Oh, look - the best rapid transit system in the Pacific Northwest! Granted, that's not a high bar to clear considering the shitshow that is Portland's MAX and the shenanigans with contractors that Sound Transit is experiencing. Hopefully the fiscal cliff is abated, else Seattle will take its title when THEY get their ducks in a row! God, transit here is such a mess. I love it.
44:50, don’t know if it’s mentioned or not later, but it’s kinda reversed. The motor systems are still on the train, not the track, the track just has a long continuous metal pad the train can propel itself along
As a fellow Vancouverite I was pretty thrilled to see this and loved to hear some of the outside opinion on the system as it's easy to oscillate between fanboying about how great we are and complaining about all the ways it falls short. I would make one request though if you or Cariad have the time and interest to do a deep dive into the Canada Line's technical and political history. You touched on a few of the technical issues with the line but it's a remarkably deep well of subjects in tension. The politics around the technology choice and paring down of the scope of work to reduce cost as well as the cut&cover vs tunneling are all there. The cut&cover having been handled poorly enough in the views of the Cambie business community that there was little hope of repeating that on Broadway where we have tunneled track but cut&bridged stations. The PPP was obviously annoying but ended up being the seed for Caisse to go build REM in Montreal. The vast over-performance of passanger numbers also represented a tipping point in Vancouver politically where before outer sub-urbs may have wanted more road lanes and given skytrain a cold shoulder that's changed since then. From a technical standpoint I certainly prefer the LIM skytrain but the Canada Line represents a pretty fascinating inflection point in so many ways.
@@atn_holdings I'll take overbudget and late and even PPP over no network expansion at all which has been the case since 2007 in Montreal. You can make the case for waiting a bit longer for a better run and financed project, I'm not sure you can make the case for waiting a decade. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that.
@AmurTiger yeah, a decade of inflation will easily erase that $3b. That said yeah REM is about as good as PPP gets and is still just good not great in terms of cost/benefit.
I know A number for standing area: VBZ (Zürich city public transport) uses 4people/m^2 for bus and tram standing capacity. This is how they think they get 150+ people in a 25m double bendy boy
Oh, speaking of Monorails. When I was very young, I lived in Sydney, Australia, for six years in the late 90s until early 2002. I remember riding the monorail there quite a bit when we sometimes would go to see my Dad at his work in the city and to go to the Aquarium. Every time I go back there (I live in Perth now), it's a bit like seeing a ghost of a future that doesn't exist anymore since they pulled up the tracks except for a small section near the museum.
not exactly skytrain related but being mostly a Montrealer with a brief exile in Vancouver it's always so infuriating to me how good the 3-zone system is in the lower mainland versus how much a disaster is the ARTM ABC zone system. They just sat down at a big table and designed a fully new in house system that has every possible drawback you can imagine while the ideal solution is alread adopted like RIGHT THERE
I have a recharchable card with A tickets because that's mostly where I am but if I want to go to the suburbs I need to go to the machine and get a DISPOSABLE card of AB tickets and if I goof up and use that one for a A only trip I lose my dollar for ever and then have to go BACK to the machine and get ANOTHER disposable car with the one remaining AB trip I need. I used to just have stored value and punch in and out. Everytime I need to use STM's ruthlessly slow bad and overcrowded ticket machines it's like pulling teeth
the option for A, AB, BC, ABC, monthly that, 10-roll of this, weekend pass for this that or the other zone, unlimited night pass for the whole combinatoric of zones again and the option of 10-roll of that spread across like 14 pages of menus that are in a completely random order and never quite exactly the same across machines ... is REMARKABLY bad
Great episode, really interesting to get a view of the history of one of my favourite North American cities. Who'd have thought we'd be exporting pacers to anyone!!! A quick aside to something you said about Lincoln - whilst you're right that a lot of Lincolnshire is flat, especially the wolds and fens you've obviously never been to the city of Lincoln because the castle and cathedral are up a big hill. Whilst not as big Lincoln gives me York vibes, you should go and check it out, wasn't it a railway town (I seem to remember it being one of the places of stations in the Hornby model train sets in the 80s, along with places like York, Crewe, Swindon, and Derby).
Class 142 would happily handle 2.5% gradients, they proved they could climb even higher gradients on their original West Country lines even in leaf fall season, but the issue was they were so light they had trouble braking due to insufficient adhesion during the descent again (along with negotiating tight curves) so they were sent to the North.
I dunno if it matters, but this has been kind of a bugbear of mine. If light rail and tramways are mostly the same (which I think most people who aren't in marketing would agree with), the flowchart should make it possible to still arrive at "tram" after ticking off "Street running? No!", because most light rail systems have no mixed traffic street running at all, running instead on a distinct - and often fenced in, ballasted - right of way. The question should rather be if the system features any level crossings. If yes - that's a tram, no matter the branding! If no - that could be a metro (or in some cases a gadgetbahn, I guess)! RUclips right now is recommending a video of the Helsinki circle tram to me (Raide-Jokeri). It's definitely a tram, and it's definitely not street-running (unlike Helsinki's older tram lines). Its also definitely #notametro, because it has numerous level crossings.
Great but you could have add photos of the building of lines. For example the cut and cover of the Canada line around the Queen Elizabeth park that make it good but not great because of the noise when around.
Thank you for covering the Vancouver SkyTrain 🚈 Very interesting and informative episode.
The one and only Gareth Dennis is covering the beloved transit system from my birth city. I'm honoured!
Oh, look - the best rapid transit system in the Pacific Northwest! Granted, that's not a high bar to clear considering the shitshow that is Portland's MAX and the shenanigans with contractors that Sound Transit is experiencing. Hopefully the fiscal cliff is abated, else Seattle will take its title when THEY get their ducks in a row!
God, transit here is such a mess. I love it.
44:50, don’t know if it’s mentioned or not later, but it’s kinda reversed. The motor systems are still on the train, not the track, the track just has a long continuous metal pad the train can propel itself along
As a fellow Vancouverite I was pretty thrilled to see this and loved to hear some of the outside opinion on the system as it's easy to oscillate between fanboying about how great we are and complaining about all the ways it falls short.
I would make one request though if you or Cariad have the time and interest to do a deep dive into the Canada Line's technical and political history. You touched on a few of the technical issues with the line but it's a remarkably deep well of subjects in tension. The politics around the technology choice and paring down of the scope of work to reduce cost as well as the cut&cover vs tunneling are all there. The cut&cover having been handled poorly enough in the views of the Cambie business community that there was little hope of repeating that on Broadway where we have tunneled track but cut&bridged stations. The PPP was obviously annoying but ended up being the seed for Caisse to go build REM in Montreal. The vast over-performance of passanger numbers also represented a tipping point in Vancouver politically where before outer sub-urbs may have wanted more road lanes and given skytrain a cold shoulder that's changed since then.
From a technical standpoint I certainly prefer the LIM skytrain but the Canada Line represents a pretty fascinating inflection point in so many ways.
hard to be all that upbeat about the PPP precedent after back to back announces that REM is going to be another year late and more than 3B overbudget
@@atn_holdings I'll take overbudget and late and even PPP over no network expansion at all which has been the case since 2007 in Montreal. You can make the case for waiting a bit longer for a better run and financed project, I'm not sure you can make the case for waiting a decade. Perfect being the enemy of the good and all that.
yeahhhh I have my own love/hate relationship with REM and its model
@AmurTiger yeah, a decade of inflation will easily erase that $3b. That said yeah REM is about as good as PPP gets and is still just good not great in terms of cost/benefit.
I know A number for standing area: VBZ (Zürich city public transport) uses 4people/m^2 for bus and tram standing capacity. This is how they think they get 150+ people in a 25m double bendy boy
Oh, speaking of Monorails. When I was very young, I lived in Sydney, Australia, for six years in the late 90s until early 2002. I remember riding the monorail there quite a bit when we sometimes would go to see my Dad at his work in the city and to go to the Aquarium.
Every time I go back there (I live in Perth now), it's a bit like seeing a ghost of a future that doesn't exist anymore since they pulled up the tracks except for a small section near the museum.
It’s far from perfect, but I do love our transit system. Though fuck me the periods of no busses followed by literally ALL of them is infuriating
not exactly skytrain related but being mostly a Montrealer with a brief exile in Vancouver it's always so infuriating to me how good the 3-zone system is in the lower mainland versus how much a disaster is the ARTM ABC zone system. They just sat down at a big table and designed a fully new in house system that has every possible drawback you can imagine while the ideal solution is alread adopted like RIGHT THERE
I have a recharchable card with A tickets because that's mostly where I am but if I want to go to the suburbs I need to go to the machine and get a DISPOSABLE card of AB tickets and if I goof up and use that one for a A only trip I lose my dollar for ever and then have to go BACK to the machine and get ANOTHER disposable car with the one remaining AB trip I need. I used to just have stored value and punch in and out. Everytime I need to use STM's ruthlessly slow bad and overcrowded ticket machines it's like pulling teeth
the option for A, AB, BC, ABC, monthly that, 10-roll of this, weekend pass for this that or the other zone, unlimited night pass for the whole combinatoric of zones again and the option of 10-roll of that spread across like 14 pages of menus that are in a completely random order and never quite exactly the same across machines ... is REMARKABLY bad
Great episode once again! And congrats on getting interviewed by Novara! PoliticsJoe next? 👀
Great episode, really interesting to get a view of the history of one of my favourite North American cities. Who'd have thought we'd be exporting pacers to anyone!!! A quick aside to something you said about Lincoln - whilst you're right that a lot of Lincolnshire is flat, especially the wolds and fens you've obviously never been to the city of Lincoln because the castle and cathedral are up a big hill. Whilst not as big Lincoln gives me York vibes, you should go and check it out, wasn't it a railway town (I seem to remember it being one of the places of stations in the Hornby model train sets in the 80s, along with places like York, Crewe, Swindon, and Derby).
Class 142 would happily handle 2.5% gradients, they proved they could climb even higher gradients on their original West Country lines even in leaf fall season, but the issue was they were so light they had trouble braking due to insufficient adhesion during the descent again (along with negotiating tight curves) so they were sent to the North.
Guess which company is involved in Ottawa's LRT? Yes, SNC Lavalin/AtkinsRéalis!
I dunno if it matters, but this has been kind of a bugbear of mine. If light rail and tramways are mostly the same (which I think most people who aren't in marketing would agree with), the flowchart should make it possible to still arrive at "tram" after ticking off "Street running? No!", because most light rail systems have no mixed traffic street running at all, running instead on a distinct - and often fenced in, ballasted - right of way. The question should rather be if the system features any level crossings. If yes - that's a tram, no matter the branding! If no - that could be a metro (or in some cases a gadgetbahn, I guess)!
RUclips right now is recommending a video of the Helsinki circle tram to me (Raide-Jokeri). It's definitely a tram, and it's definitely not street-running (unlike Helsinki's older tram lines). Its also definitely #notametro, because it has numerous level crossings.
Great but you could have add photos of the building of lines. For example the cut and cover of the Canada line around the Queen Elizabeth park that make it good but not great because of the noise when around.
RAHHHHHH VANCOUVER MENTIONED
22:20 WE ARE THE SONS OF THE INTERURBAN CARS YOU COULD NOT BURN
NOT ME, THAT WOULD BE ODD, I MEAN THE BOMBARDIERS
RAHHHHHH VANCOUVER MENTIONED