The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think the expanded ferry system idea is pretty intriguing. The proposed Larry Uteck ferry spot is this area:


Source

This is the timing:

[img]https://www.halifax.ca/sites/default/fil...ry/2020-08/Larry%20Uteck%20Ferry_new.jpg[/mg]
[url]https://www.halifax.ca/transportation/transportation-projects/transforming-transit[url]

I wonder if LRT would beat the ferry travel times. Probably not, although it would stop at places along the way.

The sub really is the cherry on top for this Arctic Siberia scene!

[quall]

Halivostok!

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Talk to Edmonton. They have their downtown line underground.
For the peninsula, if the line(s) are underground, the traffic can continue to do as it needs to do. No need to take lanes away for an LRT. No need to figure out which road is the one you build.

Edmonton built theirs when it was a lot cheaper. Just look at inflation on the Hamilton LRT and you'll see how much costs have changed. And Halifax is in a province with much less fiscal room than Edmonton.

The only way a tunnel could ever be done is with substantial federal contribution. And that's never happening, with their current population size.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Edmonton built theirs when it was a lot cheaper. Just look at inflation on the Hamilton LRT and you'll see how much costs have changed. And Halifax is in a province with much less fiscal room than Edmonton.

Looking at it differently, it will never be less expensive for Halifax to build a tunnel than it is right now.

[J.OT13]

I don't think Halifax would need a tunnel. Could they not use one north-south street through downtown as a transit mall, like Calgary? The grid is perfect for that.

[goodgrowth]

Are there any specific density requirements along the transit routes tied to these federal funds?

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Are there any specific density requirements along the transit routes tied to these federal funds?

No. The provinces are expected to only nominate projects which make sense. And cities are expected as the governments closest to the ground to nominate the best projects.

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

No. The provinces are expected to only nominate projects which make sense. And cities are expected as the governments closest to the ground to nominate the best projects.

Given the housing situation it's basically negligent/incompetent of the federal government to not require density near transit routes that are costing billions of dollars. This is literally where they could exert influence over local zoning.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Given the housing situation it's basically negligent/incompetent of the federal government to not require density near transit routes that are costing billions of dollars. This is literally where they could exert influence over local zoning.

I have argued this for a long time. I think transit funding should be inversely proportional to the percentage of residential zoned R1.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Edmonton built theirs when it was a lot cheaper. Just look at inflation on the Hamilton LRT and you'll see how much costs have changed. And Halifax is in a province with much less fiscal room than Edmonton.

The only way a tunnel could ever be done is with substantial federal contribution. And that's never happening, with their current population size.

Which, these days is more possible than not. So, if the Halifax city council came up with an underground route, and the province agreed to it and then put it forward to the federal government, it might just happen. Remember, that area is a Liberal area that sometimes goes NDP. Having a liberal government approving it might be enough to keep it red. The fact that a good transit system is built is just the side effect of this.

Originally Posted by esquire

Looking at it differently, it will never be less expensive for Halifax to build a tunnel than it is right now.

This is something no one wants to admit. If we were to look at the costs of building the Subways, metros, Skytrains and LRTs, they have only gone up.

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I don't think Halifax would need a tunnel. Could they not use one north-south street through downtown as a transit mall, like Calgary? The grid is perfect for that.

That is the problem. There is no singular route. There is no best route.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I have argued this for a long time. I think transit funding should be inversely proportional to the percentage of residential zoned R1.

While in most countries that would make sense, in the most decentralized democratic nations it does not. Cities have to first realize that the housing crisis is their fault, created through policy complexity slowly over the past 50 years, where problems were solved with additional complexity, eventually over burdening the system and breaking market forces by imposing scarcity.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I don't think Halifax would need a tunnel. Could they not use one north-south street through downtown as a transit mall, like Calgary? The grid is perfect for that.

Yes, Barrington/Spring Garden corridor would be the most obvious candidate from a purely technical standpoint since that's the current route for what one Atlantic forumer referred to as the "conga line of buses". The route isn't a high volume vehicular traffic corridor being only one lane per direction but is very central.

The issue of course is the politics. Motorists in the HRM already consider themselves to be persecuted, so a total loss of vehicular access (on any street let alone among the most important) would cause a melt down. Plus there's the issue of deliveries since the corridor is very commercial. The King St pilot would be an interesting template, and while not as fast as a tunnel, would be orders of magnitude less pricey. And given that you could have a greater stop density with a surface corridor it might actually provided better service to people than a tunnel - at least for people whose origin/destination is downtown rather than using downtown as a through route.

I actually do support building a short underground section (perhaps in a bottleneck outside the core) but swimmer sounded like he was suggesting the whole thing basically be a subway since his statement was in response to someone talking about Robie St. which isn't even directly downtown. And of course, the challenge in finding the right route isn't specific to downtown. Questions like whether it should run on SGR/Robie, SGR/Coburg/Oxford, Bell/Quinpool, Gottingen, etc. still persist.

[Truenorth00]

There has to be a purpose to the tunnel. I don't see what Halifax would achieve with one, other than absolutely blowing capital and operating budgets building a shitty transit system that is not pedestrian friendly and has limited stops for transit users. We need to get away from the idea of just building expensive tunnels just to avoid difficult decisions on urban planning. In this case trying to eek out a tiny bit more throughput on downtown roads.

It's an old, small and dense downtown. It really can't accommodate more traffic anyway. But they have an amazing grid that they could build a really decent BRT system on that is both transit user and pedestrian friendly. It helps that they have a lot of parallel roads to do this. My pick would be a transit mall on Hollis with proper curbside bus lanes on Morris and Robie. Something like Züm in Brampton. This way they could funnel buses from all over to the core and they'd have a U-shaped loop to cover most of the core. Maybe another corridor on Chebucto/North.

It's a beautiful city that can and should have a decent high frequency transit system that connects to a very pedestrian friendly core.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

I don't think Halifax would need a tunnel. Could they not use one north-south street through downtown as a transit mall, like Calgary? The grid is perfect for that.

Halifax does not really have a street grid. It vaguely looks like it on Google Maps but if you plot out just about any practical route that's longer than say 1 km you will be see turns and potentially weird intersections (looks like an intersection but it's really two "T"s close to each other for example). The only street that runs for a long distance is Barrington and it's not a great alignment because there is water on one side of it (~1/2 population density). Then the streets around Barrington only run for 3-5 blocks and are not very useful as corridors, so if you cut Barrington off to mixed traffic not much is left. Barrington is about 15 m wide, from building facade to building facade.

The Barrington-SGR intersection (or Barrington-Cogswell) has a grade change and I am not sure how larger rail vehicles could handle that combined with the tight turning radius. This is supposedly why the city stuck with Birney cars for so long.

There was a proposal to connect Hollis up to the South End rail line and rail cut but CN controls that rail line and those negotiations are dead for now. Aside from that, I am skeptical that there could be some kind of LRT that would run through the city on the existing street network. Maybe there could be some kind of modern streetcar system on the peninsula but it would probably be hard to show why that is better than bus lanes.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Yes, Barrington/Spring Garden corridor would be the most obvious candidate from a purely technical standpoint since that's the current route for what one Atlantic forumer referred to as the "conga line of buses". The route isn't a high volume vehicular traffic corridor being only one lane per direction but is very central.

The issue of course is the politics. Motorists in the HRM already consider themselves to be persecuted, so a total loss of vehicular access (on any street let alone among the most important) would cause a melt down.

Kinda why I suggested using a "less important" parallel corridor. Like Hollis and Morris.

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Plus there's the issue of deliveries since the corridor is very commercial.

Parallel corridors and cross streets solves this. Yeah. It's a one block hike. But the delivery guys adjust.

Halifax has a ton of potential to build an almost European core with more pedestrianization and some woonerfs (I vote for Lower Water St as the first candidate). Kinda sad that Hakigonians don't see the potential themselves.

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker

While in most countries that would make sense, in the most decentralized democratic nations it does not. Cities have to first realize that the housing crisis is their fault, created through policy complexity slowly over the past 50 years, where problems were solved with additional complexity, eventually over burdening the system and breaking market forces by imposing scarcity.

The feds induce demand though. So it isn't only the cities to blame. You can't set ambitious immigration targets and then hope for the best....which I would argue is literally what the federal government has been doing.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

There has to be a purpose to the tunnel. I don't see what Halifax would achieve with one, other than absolutely blowing capital and operating budgets building a shitty transit system that is not pedestrian friendly and has limited stops for transit users. We need to get away from the idea of just building expensive tunnels just to avoid difficult decisions on urban planning. In this case trying to eek out a tiny bit more throughput on downtown roads.

I think there are potential reasons for a downtown transit tunnel beyond not taking up space. One is that it's a way to remove tight corners and handle grade changes better. Another is that the destinations downtown don't follow along any particular street (the route you might call Halifax's "main street" downtown is shaped like a W and it does not connect up with the North End directly; so add another "S" on to it if you want more than 1-2 km of useful route). Then farther out you need to deal with one of relatively few points on or off the peninsula with steeps grades on the mainland Halifax side. Maybe that would be a place to use elevated track one day.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Kinda why I suggested using a "less important" parallel corridor. Like Hollis and Morris.

Hollis runs for 9 blocks or so then gets merged in with traffic from Water Street. Morris runs for about 2 km and dead ends. I'm not sure if rail vehicles could make the turn at Hollis and Morris either; it's 2 relatively narrow streets. And I think that neighbourhood (heritage conservation area mostly of rowhouses on narrow streets built on a pedestrian scale) is pretty incompatible with the kind of LRT system found in Canadian cities. Part of what's going on, I think, is that residents of the core areas in Halifax consider quality of life stuff a priority, and the suburban vs. downtown commuter model there was never really that strong and has been in decline for some time.

[Truenorth00]

I'm thinking of what they could do with buses immediately. In this regard, I think it's not a dissimilar situation to say London. Only it needs a few more corridors in the core.

I can't see how LRT would work at all. Way too many destinations and diffuse a population spread.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Given the housing situation it's basically negligent/incompetent of the federal government to not require density near transit routes that are costing billions of dollars. This is literally where they could exert influence over local zoning.

Anytime the Feds place conditions on funding, they are blasted by Provinces for "overstepping" their jurisdiction. And density is provincial jurisdiction.