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Originally Posted by powderjunkie
Seems a little silly to only do one of the lines underground, but not both? Even if Blue/red are tripping over each other a little bit right now, it's not like they'd be able to increase the rush hour frequency of either by much if they were separate? For travelling within downtown, it's really nice to be able to hop onto either train any time of day...so it's one slight improvement at the cost of another, plus infrastructure costs...
If the tunnel runs under 8 ave right to City Hall, I'm curious how it routes down to Victoria Park station? Perhaps it's already starting to make the turn south at City Hall? I've never been able to find a drawing of what exists today, and what the original plan was (admittedly only ever tried a few google searches) - just keep finding the same few blog posts and tv news clips...
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The Blue line is much harder to get into the tunnel, especially at the east end, as it wasn’t planned for initially and when City Hall was built. The west side is going to be complicated anyway, but would be even more complicated if both lines had to come out of the tunnel. Now with the West line elevated track, the Blue line would have to get to grade before that.
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I know HSR is still pretty close to a pipe dream, but it would at least be prudent to plan a ROW accordingly. Perhaps self-driving cars actually make it moot, but it's also possible that self-driving cars turn out to be only as functional and revolutionary as segways (once touted as the greatest revolution in transportation since the combustion engine). It's possible that automation will not achieve the 360 degree speed/efficiency in all conditions that we expect...perhaps the long distance/linear advances will only be achievable in more closed/controlled systems (such as a railway ROW - and to be clear, I'm not even saying the physical tracks will be relevant to either passengers or freight). In other words, maybe autonomous vehicles top out at a really smooth/efficient 40kph in high density, 60 kph in med. density, and only 80 kph in low density (ie. HWY 1 - still an open system with lots of entrances, exits, variable conditions, and most importantly, human drivers)...
If autonomous vehicles cannot both:
1. Deal with weather conditions, including ice and wind gusts on winding roads
2. Deal with human operators
at speeds greater than 120kph, then they will be close to useless for long distance use across Canada, much of the USA, and much of Europe. But, I could imagine them easily getting over 150kph in ideal conditions by eliminating #2 (ie. a closed system), and still maintaining 100kph+ in adverse conditions.
I think it may be very important to have a good ROW running at least 4 directions in/out of any city's core.
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Fully grade separated heavy rail along the CP rail line from the North and West isn’t all that complicated - much, much easier than tunneling it anywhere. There are very few level crossings as it is, and anything remotely close to a major crossing has already been pondered. The full route from the North, through downtown, and out to the west currently has these level crossings:
50th Ave N (serves a small area of industrial business park) - build underpass
41st Ave N (serves a small area of industrial area) - build underpass
40th Ave N - essentially an inessential dirt road here - easy to close.
17th Ave S - probably would just be closed
15th Street SE - underpass or closure
8th Street SE - likely be closed with the Green Line LRT anyway
11th Street SW - will likely get an underpass at some point anyway
32nd Ave NW - Either will be closed, or a simple underpass.
There’s a couple other pathway and service road crossings, nothing too serious.