The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

Halifax has complicated geology. The peninsula has slate close to the surface which is probably relatively decent for tunneling. This is an area where locals make weird claims, that the whole city has granite under it, or it's hard to build tunnels because there is bedrock instead of soil.

The above-ground station point is a good one. I'm not sure it's been studied for Halifax. If there is room for a bus transit mall in the Cogswell area there is likely room for some kind of surface platform that leads to a tunnel.

I'm not sure where the relevance of the scattered opinions of a few 'locals' comes into play for this topic. Most people aren't geologists or engineers with this level of expertise, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be invited into the conversation.

Regardless, I wonder if there is some concern about tunnelling close to the harbour, below sea level, in terms of flooding due to climate change (in the form of storm surge), increasing sea levels, etc. There will always be an engineering solution, and I'm sure other areas are already doing this successfully. Engineering solutions usually just come down to 'how much do you want to spend', which brings me to my question.

Since we are talking a clean-slate build, and not tying into any existing infrastructure, I'm wondering about the value of tunnelling vs elevated rail. While there will also be challenges with elevated rail, would this not be a competitive option to tunnelling in Halifax? I can't speak to the economics (build cost/maintenance) of one vs the other, but on the surface (pardon the pun) it seems like elevated might be less problematic when compared to underground.

[savevp]

If CN/City of Halifax/Transport Canada regulations could get their collective arses in gear, light rail along the rail corridor from Mill Cove to the VIA station makes a lot of sense, in tandem with this putative Mumford redevelopment.

Wouldn't be too, too much of a stretch to route the trains behind the Nova Scotian and onto Lower Water Street to the ferry terminal. Turn Hollis into a two-way street in the process, and Lower Water becomes the transit priority corridor through the CBD. Then potentially route the LRT onward through the Barrington reconstruction up to the Shipyard. Barrington is wide enough to give LRT/buses their own lane(s).

1/3rd of trains short turn at Mumford to create a Peninsula light rail line (Mumford>Quinpool>Jubilee>Dalhousie>St Marys>Barrington), with the other 1/3 going up to Bedford. That to me is the dream semi-realistic plan if the parties involved had any gumption or spare change. A tunnel under the Peninsula is a pipe dream.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

You don't have to take my word for it, just go ask Edmonton & Calgary. Both cities created their LRTs at roughly the same size and dollar amounts but Edmonton spent most of it's money on the downtown tunnel while Calgary stayed with the cheaper option of a downtown transit-only mall but allowed the savings to bring rapid transit to far more areas of the city and thousands more destination. Calgary clearly made the right decision as Edmonton's LRT has NEVER gotten even 50% of the riders as the CTrain.

Calgary regrets their Downtown transit mall as the platform lengths are limited by the block lengths and thus they can only operate 4-car trains compared to Edmonton's longer platforms where 5-car trains can be operated. Traffic impacts are also considerable in Downtown Calgary due to the at-grade operation and this is also why the Green Line is being proposed to be tunneled, which will be much more expensive than the tunneled section of Edmonton's Capital Line.

Calgary's system has more ridership as it was expanded more due to greater levels of Provincial funding from the Ralph Klein PCs (as well as the 1988 Olympics) during the 1990s and 2000s whereas Edmonton's system received minimal Provincial funding in comparison over the same timeframe.

[Innsertnamehere]

Calgary's employment base is also much more office-focused vs. Edmonton which is more industrially focused which supports a larger, higher ridership LRT system.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Luisito

I seriously doubt that. Specially considering you proposed 8 stops on a 3.5 km line. Considering the topography of the Halifax some of the stations would have to be deep. They would not all be like the street car station in toronto you mentioned. Cut and cover tunnels would not be possible everywhere on the peninsula.

You are down playing things here. There is no where in Halifax as densely populated as some of the neighborhoods the blue line runs through. As it is the blue line is over 9 km long and has 12 stations, and runs every 5 minutes. MTL has one of the highest ridership rates per capita in North America.

Again I leave you guys with this quote. Do you think it would be cheaper in Halifax?

8 stations that are only 30m long compared to 5 stations that are 152m long. That's 760m of stations on the blue extension and 240m of stations on my suggested Hfx tunnel. Combined with the blue line extension being 6.2km that is fully tunneled compared to 3.5km of tunnel.

Keep in mind that what is or isn't possible "everywhere on the peninsula" isn't really relevant since we're talking one specific route though downtown. If it did turn out that the only option for the route was deep bored tunnel I would hesitate to support it since that's mostly suitable for longer routes with wider station spacing. But I haven't seen any official geologic assessments showing that.

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Harrison

Calgary regrets their Downtown transit mall as the platform lengths are limited by the block lengths and thus they can only operate 4-car trains compared to Edmonton's longer platforms where 5-car trains can be operated. Traffic impacts are also considerable in Downtown Calgary due to the at-grade operation and this is also why the Green Line is being proposed to be tunneled, which will be much more expensive than the tunneled section of Edmonton's Capital Line.

Calgary's system has more ridership as it was expanded more due to greater levels of Provincial funding from the Ralph Klein PCs (as well as the 1988 Olympics) during the 1990s and 2000s whereas Edmonton's system received minimal Provincial funding in comparison over the same timeframe.

Calgary does not regret it.

And no, there was not differential funding from the provincial government. Calgary borrowed a whole lot of money to build the 80s/early 90s LRT extensions, while Edmonton was similarly building 3 more mammoth underground stations in downtown (2 in 83 then 1 in 89) then across the river to another underground station at the university in 1992. Edmonton held back in the recession while Calgary borrowed and cut operations to build for the future. (Similar not only in LRT, but in public pools, arts facilities, and parks where Calgary built while Edmonton aimed to save money)

By 1992 Edmonton had 9.2 km of double track with 6 underground stations. Calgary had 19 km on the red line, and 9.5 km on the blue line, with zero underground stations. Calgary didn't spend much more than Edmonton. Oh, and those underground stations downtown? The cut and cover plus the building of West Ed was attributed with killing shopping downtown.

The Green Line is tunneled because Calgary's north south blocks are typically less than half the length of east west blocks, and they didn't want to close another street for a second east-west transit mall.

Anyways, needing to supplement a line 40, 50, 60 years after it was built is not a sign of initial building regret. It is a sign of success!

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by savevp;9813504[B

]If CN/City of Halifax/Transport Canada regulations could get their collective arses in gear, light rail along the rail corridor from Mill Cove to the VIA station makes a lot of sense, in tandem with this putative Mumford redevelopment. [/B]

From reading coverage over the years, the main impediment is money. If HRM was willing to pay, all of a sudden CN would get cooperative. Instead there are attempts at exploring cheapo pilot projects because turns out CN won't provide access for free, and the access available with no capital investment is limited and not very good.

[Luisito]

UOTE=Nouvellecosse;9813520]8 stations that are only 30m long compared to 5 stations that are 152m long. That's 760m of stations on the blue extension and 240m of stations on my suggested Hfx tunnel. Combined with the blue line extension being 6.2km that is fully tunneled compared to 3.5km of tunnel.

I don't even know why the blue line extension is being brought into this. It is a metro line. Not comparible to street cars or trams in any way. You talk as if its a new line or like the rest of the line is above ground. it is a perfectly normal extension that is needed. Hardly comparible to what you are proposing. I don't know of any cities as small as Halifax that have built a tunnel for a tram system, if you know of one please tell us. I know of a few LRT systems underground, but in cities with much much higher population and density then Halifax. 8 underground stations so close together regardless of the length are going to be very costly.

Keep in mind that what is or isn't possible "everywhere on the peninsula" isn't really relevant since we're talking one specific route though downtown. If it did turn out that the only option for the route was deep bored tunnel I would hesitate to support it since that's mostly suitable for longer routes with wider station spacing. But I haven't seen any official geologic assessments showing that.

[/QUOTE]

3.5 km will take you well outside of the downtown area. You have to take terrain into consideration as well as population. I don't know why you keep playing that down. Do you think people would support Spring garden road and Barrington street being ripped up for a tunnel? A tunnel that will use transportation not that different from a bus?

[Beedok]

Does anyone know where to find ridership estimates for the Hamilton and Quebec City tramways? I know I’ve seen one for Hamilton, but couldn’t find it, and the Quebec City estimates I could find were all at a system-wide level.

Thanks in advance.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Luisito

I don't even know why the blue line extension is being brought into this. It is a metro line. Not comparible to street cars or trams in any way. You talk as if its a new line or like the rest of the line is above ground. it is a perfectly normal extension that is needed. Hardly comparible to what you are proposing. I don't know of any cities as small as Halifax that have built a tunnel for a tram system, if you know of one please tell us. I know of a few LRT systems underground, but in cities with much much higher population and density then Halifax. 8 underground stations so close together regardless of the length are going to be very costly.

The original context was that a few people worried that Halifax was too small to build any transit infrastructure underground with the two main issues being that the city couldn't afford it and that there weren't conditions to justify it. I responded by pointing out that from a technical standpoint, the technology used for a transit route should be based on the details of that route rather than the overall metro area. I also mentioned that from a cost standpoint, the project would be in proportion to those in other cities like Montreal since we'd have as many or more people paying for each km of tunnel. So that comparison between the cost of tunneling in each place vs the population size carrying the cost burden. it wasn't to compare the systems themselves other than the amount of tunneling.

I understand it can be difficult to keep track of longer, multi-day discussions. But it's better to go back and re-read prior posts if you lose track rather than placing the onus on other people to explain everything from scratch. For example, I and Someone123 have both mentioned several times that Edmonton was a similar size as Halifax when it did it's underground LRT project. So rather than posting things like "I don't even know how this came up" you can just go back and look. I don't mean to be harsh; it's just time consuming to constantly have to re-summarize prior points.

Originally Posted by Luisito

3.5 km will take you well outside of the downtown area. You have to take terrain into consideration as well as population. I don't know why you keep playing that down. Do you think people would support Spring garden road and Barrington street being ripped up for a tunnel? A tunnel that will use transportation not that different from a bus?

Yes we have to take terrain into consideration but only for the specific route in question which passes through downtown. Your remark about cut and cover not being possible "everywhere on the peninsula" made it sound like we'd be building tunnels all around the peninsula at various undetermined locations.

In terms of what people would or wouldn't support, no one is suggesting that any of these plans are likely to happen so that's a separate issue. We're discussing what would be good and most likely to succeed. Any higher order transit would cause street-level disruption, and that includes surface LRT and bored tunnel. With deep tunnel, the stations are almost always built through large open pits. If the stations are far apart, bored tunnel can reduce surface disruption but wide station spacing wouldn't be very useful here. That's because wide spacing is best for long routes since transporting people longer distances is faster with fewer stops but for shorter distances, you lose as much time getting to/from stations (and in/out of the deeper stations) as you save in faster journey times. And a surface LRT would also require a lot of road work to install and take space away from cars so there would be as much or more political opposition.

Also, LRV railcars are significantly different from buses. They can use smaller tunnels since the tracks guide them in place and they can carry far more people since they can be longer. For instance, the new TTC streetcars are 30m long compared to our articulated buses which are only 18m long. That's an increase of 2/3 or 66%. Plus LRVs have a smoother ride and a more appealing public image.

[Nouvellecosse]

There have been quite a few examples of "pre-metros" being built in smaller cities where full metros weren't justified but surface trams downtown weren't optimal. Besides Edmonton, another example is Charleroi Belgium which has a metro area of about 1/2 million so similar to us, and a city centre tunnel section of about 4.25km (a few smaller sections outside this as well) with a total of 12 underground stations. Their overall system is larger than what would be warranted for us, but no two cities are identical.

https://www.urbanrail.net/eu/be/char/charleroi.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleroi_Metro

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

There is no way, in hell, that any form of tunnel could possibly be justified in a city as small as Halifax. Transit is suppose to be for moving people not a dick comparison competition.

If a city has X amount of dollars for rapid transit, is it better to spend it all on some little 6 km line with 3 km of subway or to create a true rapid transit system using LRT and/or BRT at street level which would serve hundreds of more destinations and tens of thousands of more riders? The politicians may like the first proposal but it is the citizens of the city and actual transit users themselves that would far prefer the latter.

It's not really a prestige thing in this case. The reason people are talking about a tunnel is because there isn't enough space/workable corridors to have many/any practical options for something like this at ground level. There's already a BRT network planned here (with a couple existing routes) but adding capacity is tough because each bus requires a driver and each new bus gets in the way of other buses (even in transit lanes), and of other vehicles in general. These are the kinds of problems that led Ottawa to eventually build a downtown tunnel (after a couple decades of the "Calgary approach" without the trains). The topography in Halifax is more hilly and the street network is more broken, with narrower streets on average than in Ottawa and even more so compared to Edmonton.

Re: "wider flatter roads in the suburbs" - Dunbrack has always struck me as one corridor that would make sense, as well as Main Street in Dartmouth. Joseph Howe has potential. Maybe some of the existing freeway corridors (note that most of them don't have median space) or something like Bedford Highway-Sackville Drive. Lacewood seems good in theory although there are parts that might be too steep.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I'm not sure where the relevance of the scattered opinions of a few 'locals' comes into play for this topic. Most people aren't geologists or engineers with this level of expertise, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be invited into the conversation.

The main point is that the transit debate there doesn't seem to progress much, has little focus, and doesn't seem to weed out bad ideas through the application of expertise and effective public communication. We can contrast transit there with what has happened with infill planning or active transportation. I think the deficiency has more to do with the municipality and province. The province does not adequately fund transit or promote long-term planning and the municipality tends to explore transit options based on whims of suburban councillors. Rapid transit discussion has basically revolved around service to Bedford due to Peter Kelly and later Tim Outhit being very vocal about it. Nothing wrong with that--it's great that some suburban politicians want transit for their area--but that's just a tiny part of the regional picture and not necessarily the most productive geography to serve.

I think if there were something like an HRM by Design of transit or Centre Plan then the discussion might move forward. There is the Rapid Transit Strategy but it does not have a long term planning horizon and isn't funded. If it were the actual transit system of the city in 2015 it would have been an upgrade but not particularly impressive. They were saying that hopefully it would be done by 2030. Very out of whack with the amount of population growth that's been happening.

[someone123]

There's also the gap between municipal zoning and planned service improvements. It is a lot like Toronto except lower density and much worse transit. The city is approving developments at inner Paris level densities while the transit plan for the most part is to add more buses to 1 or 2 lane surface streets that can already get pretty congested. Some dedicated lanes and signaling improvements are happening too but they will only go so far. Eventually adding more buses will do nothing. It will evolve in the direction of a third world city with lots of buses sitting around and travel will become harder with the economic costs massively outweighing the kinds of numbers the city talks about for transit.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Hali87

The topography in Halifax is more hilly and the street network is more broken, with narrower streets on average than in Ottawa and even more so compared to Edmonton.

Edmonton did start planning and eventually built a transit tunnel when it was smaller than Halifax is now. I guess you could argue it was a huge mistake, but it is a successful part of the modern transit system and so it seems odd that it could be a priori ruled beyond the pale with very little detailed information given.

I think the applicability of generic transit arguments about what a city of a certain size should have is minimal to nil and the "impossible" threshold is much higher than what people usually claim. Every city is different, particularly in Canada where we don't have many cities and the style of development is diverging from the US. You can look around at other cities for inspiration but none of them will provide an exact template. And technology evolves while the Canadian record of transit infrastructure funding and development isn't great so it's not as though the existing systems show the limits of what is possible in 2030.

[swimmer_spe]

I think part of the problem we have is people have never been to Halifax and have never used their transit system, or driven around the area, or even walked in the downtown. Basing the design solely based on population is what got Canada into the mess we have with transportation. We need to look at what would work to best serve the area and go with that.I am not suggesting to do what is done for Toronto or Montreal with their underground systems, but I am suggesting some sort of underground system is needed. I would even be happy with the Silver Line system in Boston.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Line_(MBTA)

[TorontoDrew]

What about an LRT system that runs above ground but goes beneath the core?

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

What about an LRT system that runs above ground but goes beneath the core?

How about Buffalo's LRT which is underground in the suburbs and above-ground downtown!

[giallo]

Cool drone video of the progress of the Broadway skytrain expansion

https://twitter.com/broadwaysubway_/status/1602721308680327169

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

What about an LRT system that runs above ground but goes beneath the core?

Off of the peninsula, that would be possible.

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

How about Buffalo's LRT which is underground in the suburbs and above-ground downtown!

That might work It would mean the depths of the tunnels, and the walkways down to the platform could be higher up.