I’ve said that I think there would be downsides to running surface-level light rail along the Broadway corridor. I don’t think they’re overwhelming, and I don’t think they decide the issue. But I think it’s at least worth clearly taking stock of them. So I want to start to do that, although I’m only going to focus on one set of related issues now, and not try to catalogue them all.
Broadway is a six-lane street. There are a few different ways you could configure lanes of traffic to make sure trains weren’t getting stuck behind drivers turning right or left. For example, you could have a lane in the middle of the road for lefthand turns and boarding platforms for the trains. Then the lefthand lanes would be for the trains, the righthand lanes for cars, and parking (or a bike lane?) would be on one side of the street. Or whatever. My point is that, so long as the trains have their own lanes — so they’re not getting stuck behind drivers turning — there’s only one lane of car traffic in either direction.
Now, I’m not one to care about space on the roads for cars. But with only one lane of traffic in either direction, there doesn’t seem to be any space for local buses* — and that, I think, is a problem.
But, you might think, why would Broadway need buses if it has a rail line? If the rail line’s going to be rapid transit, it needs to be a limited stop service. Stopping more often than the 99 stops now is going to slow the train down. Okay, so maybe it doesn’t have to slow the train down too much. After all, unlike the 99, we’re supposing this train’s never going to get stuck behind cars turning, and we’re supposing it’s going to have a solid signal priority system, so it doesn’t get stuck at red lights too often. So maybe we can put some extra stops in to make up for the loss of the local service. What would that look like?
Well, if we had as many stops as the local service does now, that’d be roughly every two blocks, or about every 350 meters. (The blocks on the route vary in length, so that’s a rough average.) But right now the B-Line makes 11 stops (including the end of the line) along a 13 kilometer route. That’s a stop about every 1.2 kilometers. (Again, that’s an average. Some stops are a little closer together, and some a little farther apart.) So talking in really rough figures here, you could double the number of stops on the route, and you’d still be making seniors walk a block farther to catch the train than they walked to catch the bus.
So there’s a really ugly trade-off here. If the train ran a local service, it’d dramtically slower than the B-Line. In no sense could it be considered rapid transit. But if the train were even as fast as the B-Line, it wouldn’t be running a local service and would be dramtically less accessible to anyone with bad mobility. Or we could try to strike a balance here, where it was only somewhat slower than the B-Line is now, and only somewhat less accessible than the local 9.
(* I’m not 100% sure of this. I’d be interested if someone could describe a way to fit two lanes of trains onto a six-lane street and still have room for at least a lane in each direction of car traffic plus local buses — and have a way for both bus and train passangers to load and unload safely. Of course, this problem goes away completely if Broadway were closed to car traffic. A boy can dream. . . .)
September 29, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Great post. I think that we are both preaching to the choir here though.
One source that sums up my thoughts would be from Jerrett Walker’s great blog:
http://www.humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html
Why spend hundred of millions to a few billion to install tram tracks to get service that is marginally better than a bus?
Tram supporters *can* say to me they want to change the streetscape, or that it is cheaper per km than grade-separated rail, but I would disagree that tram is faster, or carries more on an at-grade route. For an important artery like broadway, we need that future resiliency that skytrain would bring.
That’s not to say that I would not support a tram, in false creek, KGH median or the SRY alignment, for instance. But not on broadway.
September 29, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I second Mezzanine. it is clearly stated, and is full of common sense…
September 30, 2009 at 8:51 am
The thing is, for me at least, it’d be a lot easier to get behind spending the money for at-grade LRT even if it did nothing but increase capacity on the route. But if — as it might — it could actually make service on the route worse (either slower, less accessible, or both), then it starts to look a lot iffier.
September 30, 2009 at 8:52 am
I also agree that the Broadway route has to be grade-separated; it doesn’t matter how much cheaper on-grade light rail would be if it simply won’t get the job done.
That being said, I still want to take a stab at the question of how to best use the six lanes for all modes. First off, bikes lanes are not needed on Broadway. The Off-Broadway route and the Tenth Avenue route are both decent options for cyclists (that I use fairly frequently). I’m assuming we’re leaving cars on Broadway, and that we need local buses too. The best idea I can come up with is as follows: The middle two lanes are for light rail. That leaves two lanes in each direction for traffic (with none for parking). All intersections would then have left-turn lanes and right-turn lanes, but no through lane; we can either hope that there are few enough people turning left/right for this to work, or we can limit turns to either the left or the right at many of those intersections. At the intersections that also involve a light rail stop (e.g., MacDonald), the stops would involve a raised platform just after the intersection in the lane of traffic adjacent to the middle (i.e., what was a left-turn lane right before the intersection is blocked off after the intersection). Add in the appropriate traffic light priority system, and the light rail option might be able a fair bit faster than the existing B-line. And I do buy that it would be somewhat higher capacity.
Even with this type of lane use, it would still be worth considering a tunnel from Birch to Cypress in order to provide extra on-grade lanes for the Hemlock to Burrard congestion. And while we’re at it, we might as well tunnel near Cambie as well, in order to link into the Canada line and free up more space for the congestion near Cambie.
October 1, 2009 at 1:09 am
I was questioning myself about wiring…
couldn’t be a mess of wires to have a LRT wire messing up wit the trolley wires. I am pretty sure some solution exist, but how practical they are ?
October 5, 2009 at 1:53 pm
There needs to be a balance struck between convenience and service speed and I think most buses in Vancouver stop too frequently. With all due respect to the mobility challenged in our aging society, having a bus stop every 2 blocks is a luxury few cities in the world provide.
Going one step further, I’d argue that most passengers would prefer walking an extra block to a stop featuring a shelter and seating to the situation we have now where only the most important stops get anything more than a post in the ground and a tiny square of concrete.
A Broadway tram wouldn’t just increase capacity, it would lower operating costs, something TransLink desperately needs. One tram driver can move several times as many passengers as a B-Line driver.
Except in a few strategic places I think left turns should be completely banned along Broadway.
I’m undecided on the issue of separating the rails with a curb because although it would enforce turn restrictions and help to avoid collisions it would block almost all cross streets forcing traffic onto bicycle routes and other side streets. Making side streets friendly for bikes while making it a royal PITA for cars requires expensive engineering. Merely putting up signs doesn’t work, as proven by the number of tickets issued to drivers who still turn right from Pacific onto Hornby.