Tag: vivastation

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Construction General Live-work-play Rapidways Uncategorized Urban Planning vivaNext.com

Finding the balance: maximizing construction while minimizing inconvenience

 

If you’ve ever been involved in a home renovation project then you know it’s far easier to work in a room that is empty or unused, rather than the high traffic rooms, like a kitchen or bathroom. It’s one of the biggest challenges vivaNext faces during the rapidway construction – how to work in a confined, busy space that’s open for business 24/7.

Building a roadway is a process that follows clearly defined steps and uses modern technology, equipment and materials.  In York Region, we are fortunate to have access to some of the best, most experienced construction contractors anywhere, so building the rapidways is – in some ways – a very straightforward project.  Straightforward, that is, until you realize that the rapidways are being built down the middle of some of the Region’s busiest roads.  So during construction, it’s critical to minimize the impact on people using the roadway by keeping travel lanes open during construction whenever possible.  This is where “construction staging” – the process of doing the work in specific phases or steps to manage within the available space and right-of-way [ROW] or easement comes in.

Construction needs to happen in its own separate space; excavators need to swing their buckets, concrete trucks need to make deliveries, and construction trucks need room to back up. For this reason, the first step in rebuilding one of these busy roads is to create some extra room for construction crews to work safely.  The best approach to do this is to take out the median, narrow each of the lanes and shift them over by repainting the lines. This way crews can work in the extra space that’s been freed up, before moving to the next.

Think of our kitchen example – it’s like putting down a new floor – you do one side, and then move your fridge and stove over to the completed side so you can do the other half. Once one section of construction is done, lanes are repainted again to shift them back, and begin work on the other side, working in stages along the entire segment.

To help manage the work areas, the Region also takes temporary and/or permanent easements or ROW’s on properties that are within York Region Rapid Transit’s construction limits. This ensures that when it’s time for a certain stage of construction the area is clear and available, permitting crews access during construction at any time. Easement areas include boulevards, sidewalks, driveways and parking lots fronting the rapidway construction. Rest assured, during construction, the vivaNext teams are committed to minimizing disruption, maintaining driveway access and keeping a sidewalk open at all times.

Sometimes you may even get the feeling that we’ve returned to an area even though it seemed like we were finished. It’s not déjà vu, what you’re actually seeing is our staging technique, where work is done in small, careful steps.

And just as you wouldn’t be able to live without your kitchen while you renovate, we will keep the roads open during construction, relying on staging to minimize the impact of work in order to finish as quickly as possible.  We thank you for your patience and hope you are following along as this amazing transformation unfolds.

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Construction Stations

Lighting up the neighbourhood

It’s the dark days of winter, and our crews are truly lighting up Highway 7 in Richmond Hill. They’re trying out the lighting installed at our new vivastations between Bayview and Highway 404, and it’s an exciting sign that rapidways are well and truly on the way to Highway 7.

Energy-efficient throughout and functional in all weather, these lighting systems are designed to make it easy to identify each station, and are an important safety feature for passengers waiting. Lighting also helps drivers to clearly see the rapidway in the middle of the road.

It’s not all about the bright lights though. Vivastations are being built with reflective, tinted glass curved panels that arch overhead to keep snow and rain off. A glass-enclosed area in the middle of each station has motion-activated heaters, and the raised platform eliminates the need to climb or lift objects up onto a viva vehicle. Technology includes security surveillance and intercom on the platform, and arrival/departure screens with real-time scheduling information.

We already have the first example of a vivastation built in Markham, south of Highway 7 on Warden, so the best way to experience a vivastation is to hop on and off at one. Vivastations will follow a consistent design, but station platforms will be located on different sides of the intersection in some cases. At Bayview Avenue, the vivastation platforms will be curbside, with unique towers alongside that have stairs and elevators leading to Bayview Avenue.

As the days get longer with more sunshine in spring and summer, we’ll start to see the gleaming glass of vivastations along Highway 7. By next winter, vivastation lights will be on, and Highway 7 will be a brighter place for everyone.

 

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General

Growing up: students and rapid transit

growing up: students and rapid transit

It’s that time of year again – students are back to school next week and parents can’t believe how much their kids have grown. It probably seems like just yesterday that they were taking their first steps. If you’re an older student, maybe you’re taking a big step yourself – starting high school or college.

We understand the feeling, because it wasn’t long ago that we were planning the vivaNext rapidways, and now they’re starting to take shape. Highway 7, between Bayview and Warden, is the ‘eager beaver’ of the class. Since 2010 on Highway 7, construction crews have removed medians, relocated utilities and widened the road to allow for dedicated transit lanes. New vivastations are well underway, with nine in various stages of completion and 13 more to come in the next 18 months. Once construction is complete, the rapidway lanes and stations will be tested, drivers will be trained, and the centre lanes of Highway 7 will become a full-fledged segment of rapidway.

This September, students will get to school by bus, car, bike and on foot. Many students ride transit to and from school, and soon, Unionville High School and Seneca’s Markham Campus will have a Highway 7 rapidway outside their doors. In Newmarket, the Davis Drive rapidway will bring rapid transit to the students of Huron Heights Secondary School, and future rapidways along Yonge Street will pass near Sir William Mulock, Richmond Hill, and Langstaff secondary schools. Langstaff and Thornhill secondary schools will each be within walking distance of the planned extension to Yonge Subway, and thanks to the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension, students of Seneca, York and Schulich will be able to take the subway to York University’s Keele Campus in 2016.

York Region’s transit network is designed to help shape how and where our population grows, helping to transform our towns and cities into attractive, accessible urban areas. This includes new residents to our region, and also long-time residents like students, moving from one stage of life to another. This year’s batch of college freshmen will have rapid transit waiting to take them to their first jobs when they graduate. Grade 9 students will be able to head to college via subway, and kindergarten students will have a world of choices. It’ll all happen before we know it…[poll id=”33″]

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Construction Rapidways Stations

Building for the future: here comes the first Highway 7 rapidway station

Installing vivastation canopies along Highway 7If you’ve been driving along Highway 7 East lately, you’ll notice an exciting development taking shape on our Highway 7 rapidway: the installation of the first of 22 vivastations.

And like everything else on the vivaNext project, the station that we’re going to be building in the median at Leslie and Highway 7 is the product of literally years of design, planning and preparation. Here’s a primer on the stations, and how they’ll be installed.

Like their predecessor at Warden Station on Enterprise Boulevard, our vivastations along Highway 7 are going to be beautiful, strong and very functional. The curved viva blue glass that makes up the canopy is surprisingly rugged – this glass is curved, tempered and laminated for strength, which prevents it from breaking into sharp pieces if it is cracked or broken. Reliability was our first priority in sourcing the manufacturer: our glass panels are actually being made by the company that makes nearly half of the world’s windshield glass.

Although the canopy is made up of nearly 100 individual panes of glass, each will be connected to its neighbour by small fasteners, known as “spiders” – so visually, the glass will look like it’s all one piece.

Supporting the glass underneath is a three-piece structure made of Canadian-fabricated steel, constructed just outside of Paris, Ontario. With durability in mind, the steel will be finished with a high-quality automotive-grade paint to minimize long-term maintenance costs.

Before the station components are delivered, a concrete platform is poured and set, and the connections built into the platform are prepared.  Then the canopy’s three steel structural sections are brought in on a wide-load tractor trailer and  installed. It takes about a week to align the sections perfectly and do some other prep, in advance of the glass being delivered and installed.

Each station includes two platforms/canopies – one for eastbound passengers and one for westbound passengers. Our schedule calls for the construction of one station canopy a month, with eastbound and then westbound canopies being built along the Highway 7 East rapidway throughout the rest of this year. There are a number of steps involved in getting the platforms ready before the glass and steel can be delivered; each platform requires about 12 weeks of work including excavations, installing electrical cables and concrete work.

One of the strategic decisions we made in the beginning for the vivaNext program is to build our rapidway segments consecutively, enabling our designers and construction experts to assess the experience of the previous segment and continually fine tune the design and construction methods. Lessons learned from our experience building the Warden Station have helped us find ways to modify the design, to make the canopies easier and more efficient to install. And because minimizing traffic impacts along the Highway 7 corridor is so critically important, our team has focused on finding strategies to install these huge canopies in a very small space with minimal lane closures.

Beyond providing rapid transit users with a comfortable and convenient experience, our vivastations are going to give a defining look and feel to Highway 7, as it becomes increasingly urbanized and developed over the next few years. We think that’s a milestone that’s really worth celebrating.

Categories
Construction Stations

Winter work

Warden Station in Markham - Winter construction in 2010-2011

This winter has been unusually warm so far, but we probably can’t count on the balmy temperatures continuing all the way through until spring. But at the same time, our vivaNext rapidway construction schedule requires that we make good progress during winter. Although it might be surprising to see construction happening in winter, some work will be taking place – with a little modification to our warmer weather construction methods.

Over the winter, work continues along the boulevards on Highway 7 East, and we’ll build the foundations for the first three rapidway stations at West Beaver Creek Road, Leslie Street and East Beaver Creek Road.

Much of the work we’re doing involves concrete, which doesn’t actually dry but cures through its own internal chemical reaction that creates heat. If the concrete cools down too quickly, it won’t cure properly. So the crews must ensure the ground is warm enough before the concrete is placed, to enable the concrete to begin its own heating process. Once those chemical reactions get going, it keeps itself warm, and all we need to do is keep it insulated while it cures.

In areas where we need to excavate earth, we dig out the first few inches of frozen ground – with these milder temperatures the frost generally only extends down through the first six inches of soil. Then, using ground heaters, we blow hot air into the excavation to warm it up, and cover it with tarps. The concrete is then poured, and the tarps are kept on the concrete until it is cured. The concrete is tested to ensure it has properly set and meets our specifications.

By using these techniques, we will be able to continue work throughout the winter on the boulevards, and construct the six platforms at the three stations.

In the boulevards, we will continue to install the Cupolex® forms for the tree soil cells, which are excavated and then covered with concrete. On the station platforms, crews will augur shallow holes to pour the concrete caissons (foundations) for the platforms, then pour the concrete platform slabs on top of these foundations.

Plenty of work is happening this year for both Highway 7 East and Davis Drive, and there’s still lots of work left to do. But by continuing construction through the winter, we’ll be moving closer to finishing the Highway 7 rapidway.

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 Rapidways

Why Bus Rapid Transit?

Warden Station: York Region's first built example of a rapid transit station

With GTA transit issues in the news so much lately, I’ve been asked why York Region chose to build Bus Rapid Transit instead of some other form of rapid transit. To help you understand how we decided to build vivaNext rapidways, here’s a bit of a primer on what BRT is, and why it’s great for York Region.

To begin with, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is defined as a public transit system that provides fast, frequent service, is able to move a lot of people, and runs on its own dedicated tracks or lanes. Other examples of rapid transit include subways and light rail transit (LRT). Some of the biggest cities in the world, including those with huge subway and LRT services, are increasingly turning to BRT as a key way to transport people quickly and reliably. And many major international cities, like New York City, are transforming their rapid transit systems by including BRT, at a fraction of what a rail system would cost. With limited resources and a lot of people to move, BRT is becoming seen as the smartest transit investment cities can make – like “a subway with a view.”

In general, the best BRT services have a number of things in common, including comfortable bus stations with amenities, well designed vehicles, a mechanism for rapid fare payment, use of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs), dedicated roadway space, and frequent all day service. All aspects of a good BRT service are designed to work together to make travel faster than regular bus service. BRT vehicles need to be easy and convenient to enter, with close-to-level boarding, and rapid fare payment managed “off-board” (before passengers board). These elements help passengers get on and off more quickly, making the “dwell time” (the length of time the vehicle spends at a stop) as short as possible. And dedicated lanes through the most congested areas – as we will have here in York Region – are seen as the highest standard for BRT services.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) are a whole story on their own, and one of the most interesting aspects of planning a BRT service. In a future blog, I’ll talk about these technologies and their huge impact on the performance of a BRT system.

Other rapid transit services such as subways or light rail may also have most of the same elements. But the main advantage offered by BRT is it can be expanded in segments as funding becomes available, and implemented quickly compared to other rapid transit services. Developing a rapid transit system in segments allows capital costs to be spread over time, which also leaves time to refine the design between each segment.

Being able to expand with funding, and the relatively fast timelines to implement, is especially important to York Region. More and more people are coming to York Region every year, and as much as this growth will bring many benefits, it also means our roads are getting more crowded – which is bad for everyone. We wanted to plan for a system that we could get up and running quickly and affordably.

The flexibility of BRT also works well for us, since development is taking place at different stages across York Region. Building BRT in segments means we can focus on the areas with the worst traffic congestion now, and then expand the system to service other areas as their population grows.

Everyone loves trains and subways, but those technologies don’t make sense in every situation. The decision to use a particular technology has to take into account the number of riders and local circumstances on the existing roadways. Subways cost a lot and are the best option where there are huge numbers of transit riders (such as south of Highway 7 on Yonge Street, or between Downsview Station and Highway 7 West in Vaughan). Most other transit routes in York Region don’t have the big city volume of riders needed to justify a subway. Light rail transit also calls for higher ridership numbers, but not as high as that needed by subways. Depending on future growth, in the future we may decide to convert our dedicated rapidways to LRT.

All in all, York Region’s BRT system will make travelling around York Region faster – at a price that we can afford. And with the first built example of a vivastation and rapidway section already in service, our new BRT system is going to be ready for passengers before you know it. We think that’s a plan to be proud of.

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Announcements Stations vivaNext.com Ways to win

Warden Station is now open!

Warden Station, your new rapid transit station, is Now Open!

The first built example of a rapid transit system is now open in York Region! We’re proud to announce that Viva vehicles began arriving at Warden Station in Markham on Sunday morning, and we were there Monday to celebrate with the morning commuters as the Viva Pink, Purple, and Green picked up and delivered customers at this new station through the morning rush hour.

Warden Station is at the intersection of Warden Avenue and Enterprise Boulevard, on the first rapidway segment in York Region. We’ll be building rapidways on Davis Drive in Newmarket, Yonge Street in Richmond Hill, and along Highway 7 from Vaughan to Markham, with a total of 71 vivastations similar to Warden Station located about one kilometre apart along each rapidway.

We’re really excited about opening Warden Station, and we want you to help us celebrate by entering our contest for your chance to win a 10-pack of 2-zone, adult Viva tickets!

Click here to enter the online contest.

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General Rapidways Stations Uncategorized

New vehicle + new rapidway + new station = Training

New Nova bus being used for training at Warden Station in Markham
New Nova bus being used for training at Warden Station in Markham

It wasn’t that long ago that vivaNext was listing required specs for new Viva vehicles and testing design ideas for a rapid transit station. It feels like just yesterday that we were deciding station platform widths, highlighting accessibility requirements both on and off Viva and modelling the streetscape of the rapidways.

Now, some of the new vehicles have already arrived, the first new rapid transit station has been built in York Region and the first stretch of rapidway has been completed.

The new vehicles (made by Nova Bus) have great features – larger windows, a wider centre aisle, great lighting, and an accessibility ramp at the front door instead of at the middle. They’re powered by advanced clean diesel propulsion systems that produce fewer emissions, and we’re proud to say they’re manufactured in Canada. For drivers though, it also has new, unfamiliar on-board systems and controls.

The new vivastation is completely different from a typical transit shelter. It’s a rapid transit station, complete with heated waiting area, messaging boards and safety and accessibility features. It will serve our community for generations to come. However, with the platform being much higher than a street curb, Viva drivers must practise pulling into the station and review procedures related to its operations.

The rapidways allow Viva vehicles to bypass congested traffic as they operate in their own lane. Something drivers are also becoming more familiar with, now that the first stretch of rapidway is completed at Warden Ave. and Enterprise Blvd. in Markham.

Yes, training is a key focal point right now to ensure opening day goes without any unexpected inconvenience to our customers. Driver training on all of these elements has been underway for a while, and the Nova Buses are gradually being introduced into service. In just a matter of days now, we’ll see customers using the new Warden Station, boarding a new Viva vehicle and travelling down the new rapidway.

If you’re in the Warden Avenue and Enterprise Boulevard area, join us on opening day and bring your camera! Stay tuned for the official announcement and we’ll see you on the new platform on opening day with something special.

We love to hear from you, so if you’ve seen a Nova Bus or the new Warden Station, tell us what you think by replying to this blog, or by posting a comment on Facebook or Twitter. If you have a photo of yourself or your friends on the Nova Bus, we’d love to see those too!

Categories
General Rapidways

It’s winter, but we’re not hibernating

Photo of Utility Relocation
Crew members prepare to move a hydro pole

We’re not pouring concrete in these cold temperatures, but we are still working away on building the rapidways and subway extension. We have different segments underway across York Region, all at different stages. This gives us the chance to do a lot of the prep work that’s needed, so that when spring arrives we’re ready to do the work that can only be done in warmer temperatures.

The rapidway along Yonge Street in Richmond Hill is at an early stage, but we’ve been out surveying the land along the corridor so that our planners and crews can have the exact data they need for the project. The Highway 7 rapidway east of Yonge Street is further along, so we’re now moving utilities further back from the road to make room for widening the roadway. In Markham, the new Warden Station will be the very first to be fully constructed. And, like other things manufactured for the first time, we’re doing reviews to see if any fine-tuning is needed before training the drivers and opening the station. In Newmarket, the demolition work along Davis Drive is almost completed, including recycling 85% of building and landscape materials. Work is also underway on the gas main near the Tannery and Seniors’ Meeting Place.

Work on the Spadina Subway extension is progressing throughout the winter as well. The first pair of Tunnel Boring Machines being manufactured in Toronto will soon be ready to be moved from the factory to the tunnel site, and the second pair of Tunnel Boring Machines is close behind.

All of this winter work moves the projects along so that when the green grass appears in spring all our projects are ready to keep going. We’ll just shed our heavy coats from the cold winter season.