- Thread starter Surrealplaces
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darwink
Senior Member
Difference is bedrock versus water saturated gravel, silt and sand supported by clay. Yay unconsolidated glacial sediment! Even the more bedrocky parts are sandstone, siltstone and mudstone. Sandstone and silstone can be tough, while mudstone degrades into soil easily. With the layers being so thin for the most part, you can have very different soil types along a tbm cutter head, and as the tbm advances.
https://www.tunnelcanada.ca/document-load.php?dir=2012&file=tac2012Paper127.pdf
From another paper:
TBH I am not sure what conditions would be worse for tunneling.
whatchyyc
Active Member
I mean there's no real reason to spend all the money trying to tunnel underneath the Bow, most I'd see happening is the bridge going into the side of the hill on the north end Edmonton style
If it wasn't for the line running down 7th ave, they probably would have gone with the at grade path. They'll have to either tunnel under or go elevated....or bury the 7th ave line.
FCC1982
Active Member
I’m not sure they will.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Things are off the rails again with Edmonton’s Valley Line... There's currently no timeline for an opening for a line that was set to open in 2020. I lived there when they tried to open the line to NAIT, the train could only go 30km/h and would cause traffic to stop for up to 11 minutes at one crossing during rush hour because of train frequencies. I also remember a bridge over Groat Road being delayed because the steel warped. Something in the water up there...
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UrbanRED
Active Member
we're throwing stones from a glass house if we're chirping about LRT delays
both cities need to get their act together and build way more light rail transit, way faster
darwink
Senior Member
I’m sure glad the west LRT built very standard columns, replicated from the Canada Line in Vancouver.
That being said. Building columns to spec would seem to be a core competency.
I’d guess trans-Ed will make very little on this project.
That will make two P3s on verge of failure due to contract problems, including Ottawa.
I have to wonder if it is more: we’re building more than we ever have before, and our systems for delivering good projects depended way more on experienced personnel than procedures which doesn’t scale well.
That being said. Building columns to spec would seem to be a core competency.
I’d guess trans-Ed will make very little on this project.
That will make two P3s on verge of failure due to contract problems, including Ottawa.
I have to wonder if it is more: we’re building more than we ever have before, and our systems for delivering good projects depended way more on experienced personnel than procedures which doesn’t scale well.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Is Calgary much better, probably not but I don't think the city's list of delayed major projects is as long? I think they got ahead of themselves with Green Line. Were they really ever going to be able to build the whole line for what they said? I think it was people saying things when they had no idea what they were talking about. Its going to be a long time before we actually ride the Green Line but wouldn't we be waiting now anyways for the utility relocation? They've also cleaned up two old landfills while we've been waiting, so you could say construction has already started... ha (tongue firmly planted in cheek).we're throwing stones from a glass house if we're chirping about LRT delays
both cities need to get their act together and build way more light rail transit, way faster
The 'something in the water' quip was more a dig at the Oilers, Bob Nicholson said it when talking about the Oilers a few years ago.
Reading the Edmonton thread on the project, sounds like concrete has been an issue on the project in a few different spots along the way. Concrete in the river, they redid a portion over the whitemud multiple times, and sections of the elevated track had to be redone.
I had no idea they did this, imitation seems to work well in infrastructure projects.
darwink
Senior Member
If the project was built with no consideration for impacts on traffic I think so.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Could you imagine that in this city... "Sorry drivers, traffic might be bad now, so just take the train we built."
Turning drivers into riders isn't what you want to do with your train system at all, why would you want to increase ridership by making driving more difficult? (Sarcasm)
The goal of city transportation seems to be giving you an option to take transit, a more economically and environmentally efficient way of getting somewhere, while not wanting to give you any reason to stop your less economically and environmentally efficient way of getting somewhere, all because they'd hate to slightly inconvenience you.
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
The reason we don't have much transit is because our transit is expensive.
But the reason that transit is expensive here is that it is planned with the fundamental assumption that drivers must not be inconvenienced. Tunnelling is expensive and wildly increases uncertainty and cost, but why are we tunnelling? The only things in the centre that the Green Line fundamentally can't cross at grade are the CP Rail and the river. Everything else is a choice. The Beltline portion of tunnelling was largely to avoid crossing Macleod at grade and inconveniencing drivers. Running downtown at grade could make east-west traffic a little slower, but not a lot. Instead of taking two lanes from 11th avenue and First street, we're spending a billion dollars. If the situation was reversed and the train was there already, would we spend a billion dollars to add two lanes to these roads? There should be the same answer to both questions.
North-south and east-west LRT lines cross at grade in downtown Portland (it's even one 1970s high-floor line and one current low-floor line like we have), so it should be possible to do that here as well, although our east-west corridor has higher train volumes, and eventually there will need to be a tunnel downtown somewhere.
There's a great saying in German, Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton -- organization before electronics before concrete. That is, the first and cheapest changes involve optimizing your organization and operating; the second best is optimizing your signals and so on, and only once those have been exhausted should you build new infrastructure. We've taken the reverse tack here, very much at our cost.
It's not that the portion of the Green Line project that serves transit users is expensive and risky; it's the portion that serves drivers.
But the reason that transit is expensive here is that it is planned with the fundamental assumption that drivers must not be inconvenienced. Tunnelling is expensive and wildly increases uncertainty and cost, but why are we tunnelling? The only things in the centre that the Green Line fundamentally can't cross at grade are the CP Rail and the river. Everything else is a choice. The Beltline portion of tunnelling was largely to avoid crossing Macleod at grade and inconveniencing drivers. Running downtown at grade could make east-west traffic a little slower, but not a lot. Instead of taking two lanes from 11th avenue and First street, we're spending a billion dollars. If the situation was reversed and the train was there already, would we spend a billion dollars to add two lanes to these roads? There should be the same answer to both questions.
North-south and east-west LRT lines cross at grade in downtown Portland (it's even one 1970s high-floor line and one current low-floor line like we have), so it should be possible to do that here as well, although our east-west corridor has higher train volumes, and eventually there will need to be a tunnel downtown somewhere.
There's a great saying in German, Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton -- organization before electronics before concrete. That is, the first and cheapest changes involve optimizing your organization and operating; the second best is optimizing your signals and so on, and only once those have been exhausted should you build new infrastructure. We've taken the reverse tack here, very much at our cost.
It's not that the portion of the Green Line project that serves transit users is expensive and risky; it's the portion that serves drivers.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I only say this half jokingly; can we go after car and oil companies the way we went after big tobacco? Isn't it well documented they coordinated efforts to make us need to drive?
darwink
Senior Member
The myth is an exaggeration. Plain old market failure is the issue.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Stoney Trail might/should be the last large investment in major road projects for the city (understanding the city only really paid for approach road improvements). At least in the context of making roads bigger and faster.
Crowchild between the river and 24th is being looked at but what if we kept it as is and only made safety and aesthetic improvements? NW drivers are well served by the ctrain, north central drivers can be well served by the Green line? We would save a lot of money on projects that would only make a small difference. Heck, don't bother doing those deerfoot improvements either, lets get radical! Haha
The city is doing a 'Social Return on Investment Analysis' for the Foothills athletic park + McMahon area, I'd like to see a social return on invest analysis done on road versus transit investment.
Crowchild between the river and 24th is being looked at but what if we kept it as is and only made safety and aesthetic improvements? NW drivers are well served by the ctrain, north central drivers can be well served by the Green line? We would save a lot of money on projects that would only make a small difference. Heck, don't bother doing those deerfoot improvements either, lets get radical! Haha
The city is doing a 'Social Return on Investment Analysis' for the Foothills athletic park + McMahon area, I'd like to see a social return on invest analysis done on road versus transit investment.