Ian says:
Oh no! There’s no way the Arbutus Corridor could ever fit a tram, and bikes, and pedestrians … (cough, cough, bulls##t).
I’m in the Netherlands (and a little bit Belgium and France) for 2 weeks … So of course there’s great proof of all kinds of things working side by side that people back in Van would say would be impossible. Here’s just one example.
This happens all over the world wherever cars are not given first dibs on everything.
Honest, don’t get too romantic about a tram running through the present space. The Arbutus corridor space is tight to include a tram, without bothering certain areas with residential buildings.. For those who have lived in Toronto for several decades with streetcars, cycling near tracks (I’ve known experienced cyclists falling cross streetcar tracks.) and errant pedestrian crossing (yea….streetcars also cannot stop on a dime for errant pedestrians).
Hey, there are several fatalities in Calgary annually for our at surface LRT trains. We have only 1 underground station (yup, for more than 20 stations). Drivers and pedestrians try to dash across…..
Arbus corridor for cycling and pedestrians provides a nice balance between transportation and natural realm.
The residential units and stores adjacent to this tram don’t seem to mind the tram … most of my trip in this morning, the tram is on a grassy median in the middle of a street, with plenty of space for a bike path beside it.
The trams do a little ‘dingaling’ when there is someone in the path, and actually can stop on only a couple dimes, also, the tracks are significantly lower profile than the Toronto ones, and you can bike over them with much less/zero fear (one of the reasons most bikes here have slightly wider tires – 1.25-1.5 inches is common).
Arbutus corrodor for cycling and pedestrians and transit provides a nice balance between transportation and the natural realm too.
(the thing is, just don’t design it like crap … most trams in north america are designed badly, just like most bike paths, and most streets. Seriously, there are plenty of models to copy, if only designers/engineers would/could do so!)
If there was separation between a rolling tram and bike/ped path. Ask yourself, how do you ensure children will not wander away….no parent is perfect on this in terms of vigilance/supervision.
VAncovuer has a choice…to do it even better and safer, than the European cities who can’t tear down buildings to widen a transportation corridor.
Just ask Calgary Transit for their statistics on fatalities.
of course, children walk along the street in the above picture, too. I do think this danger is a little overblown, largely because for people in North America it’s a big unknown. For those who are used to it, it’s just normal.
Do you really believe European don’t care about the safety of street users?
The picture is showing a shared space, and it has proven time and time to be much safer than alternative arrangement involving well delimited space: It is complicate to explain why (like the helmet law: it could look counter intuitive, but nannying people is simply not the right thing to do).
Virtually, any European LRTs adopt at some point such arrangements which don’t bother cyclist either
https://voony.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bordeaux_sq_2.jpg
In fact when it comes to LRT, before becoming too much arrogant by pretending we can do better than those Europeans, we should start to have an explanation on why we are not even coming close to European LRT safety record (look at the injury colum for LRT France compared to US):
https://voony.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/usa-france-fatality-comparison.png
I am pretty sure that both example shown (Bordeaux in my post, and Amsterdam above) have better safety record than the Calgary LRT, and for that matter any North American LRT.
Also, European don’t adopt such arrangement because they like to ride slow train (that is a thinking reserved to the American streetcar movement which got no traction in Europe): they do it because it is usually the best compromise (like it could be on Robson square, if we value Transit like most European cities do).
All that said, it doesn’t speak of the relevance of a LRT on Arbutus: I will defer to Richard and Rico on that.
In the Hague in the Netherlands trams go through narrow grass areas and stop for bunny rabbits hopping through.
In Amsterdam, I saw a drunken person purposely lie down in front of a moving tram at the last minute. The tram stopped on a dime.
I hope we can go through a well thought out public process to understand how all uses can be accommodated on the Arbutus corridor and see if there is a compromise to accommodate 21st century transit and active transportation in concert.
Yes, but it would not work well for any mode. The team service would be very slow. Then why not put the streetcars on the street, Arbutus.
Spending tens of millions on a very slow team is not a good use of money.
That is tram, not team. Dim yew Otto Carrat.
Or a team of horses. Could be cheaper and safer than a tram.
Trips on Arbutus are likely to be dominated by medium to long trips….so exclusive right of way and reasonable stop spacing are a must. In North American terms it should be LRT not streetcar. That means it will be reasonably fast and will take a while to stop but this is not a major problem LRT type services exist beside pedestrian and bike infrastructure all over the world.
I dunno – this is North America not Europe.
We place value on utility and speed above dysfunctional cobblestone aesthetics and airy urban fantasies like streetcars + bunnies. We ride the train to speedily get places to make money and buy kick-ass stuff like X-boxes and trampolines. If it’s slow or tedious or bothersome, we drive. We’re a little less receptive to guilt mongering, or the feckless social engineering planners have planned for us.
I’m not so sure about that one. We’ve certainly allowed ourselves to be socially engineered into motordom. That certainly didn’t happen all by its lonesome.
Are you trying to prove we’re inferior beings in NA? To what end?
Opposite: I’m trying to say we are superior beings in NA. Although this unfortunate and pernicious fascination with streetcars seems to have been imported from the old world.
I don’t think we North Americans have much to learn from Europe, the decaying, fraying, ineffectual continent.
Re speed, suggest you look at 1950’s videos on the Arbutus line, the Burnaby Central and the New Westminster tram lines-the trams were faster than any bus could be as on their right of way and I do not recall hearing about friends being killed on the right of ways. By cars, yes. In the UK and even in the US, they separate bike/walking paths from some active rail lines by fences. The Arbutus right of way is big enough to separate the traffic. Suggest you also look at videos of light rail in Budapest. Traffic -cars, pedestrians, bikes and light rail all manage to deal with it.
It all depends on the design of the LRT system.
Streetcars travel much, much slower than “modern” LRT.
Here’s a video of Seattle Link LRT travelling at-grade through a non-armed crossing at 45 mph:
https://youtu.be/y6jomb-uk48
Ooops – there are crossing arms at that crossing (just not fully across).
Why don’t we show the light controlled intersections along the 17, SFPR – oh yellow light and the traffic barrels through – oh red light, that damn truck blew right through it.
A tram/road intersection is no different than a road/road intersection, except they are about ten times safer.
Trams always have and still are extremely safe in operation. The “life-saver” has been and still is a device used on trams for over a century and it is extremely difficult to get run over by a tram, unless it is on purpose. As for Calgary, more people are killed by SkyTrain, than by the C-Train on an annual basis.
And you are still callously quoting that old chestnut by failing to eliminate unavoidable suicides from to your stats. Calgary’s LRT killed nearly two dozen people in the 90s at level crossings, and that’s after the suicide count was eliminated along with maintenance and platform-related accidents.
Preventable accidental deaths at crossings on the SkyTrain system: zero. Why? There are no crossings.
In all considerations, public transit in all its forms is a lot safer than Autotopia. I’ve said it recently here before: Canada kills as many people on its roads every five days as those who were murdered recently in the Brussels attacks. Transit is not even on the same page in terms of statistics, though the poor planning & design and cheap implementation of Calgary’s early C-Train line leaves a bad impression to those who did lose relatives at crossings. The main culprit in Calgary is attempting making the system a fast, regional service with slower, local design. It is no surprise that the new West Leg is grade-separated.
I have always found there is much confusion between fast and slow, regional and local transit. It’s clear to me Arbutus is local and slower, but could achieve some speed on the straightest stretches between crossings.
Remind me, please, what is the demographic and what are the destinations imagined by anyone proposing a rail transport system down the old Arbutus track. Is it a scenic cruise to the lovely Kerrisdale neighbourhood? Are the denizens around western Fairview bopping over to Kerrisdale to some shopping on 41st? Is it for those lucky residents along the Boulevard making their way to the airport for pleasure trips to Maui?
I thought that transit is provided where people live in dense numbers. This does not appear to me to be other than very wealthy suburbs. Is this just another substantial expenditure in a wealthy neighbourhood, just like closing the Point Grey road?
Actually, there is far more density along the Arbutus than Cambie St.
The real issue is that we are not designing our transit system properly and continue to build with the light metro model, made obsolete by light rail decades ago.
The Broadway subway, with traffic flows less than 5,000 pphpd is about one third needed for a subway and can easily be handles by a tramway. Again, the trick is to build it right, which we do not do. A Broadway subway will greatly increase transit costs and will not take cars off the road.
Transit is so built to move people efficiently, with a customer friendly transit system and currently we are not doing that.
As Arbutus ($55m for the route) was designed as a twin track affair, relaying track ($6m/km to $7m/km) and adding OHE ($1m/km) adding modern trams at $5m per copy, would be much cheaper than increasing capacity on the already at Capacity Canada Line, estimated at $1billion+.
Now extend the Arbutus line across the Granville Bridge (designed to accommodate streetcars) and into the downtown we go.
At the other end, extend it to new Westminster via the old interurban Line and viola, you now service the populated South Fraser Slopes.
Can be done, much cheaper than extending the obsolete SkyTrain light-metro.
The real problem of course we are stuck with dated engineers, planners and single minded lobby groups like the cycling fraternity.
In Metro Vancouver, transit is built to move money, not people, change that and our congestion ills will be somewhat less.
And viola… mention LRT and Zwei appears denouncing the Skytrain.
How has it been obsolete for decades when fully automated trains weren’t around until the 80s? Are you lumping skytrain in the rubber tyred vehicles?
There are a few pesky little details you forgot: Frequency, time of operations (you included hours of closure), and land use.
By your selective narrative, all five new subway lines in LA should not have been built. Four have a fraction of Broadway’s existing bus service ridership levels, and the Red Line is nearly equivalent to Broadway. Of course the system is in its infancy, as are these ridership numbers, but why let long-term planning get in the way of making a biased point?
You can quote the largely surface Francilien stats if you want, but that will always be in the context of providing secondary service to the 14 primary Paris Metro lines with over 425 million passengers a day, and three RER lines. In fact lines 4, 12 and 14 are being extended and are expected to be open in 2019. This is where surface and underground rail service dovetail well, each with specific geographical characteristics.
Also by your ridership metric at least two of the Paris Metro lines and one London Underground tube should never have been built. Note that Paris Line 1 ‘went SkyTrain’ (oh those nasty SkyTrain Lobbyists!) with automatic train control, as is planned for Line 8. Ditto the Underground and Toronto Subway where ATC is expected to accommodate major increases in ridership through frequency efficiencies.
Regarding Arbutus vs Cambie, you forgot about Central Broadway which the Canada Line (Cambie) and eventually the Broadway Subway serves, most importantly accommodating thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of patient and visitor trips a year. In case you haven’t noticed, Cambie is densifying rapidly over its entire length.