Transit Fantasies

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by awvan

I think a lot of people here are getting way ahead of themselves speaking of different trains and fanciful routes. One must keep in mind the relative size of Western Europe. It's tiny. 2.8 million sq. km, and that is if you include Portugal, Hungary and Poland where HSR isn't exactly abundant. Ontario and Quebec combined are 2.6 million sq. km, and with a population of 21 million, we're not exactly close to the 430 million in Western Europe. We're a long way off in most of these corridors, especially ones that are already well served by relatively cheap and quick airplane service, or highway, it takes a little over 3 hours to drive from Calgary to Edmonton.

Mexico and South Africa are hardly in the financial position to start building HSR, Jo'burg only just got it's first subway. Besides, airline travel from Cape Town to Jo'burg is about the cost of a flight from Vancouver to Calgary, and takes just under 3 hours, there is no way HSR could touch that.

So long as the track is compatible with different rolling stock in the limited areas that will see HSR in North America (likely New York-Philly-DC first) I don't really think it matters who builds the trains down there. Besides, Bombardier has lots of business to chase in China right now.

I'd love to have HSR from Vancouver to Portland as much as any of you, but we have to be at least somewhat realistic. Upgraded track and rolling stock for the Amtrack Cascades route to perhaps shave an hour or two off the travel time is probably all we can hope for in the next 20 years.

A very realistic and practical summary, IMO. It's easy to get carried away with elaborate and fanciful ideas, but reality is where it's at, and we need to remember that. Thanks for bringing me - and I suspect many others - back to Earth a bit!

[xd_1771]

This is my idea for Richmond based on some of my own ideas and a few others here (NOTE: draft, no stations; mostly LRT lines except where solid)

For one I think Richmond would be highly suitable for LRT, since there are no major centres on the scale of Surrey or Langley to connect, and Richmond is fairly low density, but there would still be quite a lot of people to serve. My idea would be sort of a streetcar system; the LRT track would share the lanes of the road where not separated. Buses (mostly community shuttles) would link to these LRT lines. Of course some of these roads may need to be upgraded to add proper left turn lanes/centre lane first to avoid interfering with the LRT; before that BRT could be used as a more flexible alternative. On my map:

• The Canada Line would continue to be the main link into Richmond from Vancouver. LRT lines would branch from separate stations on the Richmond line, splitting up traffic between different stations rather than overcrowding every single one. There would be no or few absolute major centres for LRT.
• The red line is something I have envisioned myself for quite awhile - it would link Bridgeport or Aberdeen station to the Olympic Oval. The Olympic Oval, as you can see, would become a major exchange for LRT lines. Phase 1 would be built to the oval; phase 2 would continue on to Terra Nova.
• The dark line links the major business centre at Steveston/No. 5 road (and the theatre complex to the east) with either Richmond-Brighouse or the Olympic Oval.
• The green line is a direct replacement of the 410 bus route and will link Steveston. Plenty of ROW on the side of Railway Ave. for this to be built. This would make Railway Ave. truly a "Railway Ave." once again.
• The orange line follows BCPhil's idea of linking Lansdowne & the Garden City lands. It starts at Olympic Village and proceeds east into the lands. A phase two would verge north along No. 4 road and turn right on Cambie; lots of business there that could be served.
• The lime line (top right, stations placed & named) would be Richmond's link to the east from Bridgeport to 22nd St. Station. It would also be a replacement of the 410 bus route. Important places it would link are the soon-to-be-expanded IKEA, and the Night Market (finally, no more overcrowded parking lots and having to park 4 blocks away from the thing! provided the location doesn't change of course) - both of which could make this a very valuable route. My plan has it as a separate line, but it could also be an extension of the red line. This, however, would be a much higher capacity LRT or maybe even RRT, for longer distances since in the summer it may serve thousands at at a time coming in and out of the night market and it would also be a major link to New West, Coquitlam and Surrey, terminating at 22nd street station.

You may notice a few other plans I have up on there involving the roads....just ignore that for now

Tell me if anything could be improved!

[xd_1771]

Returning once again with my Surrey-Langley transit concept, now finished:


EDIT: Updated w/interurban line

[DKaz]

I had a dream last night that I was on an LRT going down along the south side of 41st Ave, toward UBC, and it was filled with students that were on the buses in the UBC Lipdub. I didn't recognize the terminus though, the bus loop with integrated LRT station looked like the existing UBC diesel bus exchange but the LRT was coming in from up a hill on an elevated guideway. Looked like a hilly suburban Los Angeles setting really.

[Toddlertoddy]

More WCE lines
one more Skytrain line (that is probably not useful in any way, but it is a fantasy, so why not?)

There is a lot of ambiguity in this which I don't feel like fixing. Also, there wasn't room to put extra stations between Commercial-Broadway and Broadway-City Hall. They were Kingsway and VCC-Clark if you are wondering.

[logan5]

I eluded to this earlier, but I'll add a few details to the Millennium spur line to downtown.

Cost: $300 million
Elevated: 1.4 km
At grade: .5 km
Tunnel: .8 km
Total length: 2.7 km
Stations: 1 + 1 future

The elevated portion would run along Station st. up to the viaducts, then run underground along Main st. up to Alexander, then go west at grade tying in at Waterfront.

You could have a future station (elevated) at the St. Pauls False Creek Flats site, which now will most likely be high density residential, and an underground station at Main and Hastings, which would greatly accelerate the rehabilitation of the area.

This would be so easy to do and it makes so much sense (to me anyways).

[Canadian Mind]

not to me, atleast not unless you then have a spur for expo line to go down broadway, keep things even. personally I think the transfer is fine for now tho.

[trofirhen]

Glad to see this thread open again. From the way things seem to be sputtering, we need it, I rather think !

[Zassk]

We don't need 3 lines into downtown. We almost doubled the amount of capacity into downtown in 2009.

We do need the two lines that already go into downtown to be connected. That is the role of Millennium - to be that connector.

Spend that money to extend Millennium to Cambie instead. This will relieve Expo Line and help justify the expensive tunnel that we built under False Creek.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Zassk

We don't need 3 lines into downtown. We almost doubled the amount of capacity into downtown in 2009.

We do need the two lines that already go into downtown to be connected. That is the role of Millennium - to be that connector.

Spend that money to extend Millennium to Cambie instead. This will relieve Expo Line and help justify the expensive tunnel that we built under False Creek.

Agreed; totally.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Zassk

We don't need 3 lines into downtown. We almost doubled the amount of capacity into downtown in 2009.

We do need the two lines that already go into downtown to be connected. That is the role of Millennium - to be that connector.

Spend that money to extend Millennium to Cambie instead. This will relieve Expo Line and help justify the expensive tunnel that we built under False Creek.

I realize I'm being manic about this but...

Virtually all cities have their rapid transit lines radiate from a central hub (downtown). This is where the majority of the jobs are. Millennium Line needs to be extended to central Broadway for sure, but it can easily and cheaply have a branch line tying in at Waterfront and loop through the other downtown stations.

The population and densities along the the M Line and future Evergreen Line are far less than the Expo Line and maybe even the C line. The transfer less ride on the M Line would not only attract more ridership that it needs, it would relieve a lot pressure on the Expo line, more so IMO than a connection at the C Line.

The Canada Line serves both Central Broadway and Downtown yet ridership is only at just over 100 000 per day. Keep in mind that 1 four car train set has the same capacity as 5 B Line buses. So, I believe, the more expensive and higher capacity M Line/Evergreen Line needs the draw of the whole Metro Core in order to fulfill it multi-billion dollar potential.

[nname]

Originally Posted by logan5

Virtually all cities have their rapid transit lines radiate from a central hub (downtown). This is where the majority of the jobs are.

Virtually all major cities that have rapid transit does require you to transfer between lines to go from one place to the other.

Connecting Millennium Line to downtown would be a scheduling disaster... Both Downtown and Broadway segment would probably need twice the frequency as North Burnaby segment, so that means every 4th train would continue to Burnaby.. If Millennium Line is going to branch off at Lougheed (with alternating train to Columbia and Coquitlam), that means only every 8th train would go to each of the destination. Assume a min headway of 90 sec at Commercial-Broadway, to get the one-seat ride, the rider would have to wait for a train every 12 minutes... No thanks, I would take the transfer any day...

[Zassk]

Originally Posted by logan5

Virtually all cities have their rapid transit lines radiate from a central hub (downtown). This is where the majority of the jobs are.

And in our city, that "central hub" includes Central Broadway as well as the downtown peninsula. I think this will become obvious after Millennium is extended westward - a lot of our network's ridership will be heading to Central Broadway rather than into downtown. Our three lines will crisscross the "central hub" with three major transfer points - just like in most cities with multiple lines.

I am sure that Strathcona has a future of SkyTrain service in a few decades - but it will extend eastward from downtown. Perhaps it will be a continuation of Expo Line, but it will not be the Millennium Line.

[deasine]

Funny though, this main hub and spoke strategy really applies to North America. Many European Systems, London and Paris come to mind, have their networks spread throughout the regional city.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by deasine

Funny though, this main hub and spoke strategy really applies to North America. Many European Systems, London and Paris come to mind, have their networks spread throughout the regional city.

Agreed, but is this North American "hub and spoke syndrome" perhaps - at least in part - based on most North American cities having a dense (some more than others, yes) downtown core, with low-density (for the larger part) commuter suburbs around them, whereas European cities tend to be more diffuse in character?

Also, both London and Paris have "circle line" connectors. In the case of London it is the Circle Line itself; in Paris, the larger, outer circle created by Line 2 on the Right Bank (Nation to Port Dauphine) and Line 6 on the Left (Nation to Etoile)

These cities are, of course, on a far larger and denser scale than vancouver, but the circle lines in each make cutting across and transferring much more expeditious than having to go all the way to the city centre to change lines, or taking a bus across part of town to get to another line.

[DKaz]

Well in Tokyo, the busiest trains were the ones coming out of the central city as well as the Yamanote Line. There were other lines that ran perpendicular but those were not as busy and service was less frequent, but it was still available. Even if these places are more dense overall everywhere, people still have a tendency to converge into a city centre.

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by DKaz

Well in Tokyo, the busiest trains were the ones coming out of the central city as well as the Yamanote Line. There were other lines that ran perpendicular but those were not as busy and service was less frequent, but it was still available. Even if these places are more dense overall everywhere, people still have a tendency to converge into a city centre.

I know what you mean about Tokyo. I lived there for a year and there were numerous lines coming from the city centre going out like spokes.
There was also a circular group of lines - or line - the one springing to mind being the Yamanote Line, that intersected with many of the others, and also linked the "downtowns" of Tokyo: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro and Ginza.

Nobody is negating the gravity of a major city centre. It is important, I think however, to remember the "across" lines, as well as the "going out from the middle" lines.

(Tokyo is rather special, too, in being so enormous and having so much density which would probably exist in no other city, not even Mexico City or Sao Paolo)

[trofirhen]

http://metro-map-pictures.blogspot.c...%20Metro%20Map

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by deasine

Funny though, this main hub and spoke strategy really applies to North America. Many European Systems, London and Paris come to mind, have their networks spread throughout the regional city.

The thing with Paris though is that it's metro system has almost all of it stations within an area less than the size of the city of Vancouver. Except for a few stations, the trains barely leave downtown, so its all hub (and the lines that do leave downtown don't cross away from downtown). If you live out in a Paris suburb and want to travel to your neighbor suburb, you pretty much have to ride the Metro, or RER into the downtown area, switch trains, then travel back out.

London doesn't really have a super dense downtown, where there are super tall buildings concentrated in a comparatively small area, so the "downtown" is spread over a large area. Thus there are multiple lines that crisscross the city core, most of which enter and leave (pass through) the downtown area. I believe all the Underground lines pass through Farecard Zone 1. So it really is a hub and spoke system, but the hub is just a large area, not a single station.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by nname

Connecting Millennium Line to downtown would be a scheduling disaster... Assume a min headway of 90 sec at Commercial-Broadway, to get the one-seat ride, the rider would have to wait for a train every 12 minutes... No thanks, I would take the transfer any day...

If you turn some trains around at Waterfront, which should be easy as the station is on a rail yard, scheduling and routing will be balanced.

Using 90 second headways on the Expo/Millennium main trunk lines gives you 4 trains in a 6 minute cycle. In one format, you could have 2 trains every 6 minutes run from Coquitlam, cycle through Downtown, and out to Surrey. 1 train every 6 minutes run from Coquitlam to Central Broadway. 1 train every 6 minutes run from Waterfront to Central Broadway via New Westminster, and one train every 6 minutes run from Waterfront to Surrey. This format gives 10 000 pph for central Broadway and the same for Downtown, which is way more than enough for the Millennium Line.

So the longest wait time is 6 minutes in Coquitlam to get to Central Broadway, and 6 minutes at the useless Braid and Sapperton stations.

Originally Posted by Zassk

I am sure that Strathcona has a future of SkyTrain service in a few decades - but it will extend eastward from downtown. Perhaps it will be a continuation of Expo Line, but it will not be the Millennium Line.

Considering Millennium Line's proximity to Hastings St (1.6 to 2.4 km away), it should be Millennium line that serves this area. M Line serves the Hastings corridor up to Sperling. A separate line up to Sperling Ave. would cost billions, while an M line connection to Downtown would be in the 300 million range.