1:30 to Whistler

Whenever I talk to people about regional rail, the project they get most excited about is returning passenger train service to Whistler. The desire has been there ever since service was cancelled in 2002 and its return has been periodically studied since.

The need for it has grown as well. The entire Sea-to-Sky corridor is growing as a destination for locals and tourists alike. Whistler is already a global attraction; it is the largest ski resort in North America and attracts around 4 million visitors annually. Squamish is a growing regional attraction with the construction of the Sea-to-Sky Gondola in 2014 and upcoming attractions such as Tiger Bay’s Surf Park.?

It’s also becoming clear that the existing Sea-to-Sky highway is not enough and expanding it is not a solution. Though the highway was upgraded for the Olympics, it is often congested during busy times. The weather disruptions and crashes the upgrades were meant to alleviate are still not uncommon. There is a need for a different mode, one that provides real redundancy.

The Challenges

Despite the need, providing frequent passenger rail service that is competitive with driving is a daunting challenge. There are several problems that a new service will need to solve that the prior BC Rail service failed to.

Challenge #1: Difficult Topography

Here is a map of the existing CN rail corridor from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish:

Here is a zoomed-in section around Lions Bay:

As you can see, it is essentially a slalom of tight bends the entire way. Though the section between Squamish and Whistler is somewhat straighter, it also has many tight bends.?

Of all the axes that are part of the MVX Nexus Vision, the Sea-to-Sky Axis is by far the most challenging technically. Some of the curves have a radius as low as 100 m, limiting the speed of conventional trains to less than 50 kph.?

If we assume that the service would average 55 kph for the roughly 120 km journey, the trip length would be over 2 hours 10 minutes. This travel time would be significantly slower than driving and wouldn’t even be an improvement over existing bus service.

Challenge #2: Getting into Metro Vancouver

The alignment gets even more challenging as we enter the Metro Vancouver area. As we can see from the map below, the existing CN rail alignment involves a tunnel and a very windy section through West Vancouver near residential properties.

Beyond the fact that this section would be very slow, it is doubtful that residents who tolerate infrequent freight and tourist trains would feel the same way about passenger trains passing by every 30 minutes. Using the existing alignment here clearly won’t work.

However, even if we do bypass this difficult section and use the existing freight alignment, where should it terminate? Rocky Mountaineer trains currently terminate at a railyard south of Norgate, far from any transit hub. We could extend it to Lonsdale Quay but a good connection there would require widening the existing freight rail tunnel or building a new one.

Then there’s the question if Lonsdale Quay is even a good terminal location. Passengers coming from anywhere other than the North Shore (which is the vast majority of them) would be required to take the Skytrain, wait (5-7.5 minutes), and ride the Seabus (15 minutes). This would greatly reduce the convenience of using the service, reducing the number of people who would use it and likely render it unviable.

If people are going to board a train to Whistler instead of driving, it needs to be easily accessible to residents from across the entire region, not just the North Shore.

The Solutions

In a previous post, I stated that making regional rail work on the South Coast of BC required using every trick in the book.?

Building a train to Whistler (that people will actually use) will require this (and then some).

Solution 1: Tilting Trains

Similar to how speed skaters tilt into a bend, tilting trains tilt into curves allowing them to travel at faster speeds. Through the difficult terrain, tilting trains increase the average possible speed by around 15 kph.

Tilting train rolling stock is more expensive, both to purchase and maintain. However, using them is a far cheaper way of achieving viable travel times rather than building new tunnels and viaducts

Solution 2: Signalling and Electrification

Advanced signalling such as ERTMS 2 and ETCS allows trains to travel at the highest comfortable speed possible over a given section. Electric trains can accelerate and decelerate faster than diesel-powered equivalents, resulting in shorter travel times. The cost of adding signalling and electrification is not prohibitive and is estimated to add only about $1-2 M per kilometre to the total cost.

Solution 3: Tunnel through West Vancouver

The only real viable way of connecting rail service to Whistler with the entire regional network is to build a tunnel through West Vancouver to Waterfront Station.

Will it be expensive? Yes. However, we can distribute this cost by enabling rapid transit service on the same tunnel from West Vancouver to Downtown.?

It will also significantly reduce travel times. We estimate the journey from Horseshoe Bay to Waterfront Station will only take 12 minutes. Not only does this make one of the province’s busiest ferry terminals easily accessible, but it also obviates the need for expensive infrastructure upgrades elsewhere on the alignment.

The Bottom Line

By employing railway technologies such as tilting trains and advanced signalling and sharing infrastructure between regional rail and rapid transit, we can make rail service between Metro Vancouver and Whistler convenient and viable. We estimate that without needing to build any new tunnels on the Sea-to-Sky corridor nor increasing the cant of the track (something that would prevent occasional freight and tourist trains) we can achieve a travel time between Downtown Vancouver and Whistler of less than 1h30m. This is competitive with driving, even when there is no traffic.

How much will cost? No cheap; around $2.4 Billion. However, infrastructure sharing reduces this cost by about half a billion and if we look at this project within the context of the entire network, a breakeven trip from Downtown Vancouver to Whistler should cost $12-15.?

I, for one, am looking forward to the day when I get to safely and comfortably travel to our skiing mecca for around $20.

Are you?