The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

Yeah, it's everywhere. I do think that there is a particular small-town attitude in Halifax though, and part of it is how people tend to measure things against Toronto or assume problems are "mini" versions of big city problems and therefore have less urgency or impact. Often this obscures reality.

For example one of the big tropes in Halifax is that it has such great traffic compared to the "big cities". I think people were probably saying this in the 1950's when the city was 1/3 the size and many of the yardstick cities were much smaller still. Yet the HRM traffic studies show people sometimes sit for 50 minutes in their cars trying to get 12 km from Larry Uteck Blvd to downtown when a ferry could take 16 minutes. Whether people in Toronto are sitting in traffic for longer periods of time is irrelevant.

Then at the municipal level there's a "kick the can down the road" attitude combined with "X years to retirement" for staff. There's a bias toward inaction and the small town trope provides some fuel for it. I don't think it's true at all at this point that Halifax can delay transportation projects by 5 or 10 years without significant impacts. Most of these projects have already been delayed for 15 years. It is the same or maybe even worse for housing where some councillors and people were arguing that development should just be stopped or delayed and yet prices have spiked by 25% or more some years with people ending up homeless. The same myopic discussions about lopping 3 or 4 floors off buildings for arbitrary reasons happen when price escalation is enormous. The people leisurely debating these issues are generally insulated from the downsides of delay.

It goes back to amalgamation, which was done before Ontario did theirs in 1996. Everyone talks about being from their town.@Truenorth00 spoke it on here "Dartmouth" "Shearwater". Those are not cities or towns anymore, and haven't been for almost 30 years. Another problem is "what about us" syndrome. If they do it downtown, but not in Sackville or Dartmouth, then what gives?

Originally Posted by someone123

The battery electric buses are already showing up in transit studies as having a lifetime net cheaper cost than diesels and being better in a bunch of scenarios but what I was getting at more is the point at which they will seem like the no-brainer choice for a risk-averse municipal politician or bureaucrat. Right now the options seem pretty murky and operators don't seem to know exactly how to deploy the buses or how they will work out. I think if they are like "diesel, but better" (cheaper, longer range, less maintenance and fueling/charging logistical issues, and so on) they will be the go-to purchase but cities don't seem to be at that point yet. There's also a problem with evolving technology and concerns over when to buy. Do you want the slightly immature 2021 version of the technology if there's going to be some big jump in 2023?

Note that on a transportation planning timescale in Canada, "now" is about 2026 and "soon" is 2031-2036.

Why not trolley buses?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

It goes back to amalgamation, which was done before Ontario did theirs in 1996. Everyone talks about being from their town.@Truenorth00 spoke it on here "Dartmouth" "Shearwater".

That's actually not what I meant. But anyway....

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Those are not cities or towns anymore, and haven't been for almost 30 years. Another problem is "what about us" syndrome. If they do it downtown, but not in Sackville or Dartmouth, then what gives?

Downtown Halifax is rather small. As you pointed out earlier, you can cover a lot of it on your own two feet. So transit isn't so much about downtown, but about regional travel, including getting suburbanites into and out of the core. In that sense, the suburbanites are right to complain about a transit design system that makes things worse for them. As say an LRT with multiple transfer would.

The Express bus network they have designed is actually pretty decent. It can be something like VIVA in York or Züm in Brampton. They just need to pick the right corridors through the core and putting in decent infrastructure like Viva and Züm did. Would be nice for them to actually build a transit mall too and not just have buses in mixed traffic on Barrington and Spring Garden.

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Why not trolley buses?

Given the size of the network they are planning, I would think installing OCS for the whole network would be prohibitively expensive. They'd probably need all the buses to have batteries anyway. So might as well just go with larger batteries and Oppchargers. Since they seem to buy mostly Novabus, it should be noted that Novabus is highly supportive of the Oppcharge standard on their electric buses:

• Video Link

The Volvo (parent of Novabus) is actually a little better at explaining the benefits and uses a European example:

• Video Link

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Downtown Halifax is rather small. As you pointed out earlier, you can cover a lot of it on your own two feet. So transit isn't so much about downtown, but about regional travel, including getting suburbanites into and out of the core.

For what it's worth, this small downtown vs. suburbs duality isn't really how I think about the city. "Downtown" may be a small geographic area depending on the chosen boundaries (which people don't agree on, and they keep changing) but there's an inner city area that covers maybe 10 square kilometers or so that's too big to easily walk around in and also isn't very car friendly. The destinations that people go to aren't just downtown, they're spread throughout this larger area. Examples are CFB Halifax which has around 10,000 who work there or the universities and hospitals or the shipyard. Collectively they are more significant than the downtown office towers, and the downtown area is transitioning to more of a mixed use neighbourhood so it's not a given that the typical downtown office worker will commute in. The peninsula has about 100,000 workers and soon probably will have 100,000 residents too (again).

This inner city area I think is where there could be some of the best returns to transportation investment. Historically the municipality has focused on expanding transit out farther and farther which does not tend to work well, and the old approach of tying some long suburban bus route to some portion of inner city transit coverage and building corridors out of 12 different overlapping routes is really bad.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Downtown Halifax is rather small. As you pointed out earlier, you can cover a lot of it on your own two feet. So transit isn't so much about downtown, but about regional travel, including getting suburbanites into and out of the core. In that sense, the suburbanites are right to complain about a transit design system that makes things worse for them. As say an LRT with multiple transfer would.

The Express bus network they have designed is actually pretty decent. It can be something like VIVA in York or Züm in Brampton. They just need to pick the right corridors through the core and putting in decent infrastructure like Viva and Züm did. Would be nice for them to actually build a transit mall too and not just have buses in mixed traffic on Barrington and Spring Garden.

The express routes have always been decent. Whether they were the Metrolink or MetroX, they were good to get you out of the city. The problem is, once they left Scotia Square, they didn't stop.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Given the size of the network they are planning, I would think installing OCS for the whole network would be prohibitively expensive. They'd probably need all the buses to have batteries anyway. So might as well just go with larger batteries and Oppchargers. Since they seem to buy mostly Novabus, it should be noted that Novabus is highly supportive of the Oppcharge standard on their electric buses:

The Volvo (parent of Novabus) is actually a little better at explaining the benefits and uses a European example:

I was suggesting that if they are going to keep buses for downtown they could make some of those routes Trolley buses.

[Doady]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Yeah....I don't buy this one. I think a lot of existing transit users in suburban areas and cities put up with this and convince themselves that it doesn't make a difference. But yet we see ridership does go up when frequencies improve. And that's often cited by riders as a reason to locate near a rail line: certainty of schedule and frequencies.

You've never pulled up at a stop just to watch the bus or train pull away? If that happens to you on a 10- min headway route, your wait time is 10 mins. And chances are, that's the wait time you'll remember and use when mentally calculating how long it takes to get somewhere with transit.

Ridership of Grand River Transit was 22 million in 2019, matching the ridership it had in 2013 and 2014, before the start of LRT construction. There was no ridership loss as a result of the new and still incomplete LRT line's lower frequency compared to the bus service it replaced.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Toronto actually gets all this. Which is why the TTC is fantastic. Rush hour service even in subdivisions the TTC operates through is "Frequent Service" (FS), or under 10 mins during peak. That is what lets you think you can live without a car in Toronto.

"FS" includes 10 minute frequency. Somehow I doubt all those suburban TTC routes had "FS" on day one.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Is sub-10 mins manageable? Sure. Is it good? Absolutely not. They should have bought more LRVs and dropped headways down to 5-6 mins at peak.

I am starting to see why you think 10 mins is great. I don't think using the baseline of transit in a suburban hellhole (I say this as someone who spent my pre-teens in Brampton) lends itself to a perspective on what good transit design actually centred around transit users should be like.

I never said 10 minutes frequency is "great". I just fail to see what is the huge difference between 10 minute frequency vs. 5 minutes, or 5 minute wait vs. 2.5 minute wait. By TTC standards, they are both "FS".

I never said Mississauga and Brampton should be the model for transit either. It's just hard to see even in such a car-oriented environment what difference increased frequency makes after a certain point. With each vehicle you add to a route, the frequency increase becomes less and less, and the time savings are only half of that to begin with.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

You really can't see in your example that adding another bus, instead of making the buses larger, reducing headways to 12.5 mins would actually be better for riders and would induce more ridership?

Well, the 25 or 26-minute frequency of the route certainly hasn't stopped the ridership from skyrocketing beyond everyone's expectations. The articulated buses were just a quick and temporary solution to solve an urgent problem, especially while the LRT is under construction (there will be plenty of buses available after the LRT is complete). An additional bus would only increase frequency to 22 minutes, or 2 minutes less average waiting time. To reduce the frequency of a 77-minute-long route from 26 minutes to 13 minutes, or reduce wait times by 6.5 minutes, would require 6 more buses.

Doubling the frequency of Waterloo's LRT would be even more costly, for even less time savings. Increasing the frequency of a 43 minute long route from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. 9 or 10 more vehicles and operators on the route just to reduce the average waiting time by 2.5 minutes. I don't understand what is the big problem with 2.5 minutes that needs so much spending to solve.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Sadly, this kind of view isn't just in Mississauga. Ottawa had some suburban routes that are on 30 min headways outside peak. It's absolutely ridiculous. Especially in a city where winter temperatures routinely drop to -10 or lower. At that point, this is not transit aimed at enabling travel for the middle class as an alternative to the car. It's basically some combination of peak service to move workers around and the bare minimum to move the poor and immobile off-peak.

I'm guessing those Ottawa routes with 30 minute headways you refer to were offering one-seat rides downtown? One bus direct from one's subdivision in Kanata to one's workplace downtown? No need to get off the bus to stand outside and wait for another? Maybe that is more important than frequency, especially when the temperature is -10 degrees. Maybe it shows in Ottawa's high transit ridership per capita and mode share and low car-dependence compared to other metropolitan areas in North America.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

They got lucky, in that politics conspired to have the feds and Queen's Park give them substantial funding, that is proportionally well beyond their size. It's unfortunately not an example that is necessarily repeatable for other cities. I imagine, for example, that if Kingston asked for a billion dollar LRT from the Feds and Queen's Park tomorrow, they wouldn't have anywhere near the same luck.

I think it was more than just conspiracy and luck, maybe it's the fact that Grand River Transit carries 4 times more riders than Kingston Transit, and serves an urban area that is also 4 times larger than Kingston and probably projected to grow faster, that makes it easier for Waterloo to get funding for a billion dollar LRT compared to Kingston.

[Beedok]

Ottawa has at least one bus within the Greenbelt that operates on an hourly schedule on weekdays. It adds needless stress to my commute during the winter.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by someone123

I wonder what the answer to this will be in Halifax. I think streetcars could maybe work there. It's at an awkward point where there's a lot of pressure to develop the core, mostly focused on residents and not commuters, and the core is a bit too big to walk around comfortably, but transit development is still fairly suburban focused. I am not sure I could see the city or province going for what would be perceived as a "nicer" system for the inner city while suburban areas get buses.

Another awkward thing right now is that there's a transition to battery electric vehicles underway. So would anybody bother installing new overhead wire systems now? And is there ultimately any advantage to a streetcar over an electric bus? Self-driving will have a similar effect in lowering the advantage to going with bigger vehicles or fully dedicated ROWs that could be automated going back to the 80's.

Trams play a lot better in tight urban spaces. With rails, you know exactly where the vehicle will be, which makes them better able to fill out narrow ROWs, meaning wider vehicles and more pedestrian space. This is why trams can run safely through busy pedestrian spaces like Berlin Alexanderplatz--everyone knows where they'll be. Just don't stand around on the tracks. It also allows sidewalk patios to exist right next to tram lines in a way that would never work with busses. That's also a function of trams offering smoother and quieter travel.

In Halifax this would pay off in, say Barrington street, getting a wider pedestrian realm, or room for bike lanes and transit-only lanes.

The wired/battery question is interesting, and I think the right answer right now is to do both. Seville has a small tram line that pokes around the old city; to protect views of their iconic cathedral, they've put supercapacitors on the trams and they run unwired for a section.

On a larger scale, I don't see why electric busses or trams couldn't draw power from wires and charge at the same time, over part of the route, then run on battery power out into the suburbs and through downtown. To this end, you could build the core of the system wired and easily expand it in the future as batteries improve without needing to run wires.

[milomilo]

The standard of construction of the old streetcars still present in Toronto, Montreal and European countries would never be acceptable today, for better or worse. There will be all sorts of accessibility and other standards that would make the ROW and cost much greater than that of the old systems.

If a city already has streetcars it probably makes sense to keep them, but to build new the additional benefits of trams vs buses are not all that much, and there are costs too (can't go around a vehicle), before you even factor in the large cost of infrastructure. So I can see why there are few examples of successful newbuild streetcars. With the advent of battery electric buses (and maybe eventually autonomous in a few decades), I think the calculus will swing even further towards buses.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by biguc

Trams play a lot better in tight urban spaces. With rails, you know exactly where the vehicle will be, which makes them better able to fill out narrow ROWs, meaning wider vehicles and more pedestrian space. This is why trams can run safely through busy pedestrian spaces like Berlin Alexanderplatz--everyone knows where they'll be. Just don't stand around on the tracks. It also allows sidewalk patios to exist right next to tram lines in a way that would never work with busses. That's also a function of trams offering smoother and quieter travel.

Yeah, these are the sorts of benefits that often seem to be completely forgotten about or ignored.

Halifax is not like Seville but I think it is a bit different from many North American cities and will continue down a separate path since there are so many medium-length trips taken within the urban core while the outer suburbs are so low density and hard to service. Part of the answer to this has been better cycling infrastructure which was badly needed but only works for some trips. If Halifax had been a bit more developed/progressive earlier on I think that buses and trucks would have been banned from large swaths of the core and streetcars might have filled the void.

An ambitious streetcar route focused on serving the inner city rather than suburban commuters (though it would be useful for suburban commuters getting to different parts of the core) would be say a line running from the far north of Agricola or Gottingen (or maybe 1 way on each), through the Cogswell area maybe underground for small sections, then out to Dalhousie along Morris Street and University Ave. And actually I think underground stations aren't far-fetched at all, it's just that in a Halifax-sized city maybe 3 or 4 of these make sense right now, not 50, and the underground sections would need to interoperate with the above ground sections. There were plans for streetcar tunnels in Halifax (and Saint John) around 1900 but I've never been able to find details (they sounded like versions of Boston's Green Line, which was built in the 1890's). If the cities had grown more during that period they probably would have been built, maybe would be operated today, and people would consider them completely normal.

[Truenorth00]

It's an interesting decision point. Halifax can either learn to start cutting cars or simply become a congested mess (with buses stuck in traffic too) in the coming years. There's really no in-between here. Limited roadspace and the geography mean decisions have to be forced.

I personally think they are on the right track with the BRT of plan. They should just go for it and cut cars off Barrington.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's an interesting decision point. Halifax can either learn to start cutting cars or simply become a congested mess (with buses stuck in traffic too) in the coming years. There's really no in-between here. Limited roadspace and the geography mean decisions have to be forced.

I personally think they are on the right track with the BRT of plan. They should just go for it and cut cars off Barrington.

We definitely need to use road space as efficiently as possible which means that key routes should be optimized for higher capacity through transit priority rather than general traffic. But one of the main obstacles is that Halifax has an even more serious case of what Toronto has experienced with suburban mergers. I've heard many people cite Toronto's merger with the 416 suburbs as reasons for the city's opposition to urban transit and active transportation priorities, but Halifax's entire metro area is part of a single municipality so it would be like if the entire GTA including York and Peel regions and even surrounding satellite communities had been merged, giving all those suburbanites direct influence over the proportionately smaller urban centre.

Unfortunately, when it comes to suburbanites it's often somewhat of a challenge
for them to "learn" to stop prioritizing cars because those people who have a much stronger vested interest in maintaining automobile privilege. It's objectively much harder for them to walk/bike/take transit due to the structure of their environments and the distances involved, so they are being asked to change more about their lives compared to people who are adapted to an urban life. So unfortunately "simply cutting cars" is anything but simple here.

[Truenorth00]

It's a challenge in every city.

Should be noted in Toronto that transit and major roads were managed at the Metro level pre-amalgamation. And in Toronto, the demand is usually for substantial transit investment in the burbs, beyond the minimum necessary. Toronto City Council even supported a toll on the Gardiner. It was quashed by the province. So Toronto isn't as anti-transit and pro-car as some might think.

I get the challenges in Halifax. A highly suburban dominated governing structure is probably going to make cutting auto traffic in the core difficult. Maybe Halifax just needs to enjoy a decade or two of congestion like every other city before they learn. It's unfortunately difficult for most cities to be pro-active and especially so if they are suburban dominated. It's kinda sad, given Halifax's potential.

[someone123]

Google traffic:





I think Halifax actually has had traffic about as bad as many much larger cities for years (maybe 20 years+, perhaps just roughly on par for the entire car era; you can find pictures of big traffic pile-ups from the 50's and 60's). What makes it more tolerable to people is that the distances are shorter so they crawl for 40 minutes instead of 80 minutes. Also a lot of people tell themselves that things must be worse in bigger cities. Nevertheless it's still inefficient.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The standard of construction of the old streetcars still present in Toronto, Montreal and European countries would never be acceptable today, for better or worse. There will be all sorts of accessibility and other standards that would make the ROW and cost much greater than that of the old systems.

If a city already has streetcars it probably makes sense to keep them, but to build new the additional benefits of trams vs buses are not all that much, and there are costs too (can't go around a vehicle), before you even factor in the large cost of infrastructure. So I can see why there are few examples of successful newbuild streetcars. With the advent of battery electric buses (and maybe eventually autonomous in a few decades), I think the calculus will swing even further towards buses.

Fun fact Many of Canada's cities had streetcar routes. In fact, they are some of the busiest bus routes. Now, people want all that back.
While that is nice, why not look instead at making the rebirth be better?
Why not build rail transit where people travel the most?
Why not create new routes to funnel other routes on to?
Why not build transit that will stand the test of time?
Why not build transit so that 50 years from now, it is still a good system?
Why not build what is needed for existing riders?

Unless you can cover all the core roads, you are not going to achieve that with surface LRT in Halifax.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's an interesting decision point. Halifax can either learn to start cutting cars or simply become a congested mess (with buses stuck in traffic too) in the coming years. There's really no in-between here. Limited roadspace and the geography mean decisions have to be forced.

I personally think they are on the right track with the BRT of plan. They should just go for it and cut cars off Barrington.

Then why not come up with a system that works best for transit users? Sorry to say, that isn't surface LRT in the downtown core. What about Brusnwick, Hollis, Lower Water, Duke and Sackville sts? What is so special of Barrington? I could argue these streets are equally deserving of rail transit.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's a challenge in every city.

Should be noted in Toronto that transit and major roads were managed at the Metro level pre-amalgamation. And in Toronto, the demand is usually for substantial transit investment in the burbs, beyond the minimum necessary. Toronto City Council even supported a toll on the Gardiner. It was quashed by the province. So Toronto isn't as anti-transit and pro-car as some might think.

I get the challenges in Halifax. A highly suburban dominated governing structure is probably going to make cutting auto traffic in the core difficult. Maybe Halifax just needs to enjoy a decade or two of congestion like every other city before they learn. It's unfortunately difficult for most cities to be pro-active and especially so if they are suburban dominated. It's kinda sad, given Halifax's potential.

That is the reality. Halifax downtown is going to get much more congested before they turn the corner on building real transit solutions.

Originally Posted by someone123

Google traffic:





I think Halifax actually has had traffic about as bad as many much larger cities for years (maybe 20 years+, perhaps just roughly on par for the entire car era; you can find pictures of big traffic pile-ups from the 50's and 60's). What makes it more tolerable to people is that the distances are shorter so they crawl for 40 minutes instead of 80 minutes. Also a lot of people tell themselves that things must be worse in bigger cities. Nevertheless it's still inefficient.

There is a reason traffic has always been bad and will only get worse. Well, there are a few reasons.

1) Dockyard parking: For most of its existence, you needed 10-15+ years in before you could get a parking pass. So, people would still drive and try to find on street parking. It had the side effect of commuting by bus. under 500,000 and the ridership is intense. Find me another city that has that high of ridership and that extensive bus routes. Doesn't help that over 10,000 people work at the Dockyard.

2) The access to the peninsula is limited: 2 bridges, 1 highway and 3 roads are all that really connect everyone to the peninsula. The bridge that comes from a highway dumps it on the surface streets. Had they extended it to downtown, and even put in a 3rd harbour crossing, the traffic would move much better.

To fix the congestion on the peninsula, it will take at least a Billion dollars before any meaningful changes will happen. Anyone think the governments will come up with that in the next decade?

Me neither.

[biguc]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

To fix the congestion on the peninsula, it will take at least a Billion dollars before any meaningful changes will happen.

This is why Halifax is at such a crucial point. It's also an enviable point--one with high growth and a desirable core, but a relatively small population Truenorth is right: it's time to get on it and make do something decisive for the city's future. More road access isn't going to do it, so it had better be transit. The political situation is tough, but the case is clear. It shouldn't take much to sell it to suburbanites.

I'm surprised you're so gung ho for a tunnel in this case; usually I think we're on the same page about the value of legacy transit and the good sense in restoring it. Halifax too had a good streetcar network. Bring that back, with the kind of modernizations you'd see in a maintained European system, and you could saturate the peninsula with only three lines--putting almost everyone within 600m of a line. Maybe a tunnel would become a useful part of that down the line, but I don't see it as necessary.

I'll always maintain that grade-separated transit in Canada is more about appeasing drivers than delivering good transit. The Fords are the loudest about it, but the idea that transit can't disrupt car traffic informs many transit decisions in this country. An LRV can move more people than a bus, which can move more people than a car. Cities should use their public spaces accordingly; replacing traffic lanes with transit lanes is a smart decision.

[jamincan]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

When people talk of transit in various places, I wonder whether they have ever been.
Do they know the typography?
Do they understand the traffic patterns.

Living in KW, I can definitely relate to this. People speak confidently about what the region is like, what is wrong with it, in this thread right now how LRT wasn't a smart investment, and I could go on...

It is almost always plainly evident that their arguments is based on a superficial understanding of the region and its history at best.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Transit riders in Waterloo would have been so much better off with a proper BRT system with high frequency. They wanted LRT as a development tool.

This is slightly right, but also completely off the mark. It is right in that KW didn't build LRT solely as a transit project. Rapid transit was born here in the context of a region that is very concerned about development pressure affecting groundwater recharge areas that it depends on for its drinking water and that was projected by the province to grow on the order of 50+% over the next 30 years (projections they are legally mandated to plan for). The region studies the issue and determined that not building rapid transit would result in requiring even greater cost for road expansion. So, while development pressure spurred the process of rapid transit on, transportation concerns related to that were the primary justification.

Contrary to your assertion, they did not "want LRT" specifically. It was only 2011 when they finally settled the debate on whether they should build BRT or LRT, and the reason they settled on LRT (among others) is that they projected that BRT would be insufficient for demand within 20 years and they would likely need to replace it with LRT anyway.

Finally, the arguments about billions of dollars for upper levels of governments is ridiculous. KW came out with this plan far before any funding was ever promised. It was already well on its plans for the Central Transit Corridor, including a "BRT-lite" style iXpress that was already exceeding projected usage of future LRT when they started construction on ION. The region critically had very strong backing from residents and had very strong planning justification for LRT construction. Funding from higher levels was not surprising in that context. Nevertheless, this preceded the taps getting open for any and all transit expansion, and the funding formula that we ended up with was disappointing and the region actually had to cover a third of the cost and was on the hook for any overruns. This deal was far worse than what other systems in Ontario ended up with. We didn't get a billion dollars, we got about $600 million.

To be clear, there is a lot that could have been done better with Ion, and it is definitely a flawed system, but you plainly don't actually know enough about the system or its history to be able to make the assertions that you are making here.

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's only been standard for the biggest metros in Ontario and Quebec over the last decade. And in Ontario this has come with a demand of substantial provincial ownership and control. With all the LRT lines that are fully funded to be owned by Metrolinx. This is why for example, Waterloo had to contribute towards Ion and Toronto has to pitch in for all subway extensions. In this sense what Ottawa is asking for is rather unique, 100% federal and provincial funding for an asset that the City of Ottawa will 100% own.

More nonsense. KW *thought* they would get 2/3 funding from the province and 1/3 from the feds. The province ended up only ponying up 1/3 and the region committed to cover the shortfall. Metrolinx ownership of the line wasn't even considered or pushed at any point.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by someone123

Google traffic:



I think Halifax actually has had traffic about as bad as many much larger cities for years (maybe 20 years+, perhaps just roughly on par for the entire car era; you can find pictures of big traffic pile-ups from the 50's and 60's). What makes it more tolerable to people is that the distances are shorter so they crawl for 40 minutes instead of 80 minutes. Also a lot of people tell themselves that things must be worse in bigger cities. Nevertheless it's still inefficient.

This is just based on armchair surveying, but Halifax has a bit of a unique situation for a Canadian city. It has a downtown but, more correctly, it has a sort of medium-density dispersed collection of trip generators within an urban setting across most of the peninsula that includes downtown, Spring Garden, Dal, North End, Halifax Shopping Centre, etc.

And it has a few prominent chokepoints: the bridges, the Bedford Highway/Windsor St. intersection in the northwest, the Armadale Roundabout.

It might actually be a good candidate for a circular LRT line that hits all the trip generators on the peninsula with prominent transit exchanges near some of the aforementioned chokepoints - like at HSC - to connect to express buses that would serve the lower density suburbs to the west and north.

Given Halifax's size and budget, the LRT line would have to be at surface and would have to take away traffic lanes and have complete signal priority, but there are strategic places - especially in the north and west - where it would benefit from having occasional grade separation.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by biguc

This is why Halifax is at such a crucial point. It's also an enviable point--one with high growth and a desirable core, but a relatively small population Truenorth is right: it's time to get on it and make do something decisive for the city's future. More road access isn't going to do it, so it had better be transit. The political situation is tough, but the case is clear. It shouldn't take much to sell it to suburbanites.

I'm surprised you're so gung ho for a tunnel in this case; usually I think we're on the same page about the value of legacy transit and the good sense in restoring it. Halifax too had a good streetcar network. Bring that back, with the kind of modernizations you'd see in a maintained European system, and you could saturate the peninsula with only three lines--putting almost everyone within 600m of a line. Maybe a tunnel would become a useful part of that down the line, but I don't see it as necessary.

I'll always maintain that grade-separated transit in Canada is more about appeasing drivers than delivering good transit. The Fords are the loudest about it, but the idea that transit can't disrupt car traffic informs many transit decisions in this country. An LRV can move more people than a bus, which can move more people than a car. Cities should use their public spaces accordingly; replacing traffic lanes with transit lanes is a smart decision.

The problem I see is that from Day One of the construction, for the rest of existence, the congestion will not get better, and will get worse. No, it comes down to either building what we have, or what is best. In my Billion dollar figure would be both. We don't have that kind of money. If Halifax went with Surface LRT, I am not saying it would be bad, but it would not do the best to move transit riders better and improve congestion. If you are ignoring the congestion, then, surface LRT is the way to go. However, if you want to fix both, get transit underground. Part of the problem was the buses stopping; holding up traffic.A surface LRT may solve that, but you loose a lane of either on street parking, or a travel lane. Neither of those solves congestion.

Many people like to compare Halifax and Boston. I have ridden the MBRA subway/LRT lines. They are great. None of them are at grade or on the surface in the downtown core. The streetscape of Boston is wonderful.They have buses on the surface. They have on street parking. Congestion is at an expected amount with the size of the city. Let's follow Boston's method. It has worked.

Originally Posted by jamincan

Living in KW, I can definitely relate to this. People speak confidently about what the region is like, what is wrong with it, in this thread right now how LRT wasn't a smart investment, and I could go on...

It is almost always plainly evident that their arguments is based on a superficial understanding of the region and its history at best.

It is clear for me with many places, most people haven't been. They haven't seen what obstacles are in the way. They haven;t experienced the weather and climate of the area.

Originally Posted by hipster duck

This is just based on armchair surveying, but Halifax has a bit of a unique situation for a Canadian city. It has a downtown but, more correctly, it has a sort of medium-density dispersed collection of trip generators within an urban setting across most of the peninsula that includes downtown, Spring Garden, Dal, North End, Halifax Shopping Centre, etc.

And it has a few prominent chokepoints: the bridges, the Bedford Highway/Windsor St. intersection in the northwest, the Armadale Roundabout.

It might actually be a good candidate for a circular LRT line that hits all the trip generators on the peninsula with prominent transit exchanges near some of the aforementioned chokepoints - like at HSC - to connect to express buses that would serve the lower density suburbs to the west and north.

Given Halifax's size and budget, the LRT line would have to be at surface and would have to take away traffic lanes and have complete signal priority, but there are strategic places - especially in the north and west - where it would benefit from having occasional grade separation.

You had me up to your last paragraph. The problem is, right now, there is zero budget for it. The city has not announced anything. Neither has the province or federal governments. We are assuming what would be a budget. What if the budget was tied with metrics? What if instead of what can be afforded, it is based on reducing congestion and increasing ridership? Surface LRT would go out the window quite quickly.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

You had me up to your last paragraph. The problem is, right now, there is zero budget for it. The city has not announced anything. Neither has the province or federal governments. We are assuming what would be a budget. What if the budget was tied with metrics? What if instead of what can be afforded, it is based on reducing congestion and increasing ridership? Surface LRT would go out the window quite quickly.

The city announced a plan with a budget of $780M which they are spending on BRT and ferries over the next few years. From what I can tell a bunch of that work is already happening. Maybe they will move on to LRT in 10-15 years or so, which means it is not really that far off from a planning perspective. Some of the BRT work (transit lanes and signal priority like Bayers Road) might overlap with LRT.

https://www.halifax.ca/transportation/transportation-projects/transforming-transit

They are also planning for 50% electric buses by 2028 which I think might change things a bit. They are planning to buy 10 new ferries too. I think just the electric bus and ferry part of the plan is significant and will amount to a big "quality of life" boost for the transit system and the city, somewhat similar to the "softer" benefits of streetcar projects.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

The city announced a plan with a budget of $780M which they are spending on BRT and ferries over the next few years. From what I can tell a bunch of that work is already happening. Maybe they will move on to LRT in 10-15 years or so. Some of the BRT work (transit lanes and signal priority) could be used for LRT.

I had heard of that. I am wondering how much they will be doing. II know they have signal priority as place stops before the lights to take advantage of that.