Hamilton Hamilton Line B LRT | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx

This morning Mayor Fred revealed that construction for the LRT for the B-Line won't be completed in time for the 2015 Pan Am Games. Construction won't happen until after the games.
 
Push hard for light-rail transit, Metrolinx chair urges Hamilton

April 30, 2010
By Meredith MacLeod
Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/761113

Metrolinx chair Rob MacIsaac says Hamilton should continue to build its case for light-rail transit.

“I encourage the city of Hamilton to proceed undaunted in planning for light rapid transit for Hamilton,†MacIsaac told a transportation summit held at Liuna Station this morning.

“The best chance for Hamilton to maximize an investment is to have its house in order. Being in an impeccable state of readiness ... (will make) an irresistible opportunity for an investment in rapid transit.â€

Metrolinx has not committed to building an LRT line in Hamilton, but the city has endorsed it as its preferred option. Ongoing planning work on an east-west line running along Main and King streets is only focused on LRT.

MacIsaac said the province’s delay in rolling out $4 billion in funding for five projects in the Toronto area is causing concern among those hoping for a boost to rapid transit in Hamilton. But he said those projects will be funded over 10 years, rather than eight, and pointed out that current investments in public transit are at “historic rates.â€

But he warned that tough choices must be made in order to fund a first-class regional transportation system.

The summit, called Taking Back the Streets, is focused on making Hamilton a great city to walk and bike to commute to work and for leisure.
 
Transit cash Hamilton's to lose: Metrolinx
Summit panels take on Pan Am, transit and downtown

May 18, 2010
Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/771310

Metrolinx CEO Rob Prichard expects Hamilton to be the next major transit announcement coming out of the province.

"I think Hamilton is better advanced and has a big head start on being the next major project to be announced," he told a group of Hamilton's 200 top political, business and civic leaders at the third annual Hamilton Economic Summit.

"I personally think it's Hamilton's to lose, rather than Hamilton's to win."

But Prichard cautioned that competition is fierce for limited provincial funding. He said the city and its residents have a lot of work to do to convince the premier and cabinet to invest here.

That means committing to a route and a mode, and building a cohesive plan around that, he said.

"I'm optimistic Hamilton will prevail but there is a lot of work to do before the cheque is in the mail," Prichard said.

The summit featured three major panel discussions around the Pan Am Games, transportation and downtown renewal. There was also an update about the West Hamilton Innovation District.
 
Hamilton's LRT system taking shape
East-west link the priority

May 20, 2010
Meredith MacLeod
Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/article/772598

The detailed design and engineering work on a light-rail line through Hamilton is about to begin.

It’s expected to take about a year to complete.

The work will be completed by international transportation consultants Steer Davies Gleave, the city announced today.

“This is a major milestone in the rapid transit planning process,” said Jill Stephen, the city’s director of strategic planning and rapid transit.

She said the study will include extensive community consultation and that the city will establish a community advisory committee.

The consultants will be tasked with the detailed design work of an LRT line running from Eastgate Square to McMaster University along Main and King Streets, including impacts on traffic, parking and adjacent properties. The study will also include preliminary feasibility work on a line running from the waterfront to the airport.

There has been no formal commitment from regional transit planning authority Metrolinx or the province on LRT or money to pay for it. But Hamilton was the only municipality to receive a grant - $3 million - to undertake planning, design and engineering work on a transit line.
 
Good God, they gave the detailed design to Steer Davies Gleave?! They are great at report writing, but as they don't have any LRT experience in Canada (one office in Vancouver) or hilly areas. I'm going to assume they bought the job by low-balling their bid to get the paper credentials and a foot in the door of Canadian design.
 
Mapleson said:
Good God, they gave the detailed design to Steer Davies Gleave?! They are great at report writing, but as they don't have any LRT experience in Canada (one office in Vancouver) or hilly areas. I'm going to assume they bought the job by low-balling their bid to get the paper credentials and a foot in the door of Canadian design.
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Doesn't this line have only about one and a half low grade hills to deal with?
There's the hill that tops at Queen Street, for both King and Main, and the slope down from Paradise to Macklin, which is only on Main St.
The line that will traverse the escarpment is not at the design stage yet.
 
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Those that placed a bid:

1. Hatch Mott MacDonald - Mississauga

2. Morrison Hershfield

3. Steer Davies Gleave

4. IBI Group - Toronto

5. AECOM - Mississauga

6. GHD Inc

7. MMM Group
 
Company Headquarters:

1. HMM - UK
2. MH - Toronto
3. SDG - UK
4. IBI - Toronto
5. AECOM - LA
6. GHD - Austrilia
7. MMM - Thornhill
 
Raise The Hammer
City Abandons Two-Way Conversion in LRT Plan

Staff need to muster up the vision and ambition to build LRT to its full potential, and not cripple it with compromises to entrenched (and empirically failed) ways of thinking about traffic and transformation.
By Ryan McGreal
Published December 02, 2010
Special Report: Light Rail

Jillian Stephen, the director of the City's Rapid Transit office, has confirmed in an email that the proposed two-way conversion of Main Street and King Street have been dropped from the City's Light Rail Transit plan for the east-west B-Line.
Previously, the City's LRT proposal included the two-way conversion of Main and King, a coupling Metrolinx affirmed in their Benefits Case Analysis, which stated:
The one-way system typically supports longer cross town trips rather than the shorter trips encouraged by the two-way streets. ... Furthermore, the two-way street system is more supportive of the City's objective to create a healthy, more pedestrian-friendly downtown. ...
In addition to the merits of the two-way conversion, the ability of the rapid transit system to compete with the automobile and generate travel time benefits is directly related to the operating speed of the rapid transit system.
​
Despite this, City staff have decided to abandon two-way traffic conversion, though the LRT itself will still run two-way on King Street through the downtown.
This is a major decision that requires a full explanation from City staff and justification for going against the Metrolinx BCA as well as the overwhelming direction and empirical best practice from city redevelopment efforts across North America.
In an email response to RTH, Ms. Stephen wrote:
The current version of the design includes two-way LRT on the Main West, King, Queenston corridor, but does not include two-way general purpose traffic on streets where traffic is currently one-way. It does include a diversion of through traffic away from King Street, leaving King to serve local traffic only.
As you can imagine, we have heard from many people who love the idea of two-way traffic on King Street, and we have heard from many others who do not want the network changed. We have taken all of the public comments received to date, along with the technical information, the operational requirements (LRT and otherwise), the Benefits Case and the Vision Statement and have analyzed a number of alternatives in order to come up with a workable solution that meets the intent of why we examined the feasibility of LRT in the first place. The narrow right-of-way on parts of King makes providing all of the amenities that people what to see very difficult, and therefore choices have to be made.
​
There may be a case for leaving King Street one-way to vehicular traffic through a short stretch of the downtown core between Wellington Street and Gore Park, but that should have no bearing on the two-way conversion of Main Street.
If anything, reconfiguring King Street for local traffic only strengthens the case for two-way conversion on Main to accommodate westbound traffic and allow motorists more direct access to whatever destination (including destinations downtown) they're trying to reach.
As the Metrolinx BCA notes, our one way streets function as de facto expressways that funnel traffic across the downtown but are remarkably poor at allowing people to reach micro-destinations in the downtown.
This has been well-understood since the late 1950s, when downtown business owners decried the one-way conversion and then started slowly dying off - as they have in cities all across North America that made the same mistakes we made.
Still Maximizing Traffic Flow

Looking at Hamilton, since the total number of lanes would remain effectively unchanged in a full two-way conversion, the real issue is the rate of traffic flow on one-way streets, i.e. their continued ability to function as de facto expressways.
It is incomprehensible that the perennial obsession of Public Works to maximize traffic flow at all costs continues to dominate the city's planning process at the expense of allowing Main Street to function as a destination in itself and produce a real economic uplift.
We know that two-way streets provide a far superior pedestrian experience that attracts customers to the businesses that would invest downtown if a market existed. Abandoning two-way conversion on Main undermines the potential for LRT to drive investment in the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) corridor.
We also know that people are more likely to walk to an LRT station if their walking environment is pleasant, attractive and feels safe. People won't walk to an LRT on King if they have to navigate a dangerous, hostile pedestrian environment on Main.
We further know that maintaining streets that maximize traffic flow reduces the comparative advantage of LRT as a viable transportation mode and undermines is capacity to attract new riders out of their cars.
A Huge Step Backwards

How can the narrow, neighbourhood-smashing objective of maximizing traffic flow trump all of the well-understood, abundantly demonstrated livability and economic development benefits that accompany two-way conversion?
This is a huge step backwards that will undercut the benefits of building LRT and weaken support for LRT from those people who already understand its potential.
At every transportation workshop and lecture sponsored by Public Works that I've attended, every expert speaker has repeated the exact same theme: Build LRT, and convert your downtown streets back to two-way traffic.
Ms. Stephen has not yet responded to our follow-up request for a more detailed explanation of how the net benefits of retaining one-way traffic flows will justify the lost potential for urban revitalization.
Raise the Hammer calls on Public Works and the Rapid Transit office to muster up the vision and ambition to build LRT to its full potential, and not cripple it with more compromises to entrenched (and empirically failed) ways of thinking about traffic and transformation.
http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/1245/city_abandons_two-way_conversion_in_lrt_plan
Click to expand...
 
Hamilton LRT Open Houses

Decemeber 9, 2010 - PIC: A-Line Kick-off at Mountain (Dave Andreychuk) Arena (25 Hester Street), 6-8:30pm

January 11, 2011 - Land Use Public Workshop for B-Line at Hamilton Convention Centre, 6-9pm

Review of draft design for the B-Line (McMaster to Eastgate)

January 19, 2011 - Downtown - Scottish Rite (4 Queen St S), 6-8pm

January 20, 2011 - West end - Westdale Secondary School (700 Main St W), 6-8pm

January 24, 2011 - Volunteer Hamilton, International Village BIA Open House, 5-8pm

January 25, 2011 - East end - Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School (1715 Main St E), 6-8pm

January 27, 2011 - Mountain - Mountain (Dave Andreychuk) Arena (25 Hester Street), 6-8pm
 
It is funny that the deluded urbanites at Raisethehammer complain so much about one-way streets as being anti-urban. They obviously never been to Ste-Catherine in Montreal. Anyways, the one-way streets plus two-way LRT is exactly what I proposed earlier in this thread. I think the city made the right choice.
 
doady said:
It is funny that the deluded urbanites at Raisethehammer complain so much about one-way streets as being anti-urban. They obviously never been to Ste-Catherine in Montreal. Anyways, the one-way streets plus two-way LRT is exactly what I proposed earlier in this thread. I think the city made the right choice.
Click to expand...

Maybe they read your suggestion! :)
 
LRT to cost city $130 million

Light Rail Transit is estimated to cost Hamilton $130 million to build and $20 to $23 million each year in operating costs.

Those are the preliminary numbers for the costs of an east-west lower city LRT line from Rob Rossini, the city’s general manager of finance, but they were enough to make some councillors run off the rails.

“It’s unaffordable,†said Ward 9 Councillor Brad Clark. “That’s been my concern from the beginning, but everyone drank the Kool-Aid ... We don’t have the money.â€

Ward 8 Councillor Terry Whitehead and Ward 12 Councillor Lloyd Ferguson said they will not support the project if city taxpayers have to contribute to the capital costs.

“If we have to put in a sizeable contribution, forget it,†said Ferguson, though he said the operating costs were lower than running a bus.

Ward 6 Councillor Tom Jackson suggested the city take another look at Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) because of the worrisome cost predicted for LRT and Ward 15 Councillor Judi Partridge suggested the city not rule out getting the private sector involved with the project.

“There are so many details that need to be nailed down,†Partridge added.

The $130 million would cover the city’s capital costs, while the city would have to pay between $12 million and $15 million in yearly operating costs. About $8.6 million would be required each year to cover increases on other existing city services like snow removal, waste collection, and traffic lights once the LRT is built.

“I can’t stress enough how very, very preliminary all the cost estimates are,†Rossini said. “I would also add that this excludes any revenue growth from increases in additional property assessment due to the economic benefits of LRT and the transformational, city-building impacts it could have.â€

Those costs are only for LRT, not BRT, Rossini said. The city will have better cost estimates in four to six months.

The total estimated cost of building an LRT line in Hamilton is approximately $800 million. It’s unclear how much the province and federal government will chip in.

Jill Stephen, the city’s director of rapid transit, said the finance department was asked to come up with preliminary figures to give council an early snapshot of the costs.

“We’re doing our due diligence right now,†she said. “What we’re trying to do is make sure that when it comes to decision-making time, council has as much information as possible.â€

Stephen said other departments are also being asked to investigate the implications of LRT.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/319932--lrt-to-cost-city-130-million
 
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