Quote:
Originally Posted by Spr0ckets
Not just students but SFU employees as well.
People tend to forget how much of an influence the major universities have on the region's transit systems and the local economies of the areas around them that they're located on.
See UBC and the Broadway Skytrain Extension, - which probably wouldn't be happening if it didn't have the pull of UBC students and workers partly justifying it.
Whenever you have something like a university or a college like those 2 (or even VCC on the VCC-Arbutus line), at the end or beginning of a route, you have already have some of the built-in ridership onthe route that you need to justify getting it built or extended.
It's a large part of the reason why UBC themselves offered to help fund part of the construction to have the UBC line go all the way to UBC and not just end at Arbutus (for this phase), when it was first proposed.
Because they know it's their students and workers who will be the overwhelmingly major beneficiaries of such an extension.
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Indeed. For all the inconvenience that UBC represents way off on the west side of the region and SFU way up in the northeast, it is a transit planner's
dream to have a strong trip generator at the end of a line, or at/near a major interchange station. YVR serves a similar function, albeit at a reduced scale, but they put their money where their mouths were and wrote a cheque for $300 million, about a 7th of the total capital cost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by officedweller
This is all I could come up with - Posted Feb 2020.
... a 3rd side-platform to the east under Clarkson St. connected by a walkway to the existing station.
The other alternative would be to move the whole station to the east 2 blocks and
buy out the rest of that block where Stefanos is located for an expanded station,
but the purchase of the Boucher Building nixes that.
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I think OfficeDweller nailed it. Ultimately, whatever we call it, there should be a shuttle-like line that connects Columbia Station and Lougheed Station. It should not try to interline with the LIM SkyTrain system's two main lines (Expo Line and Millennium Line). Ideally, it would make use of a new third track at Columbia Station with a dedicated platform. Due to the urban complexity of that area, as UrbanDweller suggests it would likely have to be a mined station with a significantly reconfigured tunnel and some fancy footwork to tie back into the main line somewhere west of Columbia Station.
Another thought would be an
elevated station with a single-track, single-sided station like Richmond-Brighouse, that would be built effectively
above Columbia Station. The station's track would split east of this new station and tie into the two existing former Millennium Line tracks
after their switches with the Expo Line for SkyBridge, but before they enter the tunnel. This would require some pretty extensive reconstruction of the retaining walls and acquisition of the adjacent properties so that Clarkson Road could be shifted north or closed altogether between Blackwood Street and Elliot St.
What such a configuration would let us do is run the Shuttle Line between Columbia Station and Lougheed Station, with a single dedicated track and platform at each end. I have given no thought to which platform at Lougheed Station it would use, however it would, hopefully, simplify operation of that station in some way. Passengers transferring at Columbia Station would be able to use vertical circulation to travel from the lower Expo Line Station to the upper Shuttle Line station. The Shuttle Line would just be a high frequency link, but all existing SkyTrain switching would remain in place, allowing for full use of the future operations and maintenance facility.
If Translink wanted to do a more modest redesign that would not involve anything as dramatic as the above to ideas, what would be idea is a reconfiguration to split the Columbia Station tracks and create a centre platform for Spanish Solution transfers, plus two standard side platforms. That will take a lot of space and a lot of engineering to carry the load of the buildings south of tracks that would be undermined by a widened track and station footprint. And the multi-year disruption that the renovations would require is daunting.
So with all that said, I don't think Translink is going to be able to muster the political capital to extract a substantial amount of capital-capital to pay for a major redesign that will require a mined or elevated station.
Therefore, I expect that the most likely scenario will be the creation of improved pedestrian connections from the existing side platforms via a new overhead vertical circulation system.
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