[Daveography]

ETS, Ebus partnership provides more travel options for Edmontonians

A new partnership between Ebus and Edmonton Transit Services is providing more travel options for those coming in and out of the city.

edmontonjournal.com

Expanded options for inter-city travellers in Alberta

Bussing across Alberta will be a little easier thanks to a new partnership between Ebus and the City of Edmonton announced on Thursday.

edmonton.ctvnews.ca

 

[Platinum107]

Me likes! Small improvements now will lead to some awesome projects down the line for transportation in Alberta (trains, anyone?)

 

[The_Cat]

I think a second stop in South Edmonton could also work, perhaps something like Davies Station or Century Park.

 

[dunno]

in here to be the first to say it'd be real cool to actually have a usable rail system. there's no reason why a edmonton-red deer-calgary-lethbridge line, a calgary-canmore-banff-lake louise, edmonton-camrose, calgary-drumheller, etc would not be well-used if affordable and reliable. edmonton-jasper currently exists but like anything VIA, has issues and needs its own track.

 

[Platinum107]

@dunno Believe me buddy, I dream of a rail system that extensive every day, but the only way that this could ever possibly become reality is if there's a massive push for it on the part of the people. Like hey, maybe instead of widening the highways any further, let's invest in great-quality and efficient mass transit that covers all the major centers in the province, actually saving taxpayer's money in the long run

I often think back to the 1984 HSR study the province did, a year before the declining and shoddy VIA Budd railcar service was going to end. I wish SO BADLY that one sensible person involved in that study would’ve come forward and said, “hey guys, we’re looking wayyy too far ahead of what we can do here. Instead of looking at High Speed Rail, which we know won’t work here, let’s improve the VIA service and invest more money in new and longer trains, more tracks in the form of passing loops and smoother curbs, reducing further the amount of at-grade rail crossings, and spreading a campaign about train safety province-wide! This way we could actually build up a demand and base for HSR in the future and further connect the province!!” But unfortunately, the exact same thing is happening again with the hyperloop. Don’t get wrong, I’m all for Transpod developing the technology here in Alberta, but let’s get the corridor linked with normal HSR please.

In my mind, the first major rail projects will have be these: 1: HSR in the E-C Corridor, 2: Calgary-Canmore-Banff commuter train, and 3: Edmonton Airport Connector. These 3 will build up a core to the system that can be expanded on later.

 

[dunno]

it honestly doesn't even have to be HSR, though that'd be ideal. as long as it can just go 100kph and get you there at least as fast as driving, maybe with wifi accessibility, and not having to deal with traffic, and have it affordable, it'll be useful.

 

[darwink]

@dunno I wish SO BADLY that one sensible person involved in that study would’ve come forward and said, “hey guys, we’re looking wayyy too far ahead of what we can do here. Instead of looking at High Speed Rail, which we know won’t work here, let’s improve the VIA service and invest more money in new and longer trains, more tracks in the form of passing loops and smoother curbs, reducing further the amount of at-grade rail crossings, and spreading a campaign about train safety province-wide!

I think you should go back and read the old studies You can trace the evolution of the projects and see why the choices made were made, and why it makes sense to make the jump directly to high speed.

The incremental capital costs between making BUDD type service reliable (in the VIA study, making 155 kph LRC service), somewhat faster and reliable weren't much lower ($452.1 million versus $498.5 million) than the high speed alternatives (in the VIA study, new tracks once outside of cities with an initial operating speed of 260 kph and a design speed of 300 kph) as per the 1970s CPR/Government of Alberta study. That set the tune for the next 50 years. Why is that the case? There is a lot of freight traffic on the line, and a lot of level crossings. The incremental update option in the CPR/GoA study involves a full twinning of the line with mixed freight passenger service and full speed crossovers to allow the passenger trains to leapfrog the freight trains.

It is also important that projected operating costs per passenger km between the alternatives drops from near 70 cents (reliable but lower speed) to near 10 cents (full HSR), and that market share climbs from below 1% to 35% (VIA study), which together create an operational profit which doesn't exist for a slower less frequent service. That is the same conclusions as from Van Horne Institute in 2004 and ~2012, and even more so they worked out the NPV for the high speed case, and it was positive. Which means the project could pay for itself with its own revenues (as long as capital costs came in close to projected).

What was the NPV of the LRC option in the VIA study? A loss of $51 million a year in 1983 dollars. Further incremental options (not HSR) had NPVs at losses of half a billion a year!

 

[Platinum107]

@darwink Thanks, and I will. I still don't understand how HSR could've been the best option back then, with Edmonton and Calgary being half the size they are now and much less dense.

 

[darwink]

@darwink Thanks, and I will. I still don't understand how HSR could've been the best option back then, with Edmonton and Calgary being half the size they are now and much less dense.

It was the best of the option mostly since the rail line between Calgary and Edmonton is busy enough with freight that to provide reliable slow service you need to build almost as much infrastructure as HSR.

If the rail line had 4 freight trains a day like many in Ontario instead of iirc 17, the math would be very different.

and because of that since speed drives demand at a rate much faster than speed increases costs And since demand yields fares, and higher speed can command higher fares, it is cheaper (net) to build faster

 

[ION]

I FULLY support upgrading the existing CP corridor for 200-240 km/h service as described in the 2004 Van Horne study. It hits the sweet spot on speed and cost and could also allow commuter rail and inter-city service along with limited HSR and cargo. Think Great Western Railway in the UK that is carries 30% of all the economic and passenger traffic in the the nation... Sometimes there are trains every few minutes along the line. Go to YouTube and watch the train-watching videos from Nuneaton for example... That's the kind of project we need here... At 199/200 km/h trains could rush between YEG and YYC between 1H 40M and 2H 10M... Just enough time to sit down and enjoy a movie on an iPad for example... At certainly faster than any other mode of travel between the two cities...

 

[darwink]

I forget, did they include a ‘CPR electric’ option?
I also forget if the CPR option was to rebuild to 2 tracks with freight (which was what was studied in the 70s and 80s) or whether they were thinking 3 tracks. Lots of different factors to optimize. 2 track service included the provision of a high speed crossover (not sure how high speed a cross over can be) every 10 km or so. Those have cost in both speed and dollars. Because of those extra crossovers, the two track option offers better conditions for simple additional stations with only one station track siding, instead of dual sided stations or islands.

For additional stations so could reintroduce milkruns and some commuter service, I think the cost would be worth it at let’s say $10 million a station plus all the extra costs imposed on the system (more crossovers and sidings causing speed limits, more operational complexity with leapfrogging).

Would have to look at it as a whole. If money were no object I’d want both a greenfield top standard corridor between the south of Leduc and north of Airdrie and a ‘euro mainline’ with high clearance caternary or hydrogen or battery on a twinned and upgraded cpr alignment.

 

[ION]

Here's the link to all the HSR studies done to date... I think the CP option in 2004 called for 2 new lines built in the same corridor as the existing line. So basically a 2 for 1 rebuild. It called for smoothing out MOST but not all of the line that has more than 2 degree curve. Thankfully as you could tell from Alberta 94% of the line is tangent... That saves a ton of cash. At the time, Bombardier was promoting Jettrain aka a revive Turbo train using a jet engine and the study was based around that. The never sold any units despite a one-day tour of Alberta to VIP's at the time including Klein... Alas here we are... Alberta High Speed Rail Studies

My opinion is that the existing line offers enough benefits that upgrading it for 200-240 km/h service seems appropriate given the cost and the fact that it would still operate with mixed traffic (overnight cargo with daytime HSR) but of course with increased ATC and signalling that could change... Ironically enough China just launched a high speed rail express cargo service at 350 km/h this week... The first dedicated HSR cargo service that is CHEAPER and FASTER than flying cargo within 650-1300 km or so...

 

[darwink]

Iirc the market studies combined with the costing studies showed that there was a lower net cost to going faster. Additionally at least the 80s study didn’t propose time separation for HSR and freight in the cpr alignment. Instead signalling and crossovers were necessary.

 

[ION]

Ummm, yes please!

Alberta Regional Rail

 

[jason403]

I just think there's not enough demand for regional rail. Edmonton-Calgary as a route might have a chance if it wasn't an expensive high speed route, but these other locations don't seem to have capacity problems in the current transport bussing system. Even within busses, a lot of these routes barely seem feasible. I just don't see how demand for regional rail like this exists in the market. If these cities were closer together, larger, and facing congestion problems on streets, then maybe there could be a market for this. Not to say it wouldn't be nice to have, but just can't see this being in the cards any time in the next 100 years.