I never actually went downtown during the Olympics… didn’t even know we had an LRT until “About Here” did a video on it on YouTube. I have since seen some of the old track and platform…
Somehow missed it
It was only for show. Lots of world leaders in Vancouver at the time.
Like how we had a Maglev train with a short section of track in Vancouver for a brief time.
Photo of it in Brussels where it ended up after the Olympics
https://www.alamy.com/traffic-on-rue-royale-in-brussels-belgium-image398772965.html?imageid=EB6DFF20-A6CF-415B-85D7-92DE63031386&p=197831&pn=1&searchId=0f84b5f1177fb9a848ccd9bf0612aa6c&searchtype=0
More info about its operation in Vancouver
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity_Outlook
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity
I can't find any complaints about them anywhere online. Brussels ended up purchasing 90 of them.
The Surrey LRT vs SkyTrain was a major part of the election that saw McCallum becoming mayor. TransLink made a number of studies on it that examined costs and benefits compared to SkyTrain and BRT. Ultimately LRT would've cost too much for too little gain - either pay a bit more for much better SkyTrain service or pay much less for only a bit worse service with BRT (I note how the R1 bus, even without dedicated infrastructure, can bring you between Surrey Central and Guildford in less than 10 min on a good day, which even LRT would have difficulty meeting).
Street level trains are a TERRIBLE idea. They have to stop for traffic lights. Cross walks. Car accidents. Idiots who step in front of the train and get hit by it. Because of street congestion and the slow down in certain spots (like downtown) you could only run trains every 20 minutes or so. Skytrain currently runs every 6 minutes or so. The trains have to be shorter for surface level as well.
The skytrain is an amazing above surface option. Subways below ground are also good options.
I came from a city that had surface level trains and it took forever to get from one side of the city to the other because of traffic lights and street congestion and too many people stepping in front of a train and shutting the whole thing down. It is far better to invest in subways or skytrain systems.
Exactly. Underground or elevated, otherwise it's just a bus on rails.
I'm convinced these posts are made by LRT companies from Ontario wanting to expand their businesses West
> Idiots who step in front of the train and get hit by it.
The 2 or more delays a month due to a medical emergency with Skytrain are due to people stepping in front of the train.
The problem with Skytrain is they have to denergize the tracks for first responders to respond. And how do you remove a person that may still be alive from under a skytrain when you can't just lift it off the person like you could at ground level? At ground level a simple tow truck can deal with many situations, even a train that isn't running can be towed by a tow truck. Over the course of 25 years many times I have been stuck going home because a skytrain is unresponsive and wouldn't even move manually. Last time it happened before my shift ended at 5, I wasn't home until well after 7. At ground level they could have towed the SOB to a side rail in less than a half hour.
I went to the UK, greater London area. You went everywhere and did everything by ground level rail. It was a dream. And they move WAY more people in a day than we do in a month.
As for your other issues like stopping for lights? Nah... the trains are timed so for places like King George, north and south bound trains approach the intersection at the same time and the lights change to accomodate them. They do not need to stop.
As cool tech as Skytrain running off of 3.5 inch floppy drives is, it is 1970's tech designed for medium density cities. That is why Toronto abandond the tech in the 1990's and didn't expand their system. That is why no other city in the world is expanding their system.
It’s typically hard to compare European trains to North American trains because their cities weren’t built for cars in the first place. I don’t recall street level trains on city streets in London. The overground is grade separated and not sharing the road with cars. London also has huge car fees for driving in the city to cut down on car traffic.
If you look at LRT situations in North America, they are all sub par compared to subway or grade separated trains like a skytrain. This is because streets built for cars aren’t designed for rapid train travel. Even if lights are timed, the train can’t go as fast on a street for safety reasons. You still have to account for people driving in front of a train, turning across train tracks, navigating shared roads with bicycles, pedestrians…
If you want something to move people quickly and be able to adapt to breakdowns or people getting hit, you do rapid buses with dedicated lanes. They can drive around a stalled bus, whereas a train still has to wait for the other train to be taken away.
They don’t have a line called the underground. They have the tube (underground) and some lines that are overground, but they are not on streets, they are more like a regular train or grade separated - like in downtown Chicago.
They should discourage that by electrifying the rails, instead of the overhead powerlines, like they once did with early streetcars.
Actually, I'm just kidding.
The big reasons as to why we aren’t using them along Fraser Hwy is because if there are car accidents on the tracks and/or car accidents with the trains themselves, then it’ll essentially shut down the tracks until the debris is cleared.
And overall it just doesn’t improve travel time well enough vs. buses, since they’ll have to stop at traffic lights.
There may have been safety issues as well regarding whether platforms would have been on the medians.
How is that any different than what we have now? All it takes is a stalled train, faulty switch, medical emergency, police incident, or even a track intrusion, and the whole system is backed up for hours, while overcrowded shuttle buses scurry to get everyone from station to station.
You would still have everything you listed above with an LRT infrastructure, plus the additional inconveniences caused by car accidents on the tracks, or by having a car crash into one of the LRT trains itself.
The LRT would not have stopped at lights. It would have had signal priority meaning the cars at the intersections would be forced to stop.
It would be like with any other train system. Through the magic of technology, the lights would change to red for all other traffic well before the LRT arrived at any intersection.
Nor would there have been any safety issues from the placement of the stops. The tracks were to be separated from other traffic.
EDIT: This article contains renderings of the project, including the separated tracks and stops.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3545483/translink-reveals-new-images-of-surrey-lrt/amp/
Depends where you live I guess. For me and my neighbours it will be directly behind our homes. Very loud and obtrusive. Also will be for all the future residents along this line. Just saying.
I didn't even realize this was a thing. The only LRT trains I remember was the prototype they had set up (at the time I saw it, it was in the Newton Superstore parking lot) around Surrey. I'm kinda bummed I never got to ride this thing.
I never rode it. But I was a passenger in a car that turned onto Moberly right in front of it one time, because the city was too cheap to put up proper crossing signals and relied on a single lit up no-right-turn arrow.
The version of these running through Istanbul works fine however.
I never actually went downtown during the Olympics… didn’t even know we had an LRT until “About Here” did a video on it on YouTube. I have since seen some of the old track and platform… Somehow missed it
Oof. U missed out on an awesome experience.
Yup. Was dumb to miss out on for sure.
I rode it a few times since I went to Granville Island often at the time
Why did it go away?
No one (i.e. the city of Vancouver, the province, translink) wanted to pay for it
It was only for show. Lots of world leaders in Vancouver at the time. Like how we had a Maglev train with a short section of track in Vancouver for a brief time.
Maglev in Vancouver is news to me…
Expo 86. And... MONORAIL! 😂
The monorail still exists and is in use by another city.
Where did it go?
Around False Creek Expo 86 lands.If I recall there was even a gondola... but I may be misremembering.
I definitely remember the gondola. I rode that bad boy a lot!
https://www.highspeedrailcanada.com/2018/05/when-canada-had-magnetic-levitation.html?m=1
You can always count on the politicians short sightedness. The poor long term planning for the Canada line also comes to mine.
There were some issues in Toronto but overall they were built well. Surrey would've probably used similar models.
The major Petro companies don't want us to have these trains competing with cars.
Photo of it in Brussels where it ended up after the Olympics https://www.alamy.com/traffic-on-rue-royale-in-brussels-belgium-image398772965.html?imageid=EB6DFF20-A6CF-415B-85D7-92DE63031386&p=197831&pn=1&searchId=0f84b5f1177fb9a848ccd9bf0612aa6c&searchtype=0 More info about its operation in Vancouver https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity_Outlook https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexity I can't find any complaints about them anywhere online. Brussels ended up purchasing 90 of them.
The Surrey LRT vs SkyTrain was a major part of the election that saw McCallum becoming mayor. TransLink made a number of studies on it that examined costs and benefits compared to SkyTrain and BRT. Ultimately LRT would've cost too much for too little gain - either pay a bit more for much better SkyTrain service or pay much less for only a bit worse service with BRT (I note how the R1 bus, even without dedicated infrastructure, can bring you between Surrey Central and Guildford in less than 10 min on a good day, which even LRT would have difficulty meeting).
Street level trains are a TERRIBLE idea. They have to stop for traffic lights. Cross walks. Car accidents. Idiots who step in front of the train and get hit by it. Because of street congestion and the slow down in certain spots (like downtown) you could only run trains every 20 minutes or so. Skytrain currently runs every 6 minutes or so. The trains have to be shorter for surface level as well. The skytrain is an amazing above surface option. Subways below ground are also good options. I came from a city that had surface level trains and it took forever to get from one side of the city to the other because of traffic lights and street congestion and too many people stepping in front of a train and shutting the whole thing down. It is far better to invest in subways or skytrain systems.
Exactly. Underground or elevated, otherwise it's just a bus on rails. I'm convinced these posts are made by LRT companies from Ontario wanting to expand their businesses West
> Idiots who step in front of the train and get hit by it. The 2 or more delays a month due to a medical emergency with Skytrain are due to people stepping in front of the train. The problem with Skytrain is they have to denergize the tracks for first responders to respond. And how do you remove a person that may still be alive from under a skytrain when you can't just lift it off the person like you could at ground level? At ground level a simple tow truck can deal with many situations, even a train that isn't running can be towed by a tow truck. Over the course of 25 years many times I have been stuck going home because a skytrain is unresponsive and wouldn't even move manually. Last time it happened before my shift ended at 5, I wasn't home until well after 7. At ground level they could have towed the SOB to a side rail in less than a half hour. I went to the UK, greater London area. You went everywhere and did everything by ground level rail. It was a dream. And they move WAY more people in a day than we do in a month. As for your other issues like stopping for lights? Nah... the trains are timed so for places like King George, north and south bound trains approach the intersection at the same time and the lights change to accomodate them. They do not need to stop. As cool tech as Skytrain running off of 3.5 inch floppy drives is, it is 1970's tech designed for medium density cities. That is why Toronto abandond the tech in the 1990's and didn't expand their system. That is why no other city in the world is expanding their system.
It’s typically hard to compare European trains to North American trains because their cities weren’t built for cars in the first place. I don’t recall street level trains on city streets in London. The overground is grade separated and not sharing the road with cars. London also has huge car fees for driving in the city to cut down on car traffic. If you look at LRT situations in North America, they are all sub par compared to subway or grade separated trains like a skytrain. This is because streets built for cars aren’t designed for rapid train travel. Even if lights are timed, the train can’t go as fast on a street for safety reasons. You still have to account for people driving in front of a train, turning across train tracks, navigating shared roads with bicycles, pedestrians… If you want something to move people quickly and be able to adapt to breakdowns or people getting hit, you do rapid buses with dedicated lanes. They can drive around a stalled bus, whereas a train still has to wait for the other train to be taken away.
Haha in regards to the trains in London. Don’t they have a line literally called “The Underground”?
They don’t have a line called the underground. They have the tube (underground) and some lines that are overground, but they are not on streets, they are more like a regular train or grade separated - like in downtown Chicago.
Ah cool!!! I’d love to go to London some day and try it out. Thanks for sharing!!
They should discourage that by electrifying the rails, instead of the overhead powerlines, like they once did with early streetcars. Actually, I'm just kidding.
The big reasons as to why we aren’t using them along Fraser Hwy is because if there are car accidents on the tracks and/or car accidents with the trains themselves, then it’ll essentially shut down the tracks until the debris is cleared. And overall it just doesn’t improve travel time well enough vs. buses, since they’ll have to stop at traffic lights. There may have been safety issues as well regarding whether platforms would have been on the medians.
How is that any different than what we have now? All it takes is a stalled train, faulty switch, medical emergency, police incident, or even a track intrusion, and the whole system is backed up for hours, while overcrowded shuttle buses scurry to get everyone from station to station.
You would still have everything you listed above with an LRT infrastructure, plus the additional inconveniences caused by car accidents on the tracks, or by having a car crash into one of the LRT trains itself.
The LRT would not have stopped at lights. It would have had signal priority meaning the cars at the intersections would be forced to stop. It would be like with any other train system. Through the magic of technology, the lights would change to red for all other traffic well before the LRT arrived at any intersection. Nor would there have been any safety issues from the placement of the stops. The tracks were to be separated from other traffic. EDIT: This article contains renderings of the project, including the separated tracks and stops. https://globalnews.ca/news/3545483/translink-reveals-new-images-of-surrey-lrt/amp/
If it's anything like downtown Portland, no thanks.
Will never know now we will have bunch of concrete eyesores
Some of it should be built underground like Vancouver gets.
Yeah
[удалено]
Depends where you live I guess. For me and my neighbours it will be directly behind our homes. Very loud and obtrusive. Also will be for all the future residents along this line. Just saying.
And noisy to say the least.
I didn't even realize this was a thing. The only LRT trains I remember was the prototype they had set up (at the time I saw it, it was in the Newton Superstore parking lot) around Surrey. I'm kinda bummed I never got to ride this thing.
More transportation modes the better.
I rode it. I also rode the streetcars that the Historical Society had running on those rails. It's a shame they haven't brought them back.
I never rode it. But I was a passenger in a car that turned onto Moberly right in front of it one time, because the city was too cheap to put up proper crossing signals and relied on a single lit up no-right-turn arrow. The version of these running through Istanbul works fine however.