and Langley Township).

Fantastic day. Now all we need is for the mayors’ council’s approval. Given the optics above, not allowing this to pass would though a major wrench into regional cooperation and planning.

Vancouver is supporting SkyTrain so it should be just a formality at this stage.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by d_jeffrey

Vancouver is supporting SkyTrain so it should be just a formality at this stage.

I hope so, currently with the rumored yes votes it is only 2 votes shy of passing.

[Aylmer]

Regarding the "surface vs grade-separated" debate, I've been thinking about this in the context of Ottawa's urban main streets. The way I see it, there are benefits to both approaches:

- Grade-separated (GS)

Pro: Faster vehicle speeds (because fewer stations, exclusive ROW)
Con: Longer walk to station (because of fewer stations), longer pedestrian access times to platforms (because not at street level)

- At-grade (G)

Pro: Shorter pedestrian access times (because at street level and more stations)
Con: Slower vehicle speeds (because more stations, non-exclusive ROW)

This means that GS systems are more useful when you're going long distances because you spend a greater percentage of your time in the transit vehicle as opposed to walking there. For example, you have to go 20km and you either have a 20km/h tram 5 minutes from your door/your destination or a 40km/h subway 10 minutes from your origin/destination. The added 10 minutes of walking is more than offset by the 30 minute reduction of in-vehicle time.

G systems are better for short distances because a bigger share of your time is likely to be spent walking to and from stations. In the same situation, travelling 2 km by subway would total 26 minutes but the tram would get you there in only 16 minutes.


I'm assuming that surface LRT (like Edmonton's Valley Line) runs about 20km/h with stop placement every 500m and that a subway/skytrain runs at 40km/h with a stop every 1000m and require 1.5 minutes to get from the station entrance to the platform (ascending 15m by escalator is about 40 seconds, plus walking on the concourse). I'm also assuming the average walk applies on both ends of the transit trip. With these parameters, surface transit is faster for trips under 8.5km, and GS systems faster above that.

For those interested, here's my formula: (X km/20kph*60min)+10min walk=(X km/40kph*60min)+20min walk+3min access, where X is the point at which GS is faster than G.


There are a few interesting implications as well as some limitations to this model.

For implications, this is an indication that for urban transit corridors where people will generally be walking/cycling to stations, a subway might actually result in longer trips than a surface alternative. I'll soon experience this phenomenon; Currently, I'll often take Ottawa's Transitway BRT for 1-2 stops downtown just because I can easily hop onto a bus from the curb (and because I'm lazy). Once LRT opens, the trains will be faster, but once I factor in the time it takes to get down to the platform and back up again, it'll likely be faster for me to walk those same distances.
So for urban corridors, good surface transit will result in the fastest trips even if the vehicles are slower. Ottawa's Bank/Rideau, Montreal's St-Laurent, and Toronto's King are good examples of this; most people on this corridor walk from their house to the street and have their destination within walking distance too.

However, there are limitations. If this is a transit line which mostly relies on transfers as opposed to walk-in traffic, the difference is largely evened out since there's no difference in access time to the line on one end of the trip. In that case, surface transit is only faster for trips under 5km (excluding the time on the transit line to/from which passengers transfer). The YUS Line is an example of this; although it has walk-ons, I believe that most of the passengers transfer onto the line and then walk to their downtown destination.

And of course, if most passengers transfer on both ends of their trip on a line, GS is always faster. Montreal's Yellow Line is an example of this; the lion's share of passengers transfer by bus on one end and transfer to the metro on the other.

So to sum it up, surface transit is faster under:

Walk-transit-walk: <8.5km
Transit-transit-walk: <5km
Transit-transit-transit: [GS always faster]

So instead of debating which one is always better in all cases, I think that it's important to look at the context and to choose the best mode accordingly. In certain contexts, a faster vehicle may end up in higher trip times for most passengers. And in others, surface options, although they may be attractive from an urban design standpoint, they might not actually be the best option in terms of getting people where they need to go.

[Truenorth00]

Your post ignores the impact of congestion. As we see on Albert and Slater. Non-exclusive and non-segregated systems are viable up to a certain point. When you want to push > 10 000 pphpd, it's another matter.

[Aylmer]

It's why I noted that I'm assuming systems such as Edmonton's: B-level ROW (exclusive lanes with crossings at grade), but not C-level (shared lanes with crossings at grade).

You're right that capacity is an important factor to take into account. But there aren't a whole lot of lines which push 10 000 pphpd in Canada. If there's a situation that does, then that restricts your options to grade-separated ones of course, but these are exceedingly rare. Even the Canada Line only carries 5500 pphpd at peak.