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

[trtcttc]

I'm not saying that the SE section shouldn't be built, only that it's more of a commuter style rail line with long stretches of emptiness and that it matches up more with a Nose creek style line. It has QP, CP, and South Campus, but most employees will still drive to those sites. The NC up Centre street would be a lot of commuter traffic towards downtown where it works for people to take transit. also the Centre street corridor has a large population over a short distance. a population that is still growing.

NC alignment also has more potential to create destinations. There's street front retail for the southern part, and the northern end before 64 has a lot of houses that may be redeveloped over time to 5+1 with street front retail.

 

[Roaring Flames]

Sometimes I wish all the ctrain lines just ended downtown at a central station transfer point along with an intercity platform with hotels and event plazas nearby

 

[Edmontonmanía]

Is there any map or layer for Google Maps? With the route and the Stations?

 

[lemongrab]

Is there any map or layer for Google Maps? With the route and the Stations?

There's a few layers you can fiddle with here, but I'm not sure there's any way to switch to satellite view:
https://maps.calgary.ca/greenline/

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

I'm not saying that the SE section shouldn't be built, only that it's more of a commuter style rail line with long stretches of emptiness and that it matches up more with a Nose creek style line. It has QP, CP, and South Campus, but most employees will still drive to those sites. The NC up Centre street would be a lot of commuter traffic towards downtown where it works for people to take transit. also the Centre street corridor has a large population over a short distance. a population that is still growing.

Yeah its a tossup on which leg should have started first. But given the hype of the time, the TOD nodes on SE made it a popular choice.

Overall though, all of the current ctrain network is essentially an urban commuter rail system, and it works quite well that way.

Calgary has so far avoided the community building trap other places have fallen into, and I'd hate to see that happen with GL

 

[lemongrab]

Yeah its a tossup on which leg should have started first. But given the hype of the time, the TOD nodes on SE made it a popular choice.

Overall though, all of the current ctrain network is essentially an urban commuter rail system, and it works quite well that way.

Calgary has so far avoided the community building trap other places have fallen into, and I'd hate to see that happen with GL

It seems to me that the GL already fell pretty damn hard into the community building trap. Most decisions have favoured aesthetics and community preferences over moving people. SE line is arguably the most 'commuter rail' line of them all

IMO TOD potential shouldn't inform any transit decisions until we've worked through at least half of what we already have. Perhaps our slow progress today would be an argument to try to skip the park-n-ride phase altogether, but I'm not sure how much that was really going to happen on the GL?

 

[Surrealplaces]

NC alignment also has more potential to create destinations. There's street front retail for the southern part, and the northern end before 64 has a lot of houses that may be redeveloped over time to 5+1 with street front retail.

Agreed. Being that it's a straight line corridor with continuous residential all the way to 6th ave and beyond, does give it lots of potential on top of all the people currently in the range.

 

[kora]

It seems to me that the GL already fell pretty damn hard into the community building trap. Most decisions have favoured aesthetics and community preferences over moving people. SE line is arguably the most 'commuter rail' line of them all

One of the basics of LRT is that it has to be faster than the bus. LRT is obviously more comfortable than buses, but speed has to be there too. We want to avoid the catastrophe of the Finch West LRT, where travel times are much longer than the express bus that it replaced.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Sometimes I wish all the ctrain lines just ended downtown at a central station transfer point along with an intercity platform with hotels and event plazas nearby

Overall though, all of the current ctrain network is essentially an urban commuter rail system, and it works quite well that way.

With the exception of 7th Avenue, the ctrain is closer to commuter rail than an urban line, but so are most LRTs.

A ctrain line that follows Centre Street south of Beddington would be an urban line. I might be using the wrong term, but what I mean is a line that has decent density, little to no room for park-and-ride stations and would be required to well-integrated into the community. The Green Line's SE segment does this at certain stations but because of the geography can't be well integrated at some of them (Ramsay, 26th Ave, Ogden, and the one beside Glenmore that I forget the name of, they should just call it Glenmore lol).

The Centre Street or Nose Creek lines would be very different (obviously), and both have alternatives. On Centre Street, you could add dedicated bus lanes south of Beddington into downtown and improve the experience. In Nose Creek a commuter rail or Blue Line spur east of the Zoo station could serve the communities north of Beddington well (you could even run that line to the airport as its own spur lol).

Curious to see what's next after the downtown portion of the Green Line is sorted out. I'm more and more skeptical of a rail plan actually being implemented versus announced and sat on so the City might have to consider what they can do.

 

[trtcttc]

One of the basics of LRT is that it has to be faster than the bus. LRT is obviously more comfortable than buses, but speed has to be there too. We want to avoid the catastrophe of the Finch West LRT, where travel times are much longer than the express bus that it replaced.

There's an extreme risk adverse culture at the TTC that's long plagued the streetcar network too. St.Clair and Spadina both got dedicated ROW, and St. Clair is slower than the bus it replaced, and Spadina is just slow in general. Finch West was poorly designed. There's no crossing arms so even with signal prioritization, they have to slow down almost to a stop on a green light to avoid catastrophic collisions. and the number of large level crossings are crazy.

 

[kora]

There's an extreme risk adverse culture at the TTC that's long plagued the streetcar network too. St.Clair and Spadina both got dedicated ROW, and St. Clair is slower than the bus it replaced, and Spadina is just slow in general. Finch West was poorly designed. There's no crossing arms so even with signal prioritization, they have to slow down almost to a stop on a green light to avoid catastrophic collisions. and the number of large level crossings are crazy.

I remember frequently taking the Spadina streetcar when I lived in Toronto. It was often was faster walking rather than waiting for and riding the streetcar. There were a lot of reliability problems with the timing and scheduling of cars and with the streetcar system in general.

From that perspective the Calgary LRT and Vancouver Skytrain are light years ahead in reliability and speed.

 

[Red Star]

One of the basics of LRT is that it has to be faster than the bus. LRT is obviously more comfortable than buses, but speed has to be there too. We want to avoid the catastrophe of the Finch West LRT, where travel times are much longer than the express bus that it replaced.

That's my biggest concern with the SE Greenline. Rapid transit needs to be fast. Not only does it need to be faster than a bus, it needs to compete with vehicles. It doesn't have to be faster than driving...but it needs to be competitive. Every second counts. Even a 30 second delay idling at a traffic light, reduces the competitiveness.

1. The SE LRT route is not as direct as the Red Line
2. The distance from Shepard to Downtown is 16km (About the same as Somerset to DT on the Red line)
3. I posted this earlier, but there are weird curves in the line that add distance to the track and cause speed delays as the trains needs to slow down on bends.

Frequency of service is very important too, but that can be scaled and is more of an operations issue.

 

[badc0ffee]

St. Clair is slower than the bus it replaced

IIRC St. Clair has been a streetcar line for like 110 years. It started with a dedicated ROW and then in the 1930s was opened to car traffic. What the LRT project of 2005-2010 did was restore this dedicated ROW.

Still, that resulting in slower service is crazy. Hopefully it, and Finch, are at least more predictable/reliable in rush hour now?

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

It seems to me that the GL already fell pretty damn hard into the community building trap. Most decisions have favoured aesthetics and community preferences over moving people. SE line is arguably the most 'commuter rail' line of them all

Yeah it sure did, although the route isn't bad in two dimensions, its that tricky third one GL struggles with...

Pondering it a little more, and recalling that GL is a pre-Covid/oil crash plan, I'm starting to see some merit in calling the whole thing off, at least as far as LRT goes.

SETway could still be done for the SE without losing too much value from the work already done.

What could be recouped and diverted from the overall 10+ billion the full build would cost should cover the build of the NW freight rail reroute, and commuter rail for Airdrie, Cochrane and Okotoks with a modest central station at Palliser.

Balance the SE BRT with the modified 301 BRT below and everyone but the Lyle Lanleys of the world wins!

No more freight rail downtown
The way is cleared for HSR/CABR
Commuter rail network established
NC north of nose creek gets DT express transit
NC south of nose creek gets reduced BRT load
YYC gets a semi-direct DT and LRT link
No more need to choose between 'unsightly' elevated rail or risky tunnel for GL DT

All for the low low price of not believing streetcars magically transform dreary roads into world class high streets.

Seems like a good deal to me!

 

[trtcttc]

IIRC St. Clair has been a streetcar line for like 110 years. It started with a dedicated ROW and then in the 1930s was opened to car traffic. What the LRT project of 2005-2010 did was restore this dedicated ROW.

Still, that resulting in slower service is crazy. Hopefully it, and Finch, are at least more predictable/reliable in rush hour now?

Sorry the comparison wasn't bus to streetcars but streetcars with ROW vs without. I was trying to remember this article, which basically says the TTC manage to travel slower with a dedicated ROW than pre-ROW because of poor operational decisions.

The main benefit of ROW and rail is that it makes it visible to those that are not regular riders of the route. I think once Calgary commits to 10-15 minute service on the MAX, they should be shown on transit maps, Google Maps/Apple Maps transit layer, so people know those are rapid (relatively speaking) transit options.

The Gradual Slowing of 512 St. Clair

When the St. Clair right-of-way went into operation after an extended construction period and a lot of political upheaval, streetcar operation was scheduled to be faster than the old mix-traffic mo…

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