5 light rail projects to watch this year
Posted by Cardinal Fang on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 · 7 Comments
Which light rail Ai??projects should we be watching this year? Here are just 5 of the many projects developing around the world.
They are at different stages and may have different reasons you should keep an eye on them, for example, to find out who will land major contracts or what will happen when it comes to construction and land development.
Total Rail – Investment & Development in Rail for operators, investors & developers
Very interesting concept but, my one complaint would be too much reliance on European projects, too many apples to oranges operating conditions compared to ours but, informative none the less. I would be interested to see what say, everyone’s top 3 most notable N. American LRT projects were and why.
Top most notable 3 North American LRT projects.
1) Portland – the template of a LRT system that grows and grows.
2) Calgary – Defies North American LRT systems by carrying the most people. Costing less than half per km. to build than the Vancouver Expo Line, yet has carried more people.
3) San Diego – The little train that could. Built cheaply, yet was able to carry well over 650,000 passengers in three days during the 2003 Super Bowl.
They are all proposed or under construction lines.
Full marks for observation exactly what the article says Rico
Cardinal
Transit in Vancouver is a farcical sham. We have a clueless or corrupt mayor who somehow believes that the subway to UBC is of “national significance” and deserves funding from the federal government, to keep 500 useless staff eating caviar at TransLink, employed.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+mayor+wants+subway+line+considered+national/9555121/story.html
Mayor Robertson of Vancouver doesn’t mind the diesel buses spewing out 5,000,000 kg/yr of CO2 on Broadway which is a trolleybus route designated for non-CO2 emitting electric trolleybuses. Is this guy daft? How can he claim to be Green when he won’t stick up to TransLink to have the diesel buses removed?
He’s a disgrace and an embarrassment. Harper doesn’t give a crap what this loon wants, and Harper is as far right when it comes to being frugal for transit as loony bird Robertson is left when it comes to spending foolishly on sky trains. Hopefully Robertson gets his butt kicked along with his side kick Geoff Meggs from disgruntled drivers, who don’t think too much of the bike lanes taking road space away from them, in the November election.
My first of three is the planned Hurontario Line in Peel Region just west of the city of Toronto (Peel Region Population : 1,300,000, contains Mississauga, Brampton and Cameron Township)
Currently the line is the assessment stage of Transit Project Assessment Plan of the Ontario Environmental Assessment Act. A approve, disapprove or more study decision is expected in August. The line will run 23 km all on street mostly in the centre on Hurontario Street (in Mississauga) and Main Street (in Brampton). This road use to be known as Hwy # 10 (pre Harris download). The right of way runs from lake Ontario at Port Credit ( Mississauga) north to Downtown Brampton. Currently the line is both Miway ‘s (Marketing name for Mississauga Transit) and Brampton Transit’s busiest routes. Transit is not a regional service in Peel, unlike the police (Peel Regional Police) so, the 3 communities have separate systems all inter lined with each other and of course GO Transit as well. Hurontario Street has both regular and express routes from both cities. One of them is a BRT Lite systems similar to your B LINE service. Brampton has initiated the third ZUM (pronounced like zoom) Route Main Street which runs from Downtown Brampton to Mississauga City Centre. The explosive growth in Mississauga city Centre has actually made it look like a real downtown and with tall ironic buildings to match. This has made this heavy transit route slower and slower, making it one of the busiest roads in Southern Ontario, period. The LRT Line was chosen because it was the only way to service this route without having to keep adding buses and more buses to the corridor and contribute to more of the heavy traffic and further degrade the air quality.
The line will be 23 km in length all on surface with some deviations from Hurontario Street at Mississauga city Centre and downtown Brampton’ transit terminal. There will be 28 stops and it is expected to take 47 minutes to travel end to end. Some stops will be as little as 300 metres apart others 1.4 km, average distance is 850 metres. The vehicles are expected to be the same 30 metre Bombardier Flexity Models used for the Toronto LRT Lines and the Ion Line in KW. They will run in 3 car trains with 90 metre long surface platforms similar to the surface running sections of the Eglinton Ave Crosstown LRT Line. The cost is projected to be 1.3-1.6 billion.
The current transit use is :
45700 passenger trips daily ( 2500-3000 pphpd at peak) . The traffic loads on this right of way make Broadway look like a garden party and its growing at 7% a year. So rapid transit is desperately needed here before the buses are stopped completely by traffic. During peak there are up to 26 buses an hour (includes both transit services) on 4 separate routes. Weekend transit use is also heavy as well as the car traffic. The road varies from 5 to 7 lanes depending on location.
Interesting things about this line.
1. This is the first heavily traveled GTA route that is going to have LRT which, does not have anything to do with a travel route into and out of the city of Toronto. Its treatment is a clear indication of how weserious Ontario ‘s government is about LRT.
2. Who is going to run this thing? Mississauga, Brampton or GO Transit?
3. It is rumored to be a possible P3, how is thing going to be structured?
Minor point I forgot about the Hurontario Line, its great length ties together 4 east-west super highways, 3 east-west GO Train Lines, 2 growing, one of them exploding really, downtowns and 1 under construction full east-west busway, similar to Ottawa’s Transitway. The choice of LRT was controversial on the corridor but, the head of Miway (Mississauga Transit) was shocked at the steadily growing number of buses that are becoming needed to move people on the Mississauga Busway Project and the ever increasing cost to move more people by bus.
Sorry auto correct strikes again. Peel Region is made up of the City of Mississauga, The City of Brampton and Caledon Township. Downtown Mississauga has tall iconic buildings not ironic ones.
Dallas ‘s LRT System is my second choice just because of the matter of fact business like attitude they have put into what is now by far the largest LRT System in North America. When the Orange Line finishes its extension to Dallas – Ft. Worth Airport in late 2015, early 2016, the system will have more than 100 miles (not kilometres) of track. All of it on its own right of way. The huge horizontal growth of the system hides the only major hindrance in the system it’s vertical growth or service frequency. All four of their lines share the same downtown section which after 2016 will be at capacity. Their answer, were going to build a high capacity tunnel section downtown, similar to Calgary’s plan for 8th Ave. What has been amazing is the lack of hand wringing among the community representatives. Considering how car centric the Dallas Ft. Worth area is I’m stunned at the level of support they do get. Yet they have spent less than 4 billion (US) on this system. Finally it seems the outward growth is slowing with only extensions to existing lines after the tunnel section downtown is built. Now it seems major investment in Regional Commuter Rail has started with 2 new lines opening in Ft. Worth and Suburban Dallas as well as long existing one already in operation and 4 more planned to open by 2024.
The original LRV S for the system were one of the last all high floor units ordered in the US before the full force of the Americans with Disabilities Act came into effect. The prudence of the people who ran the system meant that they ordered more vehicles than needed for the first line. This was done to save money and delay the need for future orders. This prudence hurt when the federal government as well as the state gave into political pressure and threaten the loss of much funding if they system did not make these vehicles more friendly to the disabled. They always had ramps for wheelchairs already at their stations so the disabled could enter the high floor vehicles but, the interior arrangement made access difficult. Instead of ordering new vehicles like the disability advocates wanted and possibly forcing the postponement of major line extensions to pay for them. As well as being forced to sell at a loss perfectly serviceable trains. They got their car builder Kinki – Sharyo of Japan to build a much cheaper centre low floor centre section and insert it in between the two existing sections separated by a single articulation joint. What they now have is a double articulated vehicle with a low floor centre section all at the cost of only 12 new Lrv’s, that now carry more people than the original cars. Considering the modest amount of what they have spent and the truly hostile anti transit political environment in Texas what they have created is amazing. Especially when you consider that, the first line only opened in 1994!