Rapid Transit in the Halifax area

[hfx_chris]

Originally Posted by xanaxanax

You can take a train to Truro and back daily if you want

The Ocean only runs 3 trips a week now, and the schedule was never designed for commuters.

[Hali87]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Right now, I know many people that do commute from Bridgewater, Windsor and Truro.

If the line were to be built only to MH, then you would see more people moving there. They would look at is as a way to get out of the downtown area, yet not have the challenges of getting to work.

Now, once enough people do that. Some people would look at the extra distance to somewhere like SH, and they would move there.

The thing the HRM needs to do is to think. They need to think about how they will grow the city sustainably, and without creating even worse gridlock.

Part of that IS rail transit. Part of it, is, as you said, Truro sized towns.

That will happen if the HMR plans for it.

Encouraging people to move to MH and SH and commute downtown is the opposite of a sustainable way of growing the city.

[worldlyhaligonian]

I would argue connecting Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford via light rail and creating incentives to live within the urban HRM would be the best way.

HRM should cut the farflung areas from its responsibility and create disincentives for living far away. Why would we subsidize places 45 minutes outside of the city?

[hfx_chris]

I wouldn't say we should create disincentives, some people just want to be away from everything and live a more quiet life and they should not be penalized for that. But we certainly shouldn't be adding things like LRT..

[Nouvellecosse]

There's a difference between penalizing something and not subsidizing it. If a person wants something that costs more, then fine, as long as they're willing to pay for it. If they're not willing to pay the true cost then they can choose something else.

[ILoveHalifax]

To me the logical place to improve transit in Halifax would be with some sort of transit line on the peninsula. Spring Garden has so many routes on it that buses line up to get to the stops. I think we are to the point where we should be considering a couple of street car lines to serve the peninsula. The lines coming onto the peninsula should basically terminate when they meet up with the street car lines.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax

To me the logical place to improve transit in Halifax would be with some sort of transit line on the peninsula. Spring Garden has so many routes on it that buses line up to get to the stops. I think we are to the point where we should be considering a couple of street car lines to serve the peninsula. The lines coming onto the peninsula should basically terminate when they meet up with the street car lines.

I agree that this seems like a good plan. Ideally, many of the bottlenecks would be avoided with signaling priority and dedicated ROWs (maybe with some tunnels, overpasses, etc.). Suburban service could gradually shift to more BRT-like routes similar to the existing MetroLink service for Dartmouth and Sackville. Commuter rail for the Bedford Highway would also fit in nicely with improved transit on the peninsula.

[hfx_chris]

One thing HRM is doing that I really applaud is attempting to focus more on the Woodside ferry, now that it's operating all day and 15-minutes during rush hour (or at least will switch to 15-minutes once they're done training on the new vessel). The introduction of a couple of express routes (78 Mount Edward Express and 79 Cole Harbour Express) during rush hour should make it really easy to get from eastern Dartmouth and Cole Harbour to downtown Halifax very quickly.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I honestly think commuter rail, in a city of this relatively small size, with tentacles reaching out to genuinely tiny communities, is a bit crazy from a cost perspective, and counterproductive especially when we're trying to densify living patterns.

Far more important is decent transit facilitating convenient movement around the core communities--Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and inner suburbs like Clayton Park.

Well, right now, the entire system is jammed at 4 choke points to get off the peninsula.

They really need to fix that issue for transit. Once people realize the transit is faster, the people will slowly make the switch.

[ns_kid]

The current (July) issue of Trains magazine features an interesting piece by Ohio transit exec Paul Grether called “A Streetcar Named Revival”, about the growth of modern streetcar systems in North America. There are 24 cities with systems operating or in development. (This is in addition to 39 cities with conventional or light rail transit systems now running or planned.) The smallest of these cities is likely Tempe AZ, with a population of 167,000.

“Modern” streetcar systems (as opposed to the more traditional or historic types of car often operated primarily for tourist appeal) feature accessible vehicles with low floors and elevated platforms for easy boarding and the ability to operate without overhead wires.

The capital cost of building such systems is high of course: the planned 5-km system in Tempe is estimated at $130 million USD. (A final route is still being determined.) The trade-offs include lower operating costs, greater rider acceptance, increased capacity, an end to emissions and a substantial reduction in noise as compared to bus transit. Because of its smaller size, the streetcar system allows the vehicles to share streets with cars, eliminating the need for dedicated or subgrade rights-of-way as is typically the case with conventional and light rail.

The modern technologies available (there are now six major suppliers, including Canada’s Bombardier and three makers from Europe, where streetcars never went out of vogue) mean that you could conceive of a system relying on overhead power through the existing rail corridor (Fall River-Bedford-Rockingham-Richmond/Armdale-Hollis Street), switching to stored power for the transition to street-level running on Barrington and/or Water Streets. Some systems offer over 3 km of running on battery power.

Fanciful thinking? Almost certainly in our risk-averse climate. But the redevelopment of the Cogswell lands offers the ideal time to have the discussion.

[Keith P.]

Streetcars are more of a romantic idea than a practical one. The need for rails embedded in streets makes them difficult to implement and awkward/dangerous for passengers to use since they enter/exit not at the curb, but in the street. They are also totally inflexible in terms of route changes due to construction, traffic, etc. Let's not waste our time on them. We have much higher-priority needs like ways to get people from the 'burbs to downtown using something other than buses caught in traffic gridlock thanks to our obsolete road network.

[ns_kid]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

Streetcars are more of a romantic idea than a practical one. The need for rails embedded in streets makes them difficult to implement and awkward/dangerous for passengers to use since they enter/exit not at the curb, but in the street.

Many cities have indeed found them quite practical. As per my post, modern systems do not load in the street but only on level platforms. And, as author Grether points out, it is the fixed route network that makes them easy to use and therefore attractive to riders. He notes that the cities that have adopted streetcars find that they support the urban development goal of increasing residential density in the city core. To use a Halifax example, a couple going out on the town from one of Mr. Reznick's high-end condos is unlikey to hop on a diesel bus but will very readily board a modern streetcar.

Here's video of the Seattle streetcar system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w9OjL9rHbs
Note the businessperson talking about how quiet the streetcars are, even as she's being drowned out by the autos and trucks going by.

[Keith P.]

Note how Seattle streets are all 3 times as wide as those in downtown Halifax. That alone makes them a non-starter.

I don't disagree that if you were starting from scratch an electric trolley system (as opposed to a rail-based streetcar, which I don't see any advantage to) is a step forward over diesel buses. But Halifax is not designed to let them work.

[rkannegi]

I just went down to Mountain Equipment Co-op on Granville Street. I took the temptation of parking on an empty private lot across the street from MEC at 5:50 PM. I returned my truck only 10 minutes later to discover that it was booted at 5:55 PM. I called, paid the costly $115 release fee at 6:20 PM when my truck got unlocked. I returned home at 6:33 PM.

I got busted fair and square, so I promptly paid my fee via debit.

Ironically, I got away with illegal parking longer at Halifax International Airport passenger drop off area without a tow, although the tow truck was rushing in as I ran back out to my truck.

Long story short: Parking regulations in Downtown Halifax are now "as sharp as a sword".

The moral of my story is this (also analogous to the saying from "The Governor" in the Walking Dead on Netflix): "Keep sleeping on the sword and you're bound to get slashed."

Illegal parking (breaking the law) can be analogized as "sleeping on the sword".

Take it from me, where I "slept on the sword" (parked illegally on a private lot) and got "slashed by the sword" (in a financial sense, where I was immobalized and fined) - YEOOOW!!!

So, with that being said, everybody here can go ahead and have a laugh at my expense.

Regards,

Richard Kannegiesser

[hoser111]

Originally Posted by rkannegi

I just went down to Mountain Equipment Co-op on Granville Street. I took the temptation of parking on an empty private lot across the street from MEC at 5:50 PM. I returned my truck only 10 minutes later to discover that it was booted at 5:55 PM. I called, paid the costly $115 release fee at 6:20 PM when my truck got unlocked. I returned home at 6:33 PM.

I got busted fair and square, so I promptly paid my fee via debit.

Ironically, I got away with illegal parking longer at Halifax International Airport passenger drop off area without a tow, although the tow truck was rushing in as I ran back out to my truck.

Long story short: Parking regulations in Downtown Halifax are now "as sharp as a sword".

The moral of my story is this (also analogous to the saying from "The Governor" in the Walking Dead on Netflix): "Keep sleeping on the sword and you're bound to get slashed."

Illegal parking (breaking the law) can be analogized as "sleeping on the sword".

Take it from me, where I "slept on the sword" (parked illegally on a private lot) and got "slashed by the sword" (in a financial sense, where I was immobalized and fined) - YEOOOW!!!

So, with that being said, everybody here can go ahead and have a laugh at my expense.

Regards,

Richard Kannegiesser

That lot is notorious for it's booting. I know a few people who've gotten stung there, within minutes. I've not heard of anywhere else in town that boots vehicles. Not to say there isn't.

That's the Twisted Sisters/Skye site so i wonder if United Gulf is paying it's legal bills for The Waterton, et al, $115 at a time!

[rkannegi]

Originally Posted by hoser111

That lot is notorious for it's booting. I know a few people who've gotten stung there, within minutes. I've not heard of anywhere else in town that boots vehicles. Not to say there isn't.

That's the Twisted Sisters/Skye site so i wonder if United Gulf is paying it's legal bills for The Waterton, et al, $115 at a time!

I've seen other lots with NOGO NOTOW signage, but only a few. What astounded me is how fast they boot (as little as two minutes) - much faster than an airport, even faster than an airport that's at HIGH/ORANGE terror threat level!

I would understand this during regular business hours, but during low-demand times late at night or on the weekend? Are there that many offices that have random, erratic hours across every hour of the day? I know there's an accountants office on the corner of Oxford and Young that has no defined business hours, meaning that workers there can show up at any time and therefore their parking has no "after hours" parking.

I have to say that Halifax has sure changed in the last decade, where it's gradually turning into a city that "never sleeps" in spite of only being around 400,000 people within the county lines. It's already like that with parking enforcement on many private lease lots and public/private pay-and-display lots on the Peninsula. We may as well say that the notion of "normal weekday hours" in Halifax is already going out the window.

I really question the economics of having 24-hour enforcement on many lots in this city during times that enforcement costs would very likely exceed any potential revenue from either parking fees or parking fines (even on the scale of the fine that I just got whacked with) during the dead of night or on the weekend.

I've heard many parking horror stories from cities Vancouver and Calgary, but what happened to me today would totally kill most horror stories from those cities! (Those cities still have a some parking horror stories that would even scare people the world over.)

Canada is becoming a very unforgiving country for parking, where for instance, downtown Calgary is second only to Lower Manhatten in New York City (NYC) in terms of off-street parking fees, even though Calgary has a whole only has a population base of 1 million compared to a population base of 18 million for NYC, further reinforcing the need for stronger urban transit systems across all of Canada. I thought I would have to go to New York City to see parking enforcement of the extreme that I got hit with today when it turns out that "my own backyard" is actually worse! I have to say, "WTF is going on with Canada?"

Overnight Drunk Parking Demand on Weekends

I do wonder how much of the weekend downtown street parking congestion in Halifax is due to people leaving their cars overnight and into the next day after a night of hard drinking (to avoid drunk driving or expensive taxi rides). Better overnight transit across the "urban core" of Halifax Metro and key suburban arterial-class roads may help reduce this parking demand, if it is in fact causing a good chunk of the weekend parking congestion in downtown Halifax.

The reason I'm bringing up the potential issue of inflated parking demand due to "overnight drunk parking", is that the on-street parking congestion on downtown Halifax's streets is now almost as bad during weekend daytime hours as it is during normal weekday working hours.

As odd as this sounds, I've usually had easier times finding weekend on-street or off-street parking (that's not in a low-clearance parking garage) in other, bigger Canadian cities' downtown cores than in Halifax's core. Could the overnight drunk parking, small street block size, very tight driveway spacing on some of these street blocks compared to other cities be contributing factors to on-street parking issue too, aside from the over-regulation/over-pricing on many off-street lots that causes them to often be under-utilized, let alone the future real estate development plans dissuading people from relying on some of the existing off-street lots on a sustained basis?

Regards,

Richard Kannegiesser

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by rkannegi

I just went down to Mountain Equipment Co-op on Granville Street. I took the temptation of parking on an empty private lot across the street from MEC at 5:50 PM. I returned my truck only 10 minutes later to discover that it was booted at 5:55 PM. I called, paid the costly $115 release fee at 6:20 PM when my truck got unlocked. I returned home at 6:33 PM.

I got busted fair and square, so I promptly paid my fee via debit.

Ironically, I got away with illegal parking longer at Halifax International Airport passenger drop off area without a tow, although the tow truck was rushing in as I ran back out to my truck.

Long story short: Parking regulations in Downtown Halifax are now "as sharp as a sword".

The moral of my story is this (also analogous to the saying from "The Governor" in the Walking Dead on Netflix): "Keep sleeping on the sword and you're bound to get slashed."

Illegal parking (breaking the law) can be analogized as "sleeping on the sword".

Take it from me, where I "slept on the sword" (parked illegally on a private lot) and got "slashed by the sword" (in a financial sense, where I was immobalized and fined) - YEOOOW!!!

So, with that being said, everybody here can go ahead and have a laugh at my expense.

Regards,

Richard Kannegiesser

Perfectly innocent question: Why didn't you just park in the parkade adjacent to this lot? I believe the first 20 minutes only costs $1.50 or so.

Just curious as I notice that Haligonians seem to be allergic to paying for parking. This is good for me as I usually just head straight for the parkade whenever I go downtown rather than spend half an hour circling the streets to find a spot only to see that it is a loading zone or some such thing. IMHO, a few bucks is a nominal cost for the convenience of knowing you have a spot available, plus it helps to get congestion of parked cars off the streets, and it supports the costs involved with maintaining such a facility.

However, I do tend to avoid the lots where you pay before you park, as you have to to guess how long you will leave your car there and then check your watch all afternoon to make sure you will get back to your car on time. A win-win moneygrab for the owners as you either pay for too much time or give them extra money for the resultant parking ticket. Oh well - their lot, their rules...

[rkannegi]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Perfectly innocent question: Why didn't you just park in the parkade adjacent to this lot? I believe the first 20 minutes only costs $1.50 or so.

Just curious as I notice that Haligonians seem to be allergic to paying for parking. This is good for me as I usually just head straight for the parkade whenever I go downtown rather than spend half an hour circling the streets to find a spot only to see that it is a loading zone or some such thing. IMHO, a few bucks is a nominal cost for the convenience of knowing you have a spot available, plus it helps to get congestion of parked cars off the streets, and it supports the costs involved with maintaining such a facility.

However, I do tend to avoid the lots where you pay before you park, as you have to to guess how long you will leave your car there and then check your watch all afternoon to make sure you will get back to your car on time. A win-win moneygrab for the owners as you either pay for too much time or give them extra money for the resultant parking ticket. Oh well - their lot, their rules...

I avoid parking garages here in HRM due to height-clearance and turning-clearence reasons more than financial reasons. While Metro Park's height is 6'10', which is high enough for my current truck, how do I know I won't get my truck snagged further inside of the structure? I actually had this happen at the Airport garage with a previous pickup truck that I had (that was taller than my current one) that easily fit under the height-clearance bars, and yet, got held up at the internal electronic gates due to the configuration of their height sensors. After that, I avoided parking garages like the plague.

I have also seen some garages that have electronic gates, pipes, signage or structural beams that slightly impinge into the nominal height clearance that's denoted on their entry bars (i.e. internal electronic gates at Halifax Intl Airport's garage and pipes and beams at both Halifax Shopping Center's and Park Lane Mall's garages). A 15cm/6" safety factor should be looked at for these instances to mitigate internal snags. It's one thing not to be able to get under the height clearance bar, but it's a whole new ball game when you make it under the height clearance bar and still get snagged somewhere inside.

I often also find that it's faster to park up to a block over and walk a bit futher around the block (even over on Hollis Street, which actually had an open spot) than go into a multi-storey garage, wind my way up the spiral laneway to a the nearest spot and then clamour on down the staircase after parking.

Also, I believed that only being on that empty gravel lot (United Gulf Lot 3A) for only 10 minutes well outside of normal peak parking hours would not be an issue, while it actually turned out I was majorly wrong, where I found out quite harshly that "24/7" really means "24/7", all the way to not even being allowed to leave a no-parking-pass vehicle unattended for more than an instant. Now I know that the rule is in fact "Leave a vehicle without a valid parking pass unattended for even just an instant, regardless of time of day, get booted!" Hey, if United Gulf wants to bankrupt themselves by over-enforcing that parking lot in this manner outside of its normal parking-pass user base hours, Let Them. I'll have no sympathy for United Gulf in that instance.

If this lot was short-stay "pay & display", at least outside of the hours that its normal parking-pass users are normally there, I would have certainly paid for the parking instead of fighting for parking on the street, risking getting snagged in a parking garage or risking getting ticketed, booted or towed.

Regards,

Richard Kannegiesser

[Hali87]

Something occurred to me while I was looking at the pics of the Nova Centre's truss spanning Grafton Street;

I always figured the biggest impediment for an elevated rail line downtown would be that it would have to basically cover a street, creating a lot of undesirable effects for the street below.

What if, though, you took the lowest viewplane, and built a rail line (or elevated busway) over top of the buildings? This could then be fed into the rail cut or a rebuilt spur line along the North End waterfront.

In theory*, the top end could actually tunnel under the Citadel (which is glacial till so presumably cheaper to tunnel through than bedrock) and then continue at grade through the Commons.


*Parks Canada notwithstanding

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Hali87

Something occurred to me while I was looking at the pics of the Nova Centre's truss spanning Grafton Street;

I always figured the biggest impediment for an elevated rail line downtown would be that it would have to basically cover a street, creating a lot of undesirable effects for the street below.

What if, though, you took the lowest viewplane, and built a rail line (or elevated busway) over top of the buildings? This could then be fed into the rail cut or a rebuilt spur line along the North End waterfront.

In theory*, the top end could actually tunnel under the Citadel (which is glacial till so presumably cheaper to tunnel through than bedrock) and then continue at grade through the Commons.

*Parks Canada notwithstanding

Are there any examples? The elevated train in Chicago doesn't look very attractive.