Quote:
Originally Posted by Joborule
If we were to go down that route, I think it would make more sense for the Red Line to use the 8th Ave Subway, while the SE line shares the Blue Line on 7th ave. The SE ridership will probably never require frequent enough trains to overload 7th ave along with the blue line, so the amount of trains on 7th today is how much trains green and blue lines should be down the road. The West LRT would benefit from very frequent rush hour trains, although it also wouldn't need that level of frequency. The NC would be it's own separate low floor line, which makes a lot of sense if using Centre Street.
|
Either could work; there is a fairly open path to get to surface and join with 7th. This would also help keep the hop on/off nature of the free-fare-zone a little bit more useful once it loses the red line trains.
Ideally you'd have the ability to short turn every other SE train to the NE (which has higher ridership than west). There are a few ways this could be achieved, but the best I think would be to add switches and a third siding line on the 200 block west. So after stopping at WB 1st St SW it would cross to stop at 3rd St station and return EB (with 3 lines on 200 block serving as a siding when necessary)...but this could get messy in a few decades.
OTOH the red line has higher ridership and could benefit more from the infusion of extra trains than the blue. But you'd need to do a similar short-turn thing somewhere. Which leads to how you make the 8th Ave Subway not quite so expensive:
Underground from City Hall to 6 St SW with a station at the 200 block west. Then you're at grade for a station at 7 St before going elevated and turning north at 9 St. If you stay at grade across 8 St (which could go under if the Roads Dept. wants to pay for that) then you have a terminus stub around 10 St while the other line turns north and goes elevated over 7th-4th.
So it adds up to ~450 meters elevated (having to tie into the bridge over Bow which is going to be tough either underground or elevated) and 1200 meters of shallow cut+cover with 2 UG stations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
But is the cost of burying the red line less than the green, and benefits of that setup? I'm just wondering if this would be cost savings, or just different.
|
Different...probably more expensive (though the scope of tunnelling I list above is actually a lot less than what they wanted for the GL), but you're getting a 2nd bird stoned with an additional mega-project in there. Which is why SE should start as BRT and then this can all be tackled separately when its actually justified.