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

lemongrab said:
Such a long rambling post that somehow seems to be a perfectly concise synopsis of so many issues. It's a really great point about not overreacting to the perception of things like grade separation being of benefit to cars.

It's such a weird thing here where the only way to mitigate horrific car sewers is through other kinds of infrastructure projects like bike lanes and transit, and somehow both the intention to remedy road designs AND the need to not impact traffic too much manage to both take precedence over designing transit or a bike lane to actually be most effective in itself.
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Personally I don’t care about impacting traffic on 16th, but I’m more concerned about it being safety issue with such a high volume of traffic. I would hate to see train service interrupted because it hit a car, or two vehicles hit each other in the intersection, or because some semi truck got stuck in the middle of the intersection (which has happened before). The fact that semi trucks traverse that road often is already a concern for me. I’d prefer to see the train kept away from those elements.
 
Duck Lightning said:
Extending low floor platforms is at least not as expensive an undertaking as extending high floor platforms. I cant imagine there will be demand for anything over 2 trains for a while anyway with the line mostly serving downtown and industrial. Also this could be a definitive sign that stage 2 is being shelved due to cost.
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90m platforms and 2-car trains sounds like a smart decision to me if longer trains won’t be required for decades.
I sure hope it means Stage 2 is being shelved - gives time for a re-think of the bonehead thought of a surface-running streetcar up Center St.
 
Beltline_B said:
Personally I don’t care about impacting traffic on 16th, but I’m more concerned about it being safety issue with such a high volume of traffic. I would hate to see train service interrupted because it hit a car, or two vehicles hit each other in the intersection, or because some semi truck got stuck in the middle of the intersection (which has happened before). The fact that semi trucks traverse that road often is already a concern for me. I’d prefer to see the train kept away from those elements.
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Another big thing would be MAX orange...a level crossing would really hurt it, while separation would remove the current challenge between orange and the NC busses
 
Beltline_B said:
Personally I don’t care about impacting traffic on 16th, but I’m more concerned about it being safety issue with such a high volume of traffic. I would hate to see train service interrupted because it hit a car, or two vehicles hit each other in the intersection, or because some semi truck got stuck in the middle of the intersection (which has happened before). The fact that semi trucks traverse that road often is already a concern for me. I’d prefer to see the train kept away from those elements.
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I agree with this.

Generally, grade-separation for rapid transit is a good idea at 16th for speed, reliability and safety reasons.

The real trick - is that any grade-separation at this location needs to be only that - transit, and by extension people that use transit (pedestrians). Sure there's definitely benefits that drivers will get, but that absolutely cannot be the goal.

If vehicle capacity, level of service and vehicle throughput slips into the transit project as another "requirement", we will get an outcome that is yet another disaster for transit, pedestrians and transit-supportive land uses. Overly-wide lanes, higher travel speeds, more land for slip lanes, more turning movements, wider crossings for pedestrians to access the transit - more land claimed for the "transit project".

Better yet - if grade-separation of the Green Line proves to be radically more efficient, we should then reduce the amount of speed, space and lanes given to vehicles here in every dimension as they can maintain today's level of service, but with less infrastructure and space needed. Return all that land to development and pedestrians - again that's the whole point of developing a major grade-separated transit station here in the first place.
 
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Beltline_B said:
Personally I don’t care about impacting traffic on 16th, but I’m more concerned about it being safety issue with such a high volume of traffic. I would hate to see train service interrupted because it hit a car, or two vehicles hit each other in the intersection, or because some semi truck got stuck in the middle of the intersection (which has happened before). The fact that semi trucks traverse that road often is already a concern for me. I’d prefer to see the train kept away from those elements.
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Myself, I'm not concerned about traffic on 16th either, but definitely would prefer to have 16th ave underground for sake of transit operability and safety. I'd like to see it underground from McHugh bluff to at least around 20th ave somewhere. After that, I don't care as much if it's at grade as long as it has the right of way.
 
What's the difference between Centre St north of 20th Ave and Centre St south of there? For me, the only thing I can think of is people being convinced we still need 4 lanes of traffic across the bridge and into downtown. Isn't that just is falling into the trap of continually planning a city where we are prioritizing cars over all else? We closed Centre Street Bridge to traffic for almost 2 years and things were just fine. Surely now we can survive with only 2 lanes of traffic south of 16th and crossing the bridge when it's being paired with light rail?
 
I want to see it underground from 16th to McHugh for my own personal liking. As a rider I would rather the line had a a more streamlined feel to the flow, but that's just my personal preference. That and if we were ever looking at putting that section underground at some point, it's easiest to do it now. They could close that section of Centre street for all I care.
 
outoftheice said:
What's the difference between Centre St north of 20th Ave and Centre St south of there?
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Traffic volume. Have you ever been on that section of the street during rush hour?

Centre Street funnels traffic to/from 16 Ave, and to a lesser extent 20 Ave. That's why we have the reversible lanes all the way from downtown to there. If they're so pointless, why not remove them today and dedicate one lane in each direction to buses? Surely that would be a smooth and inexpensive way to improve transit service if what you're saying is true. Or heck, even just save some operational dollars and shut down the reversible lanes so we have two lanes of mixed car/bus in each direction.
 
badc0ffee said:
Traffic volume. Have you ever been on that section of the street during rush hour?

Centre Street funnels traffic to/from 16 Ave, and to a lesser extent 20 Ave. That's why we have the reversible lanes all the way from downtown to there. If they're so pointless, why not remove them today and dedicate one lane in each direction to buses? Surely that would be a smooth and inexpensive way to improve transit service if what you're saying is true. Or heck, even just save some operational dollars and shut down the reversible lanes so we have two lanes of mixed car/bus in each direction.
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Well for one thing, the capacity of buses and the capacity of light rail to replace that traffic volume are orders of magnitude different. That being said, turning the two middle lanes into a BRT transitway would be a great interim solution, even if you're only suggesting it facetiously. The community of Crescent Heights would love it as getting rid of the 4 lane car sewer through their community has been a top priority for years. Like I said, Calgary survived just fine with the Centre St bridge closed completely for 2 years so the motorists will find a way to adapt. Either way, thank you for proving my point that for many people this all comes down to spending gobs of money and doing whatever it takes so that construction of a light rail line that can move a massive amount of people along a corridor doesn't impact our ability to funnel single passenger vehicles in to, and out of, downtown.
 
The community of Crescent Heights would love it as getting rid of the 4 lane car sewer through their community has been a top priority for years.
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We're talking about a 4-lane road with wide sidewalks, crosswalks every 1-2 blocks, and frequent transit service from multiple routes. It has some small front parking lots in places, but it's mainly businesses fronting the sidewalk. If that's a car sewer then that term has strayed so far from its original meaning.
 
Wide sidewalks?
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sqA2GZvAqUMfwK5F6


I was thinking about this a bit today and trying to come up with similar situations as our Centre Street. This is a random thought along those lines, but I've found the pedestrian experience on West Broadway in Vancouver - a 5-6 lane road - to be far more pleasant than our Centre St, or most of our other vibrant streets.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/itPMQrStukSzDo5U8

The answer is probably as simple as novelty+vacation mode (though I'm generally doing pleasure and not businesses at similar locations in Calgary), but I dunno. Maybe it's the far lower ratio of obnoxious pickups/huge SUVs (ripping through ~20 blocks on street view I only noticed 1 pick up and 1 large SUV out of hundreds of cars)
 
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