The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[yaletown_fella]

I wish Toronto and Edmonton would have opted for somthing similar to Vancouver's skytrain as opposed to LRT .

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Yeah, please explain how frequently running large vehicles at grade through an area is a positive for walkability and the pedestrian experience? And how exactly does it make things safer? Aren’t people driving by in cars also “safe” in this at grade nature?

Do people actually believe this developer marketing nonsense that at grade transit magically makes people want to be downtown??

I have never heard anyone use these arguments for buses, which really seems that given their at-grade transit nature should also apply...

All I can say is that with this addition Edmonton will probably have the worst designed mass transit system in Canada.

Calgary’s on the flip side will be getting better.

So happy Vancouver will be getting another subway along Broadway and not some at-grade LRT...

Cars spew exhaust into the air and also by their very nature are unpredictable. Trams running on tracks are the very definition of predictable.

Again it should be clear why this doesn't apply to buses, they aren't very accessible and also don't follow rails.

I'd also hardly call a tramway a railroad (that's evoking something like a freight train).

It's not developer nonsense that reliable and permanent transit DOES make people want to be downtown, the fact that it's at grade is secondary to this. You are missing the point of Urban Transit if you think it needs to fly through downtown at 60+ km/h. Of course, if you have a massive metropolitan area then having that type of service is a good idea but when the plan is to improve the livability of the core of your city then a tram is fine as it will still be much faster than walking around the core for people and as has been mentioned the Valley Line speeds up a lot outside of Downtown Edmonton given its longer stretches of ROW

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by Doady

The reason for grade separated rail is so the trains don't interfere with the streets including cars and pedestrians. As at-grade trains become longer and more frequent, they block other traffic more and more. You can see GO Train system increasingly becoming grade separated. Grade separation is just to increase the capacity of the system.

When Calgary started building its at-grade LRT, it was much smaller and had much fewer riders than Edmonton does today. Calgary today is using 4-car trains and every 2-3 minutes in each direction in downtown. How much more capacity can they add? Calgary's LRT needs grade separation today, but Edmonton is going in the opposite direction. Edmonton built a grade-separated system at the wrong time and now it is building an at-grade system at the wrong time.

Livable Downtowns should discourage car use, it amazes me how afraid the people on this forum are of inconveniencing car users.

Look at Toronto with the King Street Pilot and Vancouver with Granville, I can get across King incredibly fast right now on an AT GRADE streetcar and it doesn't even have dedicated lanes! When the focus of building Central Business Districts stops being making it easy for people to drive around and refocuses on improving walkability cycling and transit you see the true benefits. Its also not like the Valley Line is going to impact Jasper Ave. in Edmonton so really I think people are losing it over nothing.

Part of building good downtowns and generally part of building good transit that doesn't cost a fortune (BRT, LRT) is learning how to give these modes the edge so that they can travel faster than cars and so that cars don't slow them down. Things like dedicated lanes, Queue Jumps, and priority signals.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

As Doady said, Calgary and Edmonton seem to be basing their decisions on their own "lessons learned".

From what I have seen of the process of the Green Line in Calgary being designed, I don't think that is true. City Council in Calgary really wanted an at grade streetcar style line the whole way, which is why it was decided to be low floor before the route was even set. They really believe the lie that putting rails in the street would turn the whole corridor into an urban paradise. They spent a long time trying to see if they could run at grade through downtown, but it was obvious from the start this was impractical for many reasons - elevation changes, the CP railway, direction changes, block sizes, impact on traffic etc.

So after years of deliberation, the line was put underground because that was the only place they could. If the option to put it at grade was available, they definitely would have chosen that, I have no doubt. They don't care that all the places on the existing LRT that interact with traffic correlate exactly with the places where the most problems are.

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

I wish Toronto and Edmonton would have opted for somthing similar to Vancouver's skytrain as opposed to LRT .

The issue with this is that you cannot build the same amount of transit when it costs far more. You actually are fiscally better off building a lot of slower transit that will serve far more users.

Its also worth noting that Calgary is only in the situation its in because it has a on street central core serving the WHOLE network which already runs high frequencies. Operating highfloor trains at such high frequencies with tons of stops downtown is very different from a tramway.

[Coldrsx]

For all of those folks who think that Edmonton is going in the wrong direction from an LRT perspective, refer to this please and thank you. We are not doing a 7th ave in Calgary, but rather a much more European tram approach. I love it.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq__rQ3VsAA8sKU.jpg

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

For all of those folks who think that Edmonton is going in the wrong direction from an LRT perspective, refer to this please and thank you. We are not doing a 7th ave in Calgary, but rather a much more European tram approach. I love it.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dq__rQ3VsAA8sKU.jpg

Exactly

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by Doady

Length isn't everything, otherwise just build BRT instead of LRT.

In 2013, with 24km of light rail, Edmonton had 14% higher light rail ridership than Dallas (150km), 565% higher than Charlotte (31km), 90% higher than St. Louis (74km), 145% higher than Sacramento (69km), and 75% higher than Salt Lake City (72km).

Edmonton city council had a brt plan, and citizens hated it. They had a plan to use high floor LRT to build out the backbone of the network but then rich Edmonton, or rather anecdotally, people who donated to a former mayors campaign hated it. So they made the current plan.

The projected ridership for the first phase of this line is low. 45,000 a day by 2045. The capacity is on the low side, 6,660 per direction per hour at a five minute frequency. The capacity can be upped by ignoring traffic impacts and increasing frequency, or by buying vehicles which squeeze more people in the maximum compatible length of 84 meters or so.

The traffic on roads it crosses at grade are also low: at Boonie Doon it is 26,000 cars a day. Other roads are so wide the marginal drop in capacity won’t even be noticed like at 109th in the next phase, crossing a 41,000 car a day road.

Avoiding a tunnel in downtown was a strategic decision because Edmonton’s downtown has a big footprint without super defined edges. Similar traffic conditions on similar sized roads are prevalent for a very long distance outside of downtown, which would have necessitated a very long tunnel or elevated structures (oh yes, Edmontonians hate those too). Edmonton lacks easy to use ROW radiating from downtown because of a few things:the railways came late to downtown Edmonton, and came via not great routing due to the deep river valley. The existing route parallels (at a distance) and borrows corridor from the existing freight, and city council hated the downtown heavy rail so much they didn’t secure other useful corridors for transit purposes (there is a rather useful bike path to the central north) when it was pulled up.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

For all of those folks who think that Edmonton is going in the wrong direction from an LRT perspective, refer to this please and thank you. We are not doing a 7th ave in Calgary, but rather a much more European tram approach. I love it.

I'm not familiar enough with Edmonton to know if the line being built is a good design, and the picture you posted does indeed look nicer than 7th Ave. But you are continuing the untruth that the railway improves the pedestrian realm - it does not. Of course it is better than a road, but if the railway was underground and that was pedestrian, it would be better still. It's not the railway itself that improves urbanity, but the access to transit.

That's not to say at grade LRT is bad, but it should be presented truthfully. In the real world, underground lines cost a lot of money so we can't always afford them. So we compromise on that to lower the cost, and put the train at grade rather than below. Edmonton may well have got the right compromise, as it appears you get the whole line for a few billion, unlike Calgary which gets half of ours for twice the price, yet still retains the negative aspects of low floor LRT even though it will function almost entirely as a full metro.

[osmo]

The only issue with at grade transit is when it's NOT provided top priority with movement. Calgary has little issues with placing the C-train at top priority at crossings and proving try ability for it to persue top speeds.

Tunnels became a need as the above world was far too dense to accmodate trains, and this had nothing to do with cars as subway tunnels predated the auto. I'm old word times the stets were congested with streetcars, horses, people and it slowed down transit so the obviousnnwxt step was to go underground after above ground elevated be not as praticical and the technology allowed for (safe) operation of trains below ground.

Above Ground transit at grade is fine as long as it is given priority to move freely. Since cities have little money and nobody is open to quick and dirty trench/cut and cover construction we will see more Edmonton style projects up until it is far to dense to make above ground practical.

Edmonton will see their projects succeed as they have realized above grade needs priority. Toronto will flop with its Crosstown until it accepts this reality as these future trains don't have top priority and will get bogged down during service.

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by osmo

The only issue with at grade transit is when it's NOT provided top priority with movement. Calgary has little issues with placing the C-train at top priority at crossings and proving try ability for it to persue top speeds.

Tunnels became a need as the above world was far too dense to accmodate trains, and this had nothing to do with cars as subway tunnels predated the auto. I'm old word times the stets were congested with streetcars, horses, people and it slowed down transit so the obviousnnwxt step was to go underground after above ground elevated be not as praticical and the technology allowed for (safe) operation of trains below ground.

Above Ground transit at grade is fine as long as it is given priority to move freely. Since cities have little money and nobody is open to quick and dirty trench/cut and cover construction we will see more Edmonton style projects up until it is far to dense to make above ground practical.

Edmonton will see their projects succeed as they have realized above grade needs priority. Toronto will flop with its Crosstown until it accepts this reality as these future trains don't have top priority and will get bogged down during service.

Crosstown Trains will have signal priority/

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I'm not familiar enough with Edmonton to know if the line being built is a good design, and the picture you posted does indeed look nicer than 7th Ave. But you are continuing the untruth that the railway improves the pedestrian realm - it does not. Of course it is better than a road, but if the railway was underground and that was pedestrian, it would be better still. It's not the railway itself that improves urbanity, but the access to transit.

That's not to say at grade LRT is bad, but it should be presented truthfully. In the real world, underground lines cost a lot of money so we can't always afford them. So we compromise on that to lower the cost, and put the train at grade rather than below. Edmonton may well have got the right compromise, as it appears you get the whole line for a few billion, unlike Calgary which gets half of ours for twice the price, yet still retains the negative aspects of low floor LRT even though it will function almost entirely as a full metro.

Except that the half line we are getting is almost as long (22 km) as the total length of both phases of the Valley Line (combined 27 km). It does look good though, I don't have a problem with the Valley Line's treatment of 102 Ave, it's certainly an improvement.

However, 7th Ave isn't really that bad either. The two are just incomparably different. 7th is a transit and emergency services route that bisects the entire downtown core of the nation's third largest city and fourth largest metro area. No other city in Canada has such an avenue and it works quite well for the delivery of emergency services. Not to mention that 7th Avenue is the only place in the country that offers free rapid transit service 365 days a year. The revitalization the city did of 7th back in 2012 (or whenever it was) made it look a lot better and more functional, in fact it won urban design awards. My biggest critique is that it could use more trees. Having high-floor trains does kinda suck in that environment, but we deal with what we've got. It will be nice once the red line is underground and it's only the blue line running on the Avenue.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I'm not familiar enough with Edmonton to know if the line being built is a good design, and the picture you posted does indeed look nicer than 7th Ave. But you are continuing the untruth that the railway improves the pedestrian realm - it does not. Of course it is better than a road, but if the railway was underground and that was pedestrian, it would be better still. It's not the railway itself that improves urbanity, but the access to transit.

That's not to say at grade LRT is bad, but it should be presented truthfully. In the real world, underground lines cost a lot of money so we can't always afford them. So we compromise on that to lower the cost, and put the train at grade rather than below. Edmonton may well have got the right compromise, as it appears you get the whole line for a few billion, unlike Calgary which gets half of ours for twice the price, yet still retains the negative aspects of low floor LRT even though it will function almost entirely as a full metro.

In some of the objections to the concept of at-grade rail adding pedestrian friendliness, there seems to be an implication that pedestrians are separate from transit riders, and that pedestrians are just going about their business walking around town and are only affected by the rail service in terms of how it affects the shared streetscape. Yet many transit trips start and/or end as a pedestrian trip and convenient transit access is a major enabler to a pedestrian lifestyle, so obviously transit services are a common pedestrian origin and destination. Therefore things that make it faster and more convenient to get to transit are inherently pedestrian friendly.

At its most basic, pedestrian friendliness is just the ability to access one's destination by foot more quickly and pleasantly, and often this tends to involve not only the quality of the route, but also the proximity of the destination to the departure point. At grade rail only really improves quality in the sense that it can prompt the transformation of wide traffic sewer streets into a more complete corridor with fewer automobile lanes, and can replace some diesel bus traffic with electric transport. But it also improves proximity by picking up and dropping off passengers right at the street level rather than requiring them to travel through corridors, up/down escalators or elevators, dealing with lines and confusion etc, all adding additional journey time and complexity. This is especially true with newer systems since deeper bored tunnels are more common than the shallow cut and cover that was once popular.

And not only is the station right at street level, but there can be more stations in a busy stretch getting people closer to their final destination. While there may not be high enough passenger volume to justify frequent underground stations, there may be enough passengers for frequent surface stations since each one costs less and requires fewer passengers to justify.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Reecemartin

Livable Downtowns should discourage car use, it amazes me how afraid the people on this forum are of inconveniencing car users.

Look at Toronto with the King Street Pilot and Vancouver with Granville, I can get across King incredibly fast right now on an AT GRADE streetcar and it doesn't even have dedicated lanes! When the focus of building Central Business Districts stops being making it easy for people to drive around and refocuses on improving walkability cycling and transit you see the true benefits. Its also not like the Valley Line is going to impact Jasper Ave. in Edmonton so really I think people are losing it over nothing.

Part of building good downtowns and generally part of building good transit that doesn't cost a fortune (BRT, LRT) is learning how to give these modes the edge so that they can travel faster than cars and so that cars don't slow them down. Things like dedicated lanes, Queue Jumps, and priority signals.

I don't give a shit about car drivers. I don't own a car. I have never driven a car in my entire life. I am talking about the capacity of the transit system, not just the LRTs but the pedestrian activity to the LRT stations and the buses connecting to them and the drivers parking and riding.

King Street in Toronto is just one of 6 east-west arterial corridors from Queen to Front. That's an average distance of 100m between each of them. You're not going do give the King Street treatment to any major corridor in Edmonton.

There's a major difference between having a streetcar as a secondary line (King, Granville) and building it as the main transit line of an entire metropolitan area. The Yonge and Bloor streetcars were replaced for good reason. I don't think the subways reduced the walkability of Yonge and Bloor and promoted car use. Demonizing grade separated transit as pro-car thing is just ridiculous.

Grade separation or building rail has nothing to do enouraging people to walk and use transit. To go from regular bus to BRT to LRT to subway is all about increasing capacity, nothing more or less. Ottawa has better transit ridership than Calgary. Ottawa is building LRT because it has too many riders, not because of lack of riders.

That's the problem with a lot of cities in the US. They build at-grade LRTs when they should be building BRT. In Canada it's the opposite problem, cities building at-grade LRT when they should be building grade-separated LRT or subway. Eglinton Crosstown is probably the worst example. Subway sections mixed with at-grade sections. Subway trains and riders onto the street.

At-grade LRT makes sense for Hurontario. Unlike Eglinton it doesn't serve Old Toronto, it doesn't touch the Toronto border, it won't act as relief for the Bloor-Danforth line. 2-car trains on day one, not 4-car trains like Edmonton now. At grade LRT makes sense because it is in Mississauga, not Toronto or Edmonton.

[MalcolmTucker]

The Valley Line in Edmonton will have overall speeds comparable or maybe higher than the YUS line in Toronto IIRC. Your concerns are misplaced on this one. Unlike lets say Waterloo, which at least from the EA showed it to be a big waste of money.


I think people from elsewhere are assuming a much higher service demand than the city of Edmonton is projecting. Edmonton is not downtown Toronto. This line is also not Ottawa's - it is a second line, complimenting a very high capacity trunk tunnel.

[osmo]

Toronto is suburban wasteland outside of the old city where densities create a reality where making a tunnel is a waste of money. Suburban tunnels such as the Sheppard subway were a waste of money and Sheppard would have benefited from a real at grade system with true priority. Toronto is backwards as it ignores it's density growth and continues to chase riders on the car club stretches of the system.

The Crosstown was created to get funding and not as an actual transit route. It got funding because it stretches most of the length of the city and hit many political wards to make the Province justify funding it. Scarborough subway folly follows the same script as a political plan and not a transit plan. If transit planning was taking place then the relief line would have been built ages ago.

Toronto needs a mix of all modes as the city and it's built form makes it a need. BRT to subway to express rail is all needed and should be planned from a regional level.

Not smart to chase the most expensive mode of density and ridership does not justify it. As noted the USA is full of examples of over built stub systems that do do anything or anywhere important. DC streetcar for example is the most pathetic line I've seen in some time. Shouldn't have been built if they couldn't complete it in full.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

In some of the objections to the concept of at-grade rail adding pedestrian friendliness, there seems to be an implication that pedestrians are separate from transit riders, and that pedestrians are just going about their business walking around town and are only affected by the rail service in terms of how it affects the shared streetscape. Yet many transit trips start and/or end as a pedestrian trip and convenient transit access is a major enabler to a pedestrian lifestyle, so obviously transit services are a common pedestrian origin and destination. Therefore things that make it faster and more convenient to get to transit are inherently pedestrian friendly.

At its most basic, pedestrian friendliness is just the ability to access one's destination by foot more quickly and pleasantly, and often this tends to involve not only the quality of the route, but also the proximity of the destination to the departure point. At grade rail only really improves quality in the sense that it can prompt the transformation of wide traffic sewer streets into a more complete corridor with fewer automobile lanes, and can replace some diesel bus traffic with electric transport. But it also improves proximity by picking up and dropping off passengers right at the street level rather than requiring them to travel through corridors, up/down escalators or elevators, dealing with lines and confusion etc, all adding additional journey time and complexity. This is especially true with newer systems since deeper bored tunnels are more common than the shallow cut and cover that was once popular.

And not only is the station right at street level, but there can be more stations in a busy stretch getting people closer to their final destination. While there may not be high enough passenger volume to justify frequent underground stations, there may be enough passengers for frequent surface stations since each one costs less and requires fewer passengers to justify.

It's true that a street level station is more convenient than an underground or elevated one, but any time saving will be more than made up for by the decrease in speed caused by running at grade. See 7th ave in Calgary, it's painfully slow. I'd rather spend 30 seconds extra to wait in the warmth for a faster train than freeze my balls off on surface watching a train trundle towards me at 30km/h stopping at multiple lights. Which is another point - this is Canada, I don't want to wait at a bus shelter I want a station.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think LRT is inherently bad, I just want the arguments for it presented truthfully. The sole reason (a very important reason) to build LRT over grade separated rail is cost. That is it. If a city can build LRT for an affordable price, as Edmonton and Kitchener etc appear to be doing, than that is a good compromise. What we are doing in Calgary is the opposite, and Ottawa made a similar mistake, building what is essentially a metro with a metro sized price tag, but pointlessly compromising it with inferior vehicles.

Just don't believe that if money was no object an at grade LRT would ever be chosen over a grade separated mass transit system.

[Reecemartin]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's true that a street level station is more convenient than an underground or elevated one, but any time saving will be more than made up for by the decrease in speed caused by running at grade. See 7th ave in Calgary, it's painfully slow. I'd rather spend 30 seconds extra to wait in the warmth for a faster train than freeze my balls off on surface watching a train trundle towards me at 30km/h stopping at multiple lights. Which is another point - this is Canada, I don't want to wait at a bus shelter I want a station.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think LRT is inherently bad, I just want the arguments for it presented truthfully. The sole reason (a very important reason) to build LRT over grade separated rail is cost. That is it. If a city can build LRT for an affordable price, as Edmonton and Kitchener etc appear to be doing, than that is a good compromise. What we are doing in Calgary is the opposite, and Ottawa made a similar mistake, building what is essentially a metro with a metro sized price tag, but pointlessly compromising it with inferior vehicles.

Just don't believe that if money was no object an at grade LRT would ever be chosen over a grade separated mass transit system.

Honestly in what way are the vehicles inferior to what is used on Skytrain? The Mark3's may be the high floor but they still don't use longitudinal seating so, in reality, I don't think they are any better than the trains on Ottawas LRT, better yet the platforms on Line 1 in Ottawa are 120m

[milomilo]

They have less room inside, awkward layouts and are not automated.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by milomilo

It's true that a street level station is more convenient than an underground or elevated one, but any time saving will be more than made up for by the decrease in speed caused by running at grade. See 7th ave in Calgary, it's painfully slow. I'd rather spend 30 seconds extra to wait in the warmth for a faster train than freeze my balls off on surface watching a train trundle towards me at 30km/h stopping at multiple lights. Which is another point - this is Canada, I don't want to wait at a bus shelter I want a station.

Well I'd consider that a reversible argument. Time saved by decreased travel time is taken by increased access time and vice versa. One would need to actually measure specific scenarios to see which actually resulted in the lower overall trip times. But even if the overall trip was longer due to slower transit speeds, the aspects related to the transit leg of the trip are an aspect of the transit service rather than the pedestrian experience. So even if the total trip time is increased it doesn't mean the benefit to the pedestrian leg of the trip is untrue.

In terms of waiting indoor vs out, if you're waiting so long for an LRT vehicle that you freeze your balls off, I have to wonder if the service is even frequent enough to justify underground stations to begin with. Besides, you're ignoring that if the stations are further apart, it takes longer to get to one to begin with (which often means a longer walk outside in the cold).

Originally Posted by milomilo

Don't get me wrong, I don't think LRT is inherently bad, I just want the arguments for it presented truthfully. The sole reason (a very important reason) to build LRT over grade separated rail is cost. That is it. If a city can build LRT for an affordable price, as Edmonton and Kitchener etc appear to be doing, than that is a good compromise. What we are doing in Calgary is the opposite, and Ottawa made a similar mistake, building what is essentially a metro with a metro sized price tag, but pointlessly compromising it with inferior vehicles.

Just don't believe that if money was no object an at grade LRT would ever be chosen over a grade separated mass transit system.

We've already established that there are pros and cons to both options. I can definitely think of scenarios in which I would consider surface rail integrated into the streetscape to be the superior option even if funds were available for a tunnel because of the improvement to, and integration with, the public realm, the visibility, accessibility etc. I can certainly accept if someone prefers an underground route over a surface option in a given scenario or even in general, but claiming that there is absolutely no benefit to surface transit other than cost is not a "truthful" way to present the argument.