Month: November 2010

Notes on the Downtown LRT Connector Concept Plan

On Tuesday evening the proposed Concept Plan for the Downtown LRT Connector was presented to the public at a very well attended event. The plan is the next step in the process that really kicked off on June 21 when City Council approved a street-level downtown LRT route. The proposed 2.1 km route will serve as a connector for the future West and Southeast LRT lines, with 5 stops and opportunities for transfers to the existing LRT system in the downtown core. The route runs primarily along 102 Avenue, connecting to the West LRT via 107 Street on 104 Avenue and to the Southeast LRT on 102 Avenue near 96 Street.

The Downtown LRT Connector was mentioned as a catalyst project for the Capital City Downtown Plan more than once. It forms an importance piece of both the six-legged LRT Network Plan and the so-called Downtown-University circulator.

Here’s what it looks like (the purple line):

Downtown LRT Connector

The Downtown LRT Connector will use low-floor LRT vehicles, which is the style all future LRT development will use (when possible). Low-floor LRT requires less infrastructure and enables step-free, street-level boarding. And yes, low-floor LRT will work in our winter climate!

Downtown LRT Connector: The Quarters in Winter

There are five proposed stops along the route:

  1. Campus Stop – Located diagonally between 108 Street/104 Avenue and 107 Street/102 Avenue. Land acquisition would be required, including the AADAC building. Potential for development around the stop. Serves MacEwan and NorQuest. Features a third track, which could be used as a staging area to prepare for large events, etc.
  2. 105/106 Street Stop – Located in between the two streets, where there are currently parking lots. Land acquisition would be required.
  3. Centre West Stop – Located across from Manulife Place, in between 102 Street and 101 Street. Requires no land acquisition. Would feature dedicated bicycle lanes in both directions.
  4. Churchill Square Stop – Located across from the Stanley Milner library. Requires no land acquisition. A second set of escalators/elevators would be built on the northwest corner of the 99 Street/102 Avenue intersection. Easy connections to existing LRT.
  5. Quarters Stop – Requires no land acquisition. Some traffic impacts: 102 Avenue at 96 Street would be closed to through traffic, and a single eastbound lane would be provided from 97 Street to maintain local access.

Here’s a rendering of the Churchill Square stop:

Downtown LRT Connector: Churchill Square Stop

The question & answer session covered a lot of topics. Here are a few notes I took:

  • The Downtown LRT Connector would use a different signal system. Rather than an exemption (the current LRT always has right-of-way) the LRT would receive priority, but may hold at stations to allow traffic to clear.
  • Buses that currently run along 102 Avenue would of course be re-tooled to feed into the LRT system.
  • The bicycle lanes in the concept plan are primarily shared lanes, but there’s the potential for dedicated lanes in the future.
  • The location of the Quarters stop is further west than would be ideal, but as it dives into an underground tunnel to join the Southeast LRT there isn’t much flexibility. There are significant grade changes.

I also asked about the City Market, as the route would run right through the middle of it. I was told that the City has already had conversations with the City Market, and that they’re confident they’ll make it work (either spreading out along 102 Avenue a little more, or potentially just leaving everything the way it is…but with a train running through every 15 minutes).

I’m particularly excited for this route, living at 104 Street and 102 Avenue. It’ll mean I’m a block or less from both the existing LRT (at Bay/Enterprise Square) and the new lines (at 105/106 Street). Can’t wait to see it happen!

You can download the Downtown LRT Connector Information Booklet here (PDF).

The Concept Plan will be presented to the Transportation & Public Works Committee at a non-statutory public hearing on December 8, after which it will be forwarded to City Council for review in January 2011. You can check out the Downtown LRT Connector page for more information.

Reimagine Tower Renewal Summit in Edmonton

Next Tuesday, Manasc Isaac Architects are hosting a luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald featuring John Woelfling of New York’s Dattner Architects (on ShareEdmonton). This is the latest in a series of events known as the Reimagine Tower Renewal Summit. Here’s the event description:

In this luncheon hosted by Manasc Isaac Architects, Woelfling will present on the renewal of the Peter W. Rodino Federal Office Building in Newark, New Jersey. The P3 modernization project utilizes a true re-skinning strategy, a first for North America. The smart skin increases energy efficiency, provides more effective fresh air ventilation, allows the building to be renovated while still occupied and dramatically transforms the building’s identity.

I was invited to the event and am looking forward to it. I’m not an architect (obviously) but I am interested in ways to transform Edmonton’s urban form, and this seems like a useful addition to the toolkit. Manasc suggests that “a reimagined building” (or a re-skinned building) can result in lower operating costs, reduced energy consumption, and improved day-lighting, among other things.

Some of you might remember Shafraaz Kaba’s talk at TEDxEdmonton last March, where he discussed the reimagining of the old Dell call centre building, now the Servus building. Here’s the before and after:

Servus Credit Union

Shafraaz pointed out that the benefits go deeper than just the exterior of the building. People are more productive when there is lots of natural light, etc.

One of the Pecha Kucha talks I remember most was Myron Belej’s from the very first PKN in Edmonton (slides in PDF here). He talked about Urban Color, and showed a before & after for a variety of Edmonton buildings. I remember being struck by just how much of a difference it can make when the building is not beige. Manasc Isaac’s ideas go beyond just color, of course, but I think the two are related.

Here are some more visuals from Manasc Isaac that demonstrate the re-skinning idea:

Stanley Milner Library
The Stanley Milner library downtown – it always comes up in discussions about redevelopment.

Chancery Hall
Chancery Hall

Associated Engineering
Associated Engineering building, apparently so ugly “it stops traffic in its tracks”. There’s a re-skin on the way for this building already.

If you’re interested in attending the event, you can register here. And if you’re in Calgary, they’re doing the event there too on November 10th.

How Friday’s AMBER Alert unfolded on Twitter

On Friday afternoon, RCMP issued an AMBER Alert for 12-year-old Jacob Telford. Thankfully, he was found “in good condition” after just a few hours. For a while that evening, it seemed like every tweet in Edmonton was related to the incident. At one point during the evening, @tkoriordan said “So I’ve been away from Twitter all day. Somebody want to fill me in on what I missed?” to which @Kiri_W replied “About a billion amber alert retweets.” Curiosity got the better of me, so I looked at the data to see how the AMBER Alert unfolded on Twitter.

Here are the first four tweets that appeared:

Just heard about amber alert, young boy from #shpk, check out alert and key an eye out
Oct 29 at 2:11 PM via ÜberTwitter

1st time I have hear the emerg broadcast have a real emerg. Its ano amber alert for a little boy missing from Sherwood Park
Oct 29 at 2:11 PM via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Amber Alert in #YEG child abducted in #sherwoodpark. #Edmonton #AMBERALERT!
Oct 29 at 2:15 PM via Echofon

AMBER ALERT: 12-year-old Jacob Telford taken from Sherwood Park last night – White 2002 Ford Taurus – BC Plate: V2P4J3
Oct 29 at 2:17 PM via Seesmic Desktop

Actually, Rob McAnally had one up before the main CTV Edmonton account did, but it seems that tweet has since been deleted. CTV posted the first link to a new story at 2:29 PM (that link has since been clicked over 1000 times).

From Matthew’s first tweet at 2:11:17 PM until 7:23:43 PM when Jeremy Lye’s tweet appeared declaring that the AMBER Alert had been cancelled (the first to do so), a total of 958 tweets were posted (mentioning either the AMBER Alert or Jacob Telford). That works out to just over 3 tweets per minute (in the first hour, it was nearly 7 tweets per minute). By 5 PM the next day, the total number of related tweets had grown slightly to 1126.

Of those, 983 were retweets. Here’s what the retweets looked like:

They weren’t quite the first to tweet the start or end of the AMBER Alert (they were about six minutes behind both times), but CTV Edmonton was definitely the most visible account to do so, and that is reflected in the number of retweets they received.

In total, 710 different Twitter users tweeted (or retweeted) about the incident. Just less than half were located in the Edmonton area, while some were as far away as Brazil, Russia, and Kuwait (based on the location in their profiles). I suppose there’s always a chance that their retweets could have helped (maybe they have followers in Canada) but I still have to wonder why someone who is so far away would tweet about something like this. Is it because it’s easy to click the retweet button? Is it because we all like to feel as though we’re helping? I’m not sure.

If you add up the number of followers those 710 users have, you get a potential reach of more than 288,000 users. That’s not accounting for overlap though, so the actual number is probably quite a bit less. And not all of those users will have been online to see the tweets. Still, there’s no question that the AMBER Alert was seen far and wide on Friday.

Here’s what I found interesting about all of this:

  • 85% of all the tweets posted about the incident appeared before we knew the boy was safe
  • 60% of all the tweets posted about the incident were simply retweets of CTV Edmonton’s tweets
  • It took less than 20 minutes for the first news story link to appear
  • After 24 hours, almost no one was tweeting about it anymore

You can learn more about the AMBER Alert Program here.

Notes for 10/31/2010

Here are my weekly notes:

Sharon with the new mailboxes!
Sharon likes the new Canada Post mailboxes!