The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[biguc]

Originally Posted by casper

The "business case" for Tsawwassen is to connect the dots between walk on passengers at BC Ferries with the rest of the transit network. I don't think skytrain is best option for that. Commuter rail using some of the existing railway lines already in place may work, but even that is weak argument.

I do think there should be a train to Tsawwassen--it's a pain in the ass taking a bus to/from Richmond--but it shouldn't be the Canada Line. Running a couple diesel trains on existing lines back and forth from PCS would do the trick. As it would to serve Langley and even Abbotsford.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

That's true. Stage 3 only has a chance due to political will (vote rich suburbs in swing ridings). Any sort of subway or light-metro in the urban area might be a tougher sell, partly because they would serve fewer ridings, and those served are mostly safe (Liberal in this case) strongholds.

And even Stage 3 is still much further away than the way its portrayed in these discussions. The City is going ahead with planning in the hopes that financing materializes eventually. But the mayor has been clear that the city can't take on more debt for Stage 3. And we have yet to see a firm financing plan from the Feds and Queen's Park. Any hypothetical Bank St. subway is even further behind this.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I think a lot of us argue these projects based on needs, present or future, more than political will. In a perfect world, transit lines would be built based on solid business cases (Toronto DLR and Skytrain to UBC, for example) and not political games (high capacity subways to suburbs, REM to farm fields).

The only hope that a Bank St subway has is political. The ridership case, without a closure of the Trillium Line, isn't very strong at all. Every argument so far is based on hypothetical future densification of Bank or some possible maxing out of transfer capacity at Bayview. But there's no evidence right now that any of this is actually going to materialize. It may or may not happen. And even then, there's cheaper solutions than building a Bank St. subway. For example, conversion of the SE Transitway.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by biguc

I do think there should be a train to Tsawwassen--it's a pain in the ass taking a bus to/from Richmond--but it shouldn't be the Canada Line. Running a couple diesel trains on existing lines back and forth from PCS would do the trick. As it would to serve Langley and even Abbotsford.

I have always thought that both ferry terminals should be served by a WCE like system out of Waterfront Station.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1RuRfK5O50ayec5Zp5nF1k-5MSUo&usp=sharing

[scryer]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I have always thought that both ferry terminals should be served by a WCE like system out of Waterfront Station.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1RuRfK5O50ayec5Zp5nF1k-5MSUo&usp=sharing

Something like that would totally make sense, especially for Tsawwassen.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I have always thought that both ferry terminals should be served by a WCE like system out of Waterfront Station.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1RuRfK5O50ayec5Zp5nF1k-5MSUo&usp=sharing

Beautiful. I hadn't even thought about a Horseshoe Bay train from Lonsdale quay, but that makes a lot of sense. It would be very useful for people in North and West Vancouver; access to the BC Ferry is just gravy.

Your route to Tsawwassen is the same as what I've imagined but I just end mine at PCS. In my mind, at least, the rail line parallel to Glen drive looks busy. I could be wrong. Either way, that's another useful line that would provide new service to the western side of Surrey, and could provide express stops in Burnaby and New West.

Translink could provide this service for the cost of buying some used diesel trains and building a few platforms. It's probably not as sexy to developers as (covers mouth and gasps) Skytrain, but giving developers hardons shouldn't be the point.

[J.OT13]

TransLink planning $300 million SkyTrain maintenance centre in Coquitlam

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/translink-skytrain-coquitlam-omc-operations-maintenance-centre

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

The toolkit of transit infrastructure development in most Canadian cities seems to be missing mid-range options.

Toronto is the big exception to this. The GTA will soon have every use case for a light rail vehicle or bus that I can think of - from surface lines with stops all the way up to grade-separated rapid transit with stations - although I think it suffers from the opposite problem: it often selects the wrong technology for the context given the many options it has on the table.

[Innsertnamehere]

The one system the GTA is missing is a light metro network a la the Skytrain or Canada Line. Well, it has it right now, but will be removing it.

It seems to be opting instead for fully grade separated LRT systems for that capacity range, like Ottawa.

The Ontario Line is lower capacity than the existing subway lines, but it's still a full scale high capacity system.

I would have loved to see a Canada Line type technology used in Hamilton instead of the LRT, but the LRT is just too far along now to be worth killing it to restart.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

The one system the GTA is missing is a light metro network a la the Skytrain or Canada Line. Well, it has it right now, but will be removing it.

It seems to be opting instead for fully grade separated LRT systems for that capacity range, like Ottawa.

The Ontario Line is lower capacity than the existing subway lines, but it's still a full scale high capacity system.

I would have loved to see a Canada Line type technology used in Hamilton instead of the LRT, but the LRT is just too far along now to be worth killing it to restart.

:shh: Don’t give them any more ideas...

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto is the big exception to this. The GTA will soon have every use case for a light rail vehicle or bus that I can think of - from surface lines with stops all the way up to grade-separated rapid transit with stations - although I think it suffers from the opposite problem: it often selects the wrong technology for the context given the many options it has on the table.

Yes. One thing I find interesting is how cities tend to develop their own norms, and a standard part of transit service in one city might be considered a big risk to implement or might not be considered at all in a different city. Streetcars are in this category. And of course most Canadian governments tend to get punished based on outcomes and not the quality of decisions they make so naturally they avoid risk.

I think most of the time the best solution is mixed. Many different modes of transport, often even serving one area, and often complicated routes with a mix of improvements (mixed traffic vs. signal priority vs. various kinds of dedicated ROWs). Most of the time, when I look at transit studies, it doesn't seem like these options are carefully and fully evaluated. In public discussions planning is often framed as a choice between two vague categories like "subway vs. LRT". In reality there are tons of smaller decisions and a lot of them are orthogonal to the type of vehicles used.

[superelevation]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

That's true, but a HSR line between Toronto and Montreal would be the most expensive infrastructure project proposed in Canada (maybe ever? Some of the Ontario nuclear plants might be costlier in inflation-adjusted terms...) ...

If we built like the Spanish it wouldn't be. They do new builds for roughly 20m/km. There isn't a whole lot between Montreal Ottawa and TO . . .

Originally Posted by jamincan

One of the things that bug me about a lot of these transit-focused youtube channels/twitter accounts etc. is that they are almost always focused on the technological aspects of a particular project or proposal and typically ignore of underplay the political aspects of it. HFR is undoubtedly less ambitious than HSR and that may be its saving grace in that it requires far less political capital to implement and is a more incremental project. VIA is a 2nd-tier crown corporation. There is no way that even the most pared-down HSR proposal would ever get further than the drawing board.

The regular news media covers the politics ad nauseum - I am happy to have someone talking about the actual transit

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

$10M/km for HSR is way under what it costs in Europe and US. We'll likely be above both knowing Canada.

Spain does it for $20m/km, typically US construction costs are higher than Canada - which is why you see so little tunneled transit expansion there compared to here. Look at the costs per km for LA and NY transit these days, or even Seattle.

[superelevation]

Originally Posted by nname

I believe they'll be 82.5m, which allows for 5-cars train and 30,000-32,500 pphpd ultimate capacity. Although I doubt they would ever need that much capacity.

Some of the stations are designed to be expanded to 100m (6-cars train) when they were first constructed, with a few already at that length. Although most likely they'll stick with 82.5m (5-cars) as the ultimate train length now. A few of the stations on the Expo Line are already expanded to 82.5m during renovations in the past few years.

There is no way that 5-car trains actually have that much capacity. I have heard stated max cap is like 25k ppdph and even that seems a little suspect. TTC Line 1 does around 32k ppdph right now without ATC. The trains are almost twice as long as 5 car skytrains and substantially wider.

What stations have 100m platforms? There may be some structures which could support that but afaik no platforms do

[Hybrid247]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Eglinton today is also a very busy bus route. With a projected 2031 ridership of 12 000 pphpd westbound into Eglinton/Yonge.

Bank on the other hand, can't sustain the sub 10 min bus service that most suburban TTC routes see today.

It's really simple. There's not enough ridership to justify building a subway under Bank St without shutting down the Trillium Line. Any case for a Bank St. subway needs those riders.

I get your point, but I don't think there's much doubt that Bank's ridership could be much greater than what it is today if there was better transit investment along it. Bank has many desirable locations that people access by car instead of transit because the bus experience is just so terrible. We decided to invest transit dollars on abandoned rail corridors to the east and west instead of Bank which effectively diverted riders away from it. Obviously it wouldn't be near 10,000 pphpd, but Bank could definitely reach 5,000+ if it was the main north-south corridor. By 2050? 8,000-10,000 pphpd doesn't seem implausible.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Every other scenario that tries to create a justification, such as maxing out Bayview is well beyond any reasonable forecast period. If one wants to imagine what's possible beyond 2050, sure, I'll concede that maybe Bank will be busy enough then to justify a multi-billion dollar subway underneath.

It's not trying to create justification; it's long term planning. Planning for right now needs to consider the 2050 horizon because it will dictate where we direct our transit investments. If an extension of Trillium Line into downtown is not the ultimate goal, then why sink more dollars into it and build up ridership in that corridor? We need to think about what we want the ultimate goal to be for north-south rapid transit right now before capacity becomes an issue at Bayview and Hurdman. I mean, it took us 15 years of planning and re-planning just to get Stage 1 off the ground. I think now is a good time to start a conversation about the north-south solution. The problem is no one seems to know what the ultimate goal is yet, which will hopefully become clearer in the next TMP. Up until recently, the plan for Trillium has always been an extension across the river, but that was shelved due to capacity concerns at Bayview, so clearly there's awareness of that being an issue eventually.

[Hybrid247]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The only hope that a Bank St subway has is political. The ridership case, without a closure of the Trillium Line, isn't very strong at all. Every argument so far is based on hypothetical future densification of Bank or some possible maxing out of transfer capacity at Bayview. But there's no evidence right now that any of this is actually going to materialize. It may or may not happen. And even then, there's cheaper solutions than building a Bank St. subway. For example, conversion of the SE Transitway.

I've long thought of the SE Transitway conversion as a possibility but I have problems seeing an interlining configuration at Hurdman. I struggle to see how they would pull that off and it certainly doesn't look like they tried to design the station with that possibility in mind. It's one of my pet peeves about Hurdman.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Hybrid247

I've long thought of the SE Transitway conversion as a possibility but I have problems seeing an interlining configuration at Hurdman. I struggle to see how they would pull that off and it certainly doesn't look like they tried to design the station with that possibility in mind. It's one of my pet peeves about Hurdman.

Hurdman would have to be completely rebuilt. We could fix the Hurdman curves while we're at it.

The problem with splitting the line so close to downtown is that we'd be halving the capacity just outside of downtown. I don't think Hurdman to Trim can be adequately served with a max capacity of 12,500 phpd, and that's just on paper. I'm doubt that capacity is achievable in practice, especially not with the current rolling stock.

[Hybrid247]

Ya that's a good point. The capacity needs east of Hurdman would be fairly higher than the SE Transitway corridor. They might want to keep the interlining option open for the Cumberland Transitway corridor instead.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Hybrid247

I've long thought of the SE Transitway conversion as a possibility but I have problems seeing an interlining configuration at Hurdman. I struggle to see how they would pull that off and it certainly doesn't look like they tried to design the station with that possibility in mind. It's one of my pet peeves about Hurdman.

No interlining. A transfer like Bayview.

And my bet is this happens well before any Bank St. subway.

[Hybrid247]

Don't think there'd be much benefit there in that case. Probably better off keeping the transitway, especially with the new Baseline BRT connecting to it.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Hybrid247

Don't think there'd be much benefit there in that case. Probably better off keeping the transitway, especially with the new Baseline BRT connecting to it.

The benefit is capacity at a lower price. Pretty much what a lot of Ottawa's rail construction plan has been to date.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

The benefit is capacity at a lower price. Pretty much what a lot of Ottawa's rail construction plan has been to date.

With or without interlining, it's the same issue. The Line has a capacity of 24,000 phpd. We can't have 5,000+ per hour transferring at Hurdman onto already packed trains. Eventually, a new Line will be needed through downtown to relieve the central segment of the Confederation Line. That could be in 20-30+ years, but it will happen.