[fever]

Originally Posted by dk

Exactly what I was thinking about for the Abbotsford Line! Although I wonder if the line should follow Old Yale Road instead. It could eventually be extended to the residential areas where it would better serve residents, the Auto Mall, then sweep down to the Airport. Keeping on S. Fraser Way would connect it through the industrial area and provide a more direct connection to the Airport...

This southern route hits both of the population centres south of the highway, Murrayville/Willoughby and Aldergrove, Abbotsford airport, and the main university campus in Abbotsford. The line in the map follows a mix of what appear to be remnants of old rail rights-of-way and additions to the 1-mile grid either on the grid or at 1/4-mile or 1/8-mile offsets. An alternative northern route might go through Port Kells, Walnut Grove, and Fort Langley, but there's little beyond that.

I'd favour whatever alignment serves most of the population centres while minimizing the cost of the line. I don't know that this alignment is most cost-effective. I don't think grade-separation is necessary in rural parts of the valley, but at the same time it's important to limit grade-crossings at major roads. This alignment stays in farmland whenever it can, and approaches population centres/stations on a tangent. It doesn't parallel major roads

Originally Posted by ko

Calgary buys off the shelf from Siemens, built in California. The only way Calgary will buy from anyone else is if it is cheaper, or if they loose access to federal/provincial money if they don't.

I think building the line with standard materials in standard dimensions is a good approach. This means more than just standard gauge. Bombardier's bilevel commuter trains and Siemen's LRT trains in Calgary are good examples of standard rolling stock. It shouldn't matter which train is used initially anyway. The point is to have as many options as possible when it comes to picking your suppliers so that costs are kept low and suppliers that don't perform well can be replaced. The way I see this system operating, with relatively infrequent headways, trains are a very minor cost, but the same holds true for the track, stations, signalling, whatever. There's nothing particularly innovative about the technology in this system.

Originally Posted by ko

A nail everyone here has hit on the head is how difficult it is to plan transit in Vancouver, due to a current lack of natural hubs. The advantage to this is you can create hubs and fund construction through MTR style land development at these hubs.

Agreed. This is one of the advantages of using existing rights-of-way. Because stations are at the edge of their community, there is generally a swath of greyfield between the centre of the community and the proposed station. The axis between the station and the centre would be a logical focus for development. A criticism of the Abbotsford line as I've drawn it might be that the stations are on the eastern edges of Murraryville, Aldergrove, and Abbotsford (i.e. the wrong side).