The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[Aylmer]

All he needs to do is say ''call now and we'll double the offer!'' and he's got himself a certified, bonafied, 7-knife-set infomercial there!

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by lake of the nations

Here a very cool proposal for Southern Québec.

• Video Link

Whoa. Funny-voice over and low video production values aside, this is one fine proposal. I'd love to see it realized, but we all know what's gonna happen.

[yaletown_fella]

Originally Posted by caltrane74

Work has begun on the tunnel boring launch sites for the Eglinton Line, and should be ready for the tunnel boring machines themselves by 2012.

The tunnel boring machines can cover 75 meters per week, per machine. The TTC/City have purchased 4 machines, costing 54 million dollars each.

Instead of opening the line all at once in 2020, the TTC is now considering opening the line in segments. So we could be riding the rails under Eglinton sooner than we thought.

Still, a lump in my throat due to the fact that it won't be a full fledged subway.

[caltrane74]

A full fledged subway would probably be a waste of money.... - plus the tunnels will be upgradeable to full subway if required down the road.

(tunnels will actually be bigger than current Toronto subway tunnels due to overhead power supply for new Streetcars)

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

Still, a lump in my throat due to the fact that it won't be a full fledged subway.

I think what they are doing is just fine for current ridership and leaves the tunnel open to further uses down the road.

As long as it is grade separated light metro or intermediate rail or whatever they are calling it these days is very useful.

[Symz]

In Windsor the city council is toying with the idea of an electric vehicle trolley downtown. Do any of your cities use these?

[roccerfeller]

Originally Posted by caltrane74

Since when did Rob Ford become premier of Manitoba? Ok in all seriousness Kitchener just got approval for their LRT, and so did Ottawa, which will be partially underground. WTF?

Anyways, I'm assuming there is a negative stigma with Public Transit more so than in Ontario. Only poor people ride public transit. In Toronto really, really rich people ride the subways so it's not that bad here. Your boy David Thomson, and his dad Kenneth were big subway riders in Toronto.

Winnipeg's been in transit flux since before my parents were born

We're building our first (ever) phase for Rapid Transit, its a BRT line with 3-4 stops, and designed such that an upgrade to LRT would not be impossible (in fact the basic design schematics accommodate a potential future LRT conversion) http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=126859&page=184

including one which will be the city's first Transit Oriented Development project http://fortrougeyards.com/about-the-development/

Council has approved a move to LRT a while back, but as jmt stated there are no fund in place/no concrete pool of funds/no definitive action plan

The mayor who is "sometimes heads, sometimes tails" is now taking the position to Provincial candidates of committing support to infrastructure for the city, as he and the current NDP (who have done a lot of good for Manitoba) have never seen 100% eye to eye on infrastructure, even though during last fall's mayoral elections, Rapid Transit was a premier debate & elective issue...

The general Transit system, of buses, is really improved in the city and has some state of the art bus stops and electronic time-signs throughout major routes (ask any Albertan's who go to the U of M, nothin' but praise the same way Manitoban's praise their RT systems) and there are a ton of Active transport corridors popping up all over the city (which is very welcomed)

But beyond this Phase 1 for RT, Phase 2 is now in limbo (it wasn't when the plan was originally approved in 2008...the Phase 1 line would be extended to the University of Manitoba) and I predict later this year and next year when the Phase 1 is complete, Rapid Transit will become a central focus in the city yet again. For the 100th time.


And way back in the day, the Peg had a system of cable cars downtown. Talk about changing times, eh?


That said, if the current developmental progress of Winnipeg is any indication, Rapid Transit at the very least has a bright future...especially since a recently city-commissioned paper highlighted the need for Rapid Transit to become implemented in Winnipeg.


I spend a lot of time in London, and obviously Winnipeg doesn't need anything even remotely near the complexity of London's transit system (which is very easy to use), but Winnipeg does need to start taking RT seriously...its already missed out a great opportunity to build a whole network that the previous mayor proposed in 2005, and the current mayor axed. It would have been BRT, but instead we could be speaking about potentially upgrading to LRT rather than whether or not to still build it.

[roccerfeller]

Originally Posted by Symz

In Windsor the city council is toying with the idea of an electric vehicle trolley downtown. Do any of your cities use these?

This is among the current considerations in Winnipeg...well, something similar anyways. "Electric vehicle trolley" can be a pretty vague statement lol

[caltrane74]

Nice post on the Eglinton LRT from Eug at UT

Keeping you in the loop: shoring work, and supports for the roadway are already under construction - Tunnel boring equipment to arrive next year.

Originally Posted by Eug

Thanks for the link. It actually provides some limited simple, but useful information for the layperson, and has good production quality without looking overproduced. The two people in the video aren't particularly slick, but they're real people: Peter Allibone, Chief Project Manager, and Franca Di Giovanni, Community Liaison.

http://thecrosstown.ca/

P.S. Here is the illustration of the launch site in case you haven't already seen it:



And here is a hypothetical station, illustrating the pedestrian traffic flow:



---

P.P.S. On another topic: Regarding Transit City, I wasn't aware of this, but maybe it's just because I don't follow these things as closely as some of you do:

Peak ridership for the Eglinton section of the Eglinton-Crosstown is projected to hit 12000 pphpd, in 2031. This is an enormous increase from the projected numbers from Transit City's Eglinton section (5000 pphpd), because most of those people coming from the outer parts would have just transferred from the LRT to Bloor-Danforth.

What was the max capacity in terms of passengers per hour per direction for the Transit City LRT design?

[Wharn]

Originally Posted by caltrane74

Nice post on the Eglinton LRT from Eug at UT

Keeping you in the loop: shoring work, and supports for the roadway are already under construction - Tunnel boring equipment to arrive next year.

Delicious. That's the only word I can use to describe this.

[Canadian74]

The new Calgary Transit Smart Cards coming next summer:



Looking forward to them. Installation for smart card readers in Buses starts this month.

http://www.calgarycitynews.com/2011/09/calgary-transit-preparing-for-connect.html

[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by Canadian74

The new Calgary Transit Smart Cards coming next summer:



Looking forward to them. Installation for smart card readers in Buses starts this month.

http://www.calgarycitynews.com/2011/09/calgary-transit-preparing-for-connect.html

It is about bloody time. Seriously. Even Saskatoon had this technology three years ago.

[le calmar]

About time OC Transpo switch to smart cards too.

[whiteford]

they had lots of buses and trains to convert. i am sure that is what took so long. they voted to spend the money elsewhere, for more important projects. converting to smart cards seemed less important than expanding the platforms to increase ctrain capacity. so the money was spent building new downtown platforms or something. i can live without smart-cards, i cant live without space to ride the train. that is just a theory of mine of course, i am sure its mostly bullshit. but it does explain how there can be many variables that lead to the smart-card delay.

[caltrane74]

Accident building York University Subway Station..... (on the spadina line)

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1067...ines-in-deadly-accident-at-ttc-site?bn=1


Interesting footnote, I was not aware, this one station was costing $400 million.

At that price, it better be the mother of all subway stations.

[bulliver]

Caught ETS historic bus 432 cruising through town last weekend:

[kw5150]

By kw5150 at 2011-10-20

[Alexcaban]

STM to beat 64-year-old record

Ridership reaches highest levels; Public transit operator expects to hit 405 million trips on buses, métro

Never before have Montrealers used public transit as much as they do today.

In 2011, Société de transport de Montréal expects 405 million trips to be taken on its buses and the métro, STM president Michel Labrecque announced Tuesday.

The 2011 estimate, extrapolated from January-to-September ridership figures, is a four-per-cent jump over 2010, more than double the 1.8 per cent the STM had expected.
If the STM reaches 405 million trips, ridership will have jumped by almost 12 per cent (an increase of 42 million rides) since it started significantly increasing bus and métro service in 2007, thanks to extra provincial funding.

Over the past five years, métro service has increased by 29 per cent and bus service by 22 per cent.

Several service improvements were responsible for much of the ridership hike, the STM said:

--On the 31 bus routes in the 10-Minute Max network created last year (buses run every 10 minutes or less), ridership increased by seven per cent (or 38,000 more trips).

--On 14 rapid-bus routes, ridership increased by 48 per cent (15,000 more rides).

--The 470 Express Pierrefonds saw ridership increase by 134 per cent (5,700 more rides).

--The 427 Express St. Joseph saw a ridership increase of 65 per cent (2,200 more rides).

--Average daily ridership on the 747 downtown Montreal-Trudeau Airport express bus in 2011 is 32 per cent higher than it was in 2010.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/beat+year+record/5606675/story.html#ixzz1bwI72T2e

[Travis007]

http://www.blogto.com/city/2011/11/ttc_reveals_new_streetcar_design/

TTC reveals new streetcar design

Posted by Derek Flack / NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Here are some of the stats the TTC has posted about the vehicles, which are supposed to hit the streets in 2013:

Seating: 70
Standing: 62 (average) & 181 (maximum)
Length: 30.20 m
Width: 2.54 m
Height: 3.84 m
Weight: 48,200 kg
Maximum Service Speed: 70 km/h

If you're keen on checking out the vehicles in person, the TTC will be showing off a mock-up of the front half of the vehicle from November 12-15 (10 a.m. to 7 p.m.) at the Hillcrest yards.

[Travis007]

EDIT: double post