Nandert is the GOAT fantasy transit advocate on YT. so much effort and so much detail told by incredible graphs and animations. dude is built for being on the metro board
Feels like at least some of the challenge with cut-and-cover could be alleviated by choosing the right places that make using the technique more feasible.
For example, much of the east leg of Montreal's orange line serves and follows the rue Saint-Denis corridor, but runs under rue Berri, one block to the east. Similarly, the central portion of the green line serves and follows rue Sainte-Catherine, but runs under boulevard de Maisonneuve a block to the north.
Imagine if Vancouver's Broadway extension were built cut-and-cover under Tenth Avenue instead of Broadway, with stairs and escalators opening onto Broadway (like at Broadway City Hall station), serving Broadway, but leveraging an easier alignment to deliver.
The level of disruption and impact of opening a trench on Berri/de Maisonneuve/Tenth would be much less than on the parallel main street, from a retail, existing bus transit, and of course vehicle traffic point of view. While there would of course be significant hardship and opposition from those side street residents, surely it would be an easier set of impacts to manage than on the main drag.
While this isn't a solution everywhere (not all street networks have a consistent parallel street), and there are of course impacts on secondary streets that are just as real, and perhaps if you need to acquire a tunnel boring machine for some of the route, you might as well use it the whole way, etc etc, but there can be location elements that might improve the viability of cut-and-cover.
This is a fantastic point. Toronto also did this with Line 2 where much of the line sits off of Bloor and Danforth going under alleys to the north instead!
I absolutely concur with your point about tenth in Vancouver!
I feel like the whole point regarding LA sticking to a few modes immediately followed by a statement about building something substantially different than what they have now is contradictory. They already have a high capacity mode capable of high frequencies (even if it is not operated at those frequencies), so (in a sense; there are legitimate negatives to your suggestion) downgrading to LRT on high capacity corridors doesn't make sense to me.
Additionally, LA has stuck to as few modes as possible (they only have two). Sepulveda (if monorail is selected) may introduce a third, but from what we know about the HRT proposals, they are either identical (Alt. 6) or are dimensionally identical (Alts. 4 & 5) with just shorter trains.
In a world I'm talking about LA is building a lot more than it is today!
LRT on "high capacity" corridors would not be a downgrade, because as suggested (5 - car trains) you'd have far more capacity than any LA Metro line currently uses.
As for adding a mode what I've really suggesting is replacing current "heavy rail" with high speed regional metro, which should be slightly larger, and capable of much higher speeds (requiring OHLE)
The downgrade I'm speaking to is related to both the wasted space you get with a bunch of extra cabs that would suppress some of the extra capacity you'd get with lengthened trains and the lower top speed. Of course they could use longer, walk-through trains to avoid the former issue, but they'd need yards to accommodate the extra long trains. At that point they'd be building virtually the same thing as the existing HRT with only potential marginal cost savings.
The existing HRT spec is already fairly fast. It's designed for 70mph operation with less than 2 minute headways. It'd probably be trivial to increase that to 80mph (BART only a few hundred miles north routinely operates at this speed). I'm not sure going much faster would really be helpful given the overall urban character of LA (fairly uniform density without many natural geographic boundaries; stations probably shouldn't be multiple miles apart).
I don't know! Seoul and various Chinese cities which sprawl on a scale like LA have high speed metros which push 90 mph! So I do think theres a worthwhile distinction.
I absolutely agree with all of your points, especially in regards to how cut and cover saves money in terms of construction, and what that enables you to do in regards to increasing frequency (more trains, better signalling, automation etc.)
But I did want to ask, what makes the LA area so unique in terms of topology? I am not an LA resident, so I do not know about where people go, but it seems to me that places outside of Downtown attract more people overall. Are these kind of travel patterns found in any other place in the world?
LA Resident here. This is true, downtown LA is not the hub that many cities operate off of. In LA there are many "Downtowns". People may live in the more suburban San Fernando Valley but work in Santa Monica or vice versa. There is no mass migration daily from the suburbs ring into the city and then back out in the evening.
Blog name change is good as is continued its focus on transit.
Thanks for calling attention to the video and its suggestions.
Three car underground stations are a really bad idea as are excess underground staff rooms and the like, as pointed out by the NYU Marron Institute's Transit Costs Project.
I would not say so, the light rail cars are <30 meters long, while heavy rail cars are frequently quite a bit longer than half that. So yes maybe a four car train, but not much more.
Im hesitant about timelines though. In russia (which is the transit space i am most familiar with) timelines are most frequently blown out during construction for the need to bypass and relocate utilities. There always seem to be way more than what was expected and it always takes way longer to get them out of the way.
Regardless, choosing tunnel boring for any reason other than geological or subterranean infrastructure constraints is absolutely ridiculous and counterproductive
Well, I don't think I'd apply too much from Russia (iirc it's basically just Moscow doing a ton and no other cities) to the US, while there is some common stuff, its a very different environment, and in Russia the metros have historically been much more heavily tunnelled!
I would also point out that Moscow does tons of TBM where it isn't "technically" necessary, but thats fine because as I mentioned in another comment it can be done cost effectively!
I honestly think cut and cover is probably a bit overrated in the modern American context (I didn't want to get into this in this post for obvious reasons). A lot of metros are cost effectively built with tunnel boring machines all around the world, cut and cover just might make it more straightforward.
Nandert is the GOAT fantasy transit advocate on YT. so much effort and so much detail told by incredible graphs and animations. dude is built for being on the metro board
Hes great and I'd hope he ends up on the board at some point!
Feels like at least some of the challenge with cut-and-cover could be alleviated by choosing the right places that make using the technique more feasible.
For example, much of the east leg of Montreal's orange line serves and follows the rue Saint-Denis corridor, but runs under rue Berri, one block to the east. Similarly, the central portion of the green line serves and follows rue Sainte-Catherine, but runs under boulevard de Maisonneuve a block to the north.
Imagine if Vancouver's Broadway extension were built cut-and-cover under Tenth Avenue instead of Broadway, with stairs and escalators opening onto Broadway (like at Broadway City Hall station), serving Broadway, but leveraging an easier alignment to deliver.
The level of disruption and impact of opening a trench on Berri/de Maisonneuve/Tenth would be much less than on the parallel main street, from a retail, existing bus transit, and of course vehicle traffic point of view. While there would of course be significant hardship and opposition from those side street residents, surely it would be an easier set of impacts to manage than on the main drag.
While this isn't a solution everywhere (not all street networks have a consistent parallel street), and there are of course impacts on secondary streets that are just as real, and perhaps if you need to acquire a tunnel boring machine for some of the route, you might as well use it the whole way, etc etc, but there can be location elements that might improve the viability of cut-and-cover.
This is a fantastic point. Toronto also did this with Line 2 where much of the line sits off of Bloor and Danforth going under alleys to the north instead!
I absolutely concur with your point about tenth in Vancouver!
I feel like the whole point regarding LA sticking to a few modes immediately followed by a statement about building something substantially different than what they have now is contradictory. They already have a high capacity mode capable of high frequencies (even if it is not operated at those frequencies), so (in a sense; there are legitimate negatives to your suggestion) downgrading to LRT on high capacity corridors doesn't make sense to me.
Additionally, LA has stuck to as few modes as possible (they only have two). Sepulveda (if monorail is selected) may introduce a third, but from what we know about the HRT proposals, they are either identical (Alt. 6) or are dimensionally identical (Alts. 4 & 5) with just shorter trains.
In a world I'm talking about LA is building a lot more than it is today!
LRT on "high capacity" corridors would not be a downgrade, because as suggested (5 - car trains) you'd have far more capacity than any LA Metro line currently uses.
As for adding a mode what I've really suggesting is replacing current "heavy rail" with high speed regional metro, which should be slightly larger, and capable of much higher speeds (requiring OHLE)
The downgrade I'm speaking to is related to both the wasted space you get with a bunch of extra cabs that would suppress some of the extra capacity you'd get with lengthened trains and the lower top speed. Of course they could use longer, walk-through trains to avoid the former issue, but they'd need yards to accommodate the extra long trains. At that point they'd be building virtually the same thing as the existing HRT with only potential marginal cost savings.
The existing HRT spec is already fairly fast. It's designed for 70mph operation with less than 2 minute headways. It'd probably be trivial to increase that to 80mph (BART only a few hundred miles north routinely operates at this speed). I'm not sure going much faster would really be helpful given the overall urban character of LA (fairly uniform density without many natural geographic boundaries; stations probably shouldn't be multiple miles apart).
I don't know! Seoul and various Chinese cities which sprawl on a scale like LA have high speed metros which push 90 mph! So I do think theres a worthwhile distinction.
I absolutely agree with all of your points, especially in regards to how cut and cover saves money in terms of construction, and what that enables you to do in regards to increasing frequency (more trains, better signalling, automation etc.)
But I did want to ask, what makes the LA area so unique in terms of topology? I am not an LA resident, so I do not know about where people go, but it seems to me that places outside of Downtown attract more people overall. Are these kind of travel patterns found in any other place in the world?
LA Resident here. This is true, downtown LA is not the hub that many cities operate off of. In LA there are many "Downtowns". People may live in the more suburban San Fernando Valley but work in Santa Monica or vice versa. There is no mass migration daily from the suburbs ring into the city and then back out in the evening.
This is an overlay of other cities boundaries on the City of LA. https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/vwatu6/la_map_size_comparison_to_other_cities_is_this/
It's hard to think of other cities that are like this, Maybe Portland with its different neighborhoods on a smaller scale?
Blog name change is good as is continued its focus on transit.
Thanks for calling attention to the video and its suggestions.
Three car underground stations are a really bad idea as are excess underground staff rooms and the like, as pointed out by the NYU Marron Institute's Transit Costs Project.
I like the Milan reverse cut-and-cover approach.
I would not say so, the light rail cars are <30 meters long, while heavy rail cars are frequently quite a bit longer than half that. So yes maybe a four car train, but not much more.
I really want this to work
Im hesitant about timelines though. In russia (which is the transit space i am most familiar with) timelines are most frequently blown out during construction for the need to bypass and relocate utilities. There always seem to be way more than what was expected and it always takes way longer to get them out of the way.
Regardless, choosing tunnel boring for any reason other than geological or subterranean infrastructure constraints is absolutely ridiculous and counterproductive
Well, I don't think I'd apply too much from Russia (iirc it's basically just Moscow doing a ton and no other cities) to the US, while there is some common stuff, its a very different environment, and in Russia the metros have historically been much more heavily tunnelled!
I would also point out that Moscow does tons of TBM where it isn't "technically" necessary, but thats fine because as I mentioned in another comment it can be done cost effectively!
This article reminds me of the classic from Alon Levy. "Why American Costs Are So High"
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-costs-are-so-high-work-in-progress/
Cut-and-cover construction and overbuilt stations are his #1 and #2 bullet points.
I honestly think cut and cover is probably a bit overrated in the modern American context (I didn't want to get into this in this post for obvious reasons). A lot of metros are cost effectively built with tunnel boring machines all around the world, cut and cover just might make it more straightforward.