Totally agreed. The days of 9 - 5 office days are over and were already over before COVID-19. Employers demand flexibility too. It's no good having 4 peak hour trains after 5pm if your employer tells you to stay back until 6:30pm to finish some work. Or to come in on Saturday. Or to come in at 8:00am for a meeting. All day transit is required.
The San Diego Trolley excels at exploiting off-peak travel to maximize ridership. That's how the Trolley achieved a 2019 per-mile and absolute ridership rivaling the Portland MAX despite DTSD having only 3.6% of metro area employment vs. Downtown Portland's 9.4%.
Unlike the typical peak-centric US LRT line that starts in Downtown and dead-ends in middle-of-nowhere suburbia, the Blue Line Trolley connects Downtown with the world's busiest border crossing outside Asia. That makes ridership so consistent throughout the day that in January 2020 the Trolley increased midday weekday frequencies from 15 to 7.5 minutes. And accordingly the Trolley has bounced back from COVID stronger than any other US/Canadian LRT, and ended 2020 with more frequency than it had in 2019.
The new Mid Coast Trolley once again exploits off-peak ridership by connecting Downtown with a major university.
Third mainline track is not actually a bad thing. Triple track = double track + single track. Single track is never inherently peaky; it's definitely not the case for double track. Then why is triple track inherently peaky?
The point is that you can and should avoid peaky service patterns by operating a triple-tracked railway as a double-tracked one running frequent, local, subway-like services, and a single-tracked one providing limited express services in both directions.
As for the merit of express services, I think express services are bonuses in East Asia, but essential in North American. North American cities are too obsessed with speed. Since car driving gives you a few occurrences where you may get from point A to point B at a fairly high speed without stucking in traffic. This may give people a false illusion that a consistent, say, 60 km/h transit trip is "too slow". Although with modern EMUs local trains can also speed up, it'll never be close to the "occational" high speed cars can provide.
Also, I'm Chinese but never have heard of that proverb (
I have talked about this before but, Triple tracked railways cost almost as much as quad track and yet have far less benefit, the most effective way to operate them - express service or not, is one direction at a time - which encourages a commuter type op.
A brand-new triple-tracked railroad indeed costs almost as much as a quadruple-tracked one. They're very few new triple-track constructions, except for some pre-NYCT era New York subway constructions.
But when it comes to the expansion of an existing double-tracked railway, it's another story. I'm not quite convinced that adding a single track could cost as much as adding two more tracks. At least triple-track expansions are not rare, and much more common than new triple-track constructions.
Also, I'm not quite convinced that even # of tracks have sufficient inertia dragging agencies from running into the mud of "peaky services". When there're four mainline tracks, LIRR runs them in a "three-in, one-out" pattern. When there're two, they stop reverse-peak services completely, and use both for peak-directional services.
Totally agreed. The days of 9 - 5 office days are over and were already over before COVID-19. Employers demand flexibility too. It's no good having 4 peak hour trains after 5pm if your employer tells you to stay back until 6:30pm to finish some work. Or to come in on Saturday. Or to come in at 8:00am for a meeting. All day transit is required.
Absolutely agree, flexibility should be the priority!
That viva bus is actually on yonge not highway 7
Corrected
The San Diego Trolley excels at exploiting off-peak travel to maximize ridership. That's how the Trolley achieved a 2019 per-mile and absolute ridership rivaling the Portland MAX despite DTSD having only 3.6% of metro area employment vs. Downtown Portland's 9.4%.
Unlike the typical peak-centric US LRT line that starts in Downtown and dead-ends in middle-of-nowhere suburbia, the Blue Line Trolley connects Downtown with the world's busiest border crossing outside Asia. That makes ridership so consistent throughout the day that in January 2020 the Trolley increased midday weekday frequencies from 15 to 7.5 minutes. And accordingly the Trolley has bounced back from COVID stronger than any other US/Canadian LRT, and ended 2020 with more frequency than it had in 2019.
The new Mid Coast Trolley once again exploits off-peak ridership by connecting Downtown with a major university.
Third mainline track is not actually a bad thing. Triple track = double track + single track. Single track is never inherently peaky; it's definitely not the case for double track. Then why is triple track inherently peaky?
The point is that you can and should avoid peaky service patterns by operating a triple-tracked railway as a double-tracked one running frequent, local, subway-like services, and a single-tracked one providing limited express services in both directions.
As for the merit of express services, I think express services are bonuses in East Asia, but essential in North American. North American cities are too obsessed with speed. Since car driving gives you a few occurrences where you may get from point A to point B at a fairly high speed without stucking in traffic. This may give people a false illusion that a consistent, say, 60 km/h transit trip is "too slow". Although with modern EMUs local trains can also speed up, it'll never be close to the "occational" high speed cars can provide.
Also, I'm Chinese but never have heard of that proverb (
I have talked about this before but, Triple tracked railways cost almost as much as quad track and yet have far less benefit, the most effective way to operate them - express service or not, is one direction at a time - which encourages a commuter type op.
A brand-new triple-tracked railroad indeed costs almost as much as a quadruple-tracked one. They're very few new triple-track constructions, except for some pre-NYCT era New York subway constructions.
But when it comes to the expansion of an existing double-tracked railway, it's another story. I'm not quite convinced that adding a single track could cost as much as adding two more tracks. At least triple-track expansions are not rare, and much more common than new triple-track constructions.
Also, I'm not quite convinced that even # of tracks have sufficient inertia dragging agencies from running into the mud of "peaky services". When there're four mainline tracks, LIRR runs them in a "three-in, one-out" pattern. When there're two, they stop reverse-peak services completely, and use both for peak-directional services.
I don't think it helps! And thats important!