The Great Canadian Transit Thread

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by casper

Logical thing is to extend West Coast Express to Abbotsford. The tracks are already there. Maybe run one or two commuter rail trains from Abbotsford to Waterfront instead of or in addition to Mission City during rush hours. During the day run a DMU from Abbotsford to Coquitlam center where you have a transfer to Skytrain.

Parallel to that run some DMU along the old interurban from Surrey through Langley and Abbotsford on the way to Chilliwack. Surrey and Langley stops could be structured to provide transfer points on Skytrain.

The tracks are there. At least in the case of the interurban they are owned by the province who retains the right to run passenger service over them.

Another possible solution is to make use of the Fraser River bridge at Mission. The Mission station would have to be moved, but otherwise the existing service could be extended southward into Abbotsford. You could put in two stations as well - one in the downtown/north end of Abbotsford, and one at Highway 1.

The obvious objection to this is CPKC's use of that bridge for freight. I have no idea how much freight traffic goes across that bridge, but they do have an agreement with VIA to use that bridge for The Canadian. I would also imagine that bridge will need to be replaced at some point, as it's the oldest railway bridge over the Fraser River (pre-dating even the bridge in New West).

Originally Posted by Changing City

The majority of people who live in Abbotsford work in Abbotsford, (over 30,000). About 8,800 commute to Surrey and Langley, neither of which have highly concentrated centres, so most would probably continue to drive even if transit was better. Only 500 commute all the way to Vancouver, so the cost of extending a distant connection to Downtown would be far greater than the ridership would warrant.

It's a chicken/egg argument. I personally would be very interested in living in Abbotsford, but I won't move there as long as the transit service to get to Metro Vancouver sucks. Highway 1 is already very crowded and slow at rush hour and buses have to contend with that traffic.

[SFUVancouver]

Unfortunately it looks like the REM had a bit of a hiccup on its first day of revenue service. While not ideal, I’m sure they learned some lessons and got to put the bus alternative contingency plan into effect and gauge its effectiveness.

This sort of thing will be quickly forgotten and shouldn’t overshadow the significance of the milestone. A new rapid transit service officially opened for regular service today!

[MalcolmTucker]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

The obvious objection to this is CPKC's use of that bridge for freight. I have no idea how much freight traffic goes across that bridge, but they do have an agreement with VIA to use that bridge for The Canadian. I would also imagine that bridge will need to be replaced at some point, as it's the oldest railway bridge over the Fraser River (pre-dating even the bridge in New West).

While it is owned by CPKC, it is part of the joint operations in the Fraser Canyon with CN. Far more than CPKC traffic going into the USA.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by casper

I used the O-train in Ottawa for the first time a few months ago on a trip there. What a slow train. It is better than not having a rapid transit system, but at the same time they could have had something so much faster and without the labour costs of having a driver. Something like Skytrain in Vancouver.

Due to slow orders while they figure out the bearing issue. It was much faster before, with an average speed of about 50 km/h. You may have visited just before they returned the Lees-uOttawa stretch back to full speed, which is 80 km/h.

The system is currently shut down while they fix some infrastructure issues (guard rails) and they've decided to redesign the wheel assembly, which will take about 18 months. We're getting there.

Yes, something like the REM would have been better, but what we have, when it works at full speeds, is not bad at all.

Originally Posted by niwell

Everything is corridor specific - it works in some contexts but not others where tunnelling is likely best. Low capacity corridors are still probably fine with surface transit. Elevated transit still isn’t exactly cheap, especially stations.

REM hits a bit of a sweet spot where they were able to utilize some existing corridors and tie them together with relatively little (big emphasis on relative, it’s a huge project) work. It’s the type of project more places should be exploring - not so much in the tech or anything but identifying those opportunities to tie things together. The Ontario line seems to be following some of these principles.

Ottawa as well. We don't have a whole lot of elevated sections (Bayview, Hurdman, a few flyovers along Stage 2), but we have quite a few trenches, most of the tunneling is cut-and-cover, surface where possible, while still maintaining that grade separation. Stage 3, if ever built (looks doubtful) will have far more elevated sections.

In hindsight though, using the very curvy east end of the Transitway was probably a mistake. I don't think our politicians were truthful when they said it was built with conversion in mind. It's by far the most problematic stretch. Luckily, Stage 2 has far few curves.

I think Toronto has figured it out for the most part with Ontario Line, but Toronto has a history of tunneling and overbuilding where it wasn't necessary, like the Vaughn extension, or Crosstown (much of it could probably have been elevated).

[1overcosc]

There is a lot of NIMBY complaints about the elevated portions of the Ontario Line and demands that it be buried - ironically, from the same people that mocked the Fords for "subways, subways, subways".

[giallo]

I was in South Granville yesterday, so I shot this video of South Granville Station under construction. Enjoy!

• Video Link

[J.OT13]

Reece Martin's the gest speaker on this one.

Why does (most of) Canada suck at building transit?
August 16, 2023
Joe Fish

https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2023/08/16/why-does-most-of-canada-suck-at-building-transit/

[Rico Rommheim]

Originally Posted by J.OT13

Reece Martin's the gest speaker on this one.

Why does (most of) Canada suck at building transit?
August 16, 2023
Joe Fish

https://thebigstorypodcast.ca/2023/08/16/why-does-most-of-canada-suck-at-building-transit/

Neat interview thanks for sharing.

However I'm kind of puzzled to why the host kept on trying to make the REM out like it were a major disaster based on some minor hiccups on the very first day of service.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

Neat interview thanks for sharing.

However I'm kind of puzzled to why the host kept on trying to make the REM out like it were a major disaster based on some minor hiccups on the very first day of service.

Probably copium. Considering that the city already had one of the top metro systems in NA (I'd argue surpassed by only NY, DC, and Mex C) the new service puts other cities hopelessly behind unless they can find a major flaw in it.

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Rico Rommheim

Neat interview thanks for sharing.

However I'm kind of puzzled to why the host kept on trying to make the REM out like it were a major disaster based on some minor hiccups on the very first day of service.

Yeah, but it's good he had Reece, someone who's positive about the transit outcome, instead of picking someone who's known for bashing transit.

The media seems to exclusively cover incidents and service stoppages (beyond openings), but never take the time to say how things have been going well for a little while, so with that, most people's perspective is that everything is a disaster, all the time. Can't blame the guy for having that illusion.

[Truenorth00]

[thebasketballgeek]

This chart is always so depressing to look at. I think transit costs in Canada and US are ridiculously expensive because of the following reasons.

1. Very little in house expertise from decades of not building transit across most of the country leading to a lot of private consultation and P3 partnerships. The QC tramway original price was $3.3 billion for 22km of transit and has already ballooned to $4 billion without any shovels on the ground as an example because they only found 1 bidder for the original procurement process. These days even preliminary planning and engineering work is outsourced when it should be done in house.

2. NIMBYism, public engagement process, and environmental reviews are very time consuming and almost always lead to delays for transit projects, and whenever a transit project is delayed the costs soar through the roof. NIMBYism also leads to a lot of subway projects in NA using tunnel boring instead of more efficient and cheaper construction methods like cut and cover further driving up the costs.

3. Lackof/Refusal for standardization. For some reason most major cities with underground transit feel the need to have their own unique heavy rail system in North America. The SkyTrain is significantly different from the TTC Subway which has significant differences with the Montreal Metro. In India for example they saw the Delhi Metro was highly successful and use the same setup to build the other metro systems in the country and now they have the most metro lines under construction anywhere in the world. China is also very famous for standardization of rail lines. It allows projects to be done very efficiently and most importantly cheaper.

4. Politics

[someone123]

There is this article focused on the UK: https://www.samdumitriu.com/p/britains-infrastructure-is-too-expensive

The Angers tramway extension built in 2023 cost around $40M CAD per kilometer. Meanwhile the Edinburgh tram was $1.7B CAD. The cost of the inquiry into overspending on the Edinburgh project would have bought 500 m of tram line in France. It is similar with rail electrification projects or tunnel building.

They point out that the city of Leeds with a population of 530,000 and 300,000 in the wider metro is the largest in Western Europe that doesn't have a metro system. Leeds planned a tram system with an estimated cost ballooning to $2.6B in the 2000's and ended up building nothing.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Some of this is because we just don't have a lot of experience building underground transit in this country. We lack the transit ecosystem the Europeans have and have a labor force with very little experience building underground. That being said, I'm not sure why Australia has costs so much lower than ours and closer to Japan and the Europeans. Some of their cities have fairly robust s-bahn like rail systems, but IIRC the vast majority of transit there is above ground.

[Nouvellecosse]

I wonder if some of price variance of that chart is due to sample size issues. There are often big variances between the cost of projects in different cities and even between projects in the same city. And since some countries don't have that many different underground projects happening at once, they just used the couple most recent as representative of the country.

In the US, the biggest recent underground projects were the SAS and ESA in Manhattan - the most expensive place for tunneling - while in Canada the two most recent were the line 1 extension to Vaughan and the Confederation line in Ottawa. I don't remember the cost of the Ottawa tunnel but Toronto tends to have the highest costs in the country. If the most recent project had been say, the Canada Line, the Canada figure might look a lot lower.

[Changing City]

I'm a bit doubtful about the data in that chart. It's not sourced - and the group who published it have an agenda.

The Transit Costs Project have a compehensive database of costs for projects. The current Vancouver Broadway Line tunneled route with cut and cover stations is costing $450m CA / km, that would be $724m CA / mile, which would be about 423 GBP / mile - so much less than that chart shows, and very similar to the Australia figure.

The Canadian average will be higher with Montreal's Blue Line extension, and Toronto's Line 1 included, as they're costing more than Vancouver's line, (but not 50% higher).

[J.OT13]

Ottawa launching full open payment. Open payment has been tested over the last year or so at one fare gate per O-Train station entrance, possibly on buses as well.

Open payment includes fare capping, daily and monthly, which is better that Presto, with no fare capping on OC Transpo.

• Video Link

[H>T&T>P]

OK so Presto won't be fare capped? Just your Credit Card or mobile wallet payments?

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by H>T&T>P

OK so Presto won't be fare capped? Just your Credit Card or mobile wallet payments?

Yup. Strange, I know.

[quall]

You'll still need Presto to transfer onto STO (Gatineau) buses too.