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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 66 66.7%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 29 29.3%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.0%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 3 3.0%
  • Total voters
    99
Timeline for deciding on Green Line downtown alignment presented at Executive Committee today.


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As far as low floor vs high floor, they both have their advantages. Low floor along Centre street really makes sense to me. High floor works well for high volumes. My one complaint about low floor is flow of passengers in the cars when they are full. I found in Ottawa's low floor cars, flow isn't great when the cars are even 2/3rds full. Some of the red line and blue line trains get extremely full at peak hours, and even with open areas like they have on the newer LRVs internal flow is still tight. Given the green line's expected passenger volume, the low floor LRVs should be fine though.
 
I think many will be pleasantly surprised by the flow inside the cars. Yes there's constrained areas at the bogies but this is no different than the 72 high floor SD160s that we have with transverse seating throughout nearly the entire car. The door areas are quite large and completely open. Calgary Transit did put in the effort to make these vehicles as capable as possible
 
I would prefer high floor over low floor for reasons already mentioned, as well as the fact that it would make sense to maintain consistency among the rolling stock for the 3 lines, but its a moot point as the decision has long since been made. As a near-daily Red Line passenger, I can't stress enough how full the trains usually are at rush hour, and for some reason they almost never use 4 car trains. I just hope consideration of ridership vs capacity has been properly analyzed for these Green Line trains. I would suspect they have - I mean, they've had 10 years to sort this out.
 
Albertasaurus said:
I would prefer high floor over low floor for reasons already mentioned, as well as the fact that it would make sense to maintain consistency among the rolling stock for the 3 lines, but its a moot point as the decision has long since been made. As a near-daily Red Line passenger, I can't stress enough how full the trains usually are at rush hour, and for some reason they almost never use 4 car trains. I just hope consideration of ridership vs capacity has been properly analyzed for these Green Line trains. I would suspect they have - I mean, they've had 10 years to sort this out.
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The original vision (and maybe still possible) for the Green line is to go north on Centre, and high floor just wouldn't have worked there. Maintaining consistency is a bit moot since the lengths are so different it won't be interchangeable anyways. I think the issue with capacity, and the full red-line trains have nothing to do with the high/low floor though, it's mostly a bad planning by CT to not use 4 car trains. I agree that high floor is better for commuter service and that circulation isn't great around the bogies, having ridden the TTC Streetcar almost daily for a few years. But I don't think it's going to make or break the line.

One note on circulation I found in riding full trains during rush hour vs not. The bogies make the train always seem full. When it's less full, nobody goes to the little passageway or only 1 person is sitting in the 4 seats and others crowd the doors, making it seem full, and during rush hour, people make use of all the seats and space but it's rush hour so it's still full. So it's not really going to reduce the maximum capacity, just makes it feel busier than a high floor train.
 
whatchyyc said:
It's not so superior just not that big of a deal, people are acting like it's the end of the world. I'm genuinely curious what your deal breaker problem is with low floor that isn't just "it looks too much like a tram"
A real change would be the green line using wider and longer metro stock potentially with full automation and grade separation. Compared to that scenario low vs high LRT might as well be the same thing.
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I wouldn't say low-floor LRVs are an inferior train. But I think it all depends where and how low-floor LRVs are used.

Advantages:

- Low-floor LRVs work better when running within an urban environment.
-the stations are smaller
-the platforms integrate into the sidewalk/streetscape better
-the train can make tighter turns than high-floor LRVs

Disadvantages:

--The wheels of a low-floor LRV eat into the interior space of a tram, reducing rider capacity (I rode the ION LRT in Kitchener/Waterloo and the interior felt cramped and the floor was uneven).
- Low-floor LRVs are generally speed limited
- the maintenance cost of low-floor LRVs is higher due to limited access to the wheels and motor

In 2015, I would have liked to have seen the Green Line use low-floor LRVs running long the middle of Centre Street with an elevated section from 4th Ave to 9th Ave.

-It would have been way cheaper than $6 Billion
-It would have been operational by now
-It would have freed up a lot of buses on Centre street to be used elsewhere.

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whatchyyc said:
I think many will be pleasantly surprised by the flow inside the cars. Yes there's constrained areas at the bogies but this is no different than the 72 high floor SD160s that we have with transverse seating throughout nearly the entire car. The door areas are quite large and completely open. Calgary Transit did put in the effort to make these vehicles as capable as possible
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I hope you're right. I wasn't too impressed with the ION LRT cars in Kitchener/Waterloo.
 
Albertasaurus said:
I would prefer high floor over low floor for reasons already mentioned, as well as the fact that it would make sense to maintain consistency among the rolling stock for the 3 lines, but its a moot point as the decision has long since been made. As a near-daily Red Line passenger, I can't stress enough how full the trains usually are at rush hour, and for some reason they almost never use 4 car trains. I just hope consideration of ridership vs capacity has been properly analyzed for these Green Line trains. I would suspect they have - I mean, they've had 10 years to sort this out.
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The beauty of a high-floor LRT is that it acts like a 'dollar store metro system' yet it's cheaper and more flexible than a traditional metro system.

If CT wanted to increase capacity of the Red and Blue lines they could buy high-floor LRTs with gangways connecting the cars together. It could probably increase the capacity on the 4-car trains by 10% or so.

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trtcttc said:
it's mostly a bad planning by CT to not use 4 car trains.
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IIRC the return of 4-car trains is waiting for some work to be completed at the Haysboro garage?

Red Star said:
- Low-floor LRVs are generally speed limited
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I read that the new Eglinton line vehicles in Toronto could go up to 80 km/h, which is also the limit of our LRVs.

Red Star said:
In 2015, I would have liked to have seen the Green Line use low-floor LRVs running long the middle of Centre Street with an elevated section from 4th Ave to 9th Ave.
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I thought the green line needed to meet the red/blue lines further west (2 St W), so as to not overwhelm them with passengers transferring to the free fare zone to complete their journeys.
 
badc0ffee said:
IIRC the return of 4-car trains is waiting for some work to be completed at the Haysboro garage?


I read that the new Eglinton line vehicles in Toronto could go up to 80 km/h, which is also the limit of our LRVs.


I thought the green line needed to meet the red/blue lines further west (2 St W), so as to not overwhelm them with passengers transferring to the free fare zone to complete their journeys.
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Centre St is presumably much less of an issue for transfers than City Hall station, which was the main alternate proposal being pushed. City Hall is already extremely busy due to being the first Blue/Red transfer point.

In this alternate reality, it probably wouldn't make sense for the North Central line to connect with the SE line - maybe use different technologies, and eventually give them alternate extensions (like current Max Purple or Max Yellow routes)
 
CT just don't have enough train cars to have very many 4 car trains with the frequencies that are being run, afaik the capacity of the system is the highest it's ever been even with 3 car trains. There's been a handful of new cars delivered but they haven't been put into service yet because of commissioning issues, and a lot of these will just replace dead U2s. There's an option order for a lot more but I don't know if that's been funded yet. Edit: The order is for a total of 40 LRVs to arrive by the end of 2027, the first 14 cars are nearly all delivered
 
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