The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by Beedok

I think that render is about 5 years old.

Oh crap, sorry. I just knew it was the Hamilton colours and Flexcity Freedom, and I'd never seen it before so I figured I'd post it.

Is there any update on the Hamilton LRT situation now that Wynne has a majority and has promised to help fund it?

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Oh crap, sorry. I just knew it was the Hamilton colours and Flexcity Freedom, and I'd never seen it before so I figured I'd post it.

Is there any update on the Hamilton LRT situation now that Wynne has a majority and has promised to help fund it?

I've mostly given up on following myself. There's just bickering around in circles about minutiae.

[Chadillaccc]

Sounds extremely familiar That is really too bad though. I hope it gets a kick in the pants soon.



In other news, Calgary's Tuscany Station opens on Saturday, bringing the C-train system to a solid 58 kilometers in length. This expansion not only ends over a decade of constant rail transit construction in the city, but there are also no further rail transit projects funded at this time. It could be quite some time before we see any more. Though we still have the 4-car expansion and Southeast Transitway projects to look forward to in the short to mid term.

[matt602]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Oh crap, sorry. I just knew it was the Hamilton colours and Flexcity Freedom, and I'd never seen it before so I figured I'd post it.

Is there any update on the Hamilton LRT situation now that Wynne has a majority and has promised to help fund it?

More or less, the province is basically dicking us around and most of the councilors at city hall don't really care too much aside from a very small minority of pro-LRT, urban councilors. The whole project lost a lot of it's steam over the last few years and I personally don't think theres enough political willpower behind it to make it happen. Here's two of the more recent articles on raise the hammer that explains where things are now:

Provincial Minster of Transport being very non-commital in a recent visit:

http://raisethehammer.org/article/2251/n...ent_after_meeting_with_minister_del_duca

The Mayor being similarly non-commital on a talk radio show some time after that:

http://raisethehammer.org/article/2255/b...misinformation_on_lrt_in_radio_interview

[Aylmer]

I was taking the train between Montreal and Ottawa the other day and I decided to measure the speed with a GPS speedometer app, just for giggles and shits. Much to my surprise, the train actually goes fast for a lot of its route, averaging over 150 km/h along most of its route and even topping 200 km/h (!) in certain areas.

But then its all for nought when it has to slow down to 40-50 km/h to take some uselessly sharp turns and come to a complete halt for as much as 15 minutes at a time to let another train or freight clear the tracks.

So, just with some smoothened curves, better scheduling and priority over freight (the barley can wait another couple of minutes, CN), we could conceivably cut travel times in half between Ottawa and Montreal, and I'm assuming elsewhere:

Ottawa-Montreal in a little more than an hour,
Ottawa-Toronto in 2:15,
Toronto-Montreal in a little under three hours
Montreal-QC in an hour and a half.

It almost feels as if we make an effort to not make rail competitive...

[1overcosc]

It's been years since I've been on the Ottawa-Montreal line but I'm a regular on the Ottawa-Kingston train. It goes pretty fast too, it also goes 160km/h for almost its entire length.
There's no freight interference between Kingston & Ottawa, as the tracks from Kingston to Brockville are 2-3 tracks wide and north of Brockville VIA's the only user. Just east of Kingston there's a section where the train tracks parallel the 401 and it's obvious the train is going significantly faster than the cars. Once you're out of urban Ottawa, there's only two places where it slows down from 160km/h:

1) The train slows to a crawl through Smiths Falls--like, REALLY slow--about cyclist speed. About 10-15 minutes could be taken off Ottawa-Kingston/GTA travel time by building a Smiths Falls bypass.
2) It slows down a lot for the track switch in Brockville. Not quite as slow as the Smiths Falls crawl but still pretty slow.

Even with those two slowdowns, travel time on the Ottawa-Kingston express train is 1h45. That could easily be brought down to 1h25 through a Smiths Falls bypass and an upgrade to the track switch at Brockville. By comparison, driving time is about 2 hours.

If we wanted to get really ambitious, we could build a new straight-line railway from Smiths Falls to Kingston bypassing Brockville for express trains. That could bring the Ottawa-Kingston travel time down to about 1h05. Such a corridor would very environmentally delicate and expensive, so if we're going to do that, we just build a full HSR to make it worthwhile. A full HSR could bring Ottawa-Kingston travel time down to about 30-40 minutes.

[Innsertnamehere]

It doesn't reach 200km/h, or at least its not allowed to. Fastest it (legally) goes is 100mph. I did the toronto-ottawa route last year and it did 160km/h for most of the route outside of the towns where it slowed down to 60km/h. Smiths falls and the last stretch to the downtown Ottawa station absolutely crawled though and added a ton of time to the trip.

[1overcosc]

^ The route through urban Ottawa is currently being upgraded, so it's getting better.

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[SteelTown]

Great to see the Customs House will get a ton of new exposure with the new GO Station. You already see condos popping up even without the GO Station built.

Though I do worry it won't be up and ready for the 2015 Pan Am Games, there's less than 11 months to go and they have been digging for months, good six months or so.

[ScreamingViking]

Originally Posted by SteelTown

Though I do worry it won't be up and ready for the 2015 Pan Am Games, there's less than 11 months to go and they have been digging for months, good six months or so.

It's not the same contractor as the stadium, is it?

If it isn't ready, I suppose they could try to run additional trains to the downtown GO Centre instead - it would mean coordinating with CP, but they're going to have to do that with CN anyway on a much busier corridor. They could probably also use Aldershot to connect with the shuttle service to the stadium.

Have there been any announcements about the expected train frequency during the games?

[GreaterMontréal]

Montréal

In order to respond to the growing demand for public transit and the increasing needs of its clientele, the STM implemented the Bus Preferential Measures (BPM) program.

''Bus preferential measures (BPM) consist of installations on the road system that ensure priority is given to public transit, thereby improving the reliability and on-time delivery of service, and increasing public transportation’s attractiveness and modal share.''

BPMs include:

- Reserved lanes
- Queue bypass lanes
- « Candlestick » priority traffic signals
- Active priority traffic lights (in real time)

STM
- 45 new lines (BPM)
- 2 BRT (Pie-IX and Sauvé-Côte-Vertu)
- 1000 intersections with signal priority
--> iBUS In late 2014, following a trial period, the system will gradually be deployed in buses.

By 2017, when this program ends, some 115 bus lines will feature preferential measures, with the BPMs positively affecting more than 760 000 trips daily.

the road network with BPM will go from 61km to 375km, facilitating over 190 million trips per year. Providing travel time up to 30% shorter.

http://www.mouvementcollectif.org/en/gra...k-that-needs-to-be-better-known#comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV4L4SrI-Wk&list=UUOxE10GAu7_Gl5LMO08O7hw

[ScreamingViking]

Not sure this is the appropriate place, since the maps don't just reflect transit commuters (and the latest population thread is locked)

Canadian Geographic has an article - "Commuting in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver" - with some nice maps that illustrate commuting destinations by municipality.

[Beedok]

I crunched the numbers and the percentage of Brantforders working in Hamilton is a bit higher than Hamiltonians working in Toronto.

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by ScreamingViking

Not sure this is the appropriate place, since the maps don't just reflect transit commuters (and the latest population thread is locked)

Canadian Geographic has an article - "Commuting in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver" - with some nice maps that illustrate commuting destinations by municipality.

Toronto proper alone swells by more than 450,000 workers each day (not to mention the 837,000 locals who travel between bed and business within the metro centre). Montreal, similarly, gains almost 390,000 people per day (equal to the entire population of Halifax); Vancouver, about 150,000.

They mainly go to the downtown core area. Montreal's downtown core has over 310,000 workers and more than 100,000 students. 500,000 people use the underground city every day.

[SignalHillHiker]

Last night for the first time in a while I experienced just what a disastrous and dangerous situation the lack of public transit in St. John's can be.

We all went out to Velvet on McMurdo's Lane for jeddy1989's birthday, and after the bar closed at 3 a.m. we went to George Street just so the girl staying with us from Ireland to see it.

George Street was still packed - and Allure (which has the dance floor up against the windows facing George Street, which are open to the street - was still open, music pounding.

The street was absolutely packed - as busy as I've ever seen it on a normal Saturday with no special events. Huge lines outside every chip truck, every pizza place. Jugglers, various other buskers. Lots of sexy girls in high heels sitting on the curbs.

And hundreds upon hundreds of people waiting for a cab. There were dozens driving around, all full. Everyone was standing in the street. People spread out to New Gower, Duckworth, Water, Harbour, Waldegrave, and even Cavendish standing in large groups waiting for a cab.

We waited an hour in several spots before finally decided to just walk home.

We saw one guy being forced by the RNC to walk a straight line on the sidewalk, and several other people pulled over still sitting in their cars.

It's a recipe for drinking and driving.

There is no option for people to get home other than a cab, and there aren't enough to handle the end-of-night rush.

It's really pathetic. They should at least run the Trolley line a few times at 3 a.m. on weekend nights.

[ssiguy]

Vancouver will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to transit due to the city being very decentralized in terms of employment. This has made commuter rail service limited due to the limited employment downtown and has resulted in a lot of reverse commuting due to the heavily populated core. It's obviously much easier and efficient to serve a huge downtown employment area than employment that is scattered throughout the region.

Vancouver has done a decent job of trying to connect the local employment centres. Calgary is the exact opposite situation where employment is extremely centralized in the downtown core.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouver will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to transit due to the city being very decentralized in terms of employment. This has made commuter rail service limited due to the limited employment downtown and has resulted in a lot of reverse commuting due to the heavily populated core. It's obviously much easier and efficient to serve a huge downtown employment area than employment that is scattered throughout the region.

Vancouver has done a decent job of trying to connect the local employment centres. Calgary is the exact opposite situation where employment is extremely centralized in the downtown core.

Is that true though? Many in Calgary consider the huge employment downtown a disadvantage sometimes as the transit system tends to be a commuter system where getting from one side of the city to another seems more an afterthought, vs getting to and from the core from the burbs.

[Metro-One]

Actually a major advantage of having many nodes is reverse commuting allows you to get twice the use out of the same transit line (people are going in both directions all day, so you don't have full trains in one direction and empty trains in the other).

Same goes for highways.

[Boris2k7]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Actually a major advantage of having many nodes is reverse commuting allows you to get twice the use out of the same transit line (people are going in both directions all day, so you don't have full trains in one direction and empty trains in the other).

Same goes for highways.

Yes, living centrally and reverse commuting is the next best thing to living centrally and being within walking distance of your workplace.