(Caution: dead horse being beaten)
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Originally Posted by fredinno
Also, the 16 Line goes to Renfrew and Hastings St. as well. That skews Ridership density a lot. Do you have numbers for the Arbutus section only?
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Remember that the tram would cover everything south of West 4th... and possibly False Creek, NEFC/Chinatown/Gastown and Waterfront if linked to the downtown streetcar ROW, which looks like a given.
No numbers for actual density, but
last year's TSPR gives me about 2,300 boardings and 4,700 alightings MtF southbound from the Granville Loop; I'm going to cop out and assume that northbound to Burrard is the same, meaning 14,000-ish riders between Kits-Fairview and Marpole. Not including another 4k-5k from the #50, or induced demand from a faster, more frequent off-road route.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fredinno
I doubt it'll alleviate the Canada Line enough to justify the cost and effort. Realistically, only people from the west of Granville going to Richmond or YVR (or transferring to some bus line in Marpole or Bridgeway) would want to use it.
(My estimates above did not account for slowdowns near stations or stopping due to delays or to yield to traffic, so it's probably more like 15-16 min. Better than buses, but worse than Canada Line.) Reducing that number with better speed makes it increasingly more like commuter rail, not streetcar/LRT.
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I dunno, Toronto's Eglinton is pegged at 28 km/h every three minutes with full traffic delay, but few people would call it commuter rail. I think Vancouverites will settle for 25-26 every five.
What's nice about the Greenway is that it's an ex-railway corridor. The ROW, being designed to handle heavy rail, has very few intersections and is well separated from the road. Minimize the remaining track conflicts, and you've got a solid secondary RT with the Millennium/Canada/Expo as the backbone.
Think of it as four souped-up feeder lines, rather than one express line; Marpole to Broadway, Broadway to Olympic Village, OV to Main Street/Science World, Main to Waterfront. If you've got a start or end point in-between, and aren't in that big a hurry, one continuous trip
may be more appealing than two or more SkyTrain/bus transfers.
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Originally Posted by Galaxy
What they could do down the road say 10-30 years and or when every the money makes sense would be to build a line underground using Skytrain technology and then it would create a second north/south line there for Translink could run the lines in a way where the Skytrain at least North/South runs 24/7 with either existing Canada Line and the Arbutus Line closed alternating so maintenance can happen.
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But they'd be busy trying to fund all the other needed SkyTrain lines.
Unlike the other bass-awkwards surface rail proposals, there's no utilities to move or road to rip up, so an Arbutus tram would be cheaper to build. If the open house planners are correct, capital cost would be $400M or less; should be able to squeeze it into one of the upcoming 10 Year Plans as a side project. And as mentioned above, there's minimal traffic conflicts, so it'd also be better able to retain speed and frequency.