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  #2341  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2018, 12:56 AM
Corndogger Corndogger is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
That looks like a lot of expropriations though. A hell of a lot.

In a lot of cases it's lopping off some of the front yard, but there's quite a few places where buildings will need to go, or it's the entire of a yard that is gone. Even if they can just take someone's yard and it is feasible to build a sidewalk immediately adjacent to peoples windows, what are the owners' right here? How much compensation will they get? Even if this is a financially feasible plan, is it politically feasible to expropriate that much?

The plan accord1999 posted shows vast lengths where houses are going to need to go. What are they going to do with all that demolished wasteland?

The only precedent I can think of in Calgary is the 16th Ave widening, but that was taking off an entire strip of properties, effectively moving the road boundary one unit south. Since the Green Line plan takes a sliver off each side, we're going to be left with a huge amount of empty lots. And this line is supposed to revitalize the area? Look how 16th turned out, utter dross years later.
16th Avenue is a great example of a planning disaster. What did spending $110+ million achieve other than adding more traffic lights? That stretch of road is less visually appealing than it was before which shows you how bad this projects was.

As for expropriating properties for the north leg of the Green Line, how much have they budgeted for this? I could see this aspect of the project easily costing $200 million which I'd rather go toward building a tunnel.
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  #2342  
Old Posted Oct 12, 2018, 2:15 AM
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jawagord jawagord is offline
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My points have nothing to do with the cost of the machine but with how much such a machine can save us. It sounds like a lot which would make spending $120 million or so a no-brainer. What other projects could such a machine be used on? Could we rent it out to other cities when we're not using it?
I wouldn't expect the TBM will be re-usable if it's built to dig one large tunnel, so it's a moot point on who buys it. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see the tunnelling costs are going way over budget, hence the scramble to find the cheapest way to do it, but there really is no cheap way to tunnel through downtown. So watch for a request to increase the budget (hello city taxpayers if 6 billion is the number) or say goodbye to a couple of stations in a round of cost cutting.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...f55fe79b03d9d7

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/4-year...inally-breaks/
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  #2343  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2018, 11:25 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Two pedestrians dead on the LRT today. This should be obvious, but it's more proof that mixing railways with people (and cars) is a bad idea and absolutely does not make a road more walkable.
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  #2344  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 12:29 AM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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Two pedestrians dead on the LRT today. This should be obvious, but it's more proof that mixing railways with people (and cars) is a bad idea and absolutely does not make a road more walkable.
The six-year-old girl passing away is a huge tragedy, and prayers are with the family BUT I cannot imaging letting a grade one aged young girl walk to school alone, let alone across train tracks. Parents are not even allowed to leave grade one students in the school field unsupervised. I'm sure they feel horrible beyond belief right now, and I feel for them.

I don't know the context of the second one, however.
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  #2345  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 12:53 AM
Corndogger Corndogger is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
Two pedestrians dead on the LRT today. This should be obvious, but it's more proof that mixing railways with people (and cars) is a bad idea and absolutely does not make a road more walkable.
It's been obvious all along to most of us but people like Druh are blinded by the ideology that runs their lives.
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  #2346  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 2:35 AM
CTrainDude CTrainDude is offline
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I don't know the context of the second one, however.
Suicide
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  #2347  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 9:27 AM
outoftheice outoftheice is offline
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The six-year-old girl passing away is a huge tragedy, and prayers are with the family BUT I cannot imaging letting a grade one aged young girl walk to school alone, let alone across train tracks. Parents are not even allowed to leave grade one students in the school field unsupervised. I'm sure they feel horrible beyond belief right now, and I feel for them.

I don't know the context of the second one, however.
According to an article in the Herald the little girl was special needs whose home was located close to the tracks. She slipped out of the house without her parents knowledge and was struck by the train prior to them being able to locate her. Definitely tragic.
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  #2348  
Old Posted Oct 16, 2018, 1:49 PM
suburbia suburbia is offline
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According to an article in the Herald the little girl was special needs whose home was located close to the tracks. She slipped out of the house without her parents knowledge and was struck by the train prior to them being able to locate her. Definitely tragic.
This must have been put out by media later. The original story, including as shared by police, was that she was walking to school.

[EDIT]

Update:

https://www.660citynews.com/2018/10/...of-young-girl/

https://globalnews.ca/news/4557577/c...n-child-death/

Last edited by suburbia; Oct 18, 2018 at 12:01 AM.
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  #2349  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 12:02 AM
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Originally Posted by suburbia View Post
This must have been put out by media later. The original story, including as shared by police, was that she was walking to school.

[EDIT]

Looks like the new story doesn't have anything concrete behind it IE the police have not come out and corrected themselves based on basic investigations. Instead the new narrative is based on an e-mail from someone who claims to be a neighbor to a journalist. The police staying mum suggests that the reality might be somewhere in between.
I heard the father interviewed today saying the girl catches a school bus but she left the house on her own without the mother knowing. He said police wrongly reported that she was walking to school on her own.
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  #2350  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2018, 12:54 AM
ImmortalHawk ImmortalHawk is offline
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Originally Posted by outoftheice View Post
According to an article in the Herald the little girl was special needs whose home was located close to the tracks. She slipped out of the house without her parents knowledge and was struck by the train prior to them being able to locate her. Definitely tragic.
This is why I kinda have mixed feelings about the surface section of North Part of the Green Line. At-level crossings pose a danger to the public. Similarly, 36 Street NE is another dangerous zone, with so many at-level crossings within residential/commercial neighbourhoods while having train tracks run straight through the median of the road. This is obviously a big problem for pedestrians and commuters alike.
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  #2351  
Old Posted Oct 20, 2018, 9:22 PM
MrBigStuff MrBigStuff is offline
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This is why I kinda have mixed feelings about the surface section of North Part of the Green Line. At-level crossings pose a danger to the public. Similarly, 36 Street NE is another dangerous zone, with so many at-level crossings within residential/commercial neighbourhoods while having train tracks run straight through the median of the road. This is obviously a big problem for pedestrians and commuters alike.
They should build overhead pedways at ped crossings at the LRT stations - and make it so that they have to use the overhead pedways and not be able to cross at street level. Make it safe for everybody. The pedways should also have stairs and ramps for everyones' convenience - because more mobile people could use the stairs instead of having to walk 2 blocks equivalent up or down a long ramp - the ramps are good for the mobility challenged people.
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  #2352  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 3:05 AM
MalcolmTucker MalcolmTucker is offline
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Why for LRT stations and not for high collision intersections?
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  #2353  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 4:11 AM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Good question. But keeping a railway running is of much greater importance to the city than a single intersection. 100.00% reliability of our railways is what we should expect, as it's not like there are other options if they fail - so any failure is unacceptable. Street running LRT will never achieve that.
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  #2354  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 2:39 PM
outoftheice outoftheice is offline
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To be fair, I don't think any railway will achieve 100% reliability. Even grade separated systems like Toronto's subway and the Tube in London don't achieve 100% reliability. For me the biggest concern for the Green Line isn't that a street running system will be less reliable than a grade separated system it is that the single bore tunnel now being proposed can put the entire line into failure when reliability does break down.

If you look at the current double bore tunnel design of the Green Line every underground station has a set of switch-over tracks designed as part of it. With this design if a train breaks down, there is a system fault or if there is an accident trains can use the switch-overs and a single track operation can be used for the small segment between the two stations where the issue happened. This minimizes the delay to the system and allows trains to continue running on the entire line.

With the singe bore tunnel design the tracks are stacked on top of each other and there is no ability for trains to switch over. In essence that means that if there is a failure anywhere in that underground portion that direction of travel is completely blocked. Passengers will have to disembark trains, get onto shuttle busses and then board again at a station further down. The longer the tunnel section (ie: extending it further up Centre St) the greater the odds are something will happen putting the line into complete failure mode in one direction.

I'm surprised this issue didn't get a single mention at the latest Green Line presentation at Council as I feel it increases far greater risks to the reliability of the Green Line than having a surface running train on Centre St
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  #2355  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 3:27 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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That's a good point. AFAIK crossovers in subways aren't placed that often so they might not have planned many anyway. There are only 4 underground stations on the Green Line, so worst case scenario is that those 4 stations just act as a single track (maybe a shuttle) during an incident. For the 8km round trip at 30km/h, that would take 16 minutes, not the end of the world.

You're right to be concerned that it didn't even get mentioned though, it speaks to the priorities of those involved. While I'm sure those actually designing the line are aware of the limitations of technology and construction, it seems like the councillors are either oblivious, don't care, or both
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  #2356  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 3:49 PM
MalcolmTucker MalcolmTucker is offline
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Stacked tunnels don’t prevent building of crossovers. You can build them inside the tunnel, there is a lot of room in them. The stacked layout of the stations doesn’t prevent the trains from running side by side or anything inbetween. There is a reasonable amount of room in there.
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  #2357  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 3:54 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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True also. People are treating this stacked tunnel as a novel concept but it really isn't and has been done many times. If it's the best way to build it, then do it. If it isn't, don't.
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  #2358  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 3:58 PM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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In fact, with that said it is probably much easier to put crossovers in a single bore than twin bore.
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  #2359  
Old Posted Oct 21, 2018, 11:25 PM
CTrainDude CTrainDude is offline
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Originally Posted by milomilo View Post
That's a good point. AFAIK crossovers in subways aren't placed that often so they might not have planned many anyway. There are only 4 underground stations on the Green Line, so worst case scenario is that those 4 stations just act as a single track (maybe a shuttle) during an incident. For the 8km round trip at 30km/h, that would take 16 minutes, not the end of the world.

You're right to be concerned that it didn't even get mentioned though, it speaks to the priorities of those involved. While I'm sure those actually designing the line are aware of the limitations of technology and construction, it seems like the councillors are either oblivious, don't care, or both
If you don't think a 16 minute headway during is the end of the world, you've never tried to do it during rush hour - it would almost be worse than no service, as the crowds would be much greater than could ever be moved by the trains running. Plus, the calculation assumes the train is travelling a consistent 30km/h (no acceleration or deceleration), and doesn't factor in station stops and end changes, so would probably be more like 25 minutes. 7th Avenue is less than 3km, with trains running 40km/h, and a headway like that (for both directions) would be a disaster during rush hour.

There were a few crossovers planned for the tunnel, and are critical for maintaining service during a blockage - Calgary Transit's LRT design guidelines stipulate that crossovers need to be placed to maintain a 10-minute headway in single-track operations (including time needed for the actual crossover movements).

It absolutely needs to be in the discussion.
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  #2360  
Old Posted Oct 22, 2018, 12:08 AM
milomilo milomilo is offline
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Alright, thanks for the information - I said 30km/h as a conservative estimate of average speed - they should be going a max of about 80km/h, correct? 16 minutes was a complete ballpark estimate, but I don't think I agree it would be a disaster - it's not a whole lot worse than peak frequency on the existing lines, and seeing as the Green Line isn't actually heading north to where it's needed, the trains aren't exactly going to be packed. And remember the existing line frequently shuts down sections of line due to the regular crashing of cars into it, but the tunnel section of the Green Line should be more reliable.

I agree it should be discussed, but I doubt it's a show stopper.
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