Quote:
Originally Posted by aberdeen5698
I couldn't agree more, but we also need to make sure that we don't nickle-and-dime the project the way the Canada Line was. Stations need to long enough to allow for plenty of future growth, and it sure would be nice to have more exits. Toronto did it right over 70 years ago by building their first lines with 150 metre platforms which had exits on all four corners of the intersection. Without that foresight they would have run out of capacity long ago.
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In terms of station construction, we thankfully have learned some lessons since the Canada Line was built, where the underground stations of the Broadway subway are much better designed for future expansion. Even the above ground stations for the SLS expansion have a bit more thought put into them than previous surface expansions, however it's much easier to make changes to an above ground station in the future than underground ones.
In terms of tech, if we are going to go with something other than the Innovia metros we really need something that beats it in terms of operating profile. Unlike the Rotem units on the Canada Line which just have worse operating profiles resulting in a substantially lower average operating speed (among the many other issues). Even looking at the Metropolis units used for the REM in Montreal (and Sydney Metro among other nice shiny new examples), they don't have substantially better operating profiles than the Innovia metros, so we really shouldn't be adding a third technology unless it truly is better (or serves a different type of operating profile entirely like regional rail/high speed rail, although those should inherently have better average operating speeds than light metros).
The mistake of the Surrey LRT (and the upcoming Montreal Tram, which I hope meets a similar fate) was not understanding that transit needs to be better than driving in order to compete with driving and actually take cars off the road. In order to not make that mistake we need to make sure that the transit that is built is substantially faster than driving between the destinations on the line wherever that may be. If taking transit between just the stations themselves isn't faster than driving, you're certainly not convincing anyone who drives to switch and therefore you lose the incentive for drivers to support the project.
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