Author: vivaNext

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Uncategorized

Bus Rapid Transit: growing around the world

Dedicated BRT busway in Brisbane (top) and BRT station in Rouen (bottom)

I was recently reading in the Wall Street Journal how BRT is one of the hottest trends in urban mass transit. In the past, BRT has been used more widely in the developing world, but a growing number of North American and European cities realizing the value in combining BRT with rail-based systems.

BRT systems are now on every continent, including 49 cities with BRT corridors under construction and another 31 cities in the planning stages. The biggest systems are still in the developing world, in the rapidly growing cities in Asia, South Asia and Africa. For example, Delhi has 14.5 kilometres of busway approved and under construction, but is planning to add a whopping 394 kilometres!

Australia has taken to BRT with enthusiasm, with one of the oldest systems located in Adelaide, and others in operation or being built in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The Brisbane system has especially impressive stations – most of their stations have beautiful grade-separated pedestrian access between platforms, using covered overpasses reached by elevators.

Europe is gradually installing more BRT systems, from London to Helsinki, with one of the most well-known systems in Rouen, France. Rouen’s system launched in 2001, providing 40,000 trips a day and has since increased ridership by 60%. Its 66 optically-guided articulated buses use biofuels, which have reduced diesel fuel consumption by 30%, and greenhouse gas emissions by 15%.

In North America, several cities are expanding their rapid transit with BRT or BRT/rail combinations. Our recent Celebrating Canadian transit blog talked about some great examples of rapid transit, and several US cities have recently added short BRT corridors to their larger transit systems. One popular service is the 7.1 mile Health Line in Cleveland – named for the hospitals along this corridor. This service runs articulated buses offering first class comforts, and has shaved a typical travel time of 40 minutes down to 28 minutes. Not surprisingly, the Health Line has proven so popular since its 2008 launch that ridership has increased by 60%.

Having looked at examples of BRT moving large populations in Asia, South Asia and Africa, it will be interesting to watch the unique ways that North American and European cities continue to include BRT as part of their transit networks.

Categories
Surveys Urban Planning

When is a highway not a highway?

Inside Artist’s illustration of a transformed Highway 7

Here’s a question for you – when you hear the word highway, what comes to mind? Like most, you probably think of a lot of traffic moving at high speed along a roadway that is designed purely to get you from one place to another as quickly as possible. There may be the occasional stop along the way, but highway stops tend to be more functional than appealing destinations in and of themselves. A highway is for vehicles, large and small – but typically, not a great place for people.

A highway probably doesn’t bring to mind a welcoming, human-scaled streetscape, where people feel comfortable strolling along wide, beautifully-landscaped sidewalks and boulevards. Most highways don’t offer attractive shopping destinations, with store-fronts and restaurants near the sidewalk.

So why the question? Highway 7 is evolving and we want your thoughts and ideas about changing its name to something that better reflects its future.

Highway 7 is one of the most important roads in York Region and is the connector between urban areas in three of our municipalities. It stretches from Highway 50 in the west, across Vaughan and Richmond Hill to east of Donald Cousens Parkway in Markham. And certainly, in the past Highway 7 was all those things associated with the word “highway” – it carried a lot of traffic, and wasn’t designed to be a comfortable, attractive destination for pedestrians or local residents.

But change is coming quickly to Highway 7, and in the not-too-distant future there will be many sections of Highway 7 where people will want to shop, dine and relax. It’s all part of a larger plan – York Region is planning a system of regional centres and corridors, which follow the Province of Ontario’s Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. The vivaNext plan for rapidways and great transit connections along Highway 7 is also a big part of the change, with construction already underway for wide, welcoming boulevards and beautiful transit stations.

So, York Region is looking for suggestions for re-naming Highway 7. Considering the future transformation of Highway 7, what do you think it should be called?

It’s not a contest, so there are no rules – they’re just looking for your ideas. You can make your suggestions to York Region via Twitter (www.twitter.com/YorkRegionGovt), Facebook (www.facebook.com/YorkRegion), or you can post an idea here and we’ll forward it.

It’ll be interesting to see the name ideas people have for one of our most important streets.  Tell us what you think!

Categories
Urban Planning

Bus Rapid Transit: South America leads the way

Inside a BRT station in Curitiba – photo by www.ThomasLockeHobbs.com

The vivaNext rapidways project is one of a relatively small number of Bus Rapid Transit projects here in Canada, or for that matter in North America. There are BRT systems in Canada and the US, but the number of cities with BRT systems planned is relatively small, compared to the number of cities that would benefit from better transit.

What’s really interesting is how many cities around the world use BRT – cities with enormous populations and transit usage. Transit experts at EMBARQ (the Sustainable Transport wing of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank) estimate there are 120 cities around the world with BRT systems. And South America has taken to BRT enthusiastically, with BRT systems in 32 cities – more than a quarter of the total BRT systems around the globe.

One of the earliest BRT systems in the world was built in Curitiba, a large city in the south of Brazil with a population of just under 2 million within a larger metropolitan area. Other systems have been built all over South and Central America, including in all the major cities like Guatemala City, São Paolo, and Bogotá. There’s no doubt those systems are a spectacular success – transit ridership numbers in South American cities are huge. The Curitiba system carries a whopping 2.3 million riders per day, using 72 kilometres of median bus rapidway. Or how about São Paulo, with 104 kilometres of bus lanes, and a daily ridership of 5.7 million!

Besides a convenient way to get around, cities with bus rapid transit have been shown to have reduced commute times, lower tailpipe emissions and fewer traffic fatalities. And a key part of the success of these successful systems is that transit was built early on, and the surrounding land use was shaped by rapid transit. People became accustomed to taking transit, and transit-oriented development followed.

It’s exciting to think of the benefits vivaNext rapid transit projects will bring to our region. We know that there are differences in climate, landscape, and culture between South and Central American cities and York Region, but there are examples of BRT elsewhere in the world, and I’ll talk more about those next week.

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Uncategorized

Back-to-school time is here

Back to school time is here

It’s hard to believe, but summer is almost over. Students of all ages are heading back to school this week, and more people will need to pass our construction areas on Highway 7 and Davis Drive. With this in mind, we’ve taken every safety measure we can think of to mark and fence our construction zones for everyone’s safety.

Street safety is an especially appropriate topic as students return to school, since elementary school taught most of us how to travel on roads safely as pedestrians or bicyclists, and Drivers’ Ed taught us the rules of the road. We hope students, and parents driving students, keep in mind everything they’ve learned about safety as they get back into the routine of commuting to and from school.

We’ve installed temporary sidewalks to keep pedestrians away from construction, and we can’t emphasize enough how important it is to obey posted signs and use the temporary sidewalks. At some locations, we’re moving YRT and Viva passengers away from bus stops located near construction by installing new temporary stops. If you ride YRT or Viva along Highway 7 or Davis Drive, please keep an eye out for signs explaining how to get to a temporary bus stop, and remember never take a shortcut through a construction zone.

With people back from holidays and in school, increased traffic volume can make it take longer to drive places. So with this added to construction, it’s even more important to plan your route carefully, remembering that even though all lanes are generally open near work zones, you still may experience delays from time to time. We’ve installed electronic message signs on Highway 7 to note any traffic delays or unusual congestion ahead, and we chose their locations to give you enough time to choose your route.

The best way to find out about upcoming work or potential delays is to sign up for our email updates. We know back-to-school is a time for getting back into routines and starting some new ones, so we thank everyone for making the little adjustments needed to accommodate vivaNext rapidway construction in your school commute.

Categories
Construction

Our pledge to you

Click here to see the Pledge campaign poster

You probably can guess that I’m very proud to be involved in our vivaNext rapidway construction project underway on Highway 7. I believe – as does everyone who works here – that this project is going to be great for York Region.

We thought people in York Region might find it interesting and reassuring to meet some of the professionals who are part of the vivaNext Highway 7 East rapidway project, and to hear what those individuals personally hope to achieve through their own work. This is the thinking behind our “Pledge” campaign, which you may have seen in posters or video.

The pledge campaign is our commitment to the community – that our design will reflect state-of-the-art technology and transit planning and that it will incorporate detailed urban design elements for beautiful and welcoming streetscapes.

Our construction project will be carefully planned and implemented to minimize disruption as much as possible, and to time the noise and delays for the least inconvenience for commuters, businesses and residents.

We are committed to being careful stewards of the natural environment while we work, to ensure we cause no harm to vegetation, fish or wildlife through the construction project.

And last but not least, we will be transparent and open in providing all the information people need while construction is underway. We will be available to anyone who has a question, comment or concern, through our Community Liaison, Nimisha Raja.

All of us working on vivaNext, whether we’re named in the campaign or not, are personally and professionally proud to be a part of building this state-of-the-art rapid transit system. And we want everyone in York Region to know you have our word on it.

Categories
Live-work-play

Summertime fun made easy on YRT\Viva

Summertime fun made easy on YRTViva

It’s already August, but the weatherman is saying that there’s still lots of summer to be enjoyed here in York Region. Happily, all across York Region there are lots of great ways to relax and cool down. Whether your idea of fun includes cooling off by a beach, watching the kids in a wave pool, or taking in a performance at a concert or outdoor theatre, we’ve got you covered.

And even better, you don’t have to get in a car to get there! YRT\Viva is a great way to get yourself to some summer enjoyment, whether you’re relaxing with friends, or taking the kids for an outing.

Want to have a picnic? Scare yourself on the biggest and fastest rollercoasters? Ride a bike on a forested trail? Or play a round of golf? Whatever your idea of fun looks like, the YRT\Viva Trip Planner makes it easy. You just put in the address you’re leaving from and where you want to go, and the trip planner works out the best route and gives you a schedule. It even has a built-in list of the major recreation destinations across York Region. Then grab your PRESTO card or bus fare and you’re on your way.

For some ideas, check out these links for recreation centres, pools, picnic parks and conservation areas, and then get out there and enjoy the second half of this amazing summer.

YRT\Viva Tripplanner: http://tripplanner.yrt.ca/hiwire

Lake Simcoe region Conservation Authority, conservation areas: http://www.lsrca.on.ca/conservation_areas

List of recreational activities available in Markham: http://www.guidingstar.ca/Recreational_Activities_in_Markham.htm

Website for your municipality – Markham, Newmarket, Vaughan, etc: http://www.york.ca/Municipal+Links/default.htm

Categories
Construction General

Working together to keep everyone safe

vivaNext construction signs

During the preliminary engineering phase of the vivaNext rapidway construction projects, as you might expect, our focus was on the design of our roadways, boulevards and stations. Now that we’re in active construction along Highway 7 and Davis Drive, one of our top priorities is safety – both for the public and for our workers. Our contractors have very detailed protocols for the steps they need to follow to keep their crews and members of the public safe, and ensuring safety is something we think everyone should take seriously.

The main challenge, as I previously mentioned in a blog about construction staging, is that our work has to happen on the edges and in the middle of some very busy roads. Closing all or part of Highway 7 isn’t an option, so our strategy there was to create as much separation as possible between active construction zones, and drivers and pedestrians. We created this separation by shifting the lanes away from the shoulders of the road, giving our workers more room to work, store materials and use heavy equipment.

To make sure everyone knows where the work zones are, we’ve posted signs and installed fences to clearly show that some areas are off-limits to pedestrians and drivers. We’ve put in place temporary sidewalks and temporary bus stops to ensure pedestrians have a clear path around work zones, and signs to make sure drivers can find temporary entrances to businesses and addresses. Every single crew member working for us is reminded and drilled regularly on what they need to be doing to stay safe, and keep you safe too.

Most drivers and pedestrians follow signs and stay away from construction areas, but sometimes pedestrians try to take shortcuts through work zones. It may seem like there’s little risk to doing this, but the reality is that work zones are filled with potential hazards for those who aren’t trained and wearing safety gear. Unexpectedly entering a construction site can put you and others at risk. Wires just below the surface, sharp objects, uneven ground and other hazards can lead to injuries. And the risk of walking near or around heavy equipment or vehicles, especially when they’re backing up, needs no explanation. Our crews know all the potential hazards, which is why they follow safety procedures and wear protective, highly-visible clothing, headgear and footwear at all times.

We hope every member of the public will respect this need for safety as well, and do the following:

>> Consider construction sites out of bounds, at all times – even when workers aren’t on site. Fences and no entry signs are there for a reason, even if you can’t see the reason.

>> Follow signs for temporary pathways or detours, even if the original route seems to still be available. We know your time is important and we wouldn’t create a detour if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

As we go about our projects, we know that our construction disrupts the life of pedestrians, transit riders and drivers, and we do everything we can to do that as little as possible by keeping as many sidewalks, transit stops and traffic lanes open as we can, and minimizing detours and delays.

We hope that as you pass by our construction areas you’ll keep safety in mind too, and help us keep everyone safe.

Categories
General Rapidways Subways

York Region is ready to Presto

PRESTO card and fare machine

In London, it’s an Oyster. In Hong Kong, they call it an Octopus. Boston has its Charlie Card, and Atlanta loves its Breeze. And now York Region – along with other GTHA and Ottawa municipalities – is moving into the ranks of cities with smartcard technology for their transit system.

I’m talking of course about the launch of PRESTO this week in York Region on YRT\Viva services. PRESTO was developed through a partnership with the Province of Ontario, GO Transit and nine municipal transit partners in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and in Ottawa, and will allow customers to ride on any participating transit system without pre-purchasing printed tickets or tokens.

Having access to PRESTO is great news for transit riders in York Region. Because PRESTO uses “stored-value” fare payments, customers can reload their card on the PRESTO website or at designated locations, and never have to worry about having a printed ticket or the right change. All you have to do is tap your card either on the PRESTO card reader at a vivastation before you board Viva, or on the on-board PRESTO machine on a YRT bus, and the system will automatically deduct the fare from your card’s balance (GO Transit riders also tap off at the end of their trip).

Smartcards are the way of the future for all great transit systems, and with good reason. These cards speed up the process of buying transit fares, they eliminate the paper waste associated with tickets, and they mean you’ll never need to rummage through your pockets for bus fare again.

One of the most important, long-term benefits is that, because smartcards often involve multiple transit services, they make it easier for passengers to travel across municipal boundaries. Instead of needing to purchase individual tickets for separate transit services, PRESTO is the only ticket riders will need to use on any participating system, including YRT\Viva, GO Transit (selected rail stations), Brampton Transit (ZÜM), Burlington Transit, Hamilton Street Railway, Mississauga Transit (MiWay), Oakville Transit, OC Transpo (Ottawa) and at select  TTC subway stations. And more stations and transit agencies are joining PRESTO throughout 2011 and 2012.

The PRESTO website and call centre (1-8-PRESTO-123) have all the information you’ll need to learn more about how PRESTO works in general, and where it can take you.

To introduce riders to PRESTO, YRT\Viva has representatives showing riders how to use PRESTO, helping them register online, and distributing up to 5,000 specially-priced cards. To get your new PRESTO card, check out the YRT\Viva website for distribution locations and hours.

Categories
Stations

PA systems – designing vivaNext to sound great

PA systems - designing vivaNext to sound great

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about working with vivaNext, has been the opportunity to watch the plan take shape for York Region’s rapid transit future. In our weekly project meetings, I get to see up close the incredible amount of thought and expertise that goes into planning every single aspect of our new system. Now that we’re into final design and construction on Highway 7 East (and will be soon on Davis Drive in Newmarket), detailed design decisions are being made on a whole range of topics. So from time to time, our blog will focus on a particular topic, to give you a sense of what’s happening and a sneak preview of the plan ahead.

This week, our engineers brought forward their initial thinking on the speakers to be used for the Public Announcement (PA) system we’ll have at each station. In my experience, PA systems in big public spaces don’t usually work all that well – it’s sometimes hard to actually understand what’s being said, even if the volume is cranked right up. Our engineers agree that transit PA systems are often either too loud or too quiet, and in either case the words are often garbled and unintelligible.

So this week they made a plan for how to design an ideal PA system for vivaNext. It needs to be designed to provide the right loudness (6 to 10 decibels above the ambient noise), provide uniform coverage across the listening area, and be clear and easy to understand.

To deliver on the first measure, there are sensors that will constantly measure the ambient noise levels – which will be higher during the day when multiple buses are at the station at once and traffic is passing by, and quieter at night when there’s less activity. The sensors can be connected to the speakers, so that the volume can be constantly adjusted to keep it at the right level. Being able to adjust the sound to just above ambient noise levels is very important, to ensure that people on the platform can hear messages, while ensuring it isn’t so loud that sound spills off the platform and disturbs others.

Placing the speakers is relatively straightforward, taking into account where people will be along the platform and in the enclosure, and also considering our vivastations’ curved canopies and glass and steel structure.

Measuring the intelligibility of the system (i.e., how easy it will be to understand what is being said) is more complex, and uses a modelling approach called the Speech Transmission Index or STI. The STI is one way that acoustical engineers have to model how sound will move around a space, taking into account echoes, distortion and background noise, to predict how clear the final messages will be.

Designing a first-class PA system is complicated, and like everything else on this project, depends on a wide range of technical and design expertise. Our team is more than up to the task, and I hope you find this gives you a sense of the kind of work needed to bring vivaNext to life.

Categories
General

Celebrating Canadian transit

Examples of Canadian transit systems

With Canada Day just behind us, this is a great time to talk about the emerging enthusiasm across Canada for the importance of great transit.  If you’ve ever travelled outside of Canada to the world’s largest cities, there’s no doubt you will have seen how some large urban areas have really incredible transit systems – established networks that mean you truly never need to drive anywhere, and where transit is the easiest, fastest way to get around.  

But let’s talk about what makes good transit systems a priority, and how Canadian cities are increasingly investing in transit solutions.  The first factor that comes into play in transit design, is population density.  There’s no doubt that the more people who live or work in a defined area, the more transit can be effective.  Because Canadian cities don’t yet have the population of the really big international cities, they traditionally haven’t built the extensive networks that exist in places such as London or New York City. 

The problem is that this is a chicken and egg situation. Many people only want to live in an area where there’s convenient transit but transit planners – at least in the past – have often waited for an area’s population to increase before they invested in transit.   

Fortunately, many Canadian cities are realizing that they need to invest in transit before the population increases happen.  At the same time, they are increasingly encouraging the kinds of development that will support higher densities and that result in compact, pedestrian-friendly communities where people are more likely to leave their car at home and take transit.

Cities across Canada are building and expanding their transit networks, and using all sorts of different methods to encourage people to hop on board transit – from LRT and BRT, to ferries, subways and commuter trains, and even bike rentals. 

In Montreal, the transit provider STM has launched a new partnership called the Transportation Cocktail, which recognizes that there are all sorts of ways for people to get around apart from private autos. The Cocktail offers great deals combining tickets for transit and Bixi, the bike rental program.

Calgary’s C-Train is an enormous success, with the LRT in 2009 having counted one billion passengers since service was launched in 1981. It has the highest ridership of any LRT in North America. One of the success factors – apart from Calgary’s quickly growing population – is that rides in the downtown area are free!  Another great fact about the C-Train is that it gets all its electricity from wind power.  Now that’s a really small carbon footprint.

In Vancouver, the SkyTrain, which is a system of fully automated trains running mostly on elevated tracks, connects to a wonderfully diverse transit system that gives people lots of choices.  The entire system includes buses, trolley buses, a commuter rail system and the Sea Bus, a passenger-only ferry. 

The SkyTrain has been credited with helping to spur a significant amount of transit-oriented development to Vancouver – BC Transit says that more than $5 billion of private money has been invested within a 10–15 minute walking distance of the SkyTrain and SeaBus. 

Both Ottawa and Edmonton are currently extending their LRT lines, with the project in Ottawa involving tunneling through the busy downtown.

And what about the technology choice we’re using with Viva – BRT? 

Although it’s relatively new to Canada, cities all across the country are discovering the benefits of choosing BRT.  Some form of BRT has already been added to the transit services in many Canadian cities, with more extensive BRT services being planned or built across the country, from Victoria to Quebec City.

So in the future you’ll be able to visit cities across the country without having to get in a car, enjoying the sights by using our increasingly comprehensive transit services.  

If you’re interested in reading more about BRT in Canada, be sure to read this article from the Canadian Urban Transit Association.