Millennium Line - Broadway Extension: Planning & Pre-Construction

[santak003]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Even if this were true, it would be expensive (due to all the operators required) and it would trash the throughput on all the north/south streets that cross Broadway and carry a substantial volume of their own transit. It's extremely challenging to give signal priority to high frequency trams running in both directions with uneven block spacing and still maintain adequate windows for cross traffic. And given the propensity of cars and pedestrians to gum up the works, I'm extremely skeptical that those kinds of headways could be maintained with much reliability.

Bunching of trams is worse than bunching of buses because buses have more stops that they're able to skip (a higher number of stops with nobody alighting) in order to recover spacing. Trams have fewer stops and a lot less likelihood of being able to skip one of them, so once a tram is off-schedule it stays that way, affecting everything behind it.

We need real world data and everything you are saying. We haven't been giving anything but fluff.

If we can't do it with BRT and TSP, then for sure we should not entertain

Real world data I keep providing and it seems to be ignored. It's simple mathematics and I've given real world examples, but it's not like I'm experienced in this matter.

TSP does have delays, but well managed, it should not impact cross traffic and does not impact cross traffic in the real world as much as you are making people believe. There is not one textbook that indicates this is happening at the level you are making it appear to happen.

Also you and migrant_coconut have never given any data, but simply keep saying what I'm saying is untrue. I've given another real world example of San Antonio Texas with 100 buses an hour. That's much less than 2 minute headway.

The difference with the train is the boarding time can effect the dwell time of buses signifiantly. The right turning lanes appear that they would effect many timings, but it is an old industry and these can be calculated.

Bus Bunching occurs in practice (from the hundreds of documents online) because of dwell time and not traffic. You and migrant keep going on about traffic. The dwell time is significantly reduced with Light Rail. It is explained well in "Light Rail Explained" which basically is talking about reliability of light rail which makes all the difference.

So even with the same traffic and stops, you will get less bunching form a tram. If you don't get this...than it is no point in you and migrant keep saying the same thing.

All of this can be easily understood by translink itself if it measures right turns, measures dwell times, measures headway variance and pedestrian traffic and sees what is happening with it's own buses and even can then simulate traffic with VISSIM simulation (which Stears and Davies have done for Hamilton LRT and realized they were wrong when they did the report for UBC in giving 0 time at red lights for the tram for UBC which is never the case).

The problem is that people are not measuring reliability and not doing Cost Benefit Analysis with the time involved.

There is a benefit to people's time using the Light Rail with at-grade crossings, but people really have to take (very little) time and figure out the model and determine what will happen. To do this for the very first LRT in the city and have it go across a busy area..and never having done this before..is not a good idea. That is why the fear will push us to skytrain and we will never know if the LRT could have done what it most likely can do..which is move this volume of people with limited TSP during busy times that does not impact cross flow traffic and by limiting some right turns (possibly)..and that will save thousands of peoples entire life wages.

But we can't have that conversation. All we have is you guys saying I'm wrong with absolutely no data at all. I can do that.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

so.
many.
posts.

[jollyburger]

None
about
the
Broadway
Subway

[Migrant_Coconut]

We
end
up
doing
this
for
every
FNG.
Just go with it.

Originally Posted by santak003

I don't think you are talking from experience. I am certainly not. However, the documents I'm reading online for this very old industry do not agree with you.

Yes, TSP has impacts and Translink is going to be using TSP in select spots and yes there are impacts, but well designed the impacts are negligible (2%) and the throughput of what you are trying to improve increases 40%. So what you are saying is not making sense. We run a 2 minute headway for 99 bline during the busy times. This is nothing magical.

Loading Area Capacity Example
 Based on real-world data from San Antonio,
reported in TCRP Digest 38
 Average dwell time = 30 sec
 Coefficient of variation = 53%
 Assume a desired 10% failure rate (downtown)
 g/C ratio = 0.55
 On-line stop
 3 loading areas

42 buses per hour is the capacity of a single loading
area
 This stop has three on-line loading areas
(2.45 effective loading areas)
 42 * 2.45 = 102 buses per hour (round down)
 Agency experience was that about 100 buses per
hour was as many as could be scheduled without
having operational problems

Experience or not, we'd all do well to compare apples to oranges, and to double-check our math's applicability. Your argument for the last page or so has been garbage in, garbage out.
A) Nobody's contesting that two-minute frequency without TSP is only mildly disruptive.
B) Portland's study is for operating a bus station, not a bus route - doesn't matter how many vehicles you can cycle through an individual stop if the street itself can't support that many. A quick look at Google Maps will show that the San Antonio stop in question has four bus routes with a combined seven-minute frequency. Two-minute TSP is still entirely theoretical.

Originally Posted by santak003

Keep in mind that 4 R/Nc is a lot of right turning vehicles and a lot of pedestrians. During morning rush from Arbutus to UBC...there is likely not that many pedestrians per hour, but could be wrong..and the math indicates that you can have several hundred of them.

There's a 99% chance (no pun intended) that you haven't spent a lot of time between Arbutus and UBC. Morning commute, afternoon commute, evening commute, it's a busy street all the way to Alma. Alma to Blanca is usually dead, but then why have TSP at all? That's already the smoothest part of the route.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by santak003

But we can't have that conversation. All we have is you guys saying I'm wrong with absolutely no data at all. I can do that.

We have numbers. You called bull. You have different numbers that often aren't even relevant. We call bull.

Originally Posted by santak003

TSP does have delays, but well managed, it should not impact cross traffic and does not impact cross traffic in the real world as much as you are making people believe. There is not one textbook that indicates this is happening at the level you are making it appear to happen.

Also you and migrant_coconut have never given any data, but simply keep saying what I'm saying is untrue. I've given another real world example of San Antonio Texas with 100 buses an hour. That's much less than 2 minute headway.

I'll say it again - show me the textbook where two-minute frequency is practical. Our own studies say anything more than four minutes isn't practical at all, and experience with the corridor would agree.
Bus stops don't count because capacity for an individual stop is higher than the street's; San An itself only runs six buses an hour on that specific stop.

Originally Posted by santak003

The difference with the train is the boarding time can effect the dwell time of buses signifiantly. The right turning lanes appear that they would effect many timings, but it is an old industry and these can be calculated.

Bus Bunching occurs in practice (from the hundreds of documents online) because of dwell time and not traffic. You and migrant keep going on about traffic. The dwell time is significantly reduced with Light Rail. It is explained well in "Light Rail Explained" which basically is talking about reliability of light rail which makes all the difference.

So even with the same traffic and stops, you will get less bunching form a tram. If you don't get this...than it is no point in you and migrant keep saying the same thing.

And yet dwell times for the 99 are often as fast as the SkyTrain's, or occasionally faster - boarding delays are unlikely to be the problem. If you're not familiar with the route, it's probably a bad idea to be making assumptions about what can and cannot happen to it - you're putting junk data into your model and getting junk data in return.

Originally Posted by santak003

The problem is that people are not measuring reliability and not doing Cost Benefit Analysis with the time involved.

There is a benefit to people's time using the Light Rail with at-grade crossings, but people really have to take (very little) time and figure out the model and determine what will happen. To do this for the very first LRT in the city and have it go across a busy area..and never having done this before..is not a good idea. That is why the fear will push us to skytrain and we will never know if the LRT could have done what it most likely can do..which is move this volume of people with limited TSP during busy times that does not impact cross flow traffic and by limiting some right turns (possibly)..and that will save thousands of peoples entire life wages.

I mean no harm, but you're not telling us anything we haven't already heard. TransLink and their third-party analysts have done multiple CBAs for multiple routes. Every single time, we've found that light rail with TSP messes up the street and only saves a few minutes end-to-end over the RapidBus or B-Line, and SkyTrain saves twice as many "life wages" and creates much more growth while minimizing disruption.

Take Surrey's benefit-cost study: BRT, 1.15:1; LRT, 0.69:1; RRT, 1.55:1. Or the Richmond study, where we'd have to close off all non-arterials to run it. There hasn't been a light rail line in this city because the conclusion is always "all pain, no gain."

[santak003]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

so.
many.
posts.

Sorry about that (I've added a picture to this one so hopefully that appeases things somewhat). They (aberdeen and migrant), keep disagreeing with me and not referencing points I've made earlier that already disagree with them, so I have to continuously repeat myself. They are disagreeing with me, and there is a misunderstanding of missed perceptions...so I have to continuously defend myself....Case in point:

I have been in large Canadian companies my entire life and Reliability as a practice is always misunderstood and because of that politicized.

Forgetting about that for one second: Most of my posts have been that the LRT decision for segregation to UBC has been politicized because of fear and because reliability of the system (in terms of time spent, bus bunching, traffic, TSP, right turn lanes, bus berths etc, etc) is not fully understood. And it should be.

I will apologize before this post that I am posting, but I am being beaten like a dead horse here. That is perspective for you. So, I expect that aberdeen and migrant will continue bashing me, but there are tonnes of documents in the old industry of transit reliability and this post is talking about another document where the american metropolitan authority created a very old document on policy decisions around just what I've been saying this whole time: Whether to at grade separate LRT. My problem is that I don't see anyone, anywhere doing this right for the UBC Rail Rapid Transit studies. I'm not biased towards the outcome, but I am biased about how they are holding up a licked finger in the air and proclaiming common sense when there is no common sense to LRT loading time at stops.

I posted some other document from the European Metropolitan Transport Authority that was called "Light Rail Explained" (https://www.emta.com/IMG/pdf/light_rail_report.pdf) and it basically talked about how reliability is the main factor for light rail over buses and how train loading time is a major difference between buses and light rail even without segregation (and because Canada doesn't have an metropolitan transport authority and maybe it should -> Montreal is the canadian city belonging to the European Transport Authority along with the usual suspects of busier cities than ours: London, Madrid, Paris etc..).

This document is all about whether to grade separate or not. That's what I mean. I don't see us doing this at all. It would put a non-politicized final nail in the coffin of skytrain or not to UBC. Hell, it could be a transfer to a segregated system that is not a skytrain as well, but I don't have a clue why someone would want to do that, but there is always some benefits and costs to every decision.

"Grade crossing policy for light rail"
https://media.metro.net/about_us/library/images/Grade%20Crossing%20for%20Light%20Rail%20Transit.pdf
Metropolitan Transport Authority


HEre is the initial screening. Seems very simple..after that would be some more engineering. All of this is cheap. This is common sense to me. Talking about things that might happen and creating fear is not common sense and that's all I've been saying.

Click on this link for an initial screening assessment of at grade feasibility that was thought through (by some smart folks) in 2003. Maybe things have changed slightly..I dunno.

https://www.amazon.ca/clouddrive/folder/...bw_cg_y9o3rsd_1a1_w&_encoding=UTF8&mgh=1

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by santak003

Sorry about that (I've added a picture to this one so hopefully that appeases things somewhat). They (aberdeen and migrant), keep disagreeing with me and not referencing points I've made earlier that already disagree with them, so I have to continuously repeat myself. They are disagreeing with me, and there is a misunderstanding of missed perceptions...so I have to continuously defend myself....Case in point:

I know I can be pushy from time to time, but if you're saying aberdeen is being unreasonable, the problem might be on your end.

Originally Posted by santak003

I will apologize before this post that I am posting, but I am being beaten like a dead horse here. That is perspective for you.... My problem is that I don't see anyone, anywhere doing this right for the UBC Rail Rapid Transit studies. I'm not biased towards the outcome, but I am biased about how they are holding up a licked finger in the air and proclaiming common sense when there is no common sense to LRT loading time at stops...

... This document is all about whether to grade separate or not. That's what I mean. I don't see us doing this at all. It would put a non-politicized final nail in the coffin of skytrain or not to UBC. Hell, it could be a transfer to a segregated system that is not a skytrain as well, but I don't have a clue why someone would want to do that, but there is always some benefits and costs to every decision.

"Grade crossing policy for light rail"
https://media.metro.net/about_us/library/images/Grade%20Crossing%20for%20Light%20Rail%20Transit.pdf
Metropolitan Transport Authority

But we've already done that. Multiple times. To use your document, we're talking about running 30 trains an hour, and the Threshold 3 checks have failed over and over again. And unoptimized dwell times just aren't a problem for the 99, now or in the future.

It often feels like you have been talking past us.

[santak003]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

We have numbers. You called bull. You have different numbers that often aren't even relevant. We call bull.



I'll say it again - show me the textbook where two-minute frequency is practical. Our own studies say anything more than four minutes isn't practical at all, and experience with the corridor would agree.
Bus stops don't count because capacity for an individual stop is higher than the street's; San An itself only runs six buses an hour on that specific stop.



And yet dwell times for the 99 are often as fast as the SkyTrain's, or occasionally faster - boarding delays are unlikely to be the problem. If you're not familiar with the route, it's probably a bad idea to be making assumptions about what can and cannot happen to it - you're putting junk data into your model and getting junk data in return.



I mean no harm, but you're not telling us anything we haven't already heard. TransLink and their third-party analysts have done multiple CBAs for multiple routes. Every single time, we've found that light rail with TSP messes up the street and only saves a few minutes end-to-end over the RapidBus or B-Line, and SkyTrain saves twice as many "life wages" and creates much more growth while minimizing disruption.

Take Surrey's benefit-cost study: BRT, 1.15:1; LRT, 0.69:1; RRT, 1.55:1. Or the Richmond study, where we'd have to close off all non-arterials to run it. There hasn't been a light rail line in this city because the conclusion is always "all pain, no gain."

You aren't calling bull to me. You are calling bull to all theoretical and operational practitioners (At least those that write). I am merely giving examples from the real world. It takes time to find examples and make them readable. You aren't doing that. You are successful in pointing out my flaws, but not in the mathematics of the theory and practice of bus capacity planning. That is old stuff. I have posted it twice. I don't need to keep posting it. You are simply saying things without proof at all.

99 bline is a 2 minute headway and there is no TSP that I'm aware of. I also posted several documents showing dwell time decreases compared to when loading a train vs a bus (Light Rail Explained).

I also provided math on bus capacity planning that is very old. It clearly shows that 2 minute headways are achievable in mixed traffic. It is not something new. Without TSP.

These are old industry standard documents. Your issue with headway of 2 minutes is not an issue anywhere I can see.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by santak003

You aren't calling bull to me. You are calling bull to all theoretical and operational practitioners (At least those that write). I am merely giving examples from the real world. It takes time to find examples and make them readable. You aren't doing that. You are successful in pointing out my flaws, but not in the mathematics of the theory and practice of bus capacity planning. That is old stuff. I have posted it twice. I don't need to keep posting it. You are simply saying things without proof at all.

99 bline is a 2 minute headway and there is no TSP that I'm aware of. I also posted several documents showing dwell time decreases compared to when loading a train vs a bus (Light Rail Explained).

I also provided math on bus capacity planning that is very old. It clearly shows that 2 minute headways are achievable in mixed traffic. It is not something new. Without TSP.

These are old industry standard documents. Your issue with headway of 2 minutes is not an issue anywhere I can see.

We're not the ones insisting that twenty years' worth of dedicated work is a premeditated sham, with most data and opinion proving otherwise. I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you.

Yes, we got your documents the first half-dozen times. Doesn't make any of them relevant, especially when many of them fail to address the actual concerns or are only tangentially related to them; they give no numbers for cross-traffic, only parallel traffic. The San Antonio example is, for reasons explained above, inapplicable, especially when actual volumes at that precise stop mentioned in the study have never been planned for 100 buses an hour, or ever exceeded 6 buses/hour in actual practice.

Again, boarding delay is the least of the 99's problems - so far, it's been on par with SkyTrain boarding delay. More pressing concerns are increased demand, and increased street usage preventing surface options from optimizing for that demand.

[officedweller]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

so.
many.
posts.

Yeah, I've tuned out.

[waves]

Coconut your patience always amazes me.

[ilikeredheads]

only took a glance at all those posts... Is he trying to justify running a tram down broadway, the busiest bus corridor in North America?

[Rico]

Originally Posted by scottN

At this point any consideration of BRT on broadway only applies west of arbutus where traffic is considerably lower than on central broadway. None of the intersections have the same sort of queuing issues as broadway & Cambie though, so I suspect the benefits of signal priority would be lessened.

Also I don't think it's fair to compare the ridership of broadway with the combined ridership of all routes going across it. Transit priority measures at each intersection are independent, so the judgement of whether a transit priority measure is too disruptive to cross traffic should be made on an intersection by intersection basis. Broadway has far higher ridership than the combined ridership of the cross-traffic bus routes at Arbutus, Macdonald, Alma or Wesbrook.

Sorry, to me the key section is upto Arbutus (so I keep harping about it). After that we have lots of good options. Bus becomes practical again past congested Central Broadway, LRT would work and obviously no transfer RRT. I just don't want any change from RRT on Central Broadway, after that I prefer RRT but nothing will be a disaster like if they tried BRT or LRT on the Central Broadway portion.

[s211]

I for one am tired of having to scroll past all these term papers, for lack of a more polite description. Can we please consider a separate thread for the modal debate? This thread has turned into an academic debate, and frankly it's not going to change the world.

[scryer]

Originally Posted by s211

I for one am tired of having to scroll past all these term papers, for lack of a more polite description. Can we please consider a separate thread for the modal debate? This thread has turned into an academic debate, and frankly it's not going to change the world.

That's not a bad idea at all.

The Great Debate to End ALL Debates: At-Grade LRT vs. RRT . <- There's a title for ya!

I will kind of throw a bone in that sometimes the nature of this discussion can't help but to analyze other modes of transit. Yeah it's off topic but I can certainly see why we got there. It's just too bad that we have beaten this horse's bones into dust over this topic though since it likes to get revisited every 6-8 months .

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by scryer

It's just too bad that we have beaten this horse's bones into dust over this topic though since it likes to get revisited every 6-8 months .

Definitely not looking forward to next year when some other latecomer walks into the forum high off an Elizabeth Murphy NIMBY op-ed and we have this entire conversation all over again.

[Aroundtheworld]

I'm looking forward to the next few years as posts will be about construction instead of rehashing the same ideas over and over again.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld

I'm looking forward to the next few years as posts will be about construction instead of rehashing the same ideas over and over again.

will that start breaking ground for this, this year? or will it be spring 2021? and i mean on the Broadway Subway directly. they've been doing related work such as utility relocation's all of 2020 already.

i never make it out to VCC-Clark so would like to know when they start digging around there as i assume that'll be the launch pit.

[scottN]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

will that start breaking ground for this, this year? or will it be spring 2021? and i mean on the Broadway Subway directly. they've been doing related work such as utility relocation's all of 2020 already.

i never make it out to VCC-Clark so would like to know when they start digging around there as i assume that'll be the launch pit.

The launch pit will be the Emily Carr station. Last time I was there they hadn't even put up any construction fencing yet, let alone start digging.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by scottN

The launch pit will be the Emily Carr station. Last time I was there they hadn't even put up any construction fencing yet, let alone start digging.

Last time I was there which was sometime in August, there was "Millennium Line" wrapped chain link fencing, but technically no blue rental construction fencing.