Regional Transportation and the Provincial Election – The NDP’s & BC Liberal’s Dirty Little Secret
What has been ignored by both major political parties, vying for the electorate’s vote, is the thorny question of regional transportation and TransLink. In fact the silence has been deafening.
It seems both the NDP and the BC Liberals have bought into the TransLink and SkyTrain Lobby’s ‘kool-ade‘ that the region needs to come up with ways to gouge massive new taxes from the motorists to pay for SkyTrain heaven; or more pointedly, Vancouver’s $4.5 billion Broadway/UBC SkyTrain subway.
BC Auditor General, Ken Doyle, gave the City of Vancouver and the SkyTrain lobby a gift, with his “back of an envelope” calculations that; “SkyTrain and not light rail was the best option because of its greater capacity at similar costai??i??.ai???.
It seems no one had told the Auditor General’s Office that “capacity was a function of headway” and that light rail could be built for about one half to one quarter of the cost of SkyTrain, yet obtain higher capacities if need be.
The damage has been done and SkyTrain, which has been on the market for over 35 years and has been made obsolete by modern LRT, with its cheaper costs, yet superior capacities, is now the miracle transit system’ in the Metro Vancouver Region.
Whoever mislead the Auditor General’s Office, with misleading and erroneous information did a good job, because it is this false claim of SkyTrain superior capacity that will ensure planning for a $4.5 billion SkyTrain subway under Broadway and continue TransLink’s wild ride into financial oblivion.
Planning for SkyTrain means higher property taxes in the near future and the spectre of road pricing being forced on the region to build more of the obsolete proprietary SkyTrain mini-metro, will hang over the beleaguered taxpayer’s heads. Both the NDP and the BC Liberals know this and is the reason they are keeping quiet during the election campaign because SkyTrain construction brings massive profits to friends of the government because of the huge amount of the public’s money spent on SkyTrain mega-projects.
What is so galling is that Vancouver will demand and get a $4.5 billion Broadway subway on a route that has peak hour traffic flows under 5,000 pphpd, about a quarter of that would justify subway construction in the real world! South of the Fraser cities and municipalities, as usual, will get nothing but transit crumbs, but will be expected to pay forAi??Vancouver’s expensive subway construction and this is the NDP’s and the BC Liberal’s dirty little election secret.
A ray of hope in the midst of the sky train insanity by the TransLink buffoons: “I don’t want sky train… to destroy the city – Mayor Dianne Watts, Surrey”:
http://www.theprovince.com/business/Surrey+coalition+push+light+rail+transit+south+Fraser/8349084/story.html#
Dianne is one of the few mayors willing to tell it like it is.
First what you need to do is start a website that extolls the virtues of LRT over the Sky Train (ICTS/ALRT/ART/….) technology. Oops, you did that! (just jokin, you need to smile guys) I worked with one of the best forensic auditors in the business, in my volunteer life at the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario, he read the comments and he told me to remind people what the AG is really trying to do. First, it is not AG’s job to pick transit technology it’s his job to make sure that the money spent on whatever project was spent on, was spent on what it was stated to be spent on. Second, that the financial resources for any project went to the people and departments needed to get said projects done. That funds were not side tracked to other support projects that were not critical to get the main projects done. That no financial malice was purposely employed to stop said projects and activities or employed against the stated goals of the organization and their projects. He said that this last point was the most important that, all the associated projects programs are consistent with good financial management and the laws of Brtish Columbia and Canada.
What is important here it is not up to the AG to make a subjective judgement call on the policy direction of Translink but to make sure the money was put in the right places and the financial deals that were the basis for these were legal and logically followed. His comments were driven home by the point is that this group has a problem with the policy direction (choosing Skytrain tech over LRT) of the transit agency and that proving it is a bad policy choice is the primary duty of this group. He does agree that LRT is superior but it is not the point of a financial audit to prove that. This is primarily a policy agrument and thus a political one not a financial argument.
Zweisystem replies: It is my firm belief that the AG was fed erroneous and misleading information by TransLink and the City of Vancouver to come to the conclusion he did. An European expert reminded me that there is no ongoing audit of TransLink/SkyTrain by the AG and the department probably had to rely on TransLink and the CoV for info. What the AG did was to compare TransLink’s costs for SkyTrain and LRT and if TransLink inflated LRT’s costs by needless engineering or general ‘gold-plating’ the AG had no reference to compare. The morphing of LRT into light-metro in the USA is also of great concern as many very expensive light rail projects are in reality (Seattle) hybrid light rail/metro, using the worst aspects of each mode, which in general leaves the operating authority with an extremely expensive transit system that really accomplishes nothing.
Unfortunately for Vancouver, it is another black-eye, which is really funny because people who live in Vancouver tend to feel that they are the centre of the universe and all people envy them, while in reality, Vancouver (well if anyone cares) is a small seaside town populated by no one important in particular. And SkyTrain? No one builds with it and no one cares.
All UK & European transit projects go through a strenuous audit before they are allowed to proceed. It should be of note, to your chaps across the pond that automatic light-metros like the VAL system and SkyTrain have in most cases failed these audits.
Has anyone noticed that the construction of light metro are few and far between? When the UTDC tried to sell a Skytrain to Milan many years ago, saner heads started to audit the mode and found it so poorly built that they dumped it in quick hurry. I believe the cars built for the Milan SkyTrain were eventually sold to Vancouver.
Your AG’s facile pronouncement that indeed Skytrain has the same or more capacity for the same cost of LRT is laughable. The poor man would have been laughed out of the room if he stated the same here.
We look upon transit development in your part of the world with some amusement and a lesson to ensure the same sort of nonsense doesn’t happen here.
I have been through the European and the UK system before it is not as strenuous as you think. The system here in North America (local study guided by provincial/state/federal requirements is much more open an honest in my professional opinion because it makes no assumptions about any kind of transit system and technology were the European system does. Where the European system really excels is the streamlinning and the grouping of projects so that development can begin quickly and there universal acceptance of transit as a real form of transportation. You are right they do have a almost continuous system of self auditing however, they can can be 100 million into a project and suddenly find that the costs are going out of control. In North America if a politician suddely announced that due to unforseen commercial industry conditions and world financial markets our transit project costs have suddenly jumped 200% they would be hung out on the closest tree (politically and maybe literally). Most likely in NorthAmerica the project would have stoped because the guaranteed prices for supplies is ether being ignored or a new cost regime is in effect, that simple act stops many projects cold in North America. In Europe this can continue for weeks till the auditor or head finacial operator sees figures and makes a call. However, they are just as corrupt as we are and any charlatan can bleed a system of money. Where the Europeans really get it right is that they (Politicians and transit officials)know when a transport project is really being gold plated,due to familiarity with Rapid Transit and more than likely,they are users as well.
Zweisystem replies: In Europe, technology doesn’t enter the game because transit lines are planned to meet customer demands. If a transit line has huge customer demands, it becomes a metro. In Europe many cities with trams have tram subways. Light metro is almost universally ignored because of the aesthetics of elevated viaducts and bridges. In Europe the “technology debate” is seen as arcane and a waste of a lot of time and money.
In North America, great time and effort is taken to pretend that a streetcar is not light rail and visa versa; in Europe LRT/streetcar are just trams. Simply a streetcar is a LRT/tram that operates on-street in mixed traffic. In Europe, when a streetcar/tram route has about 40% or more of its route on a reserved rights-of-way, it becomes LRT.
In my opinion we (in North America) spend far too much time and money trying to reinvent the wheel instead of investing in providing an affordable transit system. Choosing LRT means one can plan for transit with a ‘universal’ mode, unlike SkyTrain which because of its automatic operation must always be built on an extremely expensive grade separated guide-way.
Zwei is quite right about transit mode in Europe, the only real difference is trams which operate on the surface and metro, which operates in a tube.
In Germany, tram or metro development rests mainly with whoever is in government at the moment, with rightist parties supporting metro or leftist parties supporting trams. Munich’s transit development can be traced to the ruling parties, with tram expansion happening under left leaning governments and metro expansion happening under right leaning governments.
It should be of note that those cities which invested in underground lines on lightly used routes are now seeing horrendous maintenance costs which are bankrupting the operating companies. Those cities that kept their trams on the surface have not been affected so.
The French VAL system is also an interesting study. As VAL was being marketed by MATRA, the famous French armament firm, the French government felt that if no one built with VAL it would reflect badly on other MATRA products. The French government offered a wonderful inducement for French Cities wanting to build new transit lines, they would pay most or all costs of the initial line. Unlike your Translink planners, French city planners looked into the future and saw that new transit lines could only be built in small increments due to the high cost of VAL construction.
French cities mostly opted for trams because it just gave taxpayers a far better transit ‘bang’ for the transit ‘Franc or Euro’.
Ottawa is building with trams and a small subway, but can always plan for less expensive routes due to the trams inherent flexibility. In Vancouver, SkyTrain offers no flexibility in operation as it must always be built on expensive viaducts or in more expensive tubes and Vancouver can only afford to build a small metro line every decade or so.
You fail to mention that studies have shown Skytrain will attract vastly more people to transit, than LRT, which is slow running.
Vancouver is not a small city anymore. It needs transit that meets today and future travel needs. Better to build the Skytrain now, than wait to do it latter when it will be even more expensive.
The UCB corridor carries over 100,000 riders a day. That kind of ridership in such a short corridor demands more than a glorified streetcar (which is what most LRT is) in the middle of the street
Zweisystem replies: There is no scientific study that shows Skytrain will attract more customers than LRT. TransLink may claim that Skytrain will attract more customers, but they have failed to release any study the supports this. In fact, transit systems operating at grade/on-street seem to attract more new customers than subways.
First of all, Broadway doesn’t carry 100,000 riders a day, rather there are 100,000 boardings a day and at best, this translates to about 40,000 or so people using Broadway. Even TransLink own timetables show that traffic flows along Broadway in the peak hours is less than 5,000 pphpd, a number easily handled by a streetcar or LRT. Building a subway under Broadway would cripple TransLink financially.
By the way, modern LRT has a greater capacity than SkyTrain, as evidenced in Karlsruhe Germany, where the main tram line operating on Kaiserstrsse, is dealing with peak hour capacities in excess of 40,000 pphpd! This is 10,000 pphpd more that the best theoretical capacity of the Expo line and 15,000 pphpd more than the Millennium Line!
The gentleman with the previous post has mistaken why grade separated transit is built.
Tubes are very expensive and only built when ridership on a transit line surpasses a saturation point, which today is between 15,000 persons per hour to 25,000 persons per hour on a transit route.
Many proprietary transit modes, such as your SkyTrain, has tried to capitalize on that fact and have advertised that they can offer high capacities at a cheaper price. It doesn’t work and cities that have built with proprietary transit systems tend to have invested the monies on a transit mode that has all the appearances of having high capacity but in the end doesn’t, but has the costs of a tube. VAL and your SkyTrain comes to mind, both having the costs of a heavy rail metro but only the ability to carry as many customers as a tram.
Building a Tubes does not guarantee high ridership because underground transit systems are very poor in attracting ridership because, as Mr. Zwei stated; “it is not convenient.”
Convenience is the big draw for public transit because the customer wants his transit on the pavement, ready to use and not in the air or buried in a crypt. Recent transit studies have pointed to the convenience factor as the most important to attract new transit customers.
Karlsruhe is an excellent example of the convenience factor, when in just six months after implementing it now famous TramTrain service in 1992/93, by eliminating one transfer from commuter train to tram, ridership increased 449%! In real numbers, ridership increased from 533,600 per week to over 2,544,976 per week!
This also helps explain that after building many new TramTrain Lines in Karlsruhe, that the Kaiserstrasse tram line is seeing peak hour saturation ridership of over 40,000 persons per hour, roughly one 40% the ridership that Vancouver’s Broadway sees in one day!
Mike, there are two components to transit travel: getting to transit by foot or bus and second traveling on transit. Sky train is twice as fast as trams in mixed traffic but getting to trams with stops every 270 metres to 400 metres apart is four to five times faster than getting to the sky train station.
So, statistically for the seven kilometre median distance traveled in Metro Vancouver, trams are always faster than sky train for the vast majority of transit users. I will be submitting my calculations to APEGBC for peer review soon.