If the system gets up to 5 minute frequencies for more of the day and ridership/activity at the stations increases, these at-grade locations will start becoming focus points again.
Accessibility and connectivity benefits are good things that are helped with at-grade station designs, but the trade-offs with increased risk of delays, collisions and safety are more noticeable in a more finely tuned and utilized system - delays can occur more often and impact more people when they do occur.
Collisions, deaths, and delays will compound more systemically in a busier system and (hopefully) push for a reversal of some of this at-grade upgrades in the long-run.
To be clear it's not a panacea - grade-separated systems are subject to delays too, but adds a layer of control that can help keep things moving and trains moving faster, more often.
To my post above, systems that prioritize reliability and speed will prioritize grade-separation. Ours doesn't yet, but will once capacity is reached in the current system design.
Considering your previous post as well as this:
I can see the downsides of lack of grade separation becoming more noticeable with a longer 5 minute frequency service. You notice just how much more efficient the train feels south of 39th or north of Banff Tr where it is mostly or totally grade separated. If timed right using the train to go to Chinook Mall would take the same time as driving which for transit in Calgary is crazy and is a testament to how good some parts of the C-Train are for average speed. There is also the issue of the system seemingly struggling when this happens as sometimes it starts to get a sort of get jammed up and trains have to start waiting at signals because I guess the next one is considered right in front; this seemed to be most common at least for me in Q1 of this year and it got to be very annoying.
The problem is 2 things. The more modern approach to urban planning seems to have the idea that grade separation is bad or creates inaccessibility/inequality in some way (or uses this excuse as a guise to just be cheap) and also this
is Calgary we are talking about, a cheap city when it shouldn't be and a frivolous spender when it also shouldn't be. I have no faith that they would ever be bothered to go and grade separate passenger traffic at Chinook for example after deliberately getting rid of it when it existed before. They seem to not like anything indoor, anything with escalators and elevators, or anything with a door or roof at all. We saw something similar at Anderson where escalators were replaced with outdoor stairs and some weird really long ramp also outdoors; in that case I'm sure if the CP tracks weren't in the way the whole structure would have been demolished and replaced with a crosswalk further dumbing down the system bringing it even slightly closer to being a street car (despite not even being close of course).
Regular road crossings are fine like the ones you see for the most part along the red line where the trains are allowed to cross them at full or nearly full speed with often times the issue being more with the road design being poorly planned such as having an intersection too close to the crossing, or having an expressway/freeway exit that immediately crosses the tracks. What is in the NE is a different story as that causes gridlock when the frequency hits peak; that is a very bad design.
I understand Victoria Park was not entirely by choice of the people it should have been left up to, but I am sick and tired of seeing this departure away from real train stations in favour of this little league all outdoor, almost no shelter, raised platform tram stop. I can guarantee in the future even if these points along the lines are issues, they will say it was a mistake from the past and deal with it because we made our bed. Calgary and many other cities will often build something cheaper with the intention of one day scaling up so to speak when the business case exists, but often that never happens in the end.
This of course is part of my argument against the GL north of Eau Claire in its current form. You cannot ever improve it's grade separation, in fact, it will not have any at all really. It will have little room for growth and will not provide fast travel.
The SkyTrain's incremental improvements would have been much easier due to grade separation being a requirement both due to the automation and the fact that the original system uses a 4 electrified linear induction rail system that I don't think anyone or anything has any business crossing. Crossing a 3 rail track is hard enough and usually is a discouraged engineering practice unless you are in Chicago. I was not aware that the Mk1 trains there ever had passenger operated doors, I know the TTC line 3 had a "driver" that operated the doors though.
I don't blame Calgary Transit here as it wasn't their choice - just it's a tough battle to lose. Transit service becomes incrementally worse and less reliable, to benefit others. It's one intersection so not a deal-breaker to the system, but it's another performance weakness that will be added to the tally with all the rest - the aggregate result is a weaker, slower, less reliable system. The level of grade-separation doesn't determine side or middle boarding either, you could have rebuilt the new station with side-loading platforms and kept the grade-separation (but then no 17th Ave extension).
Two articles are relevant in this conversation, from Vancouver and Calgary, looking at pedestrian deaths in the systems:
Vancouver, 2015: SkyTrain deaths examined: Could TransLink do more to prevent fatalities?
https://www.straight.com/life/458271/skytrain-deaths-examined#:~:text=Statistics from the B.C. Coroners,recorded on the Canada Line.)
- Statistics from the B.C. Coroners Service spanning 1985 to May 2015 show 75 deaths on SkyTrain tracks, of which at least 10 were accidental
Calgary, 2018: Some C-Train crashes include factors you 'can't avoid,' says councillor: This week 2 pedestrians died after being hit by Calgary Transit trains
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-transit-ctrain-death-fatality-councillor-safety-pedestrian-1.4866441#:~:text=Calgary Transit says 84 people,accidents, according to transit officials.
- "Calgary Transit says 84 people have died at or near C-Train stations from 1981 until now. Between 1985 and last year, 31 per cent of deaths on C-Train tracks were suicides, while two-thirds were believed to be accidents, according to transit officials"
My googling is hardly a rigorous academic study, and there's lots of definitional issues when comparing cause of death between jurisdictions - take this all with a grain of salt. That said, most interesting to me the amount of deaths overall are relatively similar (despite Vancouver having substantially more riders annually), and that the portion due to "accidents" is about 5x higher in Calgary than what Skytrain reports. Some of this is that definitional problem likely, but a big one is the level of grade separation.
This is only deaths too - not the vehicle collisions with a train where no one is injured but transit users are delayed. As far as I can tell, the Skytrain has never been delayed by a train v. car incident, although they did have a dog issue earlier this year!
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/01/12/vancouver-skytrain-delayed-dog-tracks/
I imagine it is generally more difficult and expensive to build a fully grade separated side platform station in situations where all else are equal. Twice the elevators, potentially twice the escalators, greater inconvenience, and if it is underground, a more complex station layout. On the ground it really doesn't make a lot of difference other than one design has people either crossing no tracks or two tracks when the other has people always crossing one set of tracks.
Interesting that the SkyTrain numbers are similar until you factor in that significantly less were accidental which are the ones that are generally the most preventable. I also can't imagine trying to get a car on those tracks, if you did it may not be much of a car by the time it's on them.
There is sufficient room right now for both ends for the red line. Blue line ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So it would replace what is there basically. That would be a rough few years but would feel rewarding in the end when we'd have a much faster train across downtown down in a nice warmish/cool tunnel depending on time of year.
Do you happen to know where those diagrams came from that are in the post you replied to, one seems to show an extra tunnel stub that ends directly under (?) the CP tunnel for what would I guess connect to the blue line and another one that goes towards 7th. Was the plan at some point perhaps to have them both link up there and then have the blue line go back up to 7th for the rest of the trip through downtown?
