West Village Towers | 149.95m | 42s | Cidex Group | NORR Dubai Yahya Jan

[Surrealplaces]

7th ave is actually quite busy, and is probably the 2nd busiest pedestrian street/avenue of downtown Calgary after Stephen Ave. IMO, it has a lot of potential if more retail can be added to the ground levels of the sterile office towers. Unfortunately we lost vibrancy with the building of the last three towers built in DT Calgary (Brookfield, Telus sky and 707 5th street) all three are cool towers, but we lost street vibrancy. That said, I don't think 7th is a lost cause. If we can add some more retail or retail with residential along 7th it would help make it a pretty decent corridor.

 

[trtcttc]

How much of it is also the disturbance around the station? The type of businesses that would want to open near transit, like coffee shops, convenience stores, would probably prefer a street just off 7th.

 

[dazzlingdave88]

It is still there and looking apocalyptic as ever.

"You know, the pit, it's just, it's been there for so long. It's almost, like, a part of Calgary now." - Ann Perkins

 

[AK452]

I'm not sure a city which has built high floor stations with accessible ramps, have torn them down to redo as low floor.

San Diego took away high platforms a long time ago, maybe 20 yrs? I believe Salt Lake City is still in transition, and mostly low-floor now. I heard Cleveland is doing it too. Of course, I do realize that it's major surgery to do so and quite unlikely. My favorite LRTs have low floors and low-ramp platforms of about 12 in for accessibility. They don't disrupt the streetscape. C-train is fast and great outside the city, but all but two blocks downtown have a station on one side of the street, which eliminates cross-street flow. Not that it's an issue, since what would you cross the street to get to? The system design prioritizes the outskirts at the expense of the downtown. I'm sure SF Muni's hybrid cars are very expensive, but here's what they look like at grade:

The Core for example has 2 stops pretty much integrated into it...removing 95% of the random poles, signs and clutter they inexplicably made part of the design

My complaint about the Core is that its popularity and existence are almost invisible from the street. A walkable corridor should have vibrancy. I suppose I could also blame +15 for detracting from the street's vibrancy. Nevertheless, great point about the poles and clutter, the architecture could be improved a lot.

The LRT volume (in number of trains and number of passengers) is far higher on 7th than these examples, and at higher-speeds. We are practically running volumes approaching a light metro here, but at-grade. The low-floor/high-floor debate is interesting if starting from scratch (and the associated pros/cons of building integration and street design), but the volume of trains will mean that we should be removing at-grade crossing expectations, not adding them IMO.

Calgary has good volume, but I wouldn't say it's fast downtown, since it lacks signal priority. You could have slower speeds downtown but higher throughput just with signal priority. And yeah it's not realistic to take away the high platforms, so other measures are needed.

Switzerland has a bunch of LRTs/trams at street-grade with lots of vibrancy. Here's Zurich's Bahnhof Street. I realize it's a tram, but Lausanne's system is LRT that switches between subway, at grade, and separated, like SF Muni.

Unfortunately we lost vibrancy with the building of the last three towers built in DT Calgary (Brookfield, Telus sky and 707 5th street) all three are cool towers, but we lost street vibrancy. That said, I don't think 7th is a lost cause. If we can add some more retail or retail with residential along 7th it would help make it a pretty decent corridor.

Too true. Now that we have a successful system everywhere outside the city and apparently low-floors coming to new Green Line, I'd like to see real effort toward making 7 St more like a Bahnhof Street, which at least has signal priority. Pedestrians mix with trams on the street, but it's only super slow as you enter the station, and steady but slow downtown, and then faster once away from pedestrians.

 

[Surrealplaces]

How much of it is also the disturbance around the station? The type of businesses that would want to open near transit, like coffee shops, convenience stores, would probably prefer a street just off 7th.

Could be, but before those three office towers were built, all three buildings had active businesses along 7th ave.

 

[trtcttc]

San Diego took away high platforms a long time ago, maybe 20 yrs? I believe Salt Lake City is still in transition, and mostly low-floor now. I heard Cleveland is doing it too. Of course, I do realize that it's major surgery to do so and quite unlikely. My favorite LRTs have low floors and low-ramp platforms of about 12 in for accessibility. They don't disrupt the streetscape. C-train is fast and great outside the city, but all but two blocks downtown have a station on one side of the street, which eliminates cross-street flow. Not that it's an issue, since what would you cross the street to get to? The system design prioritizes the outskirts at the expense of the downtown. I'm sure SF Muni's hybrid cars are very expensive, but here's what they look like at grade:

I don't think these cases are comparable though. This article on San Diego moving to low floor, says "These cars have nearly level boarding ramps, eliminating the need for stairs and wheelchair lifts. They will enable speedier boarding and quicker trips for our passengers." Their system was like Toronto, where there are platforms in some places that are rebuilt (i.e. Union, Spadina Station) but there's many level boarding stops that used stairs and wheelchair lifts, sort of like a bus. Many systems moved to low floor for cost. Low floor platforms and stations are significantly cheaper. And in cases like Toronto and SD, in order to hit 100% accessible, it was easier to rebuild a few stations for low floor than to build hundreds of stations (Toronto Streetcar) for high floor. In our case, we'd have to rebuild our entire system for low floor and I don't see the cost being worth it. Not to mention if you've ridden a low floor car, it's a compromise. The capacity is lower because of the wheel wells and passenger circulation is poor because of the narrow walkway. As much as I want some vibrancy on 7th, it's not like we're running out of downtown retail space.

This was the estimated cost for various expansion options for LRT in LA

MTS New Low Floor Trolleys

Go Into Service on Monday, October 3rd

www.sdmts.com

 

[whatchyyc]

San Diego took away high platforms a long time ago, maybe 20 yrs? I believe Salt Lake City is still in transition, and mostly low-floor now. I heard Cleveland is doing it too. Of course, I do realize that it's major surgery to do so and quite unlikely. My favorite LRTs have low floors and low-ramp platforms of about 12 in for accessibility. They don't disrupt the streetscape. C-train is fast and great outside the city, but all but two blocks downtown have a station on one side of the street, which eliminates cross-street flow. Not that it's an issue, since what would you cross the street to get to? The system design prioritizes the outskirts at the expense of the downtown. I'm sure SF Muni's hybrid cars are very expensive, but here's what they look like at grade:

My complaint about the Core is that its popularity and existence are almost invisible from the street. A walkable corridor should have vibrancy. I suppose I could also blame +15 for detracting from the street's vibrancy. Nevertheless, great point about the poles and clutter, the architecture could be improved a lot.

Calgary has good volume, but I wouldn't say it's fast downtown, since it lacks signal priority. You could have slower speeds downtown but higher throughput just with signal priority. And yeah it's not realistic to take away the high platforms, so other measures are needed.

Switzerland has a bunch of LRTs/trams at street-grade with lots of vibrancy. Here's Zurich's Bahnhof Street. I realize it's a tram, but Lausanne's system is LRT that switches between subway, at grade, and separated, like SF Muni.

Too true. Now that we have a successful system everywhere outside the city and apparently low-floors coming to new Green Line, I'd like to see real effort toward making 7 St more like a Bahnhof Street, which at least has signal priority. Pedestrians mix with trams on the street, but it's only super slow as you enter the station, and steady but slow downtown, and then faster once away from pedestrians.

The CTrain cannot have signal priority so long as it runs on the street, or else nobody would ever be allowed to cross N-S during rush hour. It wouldn't benefit a whole lot from it either since the lights are specifically timed to allow all the trains downtown to move as a unit and take advantage of station dwell time to wait for lights.

 

[AK452]

And in cases like Toronto and SD, in order to hit 100% accessible, it was easier to rebuild a few stations for low floor than to build hundreds of stations (Toronto Streetcar) for high floor.

Yeah I agree it's unrealistic and don't mean to "derail" the discussion here with low vs high floors, I should just accept it. I agree with the earlier observation that West Village towers is a nice bookend to what should be a prime walking corridor. The C Train offloads a huge number of pedestrians, but few walk more than a half block along it before turning off as soon as possible. There are a lot of cool older buildings, e.g. between Centre & 1 St SW, that currently look like a demilitarized zone. Contrast that with East Village, which despite a lot of complaints these days still looks way more vibrant.

The CTrain cannot have signal priority so long as it runs on the street, or else nobody would ever be allowed to cross N-S during rush hour. It wouldn't benefit a whole lot from it either since the lights are specifically timed to allow all the trains downtown to move as a unit and take advantage of station dwell time to wait for lights.

Signal priority is rarely absolute, and places that have it still stop trains periodically for cross traffic, just like almost every sensed traffic signal does for cars. I imagine you're right about timing during peak periods, but I'm usually there off-peak. As a pedestrian I'm often waiting politely for a walk signal to cross a completely empty street. As a driver, I'm often stopped at a red light while nothing crosses. As a rider, I'm often stopped at a red light that came on just after the train started moving. So many cities have some form of priority. With modern sensors and computers, is there really no other alternative?

 

[CBBarnett]

San Diego took away high platforms a long time ago, maybe 20 yrs? I believe Salt Lake City is still in transition, and mostly low-floor now. I heard Cleveland is doing it too. Of course, I do realize that it's major surgery to do so and quite unlikely. My favorite LRTs have low floors and low-ramp platforms of about 12 in for accessibility. They don't disrupt the streetscape. C-train is fast and great outside the city, but all but two blocks downtown have a station on one side of the street, which eliminates cross-street flow. Not that it's an issue, since what would you cross the street to get to? The system design prioritizes the outskirts at the expense of the downtown. I'm sure SF Muni's hybrid cars are very expensive, but here's what they look like at grade:

My complaint about the Core is that its popularity and existence are almost invisible from the street. A walkable corridor should have vibrancy. I suppose I could also blame +15 for detracting from the street's vibrancy. Nevertheless, great point about the poles and clutter, the architecture could be improved a lot.

Calgary has good volume, but I wouldn't say it's fast downtown, since it lacks signal priority. You could have slower speeds downtown but higher throughput just with signal priority. And yeah it's not realistic to take away the high platforms, so other measures are needed.

I get what you are saying about the urban design impacts of high-floor, at-grade rail in downtown, but respectfully the solution isn't to convert to low-floor, it's to convert to a metro tunnel, ideally splitting the lines up. The root cause of downtown's vibrancy issues is not the LRT's design, it's a half-century of single use planning and 100% car-priority street network in design and capacity.

With one major exception to that car priority - Calgary's downtown LRT does have a lot of signal priority, which is why it's able to move the volumes it does at-grade. The entire downtown signal grid is organized to keep trains moving on 7th Avenue. It's not perfect due to some quirkiness heading north on the Red Line in the NW where it's more balanced with E-W traffic, the impact of train congestion causing rippling effects, increased risk of at-grade delays (collisions), and other factors, but Calgary's frequency of trains is not similar to the other examples because it had always had fairly decent prioritization to keep things moving. For example in the next hour (3pm - 4pm Friday) 7th avenue has about 22 to 24 trains on 7th Avenue, or 1 every 2 or 3 minutes.

It's not just the number of trains, it's the volume that 3 and 4 car trains have. To put this into perspective here's the scale we are talking about here for total train ridership, Calgary's system concentrates both lines downtown:

• CTrain (Calgary): ~275,000 / day
• Muni Metro (San Fran): ~100,000K / day
• Trax (Salt Lake City): 40,000 / day
• Cleveland: ~10,000 / day, including the heavy and light rail lines

All that said, I agree downtown isn't fast to travel through and more than that - it isn't always reliable to travel through. A single consolidated line on 7th - even a hyper-optimized one - has no redundancy for either short-term disruptions (e.g. a train door is delayed) or long-term ones (e.g. a train v. car collision). Calgary is probably at the limits in terms of speed and volume of what an at-grade system can do without some more serious rethinking of the LRT as a system.

Along those lines, I think we should be thinking about adding redundancy and capacity through the Stephen Avenue Subway project to split the lines and allow at least one to operate grade-separated via the core. It would be a very large and complicated project but it's not like the city is getting any smaller or less congested. Adding a subway would free up a lot of capacity on 7th and a lot more freedom to integrate better urban design elements beyond just 7th, including 8th too.