Victoria City Council Backs Light Rail
Unlike Vancouver City Council, Victoria City Council is not afraid to say the word Light Rail. In Europe, modern trams have proven affordable to operate in smaller towns and cities, while at the same time bringing the benefits of modern public transit that has made the mode so successful.
A TramTrain service, using the E&N route could connect directly to the proposed LRT lines, providing even greater benefits for those wishing for an alternative way to commute or travel to the downtown.
Having BC Transit doing the planning is worrisome though, as BC Transit has been hostile to LRT in the past and with their anti-light rail cousins on the other side of the pond (TransLink) to advise them bode ill for honest planning.
Rail for the Valley suggests hiring an independant consultant with up to date knowledge on modern LRT and TramTrain to do proper transit planning and just leave the construction of LRT up to BC Transit. Dare we suggest Leewood Projects in the UK as a contender for such a task…………………..
I think it is worth noting that if peploe think bunching with streetcars is bad now, replacing those streetcars with buses would make bunching worse. Just look at Dufferin, the most aggressive bus route within the broader downtown area, and has obscene bunching problems.Bunching buses would cause just as much, if not more, traffic havoc than the streetcars, because more often than not, there is on-street parking a certain distance behind a near-side stop, and that would result in buses queuing up in the only through-lane as they are required to pull up to the sidewalk (although you see this rule broken on occasion in particularly awkward situations). Passenger circulation in buses is also poorer than on streetcars due to wheel wells in the front and steps at the back on the newer models that now make up most of the fleet.As such, I seriously doubt that traffic flow would improve, especially when you consider the inevitable ridership drop that will accompany the replacement of streetcars with buses. If that ridership drop leads to more cars on the road, then congestion will certainly rise, and everybody will be moving that much slower.