Pre Skytrain LRT Plans

[Bureaucromancer]

Does anyone recall the specifics of the pre Skytrain plans for conventional light rail on the Expo Line corridor? I recall at some point seeing a detailed alignment study, but don't recall what it did beyond the end of the rail ROW at Commercial. Most particularly, what about downtown? Did they expect to use the Dunsmuir tunnel with light rail or was there something else (or something less specific)?

[officedweller]

Here's the Harland Bartholemew Report (1946):

https://archive.org/details/transitplanningm00vanc

There's a link in here to a 1962 report:

http://voony.wordpress.com/2010/05/0...ouver-in-1962/

Originally Posted by officedweller

A post over at PriceTags of a 1975 Provincial Transit Plan (under the NDP) for downtown Vancouver with streetcar lines at the Relace blog:

http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2010/...-futures-past/

http://regardingplace.com/?p=8157


http://regardingplace.com/wp-content...1975_large.jpg

For reference, here are maps of the BCER:

http://bcer.trams.bc.ca/maps.html

http://www.tundria.com/trams/CAN/Vancouver-1940.shtml

[spm2013]

There's some graphics around 1978 that might be of interest

GVRD Rapid Transit Project using the Siemens Streetcar was planned to
reconnect Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, Coquitlam (Evergreen Line),
Surrey and Richmond + Airport (Arbutus Line).

http://www.urbanstudio.sala.ubc.ca/2...itsolution.pdf

[Millennium2002]

Interesting photos and historical tidbits in there... however, I can't stand the overt streetcar/LRT bias in the above article...

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by spm2013

There's some graphics around 1978 that might be of interest

This is interesting but very highly biased. The smug conclusion seems to be that we wasted 4 to 5 billion by building Skytrain instead of LRT, completely ignoring the fact that the comparison is of the original LRT proposal only vs. Skytrain plus several subsequent extensions, and also ignoring the fact that LRT would never have been able to get anywhere near the passenger volumes, frequencies and short travel times that Skytrain achieves.

[nname]

... and somehow compare SkyTrain to the interurban "rapid transit" system. Well, this is how they called a "rapid transit":

Central Park/Burnaby Lake interurban lines:
Peak: every 15min;
off-peak: every 20min;
early morning/late night: 40min-hourly
travel time Vancouver - New West: more than 1hr (local), 50min (non-stop)

Chilliwack interurban line:
3 daily round-trips Vancouver <-> Chilliwack;
1 friday-only short-turned Mt. Lehman <-> New West;
travel time Vancouver - Chilliwack: approx 3.5hr

So if you take the 8am early train from Chilliwack, you'll be arriving in Vancouver just before noon; if you take the last train from Vancouver at 5:30pm, you'll be home just past 9pm

[officedweller]

He only posted it for the graphics, not the other content.

[spm2013]

Yeah, I know it was biased but it had the 1970s LRT route so I posted the link.

There's also some stuff in Hansard if you are really curious about the decision making on it.

[GlassCity]

I thank god every day that we didn't build LRT. Hopefully we can continue to avoid this trend.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by spm2013

Yeah, I know it was biased but it had the 1970s LRT route so I posted the link.

Totally understand and appreciate the link. My intention was to criticize the document, not you. My apologies if it appeared otherwise.

It does have a lot of interesting historical tidbits in it, for sure.

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by Bureaucromancer

Does anyone recall the specifics of the pre Skytrain plans for conventional light rail on the Expo Line corridor? I recall at some point seeing a detailed alignment study, but don't recall what it did beyond the end of the rail ROW at Commercial. Most particularly, what about downtown? Did they expect to use the Dunsmuir tunnel with light rail or was there something else (or something less specific)?

I read a huge book about it published in 1970 back in September, after having found it at the Metrotown BPL location. EDIT: That map above was in that book.

The plan would have created a Calgary-style light rail system running on the same Expo Line corridor today but with some major differences. Firstly, the alignment would have required a new tunnel from present Stadium up Cambie to Waterfront, not even touching the areas where Granville and Burrard Stations are today. Secondly, end-to-end travel time would have been made inevitably longer and reliability/expansion capacity compromised by several on-street sections.

Using the Dunsmuir Tunnel with light rail would have been more expensive, if not impossible. I for one think that the development of ICTS and linear motor propulsion - which not only at the time but even still today is a very low-height system - was essential in enabling cost-effective re-use of the Dunsmuir Tunnel for rapid transit. I don't think it's really ever been made known or visible but the Dunsmuir Tunnel and SkyTrain technology going hand-in-hand probably represented a savings of hundreds of millions of dollars in today's dollars.

Originally Posted by spm2013

There's some graphics around 1978 that might be of interest

http://www.urbanstudio.sala.ubc.ca/2...itsolution.pdf

The history is interesting (particularly that there was a temporary Abbotsford-Vancouver service launched for Expo 86), but don't trust the numbers in this.

I've seen this one posted on RFTV, and the author seems to have strong connections to that crowd. The numbers are extremely questionable. You can see that in how the author is desperately trying to put together SkyTrain's total capital costs from various local news sources, when this is is published information that is often found easily online (for example, the Millennium Line's exact capital cost to the dollar can be found by searching for RTP2000's annual cost reports), and how the old BCER system apparently managed to board 144,272,508 passengers in 1946 (a ridiculous prospect given today's region - populated at well over 2 million vs. just under 500,000 at the time - sees about 177,000,000 annual boardings; I actually think that this represents the total number of passengers carried since establishment, but it's being framed as an annual boarding number in this report)

This is interesting but very highly biased. The smug conclusion seems to be that we wasted 4 to 5 billion by building Skytrain instead of LRT, completely ignoring the fact that the comparison is of the original LRT proposal only vs. Skytrain plus several subsequent extensions, and also ignoring the fact that LRT would never have been able to get anywhere near the passenger volumes, frequencies and short travel times that Skytrain achieves.

The author doesn't even know how to compensate for inflation. The 1979 numbers quoted remain in 1979 dollars.

[jsbertram]

The Vancouver - Abbotsford 'service' was actually a demonstration of a British Rail DMU - a modern British interpretation of the 1950s-era Budd Dayliners that used to run on BC Rail.

The car was only here for a few weeks in the summer, and only ran between New West and Abbotsford (no other stops) on the BC Rail (now SRY) lines.

While visiting for Expo I was able to ride on it to get to & from the Abbotsford airshow. I don't remember a lot about it, other than it had the 'new train car smell' since it was newly built and shipped over here to run during Expo 86 to be a demonstrator and sales generator for these cars in North America.

This sounds like what Bombardier did for their LRT/Streetcar/Tram during the Vancouver Olympics, but Bombardier wanted to encourage Vancouver or Surrey to buy them, and at the same time other transit people & fans who were here primarily for the Olympics would get a peek at Bombardier technology.

The British Rail DMU was also tested for a few days by BC Rail on the North Van - Squamish run, and I've heard it was shipped around the continent for other rail companies to check it out, but no sales resulted from 'kicking the tires'.

It was shipped back to the UK and went into regular service. I haven't heard if it is retired by now (its still less than 30 years old), but no doubt there is a UK-based Rail Fan site that knows more details on this widely-travelled car.


update:

I found a photo of the demo train at Abbotsford:




http://www.railwaystoday.com/2011/11...chment/142049/

[officedweller]

WRT the LRT allignment in 1970 - that would have been because the office core was planned to be on the downtown eastside at Project 200, rather than on Burrard St., etc.

Chances are (off topic), DTES would not have devolved into a drug market if the office core had been built there.

***********

Apparently, european style DMUs may be approved for for use on shared track (freight & passenger rail) in the US - so the more modern version of Rail Bus may eventually come to North America.

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/0...assenger-rail/

[MIPS]

Wasn't there a plan in the late 60's about buying and running the Seattle Monorail between the airport and downtown?

[Rational Plan3]

Originally Posted by jsbertram

The Vancouver - Abbotsford 'service' was actually a demonstration of a British Rail DMU - a modern British interpretation of the 1950s-era Budd Dayliners that used to run on BC Rail.

The car was only here for a few weeks in the summer, and only ran between New West and Abbotsford (no other stops) on the BC Rail (now SRY) lines.

While visiting for Expo I was able to ride on it to get to & from the Abbotsford airshow. I don't remember a lot about it, other than it had the 'new train car smell' since it was newly built and shipped over here to run during Expo 86 to be a demonstrator and sales generator for these cars in North America.

This sounds like what Bombardier did for their LRT/Streetcar/Tram during the Vancouver Olympics, but Bombardier wanted to encourage Vancouver or Surrey to buy them, and at the same time other transit people & fans who were here primarily for the Olympics would get a peek at Bombardier technology.

The British Rail DMU was also tested for a few days by BC Rail on the North Van - Squamish run, and I've heard it was shipped around the continent for other rail companies to check it out, but no sales resulted from 'kicking the tires'.

It was shipped back to the UK and went into regular service. I haven't heard if it is retired by now (its still less than 30 years old), but no doubt there is a UK-based Rail Fan site that knows more details on this widely-travelled car.


update:

I found a photo of the demo train at Abbotsford:




http://www.railwaystoday.com/2011/11...chment/142049/

Oh, it's still very much in service. These cheap and very basic DMU's became the backbone for many Small city and rural routes, that did not go to London. Not much liked but it is important to stress they were extremely cheap, especially in the early eighties when plenty of people did not think the railway could be turned around.

Nowadays there are lots of different types of trains that have taken their place but there are still hundreds of units that need to scrapped.

[Vin]

Originally Posted by officedweller

WRT the LRT allignment in 1970 - that would have been because the office core was planned to be on the downtown eastside at Project 200, rather than on Burrard St., etc.

Chances are (off topic), DTES would not have devolved into a drug market if the office core had been built there.

***********

Apparently, european style DMUs may be approved for for use on shared track (freight & passenger rail) in the US - so the more modern version of Rail Bus may eventually come to North America.

http://seattletransitblog.com/2014/0...assenger-rail/

Off topic too. But Vancouver was an anti-Vietnam war tree-hugging hippie town with rampant drug use. Many from that generation turned into addicts with mental problems and had warped bodies. There would be another DTES regardless.

Would be really nice to have those British style commuter trains serving the outlying towns with a new Central station in Vancouver. They are also used in many Commonwealth countries, and serve as the workhorses to bring the bulk of folks in outlying towns to work in city centres.

[lightrail]

Originally Posted by Rational Plan3

Oh, it's still very much in service. These cheap and very basic DMU's became the backbone for many Small city and rural routes, that did not go to London. Not much liked but it is important to stress they were extremely cheap, especially in the early eighties when plenty of people did not think the railway could be turned around.

Nowadays there are lots of different types of trains that have taken there place but there are still hundreds of units that need to scrapped.

Ugh - the much hated Class 142 pacers. I used to ride these a lot when I lived in the UK on the Rochdale to Manchester Victoria via Oldham line (now closed and converted to trams). They're basically a light weight bus body and it has no bogies (trucks) - there are 4 wheels per car. They're a rough ride because the wheels don't turn with the track and underpowered. They managed to get up to 75 mph though and for all their faults, they proved work horses on rural routes. With 5-abreast seating, they had high capcity and were useful on commuter lines too.

On the Oldham Line they ran two service patterns:
1. Manchester Victoria non-stop to Oldham Mumps then all stops to Rochdale, every 30 minutes.
2. Manchester Victoria all stops to Oldham Mumps and terminating at Shaw and Crompton, two stops after Mumps, every 30 minutes.

You'll find the Class 142's all over rural and northern England.

Sometimes we got lucky and had a much more comfortable long distance DMU rostered on the line - much smoother and much quieter.

[casper]

They should try operate some of these routes. There are quite a few used BUD cars on the market that can be purchased for a relatively low cost and refurbished. Even VIA rail two or three years ago refurbished a series of these old BUD cars for use on their network.


Photo from Wikipedia.

Some of the used cars are available for very little money: http://www.sterlingrail.com/classifi...ger+Car&fsw=FS

They could be used to do proof of concept on the viability of new routes at fairly low cost.

[officedweller]

I think the issue would be that they may not be handicapped accessible.

I remember those were originally proposed fror the Toornto Union-Pearson Express (then called Blue 22)