Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
Firstly I agree that building streetcars doesn't offer enough of a benefit over buses for the cost to justify building, generally. But you can't make a blanket statement that it can only ever be a choice between buses and a full metro.
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It's not only those two choices, but those are the two best choices.
Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
LRT rarely means streetcars, it means usually C-Train, Edmonton's LRT or Eglinton LRT - these are proper mass transit systems that provide far higher service quality than buses, look at how Ottawa's system strains with its capacity limitations. I strongly disagree that our current LRTs could be serviced equally well by bus lines, and the only way this would approach being true you would have to spend similar amounts on infrastructure. How do you suggest Calgary builds a bus line with equal service quality to our future Green Line? Bus tunnels?
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The C-Train, as covered, is the ideal situation and basically a commuter rail (also apart from the downtown, where the issues all are and the tunnel is needed, effectively turning it into a metro).
Edmonton had a metro (a light one, but totally separated, with a good tunnel system and everything, basically akin to the Canada Line), and has messed everything up by suddenly mixing traffic on the new line.
Eglinton LRT honestly should have been a proper subway, those above ground mixed traffic parts are going to be a headache... I do believe the line as a whole already handles higher traffic levels than the Sheppard line too with buses (and higher traffic than all but 2-3 of the streetcar lines, which are only marginally busier and struggling).
Ottawa's only struggling because of rather poor decisions downtown. If, like the C-Train, the buses had been given their own streets in the downtown (in place of running in mixed traffic) they'd probably have the capacity for years to come (and note they're now being replaced with a full metro).
Also Ottawa+Gatineau's system handles more people than Calgary's (~120 million annual riders vs. ~110 million), and that's with STO being a pretty confused mess a lot of the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
The advantage LRT has is it can provide most of the benefit of a full metro while being flexible enough to make compromises in less important areas that can bring down the cost significantly. I would prefer we didn't have financial limitations and didn't have to make these compromises, but they do exist.
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LRT is a way to combine the worst of buses (mixed traffic issues, lower capacity) with the worst of a Metro (inflexibility in case of maintenance needs, high construction cost requiring higher densities to run, difficulties to upgrade). I would prefer we didn't have financial and political limitations allowing fancy and cool LRT and other intermediate options everywhere, but these limits exist, so we should stick to functional (if unsexy) buses which can handle the traffic loads up to the point that a Metro starts to make sense.