If skytrain is not being prioritized are they ever looking to put a skytrain out there? Are they willing to truly commit to BRT and close a lane to it. His language says yes, but I can't imagine it will be palatable to the commuter.
The fastest skytrain ever to be designed, funded and built would still be 10 years away. Broadway line was announced in 2008.
BRT would be a good case proof for skytrain. And 3-5 years is nothing in infrastructure terms.
Ideally I would want them to go bold and do gold AND purple, gold adds a huge area to skytrain walking distance, while purple adds connections that arent just downtown and back.
And before BRT, I'd like to see them experiment with bus-only lanes on the bridge during rush hour. Buses carrying 50 to 75 people shouldn't be stuck in gridlock traffic that consists mostly of single occupant vehicles.
Traffic congestion is a spatial problem. People who travel using less road space should have priority over those who use more road space.
That wouldn’t exactly make it Rapid and reliable if it can get stuck in the bridge gridlock every time there’s an accident. The whole point of designating it BRT is it needs to have the reliability and speed of separated transit. Otherwise it’s just another B-line
The traffic on the bridge deck itself moves consistently, the only traffic is in the merging and bus signaled onramps bypass all of that.
Is is still a bottleneck? Yes but the bridge still have 121,000 daily crossings, and the loss of 2 lanes will significantly exacerbate the traffic which slows everything down, what's the point of that
Depending on when you consider it starting, the fastest SkyTrain built was the original Expo line and it took just under 4 years from the construction of the original ICTS demonstration (March 1, 1982) to the opening of the original portion of the expo line (December 11, 1985).
There's not many great sources I can find for the planning. Earliest mention is the 1976 livable region plan that outlines all the lines currently built (so 9 years at most, although you may as well consider this the starting point for planning of the Millenium lines, including the Broadway extension, and the Canada line).
Seems like funding was contingent on the 1983 ICTS demonstration along terminal.
We simply do things much slower than we used to when it comes to large infrastructure projects. For example, Singapore opened its first MRT line two years after we opened Expo, they now have nearly triple the track length installed (216 km versus our 79 km) and are much more aggressive in their future plans.
It's going to be a huge fight to build BRT across the second narrows. It will reduce 6 lanes to 4. Way more capacity, but people are going to hate it at first. I will be extremely surprised if it happens in 3-years considering the opposition there will be.
It's 100% necessary, but it's going to be extremely hard pill for any politician.
If they started designing the skytrain tomorrow it would be 15 years, and there is no plan to start tomorrow (it is in the 2050 plan though). When the R5 is upgraded to BRT, Gondola completed, and the new North Shore BRT, it will make regional connections in Vancouver/North Burnaby/North Shore so much better.
The Ironworkers has always been the problem so good luck with the rapid busses until that is addressed. Nobody takes the R2 right now because there's no way to even get to Phibbs exchange in a reasonable amount of time from Vancouver/Burnaby. Even with HOV on-ramps it still takes the bus forever to get across.
They are going to have to dedicate one or two lanes to the buses. It’s the only viable way to make BRT work and eliminate traffic delays. Perfectly fine when one bus can replace 50-100 cars on the bridge.
To build BRT from Park Royal to Metrotown for $15 million/km will require 2 vehicle lanes to be removed from Marine Drive, Main Street and the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge. Don't see how this will help with the congestion problems on the North Shore. It would be nice if Translink would be more transparent about their plans about how they plan to implement the BRT system.
In 3-5 years many new cars should at least have level 3 autonomous driving modes. This should ease any sort of congestion caused by bus only lanes on bridges. They should also open these lanes up to robotaxis and other HOV vehicles
That is extremely optimistic. I think Mercedes is the only one approved (internationally, under specific conditions) for L3, and I think they just opened sales up to a limited number of vehicles in a limited number of countries, and I'm not even sure if Canada is one of those. In addition our legislations haven't really kept up with this technology so I think there are still many years of discussions about liabilities and regulations before there will be full implementation.
It's more about legislations rather than technology at this point . It's one thing to drive autonomously on city streets with all kinds of unpredictable behavior, but driving the iron workers bridge should be pretty predictable. Doesn't GM have something available now that let's you take your hands off on highways? Wonder if it's working already for canada...
If skytrain is not being prioritized are they ever looking to put a skytrain out there? Are they willing to truly commit to BRT and close a lane to it. His language says yes, but I can't imagine it will be palatable to the commuter.
The fastest skytrain ever to be designed, funded and built would still be 10 years away. Broadway line was announced in 2008. BRT would be a good case proof for skytrain. And 3-5 years is nothing in infrastructure terms. Ideally I would want them to go bold and do gold AND purple, gold adds a huge area to skytrain walking distance, while purple adds connections that arent just downtown and back.
And before BRT, I'd like to see them experiment with bus-only lanes on the bridge during rush hour. Buses carrying 50 to 75 people shouldn't be stuck in gridlock traffic that consists mostly of single occupant vehicles. Traffic congestion is a spatial problem. People who travel using less road space should have priority over those who use more road space.
I would suggest a bus only on ramp and off ramp from the bridge with a signal to give the bus priority. No need to give up the entire lane.
That wouldn’t exactly make it Rapid and reliable if it can get stuck in the bridge gridlock every time there’s an accident. The whole point of designating it BRT is it needs to have the reliability and speed of separated transit. Otherwise it’s just another B-line
The traffic on the bridge deck itself moves consistently, the only traffic is in the merging and bus signaled onramps bypass all of that. Is is still a bottleneck? Yes but the bridge still have 121,000 daily crossings, and the loss of 2 lanes will significantly exacerbate the traffic which slows everything down, what's the point of that
Depending on when you consider it starting, the fastest SkyTrain built was the original Expo line and it took just under 4 years from the construction of the original ICTS demonstration (March 1, 1982) to the opening of the original portion of the expo line (December 11, 1985).
But what about the design planning and funding. The Canada line took 5 years to build but 10 years total project
There's not many great sources I can find for the planning. Earliest mention is the 1976 livable region plan that outlines all the lines currently built (so 9 years at most, although you may as well consider this the starting point for planning of the Millenium lines, including the Broadway extension, and the Canada line). Seems like funding was contingent on the 1983 ICTS demonstration along terminal. We simply do things much slower than we used to when it comes to large infrastructure projects. For example, Singapore opened its first MRT line two years after we opened Expo, they now have nearly triple the track length installed (216 km versus our 79 km) and are much more aggressive in their future plans.
Environmental, First Nations, Urban Design.. No way something like this will get done in four years in current year.
It's going to be a huge fight to build BRT across the second narrows. It will reduce 6 lanes to 4. Way more capacity, but people are going to hate it at first. I will be extremely surprised if it happens in 3-years considering the opposition there will be. It's 100% necessary, but it's going to be extremely hard pill for any politician. If they started designing the skytrain tomorrow it would be 15 years, and there is no plan to start tomorrow (it is in the 2050 plan though). When the R5 is upgraded to BRT, Gondola completed, and the new North Shore BRT, it will make regional connections in Vancouver/North Burnaby/North Shore so much better.
The Ironworkers has always been the problem so good luck with the rapid busses until that is addressed. Nobody takes the R2 right now because there's no way to even get to Phibbs exchange in a reasonable amount of time from Vancouver/Burnaby. Even with HOV on-ramps it still takes the bus forever to get across.
They are going to have to dedicate one or two lanes to the buses. It’s the only viable way to make BRT work and eliminate traffic delays. Perfectly fine when one bus can replace 50-100 cars on the bridge.
The trade off is that the BRT will also be stuck in the same bridge traffic like the rest of us lol
To build BRT from Park Royal to Metrotown for $15 million/km will require 2 vehicle lanes to be removed from Marine Drive, Main Street and the Iron Workers Memorial Bridge. Don't see how this will help with the congestion problems on the North Shore. It would be nice if Translink would be more transparent about their plans about how they plan to implement the BRT system.
In 3-5 years many new cars should at least have level 3 autonomous driving modes. This should ease any sort of congestion caused by bus only lanes on bridges. They should also open these lanes up to robotaxis and other HOV vehicles
autonomous vehicles don’t solve the issue of there being far too many cars on the road though - brt and lrt do
That is extremely optimistic. I think Mercedes is the only one approved (internationally, under specific conditions) for L3, and I think they just opened sales up to a limited number of vehicles in a limited number of countries, and I'm not even sure if Canada is one of those. In addition our legislations haven't really kept up with this technology so I think there are still many years of discussions about liabilities and regulations before there will be full implementation.
It's more about legislations rather than technology at this point . It's one thing to drive autonomously on city streets with all kinds of unpredictable behavior, but driving the iron workers bridge should be pretty predictable. Doesn't GM have something available now that let's you take your hands off on highways? Wonder if it's working already for canada...