The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[J.OT13]

Let's talk spacing. How does this compare to downtown Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver?

Here's Ottawa. 3 Stations in the 2.5 kilometer tunnel.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Let's talk spacing. How does this compare to downtown Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver?

Here's Ottawa. 3 Stations in the 2.5 kilometer tunnel.

About 2-3x farther appart. (MTL and TO)

[TorontoDrew]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Let's talk spacing. How does this compare to downtown Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver?

Here's Ottawa. 3 Stations in the 2.5 kilometer tunnel.

Put it this way, the Eaton Centre has 2 subway stops. Mind you the subways that reach out of the core can be about just as far spread out.

[FrankieFlowerpot]

From Yonge and Bloor station to St. George Station doing the downtown loop there are 12 stations in 6.5km of subway tunnels

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by milomilo

What's wrong with them? They are much better spaced than the 5 in 1600m on 7th Ave.

Well, yeah, no one is suggesting that. There's some long stretches there. Some station shifting (granted 7th has to stay put) with one more station would do wonders for the downtown/Beltine. A couple more placed in the surrounded urban communities would make this line feel less like a hybrid express commuter line.

[MalcolmTucker]

^ At $200 million a pop to add them to the underground sections, have to be a true gap in service to be worth it.

[J.OT13]

Ottawa had a debate around the idea of adding a station downtown back in 2011. The cost was estimated at $50 million.

They opted not to do it.

Six years later, they're planning on converting a bus transitway, currently under construction for, you guessed it, $50 million, to lrt within 2 years of it's planned opening.

http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-mps-ask-for-lrt-station-at-confederation-square-1.808440

[GlassCity]

I don't get having a lot of stations in city centres. They're usually the most walkable parts of the city. Maintaining 800 metre spacing is fine—you can easily walk to most places from there. Otherwise, if you're going to the last one, it's frustrating stopping every 400 metres.

[Nouvellecosse]

People don't necessarily want to have to walk twice as far for every trip, especially since city centres tend to have fairly slow walking with a higher density of intersections and sometimes sidewalk congestion. So the average user may not save any overall trip time or the average trip might even be longer with fewer stations. Besides, not everyone is capable of walking twice as far due to being elderly, pregnant, disabled or carrying heavy loads and sometimes the weather is shitty. And considering how much busier the average downtown station is likely to be compared to elsewhere in the city, there are more than enough users to justify each extra station.

Also, consider that dwell time differences means you're not necessarily saving as much time as you expect. If you have 1/2 as many stations (assuming this doesn't depress ridership, which it does) you'd need to load and unload twice as many people per station so you'd have to stop for longer than if you had more shorter duration stops.

The only real upside to having fewer stops is the construction cost savings and slight time savings for a small minority of users. But the long term cost savings might not even be that great considering you'd need to maintain more parallel local bus service since the long station spacing would make the line less useful for short trips within downtown.

[GlassCity]

I mean it's all case-dependent. But I see nothing wrong with Calgary's current proposal. Especially if the line will eventually have through-traffic through downtown, unlike Line 1 in Toronto for instance.

[swimmer_spe]

Toronto is a great example of what infrastructure needs to exist downtown.

I can walk from Union to almost Bloor in the middle of a cold snap/blizzard/torrential downpour and be comfortable. That is 3k.

Walkability depends on so much, and for 3-6+ months of the year, walking is not pleasant. Having indoor paths would make spacing stations further feasible. There are 5 stations within those 3km.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Toronto is a great example of what infrastructure needs to exist downtown.

I can walk from Union to almost Bloor in the middle of a cold snap/blizzard/torrential downpour and be comfortable. That is 3k.

Walkability depends on so much, and for 3-6+ months of the year, walking is not pleasant. Having indoor paths would make spacing stations further feasible. There are 5 stations within those 3km.

Now that is a sentence one doesn't see often!

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Now that is a sentence one doesn't see often!

I know.It was hard to write. However, in this instance, it is true.

For any major city in Canada to be a good city, it must be comfortable to move around in winter.

Toronto has done that. So has Montreal. Other cities are following suit.

[Innsertnamehere]

The PATH is key for crowd control too, not just comfort. If the office crowds were forced to the surface, they would overflow the sidewalks at rush hours. The streams of people walking down to union station at 5:00 is absolutely unbelievable.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I know.It was hard to write. However, in this instance, it is true.

For any major city in Canada to be a good city, it must be comfortable to move around in winter.

Toronto has done that. So has Montreal. Other cities are following suit.

Personally I don't mind walking outside in most winter weather, but there are a handful of days where an indoor RESO or PATH network is or would be really nice.

[speedog]

Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper

not very impressed with the station distances in the downtown core.

Only two of those four stations are actually in the downtown core unless someone has moved the boundaries of what is generally considered Calgary's downtown core.

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

I know.It was hard to write. However, in this instance, it is true.

For any major city in Canada to be a good city, it must be comfortable to move around in winter.

Toronto has done that. So has Montreal. Other cities are following suit.

Winter?

What about Summer???

When it's 30+ the risks of heat exhaustion are pretty present, and the increasingly common 40+ makes risks of full on heat stroke more and more dangerous.

Summer is the season where PATH surely saves the most lives...

[WhipperSnapper]

Originally Posted by speedog

only two of those four stations are actually in the downtown core unless someone has moved the boundaries of what is generally considered calgary's downtown core.

lol

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I don't get having a lot of stations in city centres. They're usually the most walkable parts of the city. Maintaining 800 metre spacing is fine—you can easily walk to most places from there. Otherwise, if you're going to the last one, it's frustrating stopping every 400 metres.

There's more to consider than easy access to station locations—city centre stations are usually the busiest in any system. Fewer stations mean more crowding. Additionally, riders have no other options once the stations that do exist reach capacity, which affects overall line capacity. Take the Yonge line through downtown Toronto: Even removing two stations from the Union-Bloor stretch would absolutely overwhelm the remaining stations.

That said, this concern might not be pertinent to the specific lines discussed above, especially if relief could be accommodated elsewhere (i.e., by stations on future lines).

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by speedog

Only two of those four stations are actually in the downtown core unless someone has moved the boundaries of what is generally considered Calgary's downtown core.

Actually you're also wrong if you insist on being pedantic - 2 Ave station is located in Eau Claire. Of course any normal person is completely fine with including the Beltline, Eau Claire and the other adjacent communities when referring to downtown though.