(05-22-2021, 12:05 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I really must ask what you folks think grade separation would achieve? Who benefits. What does this investment gain us.
The Courtland and Wilson examples are the most stark. The ONLY benefit drivers, and have zero benefit for LRT riders.
I'm used to money being spent on drivers, what especially bugs me, is that this money would be labeled "transit"...but it isn't being spent on transit.
The single grade separated station (not even the right of way, just the station) that I support, I do so because I believe it would improve the rider experience significantly to be worth the cost both financially and also to the experience of the users of that particular station.
I know I've heard the claims that going underground in DTK would improve the speed, but it doesn't. Going down KING improves the speed, that doesn't require going underground. I've also heard, not waiting for lights, but again, waiting at lights is a choice we've made, not a requirement of at grade operation (pretty clearly since the trains don't wait at all intersections).
Speed and capacity. If the LRT doesn't have to worry about traffic, it can move faster, which means it'll be easier to improve headways as time goes on. Also, with the LRT as it is, there is no expanding Line 1 after they run double LRVs. You ask what grade separation investment would have got us. By the time 2040 rolls around and we hit our forecasted 800'000+ population (which I believe will be much higher - we hit 600'000 well before we were projected to hit that) - with a good chunk of them living along the LRT line - the LRT might easily end up over capacity which is going to be a challenge to improve at this point. The platforms aren't big enough for any more than 2 LRVs, including a few of them which have no room to be expanded to accommodate more than 2. If it was tunneled, you could run 2, 3 or more LRVs which can carry a lot of people, while also having really fast headways...think 5 minutes in rush hour. Of course I am looking at the long term here, so most of this is moot right now since we don't yet need it, but in 30-40 years I am sure Waterloo Region will have at least 1 million people which is a lot, and with the density they're aiming for, rapid transit is going to become a necessity.
It will also never go much faster than it manages to do already. Perhaps they can speed it up in some places with a few tweaks, but it won't be by a lot. And that will do nothing to help us in the future. Even if we could fit 3 or 4 LRVs in a row, there's no way we can have such long trains crossing all these intersections every 10-15 minutes (or even less as we change headways...I believe the initial plan was to have a 7 minute rush hour headway). Try to think just how long 3 or more LRVs would take to make those awkward 90 degree turns in the core, or those at Hayward or Northfield? It would cause drivers to go livid. I'm all for reducing car usage, but in this country people have the freedom to drive if they want to. We can't make their trips hell just because cars are inherently bad in so many ways. You piss off car drivers too much, you lose public support for transit investment. Signal changes could also improve LRT speed so it doesn't have to stop for lights/traffic, but you'd still never manage to get that thing to take tight corners any faster than it already does...so those 10 seconds it might speed up by not stopping at lights would be so insignificant.
They could have run it down King Street as you said and I actually think that would have been a decent idea and it would have kept the northbound and southbound stations together rather than blocks apart. In the past I have wondered whether or not they could have done that and kept King Street semi-pedestrian only from say Water Street to Queen Street. I am unsure what the safety considerations would have to be for that to happen if there were more pedestrians walking around, but I imagine with proper signals, crossing and fences if they could have done it in a way that would have let the LRT maintain a higher speed without causing much danger to pedestrians or cyclists. Lots of European cities have LRT/tram systems that operate with much denser pedestrian numbers than we have and it seems to work.
Ultimately, if the goal is to reduce car usage and get people to take an environmentally friendly rapid transit system, it needs to go fast and be frequent. The faster, more convenient and passenger friendly it is to use, the more people are going to use it. If density is also a goal, you require the same things. Time is a finite resource in our lives.