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

Go Elevated or try for Underground?

  • Work with the province and go with the Elevated option

    Votes: 53 74.6%

  • Try another approach and go for Underground option

    Votes: 15 21.1%

  • Cancel it altogether

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • Go with a BRT solution

    Votes: 2 2.8%
  • Total voters
    71
Red Star said:
I want to ride Edmonton's Valley Line LRT to see how their low-floor LRT handles.
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I'll be on it sometime this week. I have ridden it before and I liked it. I'll take some pics this time.
 
The article also states that 2nd Street utility relocation work will start. Good practice when they move 10th Ave utilities back to 11th Ave. At least they know what's under 10th and 11th Aves.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
Interesting point, wouldn't elevated low floor actually be smaller than elevated high floor, at least the stations? Maybe not.
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For elevated, Not sure if the stations would be any smaller, probably just less vertical distance, overall size probably not significantly different.

ByeByeBaby said:
Low floor LRT cars make sense because that's what LRT cars are now.

Seattle is a great example. Their main line starts elevated south of the airport, runs elevated for 17 km alongside freeways, then runs for 7 km at grade up the median of a 4 lane stroad (sort of like 36 St NE), then 2.5 km tunnel/elevated, then 2 km at grade alongside a busway without sidewalks in an industrial area, then underground for 13 km through the downtown and university, then elevated for 14 km alongside freeways. There is no reason for low floor trains from integration or community access or whatever other urban design reason. But they use low floor trains because that's what all new trains are, and you have to pay a premium for the modifications for a non-standard platform height.

We were first movers and wound up building the first part of a system with a 1970s design, and within a decade or so train manufacturers figured out how to make trains with the more sensible height, and we have a legacy system that isn't compatible with the global standard. Nobody designing a new LRT system has a debate over low floor or high floor trains, in the same way that nobody designs subways with 400m stop distances and express tracks like they built in Manhattan before everybody figured out the right way to do it, or nobody builds subways with the weird gauge that BART uses because they thought that was a good idea, or nobody designs at-grade stations to have the massive pedestrian overpass structures like we have on the older parts of our system.
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LRTs are low floor primarily because outside of North America, people just use medium capacity driverless subways if they are building grade-separated or elevated trains, similar to the skytrain in Vancouver. An example is the Hitachi driverless metro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Rail_Italy_Driverless_Metro).

LRTs on the other hand are usually integrated to the urban design, with stops being not much more than a MAX bus stop, where low-floor is clearly ideal.

We're building one line that runs elevated, in the median of highways, in the middle of a busy street, and there's not really an ideal technology for all of those uses.
 
IMO HFLRT is the optimal compromise for mid-size cities that may never have a metro, but want to strive for efficient transit operation with as much grade separation as possible (which these days should mean striving for automated) . Low floor can also make a ton of sense, but the key benefit/reasoning should be the ability to fit it into tighter spaces and build it cheaply - not it's [alleged] magical ability to transform the urban realm into a European utopia.

I don't think we have a great answer for why we are not prioritizing automation and total efficiency on a so-called transit project. And it's actually just really unclear what is being prioritized...the answer seems to be the ability to extend the line on both ends as cheaply and easily as possible...but we still have no idea if we're actually just going to slap tracks down on the outer lanes of Centre St between 16th and 64th or not. Beyond that, I think everything north of 64th N and south of 130 Ave SE is going to feel about the same as the blue line north of McKnight, because the inherent conditions are essentially the same.

I suppose my question is, how different would Westwinds, Martindale, and Saddletown stations really feel if they were designed with lower platforms? Or will we end up prioritizing a bunch of extra grade separation like we did west of Westbrook? Would that segment have been designed differently with LFLRT?
 
trtcttc said:
Not sure if it's due to regulatory issues but the Canadian trams have a very low floor design
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In the competition to replace the Toronto streetcars, bids were offered more points for a 100% low floor design.
lemongrab said:
nd it's actually just really unclear what is being prioritized
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The aesthetic preferences of councillors who were around between 2010 and 2015. Which to be fair, if there weren't advocates then this project would never have been jumped started.

I think it was also:
At one point it was assumed (likely by consultants who never built nor ordered LRVs) that because high floor LRVs were becoming a niche product that the vehicles themselves would become more expensive over time, while low floor was standard, and prices would drop for off the self products. Add to that that low floor street level stations can cost 1/10th the amount as a high floor street level station, it seems that there were only upsides for Low Floor.

Of course, there was no life cycle maintenance analysis, no thought of longer or wider trainsets for the same capacity, no thought about service pattern differences.

It was imo: low floor is the way of the future. --> This line will be built in the future. --> This line will be low floor.
 
darwink said:
In the competition to replace the Toronto streetcars, bids were offered more points for a 100% low floor design.

The aesthetic preferences of councillors who were around between 2010 and 2015. Which to be fair, if there weren't advocates then this project would never have been jumped started.

I think it was also:
At one point it was assumed (likely by consultants who never built nor ordered LRVs) that because high floor LRVs were becoming a niche product that the vehicles themselves would become more expensive over time, while low floor was standard, and prices would drop for off the self products. Add to that that low floor street level stations can cost 1/10th the amount as a high floor street level station, it seems that there were only upsides for Low Floor.

Of course, there was no life cycle maintenance analysis, no thought of longer or wider trainsets for the same capacity, no thought about service pattern differences.

It was imo: low floor is the way of the future. --> This line will be built in the future. --> This line will be low floor.
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Toronto wanted 100% low floor, back when that was not very common. Bombardier basically custom designed a product for Toronto, then had a bunch of production issues with the fabrication facilities in Mexico. There's been far less issues with the Flexity Freedom (Waterloo/Edm/Crosstown). Definitely should order off the shelf.

I don't really understand what is the difference between a HFLRV vs a medium capacity metro. You can build metros with pantographs (most of Tokyo is pantograph, including subways), and have a driver if you have mixed-traffic design. Which kind of negates the cost/niche product issue. Low floor is great for reducing station cost, and is probably best for this project. In an ideal world though, we'd probably want the low floor Green Line to be street level and the Blue/Red line to be elevated/underground through downtown
 
lemongrab said:
IMO HFLRT is the optimal compromise for mid-size cities that may never have a metro, but want to strive for efficient transit operation with as much grade separation as possible (which these days should mean striving for automated) . Low floor can also make a ton of sense, but the key benefit/reasoning should be the ability to fit it into tighter spaces and build it cheaply - not it's [alleged] magical ability to transform the urban realm into a European utopia.

I don't think we have a great answer for why we are not prioritizing automation and total efficiency on a so-called transit project. And it's actually just really unclear what is being prioritized...the answer seems to be the ability to extend the line on both ends as cheaply and easily as possible...but we still have no idea if we're actually just going to slap tracks down on the outer lanes of Centre St between 16th and 64th or not. Beyond that, I think everything north of 64th N and south of 130 Ave SE is going to feel about the same as the blue line north of McKnight, because the inherent conditions are essentially the same.

I suppose my question is, how different would Westwinds, Martindale, and Saddletown stations really feel if they were designed with lower platforms? Or will we end up prioritizing a bunch of extra grade separation like we did west of Westbrook? Would that segment have been designed differently with LFLRT?
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High-Floor LRT is great if used in the right context. It's equivalent to a Dollar Store metro system.
 
Red Star said:
High-Floor LRT is great if used in the right context. It's equivalent to a Dollar Store metro system.
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Which is basically what we've achieved here, minus the 7 Ave stretch. I'll never understand the reluctance/outright opposition to using the GL as a catalyst to achieve that massive upgrade. Building half the 8 Ave subway was actually considered as a negative point FFS!
 
trtcttc said:
Low floor is great for reducing station cost, and is probably best for this project
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reducing the costs of certain types of stations. Whether 10 stations of savings is entirely negated by requiring a single larger underground station box, let alone 3 or 4, is what mattered for the purposes of technology choice for previous versions of the Greenline.
Red Star said:
High-Floor LRT is great if used in the right context. It's equivalent to a Dollar Store metro system.
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If high floor LRT is the dollar store metro, low floor LRT is the store trying to act like a farmers market. It doesn't know what it is, and is more expensive for aesthetic reasons.
 
darwink said:
If high floor LRT is the dollar store metro, low floor LRT is the store trying to act like a farmers market. It doesn't know what it is, and is more expensive for aesthetic reasons.
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I think there's definitely a place for Low-Floor LRT's in Calgary. Centre Street, 17th Ave and 16th Ave N would be ideal candidates for a low-floor system.

But putting a low-floor LRT in a subway/tunnel, elevating it and running it beside a heavy freight ROW kind of negates the advantages of a low-floor system. Then again, Ottawa uses a low-floor system and it seems to work fine.
 
Red Star said:
Ottawa uses a low-floor system and it seems to work fine.
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Ottawa's initial fault was a super weird one: culture. Local culture was that if the bus was closing its doors, sticking out a hand or arm into the door was an okay thing to do--the door would open, people would continue to load for a few more seconds, and you'd be on your way. The LRVs, if this happened 3 times in a row, the software would fault and require a multi-minute reboot.

Ottawa also went low floor when they thought in the far suburbs they were going to run urban style. Turned out to have not been thought through very much, and Ottawa's main line will end up being a light metro with low floor LRVs.

Eventually their system will get busy enough that they won't be able to meet demand with low floor LRVs, and they will need to build something like a 70-80% low floor metro vehicle. Won't be an issue cost wise as the order will be large enough, it will just be super weird.
 
darwink said:
reducing the costs of certain types of stations. Whether 10 stations of savings is entirely negated by requiring a single larger underground station box, let alone 3 or 4, is what mattered for the purposes of technology choice for previous versions of the Greenline.
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I would think that the cheaper station thing is most true when you're actually running the line down a road and effectively upgrading sidewalks into stations. The entire SE leg will be brand new stand-alone stations. Savings have to be pretty marginal when it boils down to a little less landscaping & cement, and no ramps/guardrails. Maybe a few other details I'm missing?

In the north, it could be as few as 3-4 'euro-style' sidewalk stations between 28th-64th Aves. Of course they could do more of them like that...or they could end up prioritizing grade separation anyways as has happened with most everything else we've built recently.
 
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