Rapid Transit in the Halifax area

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by curnhalio

That sounds great in theory. However, that alone will not fix anything. Unless there are additional transit malls on both sides of the harbour, buses will be stuck in incredibly long lines of traffic getting to their dedicated lane, making the overall commute even slower.

Well obviously we need more bus lanes throughout the central parts of town with or without one on the bridge. But the bridge is probably the more challenging one politically.

[Nouvellecosse]

[QUOTE=OldDartmouthMark;7174059]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

Interesting take on that, moving people efficiently around the peninsula would certainly have value. However, if no improvements are made to the commuter situation, then won't we still have congestion downtown from all the commuters bringing their cars into the area? Don't you think that this situation needs to be addressed as well?

A transit service that focuses on keeping "off peninsula" cars from coming onto the peninsula is going to improve mobility for people moving around the peninsula as much as it is for the "off peninsula" people actually using it. So I'd actually place this at a higher priority even though it doesn't seem as sexy from an urbanism standpoint. Even if it didn't carry as many passengers, it would probably result in a greater reduction in pollution and congestion than an inner city service since inner city dwellers are already far more likely to use transit or active transportation and the off peninsula car trips it replaces will be longer ones.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Ziobrop

I skim read the report. basically why spend 62million on startup costs when you can just buy more buses..

Completely ignores the fact that rail is a separate ROW. I challenge you to build a dedicated bus row for that price. (IIRC Ottawa's Bus Transitway is around 13million a KM)

That changes the economics alot.

I agree. A key fact here is that adding more buses along the Bedford Highway will do little or nothing to improve transit in the future, and creating a dedicated ROW for buses would be difficult. The ferry has also been ruled out. There do not seem to be many alternatives.

I am not surprised at the hugely negative spin but a lot of it is uninformed. Basically, people have been skimming the report and picking out worst-case scenarios.

Some things to consider:

- This didn't include transit-oriented development or any changes to the regional plan that would happen if commuter rail were constructed. And there would be changes, because HRM council is currently throttling back development in Bedford due to the lack of road and transit capacity. Increasing development and the population in the catchment area has an enormous impact on feasibility because it means more taxes for the city than would otherwise be possible and more riders to support the train.
- A huge portion of the cost was transit access fees to CN. These were estimates and they could be brought down. For example, terminating at Bedford Common would cut off $29M from operating expenses according to their estimates. That's about 20% of the operating cost.
- The downtown extension looks much better than I thought it would. Their estimate is $25M for this and they give an example in Canada where such a system already exists.

The cost-benefit ratio in the cover letter for the report didn't include any of these changes, which are "optimizations" under chapter 14. The benefits of the unoptimized scenario are supposedly 70% of the costs, but this shifts to about 90% with some of their optimizations not counting TOD. This suggests to me that the project is actually pretty good.

I think there's a subtle bias here in the sense that when a project does have a quantifiable benefit (e.g. travel time saved) that gets weighed against the cost and if the result is negative we say the project is not worthwhile, ignoring any other benefits. Meanwhile, other projects without such quantifiable benefits (public attractions, sports infrastructure, and so on) tend to be judged by a different bar.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

However, we will still likely all buy in to the idea that it 'costs too much' and thus be mired into a slightly improved version of what we have now, with more traffic and similar level of convenience to transit customers as current. After all, it wouldn't be Halifax if we were too forward thinking...

It's penny wise and pound foolish thinking. A big part of the problem is that land use patterns aren't being taken into account with transit planning. An enormous part of the value of transit projects is that you can increase the densities built around the stations while increasing transit ridership and saving on land servicing costs. Over a 20 or 30 year timescale the zoning is what will make or break projects like commuter rail, LRT, or streetcars in the North End.

HRM commissioned a study a few years back around urban vs. rural development and the result was that shifting just 10% of development from suburban to urban would save $3 billion over 22 years: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=7172512

Shifting by just 1% is worth $300M, but the city balks at spending $100M on a transit project, and doesn't even take transit-oriented development or urban infill into account when doing transit studies.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's penny wise and pound foolish thinking. A big part of the problem is that land use patterns aren't being taken into account with transit planning. An enormous part of the value of transit projects is that you can increase the densities built around the stations while increasing transit ridership and saving on land servicing costs. Over a 20 or 30 year timescale the zoning is what will make or break projects like commuter rail, LRT, or streetcars in the North End.

HRM commissioned a study a few years back around urban vs. rural development and the result was that shifting just 10% of development from suburban to urban would save $3 billion over 22 years: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=7172512

Shifting by just 1% is worth $300M, but the city balks at spending $100M on a transit project, and doesn't even take transit-oriented development or urban infill into account when doing transit studies.

After living there for a few years, I quickly learned the real issue. The people do not want to think that they live in the big city. For example, someone from Sackville does not say they live in Halifax or HRM, they say they live in Sackville.
Attitudes are not for the whole city, it is for their area.

If this were, say, Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver the argument would be ignored and the line would be active.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

If this were, say, Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver the argument would be ignored and the line would be active.

I think there's some degree of that, but the issues exist elsewhere too, unfortunately. All one has to do is read about the dismaying saga of Transit City : a fully funded, city-wide transit expansion that would have vaulted the Toronto's transit into the next century, until it was killed by Rob Ford. Ever since, there's been no agreement and no meaningful debate on what to build, and everything is stalled by bickering between vocal suburban stakeholders and their urban counterparts.

But I do agree that in some other cities, there's a bit more pride in residents from across an urban region simply saying "I'm from [insert city here]." But parcohialism is still a huge issue in infrastructure planning everywhere.

[someone123]

I think it's a function of age and geography and, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd probably say that the larger, more "metropolitan" cities tend to have more distinct parts where people feel more of a sense of sub-regional identity. Halifax is just big enough that it's a pain to travel to other parts of the city for day-to-day stuff, so different parts of the city have their own employment centres, shopping areas, and other attractions.

New York's one prime example where people have ties to their borough or part of the city (which sometimes means state as well, since metro NY extends into NJ and CT). Definitely not a small city.

[curnhalio]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think it's a function of age and geography and, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd probably say that the larger, more "metropolitan" cities tend to have more distinct parts where people feel more of a sense of sub-regional identity. Halifax is just big enough that it's a pain to travel to other parts of the city for day-to-day stuff, so different parts of the city have their own employment centres, shopping areas, and other attractions.

New York's one prime example where people have ties to their borough or part of the city (which sometimes means state as well, since metro NY extends into NJ and CT). Definitely not a small city.

In NYC specifically, the ties extend to their individual neighbourhood. People in Brooklyn will say they're from Park Slope, or Williamsburg, or Bensonhurst or what have you.

With the "We're not Toronto, or Montreal" argument, I think people tend to forget (or may not even be aware) that a city doesn't have to be that big to have higher order transit, or tall buildings, or to have to pay to park downtown. Those things exist in cities of 500,000-1,000,000 people. There is definitely a cadre here that desperately clings to the "small town Halifax" that was here 20-25 years ago. They certainly voice their opinion, and they even have a few representatives on Council.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by curnhalio

With the "We're not Toronto, or Montreal" argument, I think people tend to forget (or may not even be aware) that a city doesn't have to be that big to have higher order transit, or tall buildings, or to have to pay to park downtown. Those things exist in cities of 500,000-1,000,000 people. There is definitely a cadre here that desperately clings to the "small town Halifax" that was here 20-25 years ago. They certainly voice their opinion, and they even have a few representatives on Council.

I agree. Thankfully this group seems less vocal today than it was 10 years ago. Or at least the positive, forward-looking opinions seem a bit more prominent.

I'd reframe it a bit though and say that part of the change is that Halifax simply isn't a small town anymore. I think part of the issue with this is that people keep comparing it to other Canadian cities that are also growing at a similar or faster rate; the "smaller than Toronto" perspective has been around since the 1970's for example but that goalpost has moved considerably. As far as the big projects are concerned, they need to be planned for a medium-term horizon for a metro area of 500,000 people. That is not a huge metropolis but it's definitely a significant human settlement. A lot of things that make sense at 100,000 don't make sense at 500,000.

[someone123]

Perhaps not very informative to this crowd but here's, very roughly, the proposed Hollis Street extension alignment for commuter rail:

[scryer]

I hope I did this right...

Let me introduce you to the Atlantic Line transit fantasy! Crappily designed in Paint, the Atlantic line services the Halifax and Dartmouth areas by connecting the key city centres with a rail rapid transit (of some sort) system never seen before in the Maritime provinces. This first phase of Halifax's rapid transit system will have the potential to connect students from St. Mary's University to downtown Dartmouth within 45 minutes! As illustrated by the barriers and arrows, most of the system will be underground as the areas that the Atlantic line is servicing is already pretty densely populated and there isn't a ton of room in the peninsula to build above the ground.

This line of rapid transportation will encourage the growing peninsula area to grow taller by providing a rapid transit option that can sustain the demand, as seen with the TODs in Vancouver and Toronto. Even though the Atlantic line connects Dartmouth and Halifax with an easily accessed rail option, the ferry services will remain intact as they are also key to the area's transportation plan, being convenient to use if you just want to get over to Dartmouth or Halifax quicker. This would be comparable to using the Seabus in Vancouver to get to North Vancouver, instead of using a bus.

The Atlantic Line also considers the bright future of Canada's largest east coast city, and it can be extended. Ending at Saint Mary's University, the line can twin the nearby railroad that curves up the west side of the peninsula.

Just having a little fun... Would this even be plausible in Halifax?

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by scryer

...from St. Mary's University to downtown Dartmouth within 45 minutes!

Finally!

(note: the image isn't loading properly)

[Hali87]

(this is scryer's, not mine - inside the [ img ] [ /img ] tags should be the link copied from the right side of the page where it says IMG, under Email, Direct, and HTML.)

[TheGreenBastard]

Originally Posted by Hali87

(this is scryer's, not mine - inside the [ img ] [ /img ] tags should be the link copied from the right side of the page where it says IMG, under Email, Direct, and HTML.)

No love for Woodside.

It's so inconvenient for a Haligonian to get across the harbour to NSCC Waterfront :/

[Nouvellecosse]

The Canada Line from downtown Vancouver to Surrey is about 15km (not including the airport spur), costed over $2 billion and has ridership greater than the entire Halifax transit operations. This route would be 13km and unlikely to cost any less than $2 billion. I agree that it's fun, but I doubt it would be feasible.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by TheGreenBastard

No love for Woodside.

It's so inconvenient for a Haligonian to get across the harbour to NSCC Waterfront :/

Depends what part of town you're coming from. There's the ferry

I would imagine Akerley is actually much more tedious for most people to get to.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by TheGreenBastard

No love for Woodside.

It's so inconvenient for a Haligonian to get across the harbour to NSCC Waterfront :/

That's why the need for a third harbour crossing in the southern part of the peninsula is self-evident to all who do not have an irrational hatred of progress.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

The Canada Line from downtown Vancouver to Surrey is about 15km (not including the airport spur), costed over $2 billion and has ridership greater than the entire Halifax transit operations. This route would be 13km and unlikely to cost any less than $2 billion. I agree that it's fun, but I doubt it would be feasible.

Much of the Canada Line is underground though and it was generally kind of overpriced and gold plated. A similar line could be built in Halifax for far less money.

The ridership number comparison isn't very meaningful because part of the point here is that Halifax doesn't have rapid transit. If it did ridership would probably be a lot higher.

I'm not sure about this plan but I don't think a $1B investment in transit in Halifax should be considered beyond the pale. That's what the province considers spending on highways and bridges.

[Nouvellecosse]

The whole point of using that as a comparison is that the line this guy suggested was also supposed to be mostly underground. And I've mostly heard criticism about the Canada line being overly spartan, with platform lengths being too short, and stations being very bare bones (like this article). This is about as basic as a rapid transit/metro line can get. The only way to make it any more basic would be to downgrade it to LRT. Yes you can build transit lines for a lower cost, but I assume he was specifically discussing his proposal.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

Much of the Canada Line is underground though and it was generally kind of overpriced and gold plated. A similar line could be built in Halifax for far less money.

The ridership number comparison isn't very meaningful because part of the point here is that Halifax doesn't have rapid transit. If it did ridership would probably be a lot higher.

I'm not sure about this plan but I don't think a $1B investment in transit in Halifax should be considered beyond the pale. That's what the province considers spending on highways and bridges.

Absolutely agreed. Toronto is going to spend $3.65 billion on its ludicrous Scarborough subway expansion to serve a puny ridership, in a far-flung corner of the city that doesn't remotely merit such service. And Toronto is a city with some pretty staggering fiscal problems.

Surely we can spend a fraction of that sort of expense to serve the densest part of our entire region.