darwink
Senior Member
There is sufficient room right now for both ends for the red line. Blue line ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
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CBBarnett
Senior Member
A bit of a rant:
Another factor that should be discussed about downtown metro tunnels is how much these choices depend on the future growth pattern of the city - we might not need a tunnel soon if we continue to grow the way we do - spread out mostly, with incremental intensification. This pattern means that demand is also spread out, boosting the need for new lines to new emerging places and incremental bus upgrades, rather than demand for the capacity along the main rapid transit Blue/Red backbone.
To make a very expensive downtown grade-separation more obviously worth it, we really must be out of capacity and used all tricks to keep things moving at-grade. Because 7th Ave works reasonably well today, there is less momentum to fix it compared to any number of other new projects, lines and extensions.
"Reasonably well" is an underwhelming position to take on transit service, but it's where we have been stuck in Calgary for what kind of transit system we want. This is probably unlikely to change soon, however that does not mean it won't change ever. If Calgary starts growing differently - for example, and an increasingly large share of growth occurs in TOD along the Red Line, that equation changes. Demand growth will necessitate intervention and capacity increases eventually. A city of 2 million is not far off, with many trips and demands pushing up the need for better transit.
A modern example of this in action is Vancouver. Back in the 1980s when the Skytrain was first developed it's capacity was nothing close to today. The system even had doors on the trains open by push button, rather than automatically (sound familiar?). Growth in the region, but also growth clustered at TOD areas, resulted in pressure to continually upgrade the system in small (e.g. automated doors as of the early 1990s to reduce inefficient operation issues) and big ways (e.g. add more and longer trains, expand stations capacities for circulations). Finally, and most expensive of all, they also added new lines and extensions, included fully tunneled ones like the Broadway Subway project currently underway.
Calgary has been no where near as successful at concentrating growth on the LRT, but that will change as commute times stretch and the sprawl gets worse. Inevitably, Transit will need to keep addressing the existing system's capacity and reliability issues. Automating doors, upgrading switches and electrical systems, adding trains outside of peak, increasingly make 4 car trains standard, upgrading the fleet to have open-gangway trains, upgrading stations, removing at-grade crossings elsewhere - all these are cheaper options to address system operations than a downtown subway, however eventually we run out of tricks and will have to add a downtown tunnel. This will occur sooner if growth is concentrated and ridership booms, less soon if growth isn't and the incremental improvements will be enough.
Overall, I am liking what I am seeing with the long-term thinking on the BRT routes and the increasingly coherent message from Calgary Transit that we need service frequency on the primary transit system. Ridership is responding after a decade of stagnation, weekend ridership are at all time highs while weekday ridership is fast growing to reach previous peaks in many areas. Quality of life improvements have been made and are increasingly successful, like the ticket app, real-time train/bus information being more common and reliable etc.
We just have to stay focused - after frequency, the next step is to start acting like a bigger city metro system and prioritize reliability, capacity and speed are the goals. It's easy to stray from this; things like adding new inner city at-grade sections (i.e. 17th Avenue SW extension) won't help long-run system capacity, speed and reliability. And for god sakes, automate the doors.
badc0ffee
Active Member
It seems like we are all about adding level crossings nowadays - first with the accessible entrances on all the south platforms, and now with both Victoria Park and Chinook having bridges over the tracks removed. But I suppose that is at stations, where the train is stopping anyway.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
If the system gets up to 5 minute frequencies for more of the day and ridership/activity at the stations increases, these at-grade locations will start becoming focus points again.
Accessibility and connectivity benefits are good things that are helped with at-grade station designs, but the trade-offs with increased risk of delays, collisions and safety are more noticeable in a more finely tuned and utilized system - delays can occur more often and impact more people when they do occur.
Collisions, deaths, and delays will compound more systemically in a busier system and (hopefully) push for a reversal of some of this at-grade upgrades in the long-run.
To be clear it's not a panacea - grade-separated systems are subject to delays too, but adds a layer of control that can help keep things moving and trains moving faster, more often.
To my post above, systems that prioritize reliability and speed will prioritize grade-separation. Ours doesn't yet, but will once capacity is reached in the current system design.
whatchyyc
Active Member
If it makes you feel better, the S200s can actually operate in an automatic door mode but they just don't 99% of the time
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CBBarnett
Senior Member
I don't blame Calgary Transit here as it wasn't their choice - just it's a tough battle to lose. Transit service becomes incrementally worse and less reliable, to benefit others. It's one intersection so not a deal-breaker to the system, but it's another performance weakness that will be added to the tally with all the rest - the aggregate result is a weaker, slower, less reliable system. The level of grade-separation doesn't determine side or middle boarding either, you could have rebuilt the new station with side-loading platforms and kept the grade-separation (but then no 17th Ave extension).
Two articles are relevant in this conversation, from Vancouver and Calgary, looking at pedestrian deaths in the systems:
Vancouver, 2015: SkyTrain deaths examined: Could TransLink do more to prevent fatalities?
https://www.straight.com/life/458271/skytrain-deaths-examined#:~:text=Statistics from the B.C. Coroners,recorded on the Canada Line.)
- Statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service spanning 1985 to May 2015 show 75 deaths on SkyTrain tracks, of which at least 10 were accidental
Calgary, 2018: Some C-Train crashes include factors you 'can't avoid,' says councillor: This week 2 pedestrians died after being hit by Calgary Transit trains
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-transit-ctrain-death-fatality-councillor-safety-pedestrian-1.4866441#:~:text=Calgary Transit says 84 people,accidents, according to transit officials.
- "Calgary Transit says 84 people have died at or near C-Train stations from 1981 until now. Between 1985 and last year, 31 per cent of deaths on C-Train tracks were suicides, while two-thirds were believed to be accidents, according to transit officials"
My googling is hardly a rigorous academic study, and there's lots of definitional issues when comparing cause of death between jurisdictions - take this all with a grain of salt. That said, most interesting to me the amount of deaths overall are relatively similar (despite Vancouver having substantially more riders annually), and that the portion due to "accidents" is about 5x higher in Calgary than what Skytrain reports. Some of this is that definitional problem likely, but a big one is the level of grade separation.
This is only deaths too - not the vehicle collisions with a train where no one is injured but transit users are delayed. As far as I can tell, the Skytrain has never been delayed by a train v. car incident, although they did have a dog issue earlier this year!
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/01/12/vancouver-skytrain-delayed-dog-tracks/
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SlippinJimmy
New Member
Considering your previous post as well as this:
I can see the downsides of lack of grade separation becoming more noticeable with a longer 5 minute frequency service. You notice just how much more efficient the train feels south of 39th or north of Banff Tr where it is mostly or totally grade separated. If timed right using the train to go to Chinook Mall would take the same time as driving which for transit in Calgary is crazy and is a testament to how good some parts of the C-Train are for average speed. There is also the issue of the system seemingly struggling when this happens as sometimes it starts to get a sort of get jammed up and trains have to start waiting at signals because I guess the next one is considered right in front; this seemed to be most common at least for me in Q1 of this year and it got to be very annoying.
The problem is 2 things. The more modern approach to urban planning seems to have the idea that grade separation is bad or creates inaccessibility/inequality in some way (or uses this excuse as a guise to just be cheap) and also this is Calgary we are talking about, a cheap city when it shouldn't be and a frivolous spender when it also shouldn't be. I have no faith that they would ever be bothered to go and grade separate passenger traffic at Chinook for example after deliberately getting rid of it when it existed before. They seem to not like anything indoor, anything with escalators and elevators, or anything with a door or roof at all. We saw something similar at Anderson where escalators were replaced with outdoor stairs and some weird really long ramp also outdoors; in that case I'm sure if the CP tracks weren't in the way the whole structure would have been demolished and replaced with a crosswalk further dumbing down the system bringing it even slightly closer to being a street car (despite not even being close of course).
Regular road crossings are fine like the ones you see for the most part along the red line where the trains are allowed to cross them at full or nearly full speed with often times the issue being more with the road design being poorly planned such as having an intersection too close to the crossing, or having an expressway/freeway exit that immediately crosses the tracks. What is in the NE is a different story as that causes gridlock when the frequency hits peak; that is a very bad design.
I understand Victoria Park was not entirely by choice of the people it should have been left up to, but I am sick and tired of seeing this departure away from real train stations in favour of this little league all outdoor, almost no shelter, raised platform tram stop. I can guarantee in the future even if these points along the lines are issues, they will say it was a mistake from the past and deal with it because we made our bed. Calgary and many other cities will often build something cheaper with the intention of one day scaling up so to speak when the business case exists, but often that never happens in the end.
This of course is part of my argument against the GL north of Eau Claire in its current form. You cannot ever improve it's grade separation, in fact, it will not have any at all really. It will have little room for growth and will not provide fast travel.
The SkyTrain's incremental improvements would have been much easier due to grade separation being a requirement both due to the automation and the fact that the original system uses a 4 electrified linear induction rail system that I don't think anyone or anything has any business crossing. Crossing a 3 rail track is hard enough and usually is a discouraged engineering practice unless you are in Chicago. I was not aware that the Mk1 trains there ever had passenger operated doors, I know the TTC line 3 had a "driver" that operated the doors though.
I imagine it is generally more difficult and expensive to build a fully grade separated side platform station in situations where all else are equal. Twice the elevators, potentially twice the escalators, greater inconvenience, and if it is underground, a more complex station layout. On the ground it really doesn't make a lot of difference other than one design has people either crossing no tracks or two tracks when the other has people always crossing one set of tracks.
Interesting that the SkyTrain numbers are similar until you factor in that significantly less were accidental which are the ones that are generally the most preventable. I also can't imagine trying to get a car on those tracks, if you did it may not be much of a car by the time it's on them.
So it would replace what is there basically. That would be a rough few years but would feel rewarding in the end when we'd have a much faster train across downtown down in a nice warmish/cool tunnel depending on time of year.
Do you happen to know where those diagrams came from that are in the post you replied to, one seems to show an extra tunnel stub that ends directly under (?) the CP tunnel for what would I guess connect to the blue line and another one that goes towards 7th. Was the plan at some point perhaps to have them both link up there and then have the blue line go back up to 7th for the rest of the trip through downtown?
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whatchyyc
Active Member
SlippinJimmy
New Member
I wasn't able to sleep and felt like doing something. Since they decided the Bow River is a huge body and redefined rapid transit as something that runs on a street "up to" traffic speed I have been trying to dig up the original river crossing options they had presented because I remembered at least one of them providing a non-tunnel crossing that remained grade separated north of the river under Centre St until after 16th (the most congested segment of Centre St?).
Now the city has made these old drawings or any reference to them very hard to find, but I managed to find the one I was looking for and photoshop the design south of the river to what is currently planned. It really really irritates me that the current plan, if they every cross the river, and given it is not in a tunnel, is not this. There would be nothing wrong with lowering the bridge and making the much shallower cheaper tunnel under Centre St until after 16th where it should get less congested. Yeah north of 16th would still be a BRT that has really fancy stops and just happens to drive on rails, but at least there would be no crossing 16th madness or whatever chaos merging tracks onto the street just north of the 4 lane bridge cause.
There is no reason other than cost why this couldn't be done. Perhaps even a simpler bridge structure could be built in this case.
Had they proposed something like this when the river tunnel was cancelled, they would have still cut costs significantly, gotten rid of a 13 story deep station that would not be busy enough to make it worth the cost, and would most importantly have not impacted the efficiency or user experience in any negative way whatsoever.
Now the city has made these old drawings or any reference to them very hard to find, but I managed to find the one I was looking for and photoshop the design south of the river to what is currently planned. It really really irritates me that the current plan, if they every cross the river, and given it is not in a tunnel, is not this. There would be nothing wrong with lowering the bridge and making the much shallower cheaper tunnel under Centre St until after 16th where it should get less congested. Yeah north of 16th would still be a BRT that has really fancy stops and just happens to drive on rails, but at least there would be no crossing 16th madness or whatever chaos merging tracks onto the street just north of the 4 lane bridge cause.
There is no reason other than cost why this couldn't be done. Perhaps even a simpler bridge structure could be built in this case.
Had they proposed something like this when the river tunnel was cancelled, they would have still cut costs significantly, gotten rid of a 13 story deep station that would not be busy enough to make it worth the cost, and would most importantly have not impacted the efficiency or user experience in any negative way whatsoever.
whatchyyc
Active Member
This is exactly what I had in mind, luckily I don't think the current Stage 1 design locks us out of doing this yet.
accord1999
Active Member
I suspect capital cost was the overwhelming (perhaps only) factor in choosing the at-grade option (Option E). Given that building even that option is uncertain today, the shallow tunnel option was probably still too expensive and ruled out early on.
SPC on Transportation and Transit - June 15, 2016
And even that cheap option had to be value-engineered further with the 16th Ave Station going at-grade to save more money.
Duck Lightning
Active Member
Maybe we should just shelve the north leg for now and expand south until the line is financially successful. Then when we have the money we can build out the north with all the tunnels we want.
I'm starting to wonder that myself. Looking at Option E is seems shortsighted to have an at grade station at 9th, and go u/g for only a few blocks only to go at grade again.
This is such a more logical option, even if it is more money.
This option seems like a dog's breakfast afterthought of an option. It's less money, but IMO, not the best way to do it.
darwink
Senior Member
At grade at 9th is fine. I’d rather save the $100 million or so. A very short tunnel to get in the median would be nice. Then an under 16th station where an under intersection station improves transfers and traffic enough to be worth the big $.
Stephen Ave
Active Member
I’d rather we spent the 100 million and did the tunnel, even if it meant holding off the north leg a bit longer.
20 years from now people will be asking why we didn’t tunnel it to 16th. It’ll be so much more expensive and so much more of a hassle to do it 25 years from now.