Anchoring means designing a line so that it ends at a major destination, so that there will be lots of people on the vehicle all the way to the end of the line. So transit planners are always looking to anchor their lines.
![highrise city grid layout highrise city grid layout](http://stockarch.com/files/imagecache/Preview/12/10/city_blocks.jpg)
If you scale your capacity to the maximum level, you end up with a lot of wasted capacity near the ends of the line and no way to make use of that capacity. If you plot the load of the vehicle against the position on the line, you get a bell curve: zero at the ends of the line and its maximum level right in the middle.
![highrise city grid layout highrise city grid layout](https://i.imgur.com/LmesNdK.jpg)
As you near the far end of the line, the vehicle is nearly empty again. After that, more people get off than get on. That’s because the vehicle will leave the end of the line empty, fill only gradually with passengers, and reach its maximum load at the midpoint of the line. If a transit line is operating through an area of uniform density, about 50% of its capacity goes to waste. They’re positioned in a way that solves another transit planning problem: anchoring. Most of the time, parallel major streets are spaced about every 800-1000m apart, and since a comfortable walking distance is about half that, this spacing is perfect for efficient transit.īut what’s really great about Vancouver from a transit perspective is the position of its major destinations.
![highrise city grid layout highrise city grid layout](https://wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/terra-reforma-768x953.jpg)
Here’s what I mean.Ī grid pattern of arterial streets covers almost all of Vancouver. In the last post, which explains why grids are such an efficient structure for transit, I mentioned that Vancouver has one of the best transit geographies I’ve ever encountered. Posted on Februin Strategic Transit Planning, Urban Structure, Vancouver