Quote:
Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld
I put this in the Arbutus Corridor thread, but I think it also belongs here.
I've been thinking about how this could work for some time and I developed some concepts. I think it's pretty clear how the middle of the corridor will look, however, both the northern and southern ends present different options. I decided to map out these possibilities.
This map shows the corridor with the different options extending north, to Marine Drive and to the River District.
This map shows the options at the northern end. At first, I think the terminus will be at Arbutus - Broadway because that would provide connectivity with the Millennium Line extension and the fact that the corridor gets narrower and more complicated north of Broadway.
The Main St. extension is technically the easiest and would run largely on the Olympic Streetcar route. This would connect several Skytrain stations and provide access to Granville Island.
The Downtown Extension is much more complex, but I think might be necessary in the future to deal with congestion on the Canada Line section between Broadway-City Hall and Downtown. Without this extension all the people coming from the western and southern parts of Vancouver as well as Richmond will be using this section. Once the Millennium Line is extended to UBC, this could end up being a bottle neck.
I envision the Downtown Extension going underground at Arbutus-Broadway, east along Broadway to Granville and emerging at surface level just south of the Granville Bridge. There would be a station on the Granville Bridge and the line would continue on the surface on Granville all the way to Waterfront. This line would allow people from the west to get Downtown faster and provide an easy connection from Downtown to Granville Island. (If you think a station on the Granville Bridge is crazy, it is mentioned in Granville Island's future plans)
Now for the southern options! I see two possibilities extending to Marine Drive Station, along 70th St. and along the rail corridor. I prefer the 70th St. option as it is shorter, would get better ridership and could integrate better with Marine Drive station. You would probably still need a spur on the rail corridor south to an OMC. 70th would become a 2-way street with light rail down the middle.
The problems I see with the rail option is that the connection with Marine Drive station is a bit awkward and the area it serves is less built up. I also think the portion east of the bridge is still being used.
Both of the previous options could lead to extensions to the River District. For the 70th St. option, the best way to do this that I see is continuing it down Marine Drive and then joining the rail corridor at Fraser St. The Rail Option would require a separate line that would connect the River District with Marine Drive Station and would run along the rail corridor. Again, I prefer the 70th St. Option as it could be a seamless line and serves existing areas better. |
I like your plan! A few thoughts:
-I agree that an extension to downtown from Arbutus would be wise. It would have to be relatively high quality and capacity, though, in order for it to function as relief for the Canada Line by capturing anybody other than Arbutus-corridor customers. A lot of people going to UBC, Kits, Dunbar, or Point Grey already have direct buses from downtown (14, 4, 7, 2), so in order to improve on these, the LRT connection will have to be orders of magnitude better than a bus--in other words, it will need to be as good as the Canada Line in terms of reliability and capacity. If it isn't, then people will continue to transfer at Broadway-City Hall, sticking to an all-skytrain itinerary and then transferring to the 99 or another bus at Arbutus. For example, if the downtown extension only comes every 10 minutes (which is optimistic for an LRT branch line), they won't see see the point in using it if they still have to transfer at Arbutus, they will just take a direct bus (provided the 4, 7, and 14 still exist in their current routing--and if they don't, people will complain).
On the other hand, if the downtown branch has at least 5 minute frequencies, and doesn't encounter congestion or regular obstructions while downtown, people may very well want to start using it to transfer to the 99, 14/9, and 4/7. In that case, a new transfer point could be set up south of Granville Island (5th and Fir area) in order to facilitate some of these transfers, and the 4/7 could be rewired to either terminate there or continue on to the False Creek flats along 2nd (splitting them both from their East Van halves). The 14 could also be cut in half, effectively merging it into the 9, with its passengers transferring to the LRT at Arbutus. Those service hours could be allocated to run the 14 Hastings all night between downtown and Kootenay Loop, solving some of the NE sector difficulties they've been having (i.e. allowing them to run the 16 up to Eton and Renfrew along the Powell Street corridor, while still servicing customers between Nanaimo and Kootenay Loop frequently and all day).
But all of that depends on having high reliability and frequency on the downtown branch. You'd have to show that that's possible while remaining above ground, or find a tunneling solution. I myself like the idea of
totally closing the Granville Mall to vehicles, except for LRT, and having it function as
the way to get across the Granville Bridge using transit--with the exception of maybe the 10, which could run on Seymour and Howe. But I don't know if that would ever really be possible, barring a catastrophic collapse of the taxi industry (lol). Even if so, the frequency would have to be fantastic, and that means no branching of the Arbutus Line--it would have to loop all the way around through Gastown (using a hopefully pedestrianized Water Street, and the Carrall St Greenway closed to car traffic) and NE False Creek, or the Olympic Village section would have to be made into a shuttle as it was during the Olympics.
-Regarding the southern options, I would favour the alignment going down to Marine and Hudson, to connect with the bus depot and, like you said, an OMC. (This could serve as an efficiency incentive for Translink to buy land there both to expand the bus depot, desparately needed, and to build the OMC.) While it would be ideal to connect the Oak and 70th area with the rail network, the amount of development completed around Marine and Hudson is just as large, and specified to be larger in the Marpole Community Plan. In addition, an alignment down 70th would be absolutely insane, traffic and collision wise, with several very dangerous and high-speed intersections to navigate approaching the Oak St bridge. Since the 70th and Granville area can still be served using the rail alignment, I think it would be safer to stick to it. This would also make the approach to Marine Station easier, since there is land to work with south of the station.
East of Marine Station, especially to the River District, would be an awesome extension. The difficulty would be with the bus connections. At least up to Victoria, it would be advantageous to run it on Marine Drive, since the artic trolleys (3, 8, 20) and the 22 have no way of getting down to the rail corridor closer to the river, at least not without massive trolley rewirings and new loop and road construction. But by the time you're at Victoria, the grade is almost too steep to run the LRT back down to the rail corridor before it enters the River District. And in any case, running LRT along Marine Drive, you would encounter similar problems with traffic and a hostile, anti-urban pedestrian environment encountered along 70th, barring massive redevelopment of the whole corridor such as Surrey has planned for King George. If that's what the city wants to do with Marine Drive then I would be all for it, but I don't know if they have the political capital or will necessary to concentrate that much on Marine Drive in the near future, even if it were just between Marine Station and Fraser. Inversely though, it would be almost pointless to run an LRT extension just to service River District residents going to the Canada Line--most of them hardly take transit at all right now, although that is admittedly partly due to the lack of options, and it would be good to tap and grow the latent demand. The vast majority of boardings on the 100 are between Victoria and Marine Station, but if the LRT line is too far south, people will just long for the 100 since it's closer to where they live and the stores on Marine. In any case, I don't think it would beacceptable to build the LRT line without connecting it to at least the N-S lines along Main, Fraser, Knight, Victoria, and Elliot, but that seems exceptionally difficult at the moment. In the long term I honestly think it more likely that the rail corridor would be used, but some way found for the buses to extend closer to the river, despite the engineering challenges. If you're not even using the rail corridor, why even think about building LRT in this section of Vancouver? The rail right of way would be the thing providing easy reliability and safety and the ability to provide good headways.
It's interesting to think about this stuff! I hope some kind of LRT gets built in the near future.
