Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit

[lemongrab]

Seems like he got the S200 weight from the minimum spec listed on Wikipedia, probably for the SF MUNI version. Siemens spec sheet lists ours at 40,800kg. Most 7 segment Urbos 100 trains are about 53,000kg, but I remember that the city said the 12 ton mockup represented about 20% of the final vehicle weight. Ours could be heavier because they'll have solid axles, but even at 60,000kg a 42m Urbos would be 1.5 times as heavy as an S200 while being 1.6 times longer

I suppose I should have fact checked the weight since the height claim wasn't true. Didn't mean to set off the LF vs HF thing for the 947th time...but while we're here the bottom line for me is that LF is simply not as future-proofed as HF. Which might be okay...if we weren't insisting on spending billions to future proof the line

 

[darwink]

Presumably this would have applied to the tunnel under the Bow River, too?

I believe so. Other more expensive solutions could be used like a wider bore or parallel tunnel to contain a lot more evacuation and smoke management space.

I guess that's why comparing option costs by shading in eighths of a circle is kinda dumb.

Somewhat. The problem comes when a presenter talking about the report can’t or won’t contextualize the cost of the incremental pie bits and that they aren’t all created equal such as: the 5th bit of pie in social might not be worth the same dollar amount in benefits as the 5th bit of pie costs on the budget pie. What are tradoffs isn’t typically very clear, same with what are cost drivers. So scope gets added because an elected official has a brain wave and the project team never goes back with a list of all those extra requirements and what they actually are likely to cost.

 

[darwink]

I also found this old news report recently that shows an underground ctrain tunnel built ages ago. I wonder why this hasn't been used.

It aligns to a potentially future 7th and 8th Avenue subway. Built to save a boat load of trouble in the future, not to be used anytime soon.

 

[darwink]

transit connected airports are another thing that says 'smart city'

Most cities that build airport links find they underperform compared to other parts of their system.

Airports are bad trip generators compared to the number of people coming and going proximate to the airport (what we are being told when we hear X people work at the airport, plus passengers).

 

[ahuch]

The more I think about it, I just hope they don't botch some kind of +15 connections with an above ground routing. It would probably be the most human friendly element to transit in the city if done right, but if done for cost savings like most of the project it'll probably end up a poor experience with irritating connections like elsewhere in the city.

 

[pdubs015]

A long response which jumps around a bit:

Because each of the 6 (not counting 16th or the possible one to the south) stations would cost $200 million in today's dollars. Then add in 16+ smoke and evacuation structures plus the land for them (any run longer than 400 metres between evacuation points needs an additional evacuation point) - this is in addition to smoke control built into the station boxes, increasing exvcavated volume. The tunnel itself is the cheap part, likely less than half a billion on its own, if it was the same size to carry anything else.

In very general terms when thinking about cost for infrastructure, with a surface line and elevated, costs increase in a linear manner. Above ground structures, you're working in two dimensions, so stations if you make them wider, also increases costs, just as when you make them longer. So costs go be square. When you go underground, you're talking about cubic metres of dirt excavated and held back, so costs increase by the cube.

So you 90 metre long surface station at $10 million, you add 5 metres of width to 'eyeball' building an elevated structure, and you're at $50 million, then for underground you add 4 metres of depth, you're at $200 million. Super basic, but when thinking of these things as amateurs, simple rules of thumb are useful to start to conceptualize costs.

For smoke and evac, any time a tunnel can be kept at fewer than 400 metres you save a lot of money. West LRT Westbrook tunnel accomplishes this, Cemetery Hill is too long, closer to 700 metres and so it has an evacuation point. The Red Line Tunnel from the Beltline to Downtown is 460 metres, and has an evacuation point on 10th Ave.

For under a street, you can't just go virtually straight up either, you have to lateral to a lot off to one side, which also can increase the frequency of additional structures, as it makes evacuation paths longer. Also ends up requiring higher power fans for smoke, since you have to fight vertical draft. For smoke, since the tunnel is going up and down, you can need even more structures, if the optimal spacing places the smoke control structures at low points.

Then you have things like substations. When going underground, there is a huge temptation to just add them into station boxes instead of expropriating land, to make the projects less complex to approve but at the result of making them more expensive to build.

There is a reason Toronto didn't build under Bloor Street for its second subway line, and for its first, avoiding building under Younge as much as possible, at least until later expansions when they unlearned their cost savings reasons.

Building the North Central Green Line completely underground just seems so excessive to me. I can understand wanting to have the 16 Ave N station underground, as it has so much potential to build a hub for the area. However, for anywhere north of that, the cost/benefit of a full subway just doesn't add up.

I think an effective compromise north of 16 Ave N would be an open trench for the next 12 blocks, and then a below ground station at 28 Ave N. A great local example of this is on the Blue Line through Rosscarrock, just as the train is leaving ascending out of the Westbrook tunnel towards 45 St SW station.

To me, the open trench on the Blue Line through Rosscarrock actually improved the neighbourhood, as it serves as a pleasant looking barrier between the community and a busy 50km/h road: 17 Ave SW. Further, there are reasonable amounts of crossings that give the Rosscarrock residents access to 17 Ave: every 3 or 4 blocks.

Once the train is beyond around 30 Ave N, There really isn't a lot of density in that area that causes a need for grade separation. Perhaps, a fully grade separated crossing would be necessary at McKnight, but outside of that, there isn't a lot going on in that area of Calgary. Sure, at grade crossings can lead to safety issues. However, there isn't a need for constant east/west crossings once you are past 30 Ave N. These could easily be cut off to only allow east/west crossings of Centre St N every 10 blocks or so past this point.

Even though this area is still quite close to downtown, it isn't nearly as developed as other quadrants. For example, in the SW, a similar distance from downtown would show far denser areas: Marda Loop, Bankview, Mission, Sunalta. If an LRT is ever developed through Marda Loop or Bankview, I would say full grade separation is a must. But that is not the case in Highland Park or Thorncliffe.

Sure, one might argue that an LRT could be the cause for massive redevelopment in the area. However, if that were the case, then why do so many other inner city neighbourhoods in Calgary show such superior redevelopment, even without effective LRT infrastructure? To me, it's because those other areas are more desirable to the general population, and therefore show greater implied residential demand.

 

[lemongrab]

I think we overvalue the impact of different grade options in terms of how they affect redevelopment. Other characteristics seem to matter for more to influence when/where redevelopment happens, and in any event we probably have a half-century supply of TOD sites already. So if the motivation for tunnelling/trenching is to enhance redevelopment in an area you're likely just cannibalizing another area.

The primary factors to consider should be how it affects the transit service itself (reliability and travel times, including how quickly/easily riders access stations) and operating costs. Going all the way to full grade-separation facilitates automation, which can help offset the extra CAPEX required if you have sufficient ridership to justify high frequency (though you still shouldn't expect it to pay for itself as most things in transit don't).

In 2017 transit fares covered 47% of Calgary Transit OPEX. For stage 1 of the GL at that time(16th-Shephard tunnelled under Bow River) fares were only going to cover 17% ($8M new revenue vs $48M OPEX). That rate should improve with more build out (particularly once you are actually replacing bus service rather than just shortening routes), but it has a long way to go before it would actually help the whole system run more efficiently. Though I should add that increasing the rate of fare recovery isn't necessarily a good objective to strive for system-wide (so many indirect benefits from subsidizing transit), but you probably want major capital expenditures to perform well in that metric.