Sean Marshall

Tag: travel

  • Travel by train (or bus): Denver’s renewed Union Station

    Travel by train (or bus): Denver’s renewed Union Station

    Denver’s Union Station, with the iconic “Travel by Train” neon signage

    Earlier this summer, I had the privilege of travelling with my spouse to California. We started in San Diego (where my partner was attending a conference) and then made our way northwards, to Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Simeon, and finally the San Francisco Bay Area. I continued my trip an extra three days to ride Amtrak’s California Zephyr train east through Nevada and Utah to Denver, Colorado.

    Looking south from the California Zephyr across the Colorado River near the Utah-Colorado border

    Besides the breathtaking scenery through eastern Utah and western Colorado, I wanted to visit Denver itself, including its Union Station.

    Denver’s Union Station was constructed in 1881 to serve the Denver Pacific Railway (the city’s connection to the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad at Cheyenne, Wyoming), as well as the Denver & Rio Grande, the Denver, South Park & Pacific and the Colorado Central Railroads. (Today, it is reached by tracks belonging to the Union Pacific or BNSF Railroads.) Renovated and expanded in 1914, one of the station’s most iconic features, rooftop neon signs beckoning customers to “Travel by train” were added in the 1950s, as interstate highways were being planned and constructed across the United States and air travel became more common.

    The station was nearly closed in the 1980s with only Amtrak’s Oakland-Chicago California Zephyr calling once a day in each direction. Passenger train facilities would have been moved to a small “Amshack” building outside of the downtown core, with the station building incorporated into a proposed new convention centre. (This proposal is similar to the fate of St. Louis’ Union Station, which was turned into a hotel, shopping, and entertainment centre, with the Amtrak station moved into a small building off-site.) Luckily, this never took place.

    Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) purchased the station in 2001, with a new master plan developed for the station property and the vicinity in 2002, approved by voters in 2004 as part of the “FasTracks” program. Denver’s light rail system was extended to Union Station in 2002, while the immediate area was redeveloped with midrise apartment and office buildings. The train platforms were rebuilt with a new canopy, meant to accommodate both Amtrak and proposed new commuter and regional rail services.

    Denver Union Station train platforms

    Connecting the historic Union Station building and train platforms with the LRT platforms two blocks north is a long underground bus concourse.

    Denver Union Station’s underground bus terminal

    The underground bus terminal serves local and regional RTD services, as well as Bustang, the State of Colorado’s intercity coach service. Bustang offers multiple daily bus services to cities such as Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, and Pueblo, connecting most of the state together. There are also seasonal ski buses from Denver, along with special runs for Denver Bronco games.

    Bustang service map

    There are also two free RTD bus services connecting Union Station with the rest of Denver’s downtown core: MallRide, a frequent, daily service along the 16th Avenue pedestrian mall (which was undergoing reconstruction in July 2024, and was on detour), and MetroRide, which operates during daytime hours on a parallel route.

    Splash fountains in the Union Station west plaza

    Union Station now hosts a boutique hotel, several restaurants and bars, a branch of a local bookshop chain, and includes amenities such as public art and a splash fountain outside its main entrance. Though the main lobby was undergoing minor renovations, it was clear how much work went into the project.

    Union Station lobby
    Take the A-Train
    Arriving at Denver International Airport

    Like Toronto’s Union Station, Denver offers an airport rail link, operating every 15 minutes most of the day. The electric A-Line train runs from Union Station, making 7 intermediate stops. With the exception of the airport itself, the A-Line operates within the regular RTD fare zone, with free transfers between connecting buses and trains.

    To enter or exit the airport station itself, occasional travelers must purchase a special $10 day pass (a standard day pass is $5.50), but that, of course, includes all rides taken before or after arriving at or departing from the airport. (By contrast, there are no transfers or fare discounts when connecting between UP Express and GO Transit, TTC, or suburban transit services.)

    Because of the additional stops and the long distance between Downtown Denver and the international airport (25 miles or 40 kilometres), the trip takes 37 minutes versus UP Express’ 25 minutes.

    Unfortunately, most RTD rail services, like the A-Line, follow existing or abandoned rail corridors. Though these routes offer limited obstructions to construction and allow for faster service than operating within roadways, they limit how much ridership can be generated by walk-on service. Even the Downtown Littleton station on the D-Line is distant from any commercial or residential uses, with a large commuter parking lot behind the historic station building.

    At least many RTD stations offer convenient bus transfers, which draw much of the ridership.

    The D-Line LRT at Littleton, Colorado

    A lot was done right at Denver Union Station, which is well served by local, state, and national rail and bus connections, and is serves well as a model for developing a good intermodal hub in a midsized city like Denver. There are certainly aspects that could be replicated at some GO Transit stations, such as Brampton, Port Credit, or Unionville, which are poised to become important intermodal hubs, such as great public spaces, easy connections between nodes, and complementary retail spaces. At Brampton in particular, much can be done with the small historic station building there to make it a centrepiece of a great downtown redevelopment.

    I am glad I visited Denver, and I am glad to have travelled by train.

  • A heartbreaking end for the Ontario Science Centre

    A heartbreaking end for the Ontario Science Centre

    A family enters the Science Centre for the last time on Friday June 21, 2024

    When I was growing up, our family would make a trip every year to the Ontario Science Centre, a 45-minute car drive from our home in suburban Brampton. Invariably, these trips would take place on the first PA day of the school year, typically on a Friday in late September or early October, when the ravine was still lush and green, with only the first hints of the changing season.

    Because it was early in the school year, and since the Toronto school boards typically had different PA days than the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board, the Science Centre would be mostly empty; my father would run with my brothers and I along the corridor over the ravine between the entrance hall and the great hall. At the end of our visit would be an hour spent at the Science Arcade, the highlight of any child’s visit to the once-great institution. I marveled at Raymond Moriyama’s wonderful harmony of concrete, glass, and natural beauty as one descended into the West Don Ravine by means of glass walkways and escalators.

    Later visits in high school and in my early adulthood, however, were not as great. The exhibits were getting old, and the place started feeling worn out. The Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne-led governments did not value the Science Centre enough to invest in its relevance or its long-term maintenance. Doug Ford’s PC government continued the neglect, favouring a private redevelopment of Ontario Place (closed under the previous Liberal government) with a new, downsized Science Centre to take its place.

    In 2022, that once-wonderful double-deck bridge between the entrance hall and the exhibition space was closed due to the risk of structural failure, with no plans to fix or restore the link. Instead, $2 million a year was spent on shuttle buses ferrying visitors between the upper parking lot (after they paid admission) and the lowest level at the bottom of the ravine. That year, the planetarium (a smaller version of the McLaughlin Planetarium that operated next to the Royal Ontario Museum until the 1990s) also closed due to deterioration.

    A December 2023 report from the provincial Auditor General’s office took issue with the government’s management of the Ontario Science Centre and the flawed business case for moving it to a new location on Toronto’s waterfront, in a location much less accessible to school groups.

    Loading Ontario Science Centre visitors on shuttle buses, June 21, 2024

    The most recent development in which engineers warned of sections of the roof in danger of failure and collapse in a report to Infrastructure Ontario (linked in full on the CBC Toronto website) after October 31, 2024, with repairs costing between $22 million and $40 million. The immediate closure, announced on a Friday afternoon, would provide time to allow the exhibits to be removed, possibly to an interim location. However, most of the roof was found to be in good or fair condition in an the engineer’s report, making the immediate closure suspect.

    Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozilkovic questioning the government’s sudden closure on X/Twitter.

    On Friday morning, gates were already being installed at the parking lot entrances to the Science Centre, before the official announcement, even before the Toronto Star published the first story about the closure on its website around noon.

    Workers install rigid gates at the staff parking and bus exit at Ontario Science Centre. Local Liberal MPP Dr. Adil Shamji speaks to a reporter in front.

    One cannot help but be skeptical about the sudden decision to close the Science Centre, despite the demolition by neglect by the Liberal and PC governments. Had an announcement been made, but with the closure taking effect two weeks later after the long weekend, it would have given visitors one last time to appreciate the Science Centre and its unique architecture. But that might also be the point. By making the closure a done deal without the opportunity for the community to rally to save the Ontario Science Centre, Doug Ford’s PCs have shut down debate. By the time the legislature meets again in October, their hope is that opposition to the destruction of Ontario Place and the Ontario Science Centre will have dissipated. The Friday afternoon news dump also fits this strategy.

    Though I made it up on Friday to document the closure, I am sad that I did not make it for one last visit, just as with the sudden closure of the Scarborough RT last year.

    The most heartbreaking thing for me was watching a young family walk from Flemingdon Park into the Science Centre just as the news media was assembling for a press conference with Don Valley East MPP Dr. Adil Shamji and Floyd Ruskin of SaveOSC. The young child looked so excited for a day at the science centre, unaware that it would be the last day it would ever be open.

  • Transit museums’ transit dilemma

    The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum now features a new main entrance and exhibition hall, along with an on-street boarding area complete with vintage signage.

    While visiting Pittsburgh earlier in June, I also paid a second visit to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM), located 45 minutes south of Downtown Pittsburgh in Washington PA. I had visited the museum a few years prior as part of a visit to the Pittsburgh area, but since then, a new section of the museum opened to the public, and there were additional cars in operation.

    While I went to PTM with a friend who planned to stick around until the evening, I planned to return to downtown Pittsburgh earlier in the afternoon. I found information on a local transit service operated by Washington County — called Freedom Transit — that ran a route to and from Pittsburgh that stopped not too far from the museum’s main entrance. That plan did not go well at all.

    It is an unfortunate irony that most North American transit museums have poor or non-existent transit access. There are historical reasons why this came to be, but some of the continent’s best transportation exhibitions are inaccessible to newer generations of transit fans, historians, and enthusiasts, many of which do not or cannot drive.

    Washington County Transportation Authority, or “Freedom Transit,” doesn’t offer much freedom
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