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By Haveacow (registered) | Posted May 17, 2016 at 08:12:53 in reply to Comment 118629
Hamilton's LRT is mostly on street service with physically segregated private right of way for the trains and signal preference at intersections. Signal modifications either shortens red lights or lengthens green lights when a LRV (Light Rail vehicle) is close to the intersection. There will be a special train only signal for the LRV so it crosses the intersection first before the other vehicles.
You are right Calgary's West Line project went way over estimates. It was a victim of an older but far cheaper design being retrofitted with many newer features and designs that were deemed necessary by the people of Calgary. Drivers wanted many of the surface running sections eliminated because they felt it that the older design didn't reflect the modern traffic and road conditions in Calgary. So instead of surface running on streets as much as possible they started adding very expensive bridges and fly overs and hard to construct private right of ways. Then a 2km sub surface section was added, that was 2-3 metres deep to make residents happy about avoiding train noise in their quiet neighborhoods. Not quite a tunnel but it also increased the budget by an extreme amount. 2 stations in this corridor suddenly needed escalators and elevators, which I can tell you greatly adds to the cost of the stations because you have to structurally change the station designs as well as add the elevators and escalators. Many of the stations on the West Line had huge commuter parking lots added during this phase as well, greatly adding to the cost for land purchases.
Remember the times they are changing, the era of driving everywhere and living in very low density far away single use neighborhoods is coming to and end. For environmental reasons yes, but mostly cities just can't afford to build like that any more. It doesn't produce enough taxes and we can't keep using more of our commercial and industrial taxes to prop up tremendously financially efficient residential areas. It doesn't mean that we will all live 40 story apartments but a much greater variety of housing types is preferred and at a higher but not necessarily a Manhattan type density.
Much more money spent on regular surface transit and higher order transit including LRT is a must. But so is more bicycle infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure. Instead of 80-85%% of the transport budget spent on roads and 90-95% of the road space used for single use vehicles, we have to adopt a more European like system mix. We just can't afford sprawl car only cities like this anymore. I work as a urban planner, we have to change now! There is no more time, the only real alternative to this approach is to charge suburbanites the real cost of servicing their communities. Which would in many cases mean massive tax increases for suburbanites. Currently many of the costs associated with sprawl development get paid from commercial and industrial taxes not just the residential tax base, who cause the bills in the first place. This leaves little extra money for commercial building services or we have to raise their property taxes to try and keep up. Keep this in mind, we can't keep building suburban sprawl for another reason. The best land for development is also our best farm land. We are running out of Class A farmland in Ontario. We have paved over more than 50% of it for sprawl.
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