Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, & Intercity Transportation

[twoNeurons]

Love the discussion here on this! I, personally, would love to see the Vancouver - Seattle link improved. That's the link with the best chance of upper government funding, and any tracks built ( to bypass White Rock, for example ) would benefit the whole system.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Love the discussion here on this! I, personally, would love to see the Vancouver - Seattle link improved. That's the link with the best chance of upper government funding, and any tracks built ( to bypass White Rock, for example ) would benefit the whole system.

Why not use the tracks in Abbotsford and then cross the Fraser River into Mission?

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The big issue with any rail bridge is that marine traffic is the senior mode and has priority - so for reliable service you have to build it high like the Patullo. That's very difficult to do when the maximum grade for rail is typically only 2%.

Or you know, don't send freight over it. There are passenger trains with 13% grade. Not sure how comfortable or safe those are. For the forseeable future, freight pretty much has to use what is already there. Take freight out of Downtown Vancouver (eg send it to the Deltaport or up to Prince Rupert,) and that problem is solved for good.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Why not use the tracks in Abbotsford and then cross the Fraser River into Mission?

So, in order to make that work, you'd need to use the old Northern Pacific - CP interchange at Huntingdon/Sumas. The NP route runs down through the valleys a bit back from the coast to Sedro Wooly and connects back to the BNSF mainline at Burlington. This route hasn't seen through passenger service since the 1920s, has it's own congestion issues, is likely not a terribly fast route these days, would lose out on all the investments that WSDOT has made in between Blaine and Burlington, and would bypass Bellingham. The alternative to make that work would be to rebuild the old Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railway which used to connect Huntingdon and Bellingham, which would be a significant expense. The CP bridge at Mission is a single-track bridge, is said to suffer it's own congestion issues The CP Mainline isn't a terribly fast mainline either, and even back in the days of prestige express passenger service the CP passenger trains didn't get to Mission any faster than the West Coast Express does today.

So absent some major infrastructure investments the Great Northern Sea Route will continue to be the best south-bound route out of Vancouver for passenger trains, as it has been since it was built.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Bdawe

So, in order to make that work, you'd need to use the old Northern Pacific - CP interchange at Huntingdon/Sumas. The NP route runs down through the valleys a bit back from the coast to Sedro Wooly and connects back to the BNSF mainline at Burlington. This route hasn't seen through passenger service since the 1920s, has it's own congestion issues, is likely not a terribly fast route these days, would lose out on all the investments that WSDOT has made in between Blaine and Burlington, and would bypass Bellingham. The alternative to make that work would be to rebuild the old Bellingham Bay and British Columbia Railway which used to connect Huntingdon and Bellingham, which would be a significant expense. The CP bridge at Mission is a single-track bridge, is said to suffer it's own congestion issues The CP Mainline isn't a terribly fast mainline either, and even back in the days of prestige express passenger service the CP passenger trains didn't get to Mission any faster than the West Coast Express does today.

So absent some major infrastructure investments the Great Northern Sea Route will continue to be the best south-bound route out of Vancouver for passenger trains, as it has been since it was built.

So, what you are really saying is that there are 2 rail bridges desperately in need of becoming double track in the Lower Mainland.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

So, what you are really saying is that there are 2 rail bridges desperately in need of becoming double track in the Lower Mainland.

Not quite. I wouldn't even say either are desperate. CN-CP coproduction made New Westminster non-desperate (organization before electronics before concrete ftw). New Westminster needs to be replaced for future freight and passenger needs, and a higher double tracked bridge at New Westminster would probably be sufficient for alleviating both bridges, since BNSF can interchange with both CP and CN at New Westminster. The only scenario in the foreseeable future where Mission really needs to be twinned would probably be in the event that WCE service were extended across it

[Political_R]

Extending rail to Tsawwassen and Horseshoe Bay does not make sense given the demand is hourly and very specific to summer seasons where there is heavy summer traffic. During the off season, there isn't as much traffic during the week let alone the weekends to justify full rail service. It would be more important to extend service to places that need a weekday service at a minimum such as Abbotsford and White Rock.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

A new bridge would really help the Cascades train from Portland as well. But even if the track was restored to better condition, it's indirect and has many curves which prohibits it from higher speeds. If you look at the rail systems in Montreal and Toronto, it's pretty easy to see why their commuter rail is so developed: their rail lines go directly into downtown in mostly straight lines. It's really frustrating and the only option I really see is to go underground, which would be absurdly expensive.

Honestly, the tracks are not that curvy in Vancouver. I've seen trains travel pretty fast.

Trains take a long time to get to the border because Vancouver is actually a pretty big city. Just driving from Pacific Central to White Rock takes anywhere from 45 minutes (in the middle of the night) to well over an hour depending on traffic. And regular transit gets you there in 1:40. Having a train get there in around an hour is pretty good by train vs driving standards in North America.

I think the biggest slow down is in the signalling. I have no idea how long the signal block are, but they seem pretty long. So a train could be waiting at a signal for a train to clear a block that could be miles away. I've seen the Cascades stopped waiting at the entrance to the Grandview Cut after just leaving Pacific Central for a train that was probably in Burnaby crossing the mainline into the tunnel to the North Shore.

When the signals do work in your favor, the trains can be very fast.

Right before the Olympics, the Royal Hudson was in White Rock for the torch relay. After the relay, the train traveled on an excursion from White Rock to Pacific Central.

I followed the train to take some pictures. After it left White Rock, I drove to Crescent Beach, where I just missed getting a picture of it by 5 seconds. So I quickly took off to catch up. By the time I was on the AFB, I could see the steam from the train up the river near the Fraser docks.

By the time I got into Commercial drive and found a parking spot and got Commercial drive station, I only beat the train there by about 5 minutes and got this photo:

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

Love the discussion here on this! I, personally, would love to see the Vancouver - Seattle link improved. That's the link with the best chance of upper government funding, and any tracks built ( to bypass White Rock, for example ) would benefit the whole system.

So if a stream train can almost beat me driving downtown, I don't think diverting the tracks around White Rock is a great way to spend money.

I used to live right near the tracks in White Rock, and I can attest that I have seen some very fast moving trains through there. The only reason the Amtrak slows down is because they don't want the bad press of smushing an arrogant teenager or jogger. I've seen plenty of people just walking on the tracks and even people pose for selfies on the tracks with the train barreling down at them. (if you think a train whistle is loud, just wait until you hear the get the hell out of my way you selfie taking idiot emergency horn on some trains).

If they installed proper pedestrian gates at the crossings (like they have at every single pedestrian crossing of the LRT in Calgary) then the trains could travel much faster through there.

I think if you actually used the tracks as they are but with better signalling, train control, and safety measures, you could run a commuter train from White Rock, stop at crescent beach, then head downtown, and it would get commuters from that area to downtown faster than any other means in the AM rush.

Moving the tracks just moves it away from commuters who would use it if there were local passenger service, and adds steep grades sends it over difficult to maintain bogs and eats up farmland (the reason GNR moved the tracks in the first place 100 years ago).

[tovan]

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...70#post6950270

Originally Posted by tovan

Skytrain should be extended to Newton Town Centre with a spur to Guilford Centre from Central City (similar to Canada Line to YVR and Brighouse). This would allow for increased transit oriented development along KGB and 104 corridors. This would also create transit hubs at each terminus for bus connections from i.e. N. Langley, S. Surrey, etc.

The Langley/Cloverdale urban area should be serviced by one of two options:

1) Rapid bus or BRT down Fraser Highway in the medium term until ridership numbers warrant development of a future LRT or MRT line; or

2) A suburban commuter rail along the BNSF/CN & SRY corridor with stops at
-Langley,
-Cloverdale,
-Newton,
-Nordel,
-Scott Road,
-Braid Street/NW,
-Gilmore/BBY or Renfrew/Vancouver,
-Waterfront.
With connections to Skytrain at Newton Town Centre, Scott Road, Braid, Gilmore or Renfrew, and Waterfront. This line could run hourly throughout the day, instead of peak hours like WCE, and use similar rolling stock as the new Toronto Union-Pearson Express: http://www.upexpress.com/en/project/vehicles.aspx
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03...airport-train/



All regular and express bus lines should feed into these systems in order to make it work. Closer proximity to rail stations would shorten bus trips allowing for more frequent bus service or buses to be distributed elsewhere within the transit system.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Political_R

Extending rail to Tsawwassen and Horseshoe Bay does not make sense given the demand is hourly and very specific to summer seasons where there is heavy summer traffic. During the off season, there isn't as much traffic during the week let alone the weekends to justify full rail service. It would be more important to extend service to places that need a weekday service at a minimum such as Abbotsford and White Rock.

You can schedule trains to be hourly too. Just sayin'

Also, foot traffic on the ferries is actually pretty consistent throughout the year. It is vehicle traffic that peaks in summer by a lot. You can ride a ferry any Friday night of the year and there will be about the same number of walk ons. It's mostly locals visiting family that walk on the ferry (they can take transit from/to home and get picked up on the other side), and people do that all year long. Tourists drive because the Island is pretty boring if you don't have a car.

I think the bus service to Tsawwassen is actually pretty nice (could actually be a bit more frequent, as the schedule of the bus gets you there just in time, which can be stressful when the bus is running late).

For Horseshoe bay, a train service could work because the train wouldn't be primarily serving the Ferries like a train to Tsawwassen would.

I think if you were to run a NSE, it would have to go all the way to Squamish (at least; Whistler would be better). Then Horseshoe bay would just be a station between the two end points serving long range commuters/travelers.

Like I wouldn't build a train line just to serve the ferries, but it makes sense if it were a stop on a longer line serving other people too.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I think the biggest slow down is in the signalling. I have no idea how long the signal block are, but they seem pretty long. So a train could be waiting at a signal for a train to clear a block that could be miles away. I've seen the Cascades stopped waiting at the entrance to the Grandview Cut after just leaving Pacific Central for a train that was probably in Burnaby crossing the mainline into the tunnel to the North Shore.

The signal block that starts at the CN Junction (at the west end of the Grandview Cut) runs through the Cut to Slocan Street on the east end, where there is another set of signals and the switch for the beginning of double-tracking. That block and the others between there and the New Westminster bridge are not IMHO particularly long - some of them are probably shorter than some of the freight consists that go through there.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

The signal block that starts at the CN Junction (at the west end of the Grandview Cut) runs through the Cut to Slocan Street on the east end, where there is another set of signals and the switch for the beginning of double-tracking. That block and the others between there and the New Westminster bridge are not IMHO particularly long - some of them are probably shorter than some of the freight consists that go through there.

Then I don't know what the passenger train was waiting for, because I rode the millennium line a few times after noticing the Cascades or Canadian just sitting there, and there wasn't a train coming the other direction through the cut.

If it's because there was a train going in the same direction, then that's still to my point. Any amount of track straightening isn't going to reduce congestion. Trains need better control and scheduling. The waiting is what kills travel times, not the speed.

If you do want to build something, the money would probably be best spent removing at grade crossings. Ever since they finished the Roberts Bank rail corridor program, trains seem to be moving a lot faster. They were fast before, but now they just seem to fly through there.

[ssiguy]

Remember that these lines don't have to have the big honkin trains of GO or WCE.

Most suburban train systems operated the smaller one level trains a la O-Train or Toronto's UPX. The UPX trains are DMU but have been bought so that EMU conversion is relatively easy and cheap. Again showing that suburban rail, unlike SkyTrain or LRT can be phased in and not an all or nothing deal.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Remember that these lines don't have to have the big honkin trains of GO or WCE.

Most suburban train systems operated the smaller one level trains a la O-Train or Toronto's UPX. The UPX trains are DMU but have been bought so that EMU conversion is relatively easy and cheap. Again showing that suburban rail, unlike SkyTrain or LRT can be phased in and not an all or nothing deal.

Some of the GO Trains are 12 cars long.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Then I don't know what the passenger train was waiting for, because I rode the millennium line a few times after noticing the Cascades or Canadian just sitting there, and there wasn't a train coming the other direction through the cut.

There's a manually operated switch just before the final curve from the coach yard into the cut that the conductor sometimes needs to throw before the train can proceed - I'm not sure if that's what you were seeing.

I've also noticed that the signals through the cut and out into Burnaby are not normally lighted - so it's possible that there was an issue with the dispatcher not being available immediately. That's related to signalling, but isn't really a fault of the block length.

It's also possible that they also sometimes hold trains short if they know that the New Westminster bridge is going to be up by the time they get there - similar to the "takeoff hold" that air traffic control sometimes imposes when destination airports are congested or down due to weather or other emergencies. They could do that so that the train isn't blocking other traffic on the interconnecting lines while waiting closer to the bridge.

I don't believe that there's enough traffic through that corridor from the cut to the New Westminster bridge that the block length is really that big an issue there. I could be wrong, but that's my feeling after having spent a lot of time shooting train videos all along it.

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Remember that these lines don't have to have the big honkin trains of GO or WCE.

Most suburban train systems operated the smaller one level trains a la O-Train or Toronto's UPX. The UPX trains are DMU but have been bought so that EMU conversion is relatively easy and cheap. Again showing that suburban rail, unlike SkyTrain or LRT can be phased in and not an all or nothing deal.

The problem with that is that TC/FRA rail regulations tend to make passenger trains very heavy and inefficient, and tend to impose very stringent construction, inspection and testing requirements on MUs. Furthermore, the TC/FRA compliant DMU market in the US and Canada is pitifully small, so any attempt to purchase a DMU gives you small runs of expensive, untested machines, like what happened to Portland. This means that trains in general and MU in particular become expensive to operate.

So the only way that railway passenger service becomes terribly economical is either you have very large trains that are very full, like the West Coast Express, you operate smaller trains with very high fares, like UP Express or the Acela, or you get a waiver for temporal segregation and ban freight trains from your tracks during the day so that you can import much lighter, cheaper to operate DMU like the O-Train and a number of other operations in the US.

It should be obvious that banning freight trains from Grandview cut or New Westminster Bridge is not feasible. Perhaps you could get away with such a maneuver on the the old Interurban line, or on the CP line along the Fraser River west of New West. But only perhaps

[ssiguy]

The US government has recently eased it's neurotic view of small DMU/EMU vehicles using freight lines if they have automatic train control. Canada is following suit as the O-Train received a waiver as did the UPX and AMT is going to be using similar trains.

Metrolinx also had the vision to see RER as a long term goal that could be phased in as money became available. They started to buy the tracks from the freight operators. A decade ago Metrolinx didn't own any rail corridors and now it owns 80% of all the rail in it's 460km system. The other portion and expansion will be 100% controlled by Metrolinx by 2024 at the latest. Metrolinx is hoping to have a 700km system within 10 years and 100% owned by Metrolinx and where all areas from Burlington to Oshawa and from Toronto to Georgetown and Newmarket enjoying all day 2-way service of every 15 minutes.

Vancouver must think long term and suburban/commuter rail is a good place to start and unlike SkyTrain it doesn't need monstrous amounts of money to get started and can be phased in.

[Rico]

[QUOTE=ssiguy;7138373]The US government has recently eased it's neurotic view of small DMU/EMU vehicles using freight lines if they have automatic train control. Canada is following suit as the O-Train received a waiver as did the UPX and AMT is going to be using similar trains.

Metrolinx also had the vision to see RER as a long term goal that could be phased in as money became available. They started to buy the tracks from the freight operators. A decade ago Metrolinx didn't own any rail corridors and now it owns 80% of all the rail in it's 460km system. The other portion and expansion will be 100% controlled by Metrolinx by 2024 at the latest. Metrolinx is hoping to have a 700km system within 10 years and 100% owned by Metrolinx and where all areas from Burlington to Oshawa and from Toronto to Georgetown and Newmarket enjoying all day 2-way service of every 15 minutes.

Vancouver must think long term and suburban/commuter rail is a good place to start and unlike SkyTrain it doesn't need monstrous amounts of money to get started and can be phased in.[/QUOT

Except in Vancouver it will cost monstrous amounts of money for a RER like system. There are only 2 existing Right of Ways I am aware of that are available and not at almost full utilization by freight. Arbutus and the old BCER. Neither is viable as a RER type service without bucket fulls of money. Anything else is a complete new build in a built urban environment, talk about buckets of money. For reference the 3.3km of new build plus stations etc. for the Union Pearson Express cost something like 450 million and with a 27 dollar ticket price will still get terrible operational cost recovery.

[Bdawe]

The US government hasn't finished fixing MU regulations yet, and TC hasn't either to my knowledge.

The O-Train is temporally segregated from other traffic, which they've done in a number of places for some time now. UPX is FRA compliant, and can run on any tracks. Montreal has long had EMU, but EMU are more economical than DMU and I believe Montreal's EMU are TC legal as well

As for Vancouver RER, it has to be said a thousand times, there is no right of way to do this on the cheap. Other cities have far more useful existing rail routes than Vancouver does, with direct routes into the urban center from all directions. The CP Line could be used, but it's going to need a lot of money to sustain reliable all day service. The CN line is circuitous and built on poor soil, so cannot support much higher speeds according to WSDOT routes, and misses everything between New Westminster and Chilliwack other than Fort Langley. The BCER might have some value to Langley City, but it is a curving, steep, and circuitous route otherwise. The Steveston Line and Arbutus Line could be reactivated into something useful, but it may well be much easier just to add to the Canada Line.

Most of the older Fraser Valley Population Centers don't run along the BCER or the CN mainline. They're along the old Yale Road and the old Great Northern Line, since removed and subdivided. It's not like some east-coast city where everything was seeded from rail. In the Lower Mainland, much was ultimately seeded from road

[officedweller]

Surrey, White Rock launch study to assess possible new routes for railway
Cities have been discussing the relocation of the tracks for more than 50 years
By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun
October 22, 2015

METRO VANCOUVER -- Surrey and White Rock are upping the ante in their battle to relocate railway tracks away from the cities’ beaches, launching a $700,000 technical study to assess and cost the best alternative route.

The cost of the study, which is likely to take up to three years, would be split between the two municipalities with potential funding from the provincial government, Coun. Judy Villeneuve said. It would then be used to initiate a request for relocation under the Railway Relocation and Crossing Act, which gives municipalities and the B.C. government the authority to compel a railway owner to relocate a train track.
...
No route has been chosen but several feasibility studies on alternatives have been done. In 2013, four alternatives were proposed, including a parallel route along King George and Highway 99 with a tunnelled section between 16th and 36th avenues, while in 2002, the recommended route was along 180th Street with a diversion at 188th Street around the base of the hill between 16th and 36th Avenue. This same route had been proposed in a 1995 study done by the Washington state Department of Transportation.

A southern rail route is also a possibility, White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin said. “I just want it to go the safest way possible,” he said. “What we’ve got is an area that’s highly prone to slides and they’re going to get worse.”

However, Gus Melonas, spokesman for BNSF, said the land in Canada is not nearly as unstable as that in Puget Sound. His company has also spent $22.5 million over the past two years upgrading the tracks and railway ties as well as building new bridges, he said.

“If they want to invest in a study we have no issue with that,” he said. “But we would have to review an official proposal.”
...

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/sur...500/story.html