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

To be honest I think there will only be 2 branches:

1) Mac to West Harbour and;
2) Mac to Queenston

The third branch that people have been talking about (West Harbour to Queenston) doesn't make too much sense if you think about it. There are very few riders who would travel from some point along James St to Queenston Rd. Now if the LRT went all the way to Eastgate I believe there would certainly be demand for this; but at this point in time I dont think anyone is going to bother themselves going from West Harbour to Queenston and transferring again to complete their trip to Stoney Creek (or some point before).

But the way that the HSR shoddily plans their routes I wouldnt be surprised if their was a West Harbour to Queenston Branch, a Mac to West Harbour Branch and a very infrequent Mac to Queenston branch.
 
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Amare said:
To be honest I think there will only be 2 branches:

1) Mac to West Harbour and;
2) Mac to Queenston

The third branch that people have been talking about (West Harbour to Queenston) doesn't make too much sense if you think about it.
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The answer would I presume be pretty evident from the ridership numbers for each segment, which I'd assume are in the EA.
 
Yeah, we need a new EA amendment based on the modified routes and current new construction situation and JamesNorth, which was only an uncertain distant idea/promise at the time. There's enough time to do it before 2017 procurement. It shouldn't be a major modification to the previous EA.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Have there been any ridership estimations for this LRT?
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Here is the Metrolinx benefits case analysis for the original version of the project.

Option 2, which was the option with the most demand, had a peak-hour estimate of 1946 passengers in the westbound direction by 2021.

EDIT:

This report from Hamilton Public Works estimated 13,300,00 annual boardings for the B-Line Corridor from McMaster to Queenston Circle. So ... about 36,000 boardings a day?
 
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I recall reading the B-line bus route has 11,000 boardings a day, and that still justified the LRT. I would naturally assume boardings will go up (as they pretty much always do) relative to the bus route that they replace.

36,000 seems realistic if they run the trains frequently 7 days a week and almost as efficiently as a subway (good traffic light priority, to the point that it behaves like a grade-separated line). Hamilton's Main-King has some of the most efficiently synchronized traffic lights in Canada, and if they do a really good job linking it to the LRTs, I have no doubt they will easily breeze through. This means better than both Spadina and St. Clair, which both have inefficient and/or malfunctioning traffic light priority, unlike some well-implemented European LRTs.

Because of a couple of bad experiences waiting for the B-Line bus before giving up (I realized later about poor offpeak and weekend service), I frequently forget about taking the bus downtown on weekends and just drive downtown where I sometimes end up paying parking. I like to enjoy my weekends in Hamilton, and I'd rather leave my car at home if I know I can catch a BRT or LRT within 5 minutes. Heck, I'd even have settled for frequent 7-day-a-week buses so that I am confident I will get buses no matter which day of the year I walk up to the bus station. But I am discouraged because I am a Toronto commuter, so whenever I want to enjoy walking James/Locke/Hess/Augusta, then I use the B-Line whenever it's running very crappy frequencies. But if you're ramping up the B-Line, you might as well go LRT since the LRT operating costs are cheaper (Even though capital costs are stupendously expensive). Also, running the LRTs well past closing time will be a good thing, to capture a good deal of the pub/nightclub/student market (as long as we are aggressive on keeping the trains clean!). Some north-south feeder bus routes will be good, to get to our industrial lands. Attracting the weekend market (including me), night shift market, and bar-closing market will easily bump it to 36,000 boardings a day average, given the attractiveness of subway-style-predictable European LRT service.
 
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wopchop said:
Here is the Metrolinx benefits case analysis for the original version of the project.

Option 2, which was the option with the most demand, had a peak-hour estimate of 1946 passengers in the westbound direction by 2021.

EDIT:

This report from Hamilton Public Works estimated 13,300,00 annual boardings for the B-Line Corridor from McMaster to Queenston Circle. So ... about 36,000 boardings a day?
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Only 1,950 at peak hour? Surely this $1 Billion could be spent elsewhere on projects that will move more people.
 
gweed123 said:
Hmm, that's interesting, thanks! I wonder if they meant the Ottawa Valley, because I know that the twinning west of Arnprior is going forward. But yes, it is a pretty big pot, with far fewer big ticket (>$1B) items chewing up a substantial chunk of it (unlike GO RER for the GTHA pot).
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Once we've twinned to Peterborough, and we've twinned past Arnprior, how many kilometers between the stubs? It seems we'll have produced half a second twinned freeway corridor between Toronto and Ottawa.
 
mdrejhon said:
Once we've twinned to Peterborough, and we've twinned past Arnprior, how many kilometers between the stubs? It seems we'll have produced half a second twinned freeway corridor between Toronto and Ottawa.
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Arnprior is till 280 km from North Bay. Not sure what Peterborough has got to do with it ... are you thinking of Carleton Place rather than Arnprior? About 220 km to close that gap ... which would cut 45 km off the Toronto-Ottawa up the 401/416 route.
 
nfitz said:
Arnprior is till 280 km from North Bay. Not sure what Peterborough has got to do with it ... are you thinking of Carleton Place rather than Arnprior? About 220 km to close that gap ... which would cut 45 km off the Toronto-Ottawa up the 401/416 route.
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Checked, you're right. I was thinking the wrong location -- I was incorrectly thinking northwards, rather than southwards (i.e. that would have been twinning from Carleton Place to Perth, not twinning past Arnprior). It seems like the endpoints of twinning are slowly creeping together, that a 407 to Ottawa, as a faster route than 401, is theoretically possible within lifetime -- mixed feelings about that -- but that's the Perth-Carleton Place routing. More than 45km would be cut off for destinations west of the 416.

(I realize, yes -- wrong thread -- I should be posting this in the 407 thread.)
 
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mdrejhon said:
It seems like the endpoints of twinning are slowly creeping together, that a 407 to Ottawa, as a faster route than 401, is theoretically possible within lifetime
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Google Maps is already recommending Highway 7 over 401/416 at times. Without traffic from North York to Ottawa is 3:56 on 7 and 3:52 on 401.

I expect if they build the next 25 km leg from Carleton Place to Perth, as planned south of Mississippi Lake, that it would actually be the faster route most of the time.

Though once 407 is complete, that too would tempt many already using 407 to bypass Toronto, to take 7, rather than the slower route of heading down to 401, even if no more widening is done on 7.
 
vic said:
It would *really* suck for anyone going cross-town to be diverted all the way to West Harbour (FKA James North) GO. That's probably about a 2.5km diversion, plus all the turning around etc.

I'm also really curious how they will handle that.
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I'm also curious.

Will they run it as a stop along the east-west route?

Or (my preferred option), will they run just a couple trains on that line alone, acting almost as a people-mover type option.

They can still call it the A-Line, make it seem like we're getting two lines in one shot.
 
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