The Greer Report & Rapid Transit
Reedited, but the message is the same.
OverAi??14 years ago the Greer Report, done by Greer Consulting Services, issued a scathing report on the Broadway/Lougheed Rapid Transit Projects, later to be know as the SkyTrain Millennium Line. The report found:
- cost comparisons appear to have been contrived to favour SkyTrain over LRT
- no ridership (demand) analysis was reported to justify the high capacity system
- air quality and transportation benefits are unsubstantiated
- accelerated construction advantages of SkyTrain were clearly unrealistic
- risks associated with the SkyTrain car manufacture have not been assessed.
Fast forward to 2013, has anything changed?
Nada, nope, not a chance!
The same argumentsAi??have beenAi??used by TransLink for the Evergreen line.
How can TransLink be trusted with any honest rapid transit planning, especially when they want hundreds of millions more in taxpayers money to pay for ai???pie-in-the-skyai??i?? Broadway SkyTrain subway planning based on contrived planning and phony studies? The Canada line is just a symptom of a major problem: TransLink refuses to plan for affordable light-rail and instead invents statistics to suit their in-house light-metro planning. The 100,000 passengers a day, quoted by Liberal politicians, needed so the Canada line will operate subsidy free is ai???stuff-and-nonsenseai??i?? as TransLink has absolutely no mechanism in place to apportion fares between SkyTrain, Canada line, Seabus, and the regular buses. TransLink doesnai??i??t know what percentage of fares are full fares, concession fares, and the deeply discounted U-Pass, nor do they have a formula for allocating fares between bus, Seabus and metro.
Fast forward to 2014: TransLink claims the Canada Line is carrying in excess of 135,000 passengers a day, yet TransLink is still paying about $90 million annually to the operating consortium!
Wasn’t the Canada Line promised to pay for itself when ridership exceed, 100,000 a day?
No? Well, that was the inference by the BC Liberal party, on top of the claim that the Canada Line would take over 200,000 car trips off the road, each and every day.
Certainly nothing has changed much at TransLink as American transit expert, Gerald Fox, stated in a Feb.2008 letter regarding the Evergreen line:
ai???I found several instances where the analysis had made assumptions that were inaccurate, or had been manipulated to make the case for SkyTrain. If the underlying assumptions are inaccurate, the conclusions may be so too.ai??? And adding: ai??? It is interesting how TransLink has used this cunning method of manipulating analysis to justify SkyTrain in corridor after corridor, and has thus succeeded in keeping its proprietary rail system expanding. In the US, all new transit projects that seek federal support are now subjected to scrutiny by a panel of transit peers, selected and monitored by the federal government, to ensure that projects are analyzed honestly, and the taxpayersai??i?? interests are protected. No SkyTrain project has ever passed this scrutiny in the US.ai???
Metro politicians take note, TransLink are taking you and your taxpayers on a wild ride, ai???around, around, TransLink goes; whereAi??the money trainAi??will stop nobody knows!ai???
For the full Greer Report
http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/green/GREER_Rep-SkyTrain_April_12_1999.pdf
Gerald Foxai??i??s letter
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/can-translinks-business-cases-be-trusted/
Apparently, just four years after the construction of the $2.5 billion RAV Line (renamed Canada Line to endear it to patriotic Canadians) – City of Vancouver (COV) transportation staff plan to rip up Cambie Street to add two more stations at $30 million each – to help developers sell more condos. Nice.
http://www.theprovince.com/Vancouver+eyes+Canada+Line+stations+development+Cambie+57th/9478500/story.html
If the intention from the beginning was to plop more sky train stations along the express Canada Line to turn it into one very expensive underground and elevated line with stops every few blocks for developers to sell condos, wouldn’t it have been more prudent to have just built a tram line at grade in 2010 for maybe $700 million? If a tram line were in operation right now on Cambie Street, each additional stop might cost $300 each to put up the “tram stops here sign”.
It seems, that the existing Canada Line stations are too far apart, and the No. 15 diesel bus operating along Cambie Street to shuttle transit users to the RAV Line doesn’t cut it. What does that say about the sky train service along Cambie Street? I’d be looking at replacing the “COV engineers” making the silly recommendation to punch holes into the tunnel along the Canada Line to add more sky train stations acting as a magnet for crime.
Efficacy of “fast” transit
The efficacy of the large amount of fast transit or express transit used by TransLink and supported by COV engineers (rapid bus or sky train with distantly spaced stop to increase its speed) is predicated upon the reduction of road congestion by express transit. If there is no reduction in road congestion: there is no reduction in GHG emissions and no improvement in air quality, also. In short, there is no basis for sky train or rapid bus service. None.
We’re merely paying high salaries to the staff at TransLink to maintain a costly bureaucracy to manage the express or fast transit. Ultimately, staff at TransLink are minions directed by the provincial government. Staff at TransLink only execute policies made by the provincial government. No one at TransLink does anything to operate transit. No one at TransLink matters.
We don’t’ need to keep funding losers costing us $112 million in overhead at TransLink (2013) to “manage” transit. We can start to build tram lines without them. This is what Surrey and the rest of Metro Vancouver have to do.
Road congestion
In the last 10 years, TransLink has spent billions of dollars on the Millennium Line and Canada Line. Road congestion has worsened, as a result, and Metro Vancouver has added 470,000 registered drivers in the last ten years. Last year, Metro Vancouver took the prize for the worst road congestion and most gridlock in not only Canada but also in the USA.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Heavy+congestion+looms+more+vehicles+expected+clog+Metro+Vancouver+roads/9460242/story.html
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/06/vancouver-traffic-congestion-worse-than-in-toronto-or-even-los-angeles-report/
Investing in more expensive fast transit (rapid bus or sky train) shunned by drivers isn’t smart. It is foolish. We’re better off with an inexpensive and parallel tram line tying into the Canada Line from First Street to 70th Street along Cambie Street than we are throwing away more money to add more stations to the Canada Line. If the COV transportation planners and engineers don’t think so, maybe it is time to replace them. They are just being stupid and costing money. Either that or they are corrupt and in the back pocket of developers or thugs. They have to go, regardless.
We’ve blown billions dollars on sky train under the false premise that fast transit is the over riding factor motivating commuters to take transit. There are a multitude of internal factors such as age or income and external factors such as crime on transit or undesirables on transit which are just as important or more important to commuters when it comes to taking or not taking transit.
http://translinkharassment.wordpress.com/
In any case, fast transit such as sky train “for the majority of commuters” doesn’t make transit fast relative to other modes of transportation; sky train just makes transit less slow. For most commuters in Vancouver, cycling or driving is faster than taking transit. In other words, “fast” sky train or rapid bus, does nothing to put more drivers or cyclists onto transit – it is not fast if you are a driver or cyclist.
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2013/10/23/five-minutes-to-downtown–cyclist-wins-fastest-commute
We are no better off today than we would have been if we just kept operating trolleybuses in 1986 as far as road congestion when the first sky train line went into service – but the air quality would be better without the soot blowing and loudly squealing diesel buses (B8091) taking riders to sky train if we didn’t have sky train. TransLink and its predecessor (BC Transit) have squandered $9 billion to date on sky train lines. The next sky train line (EGL) for $1.4 billion is not going to add transit capacity one bit. It is extending the Millennium Line. Now that’s truly dismal.
TransLink is merely stringing taxpayers along with its “fast” transit. TransLink is one big sham. Dissolve TransLink and make the world a better place. Do it now.
The new stations, were they in the original plan for the line and dropped due to budget considerations? Or are they entirely new stations? Well placed instill stations can make a big difference for not just developers but, more importantly, pedestrians and different kinds of ridership. This is the reason the TTC and Metrolinks are often at each others throats over station spacing on Toronto’s future LRT and Subway lines.
That should be infill stations not instill, auto correct strikes again!
The Canada Line, in order to get financing from YVR had to ensure a under 27 minutes travel time from Waterfront to YVR., which meant at least 3 stations were not built. The City literally had to force TransLink to build the Olympic village stop, by offering to pay for it. My contacts back then told me the 27 minute timing was arbitrary and had more to do with the Canada line budget going out of control than what YVR wanted. Today, very few people ride the Canada Line to YVR and a good portion of the Canada Line’s ridership is coming from U-Pass post secondary students, who I have been told, may ride the Canada line up to 8 times a day, playing havoc with revenue!
It really looks like taxpayers are being hustled to award sky train contracts without any fair bidding process to me. Travel speed is the only thing that TransLink can come up with to defend sky train. People in Metro Vancouver aren’t making trans-Atlantic trips – they travel 7 km one-way average to work or school. Travel time for transit is not a significant factor.
My main point is that we can cut our losses and ditch TransLink. Paying SNC Lavalin $100 million every year or whatever to run the Canada Line is really while collar robbery and taxpayers are being exploited. Shut the damn thing down and build a tram line; it will pay for itself in 10 to 20 years.
More people will not drive if we operate slow trams with stations every 500 metres. More people will be taking transit.
I guarantee if you dump Translink right now, nothing will happen for a decade while your local PTB’s and the Province try to figure a new system of operating and funding transit. IMHO, it is much better to change from the inside out, learn to lobby guys if you want LRT instead of Skytrain, its painful at first but, it will ultimately work better for you and the tax payer. This way you are part of the conversation and have a little bit of control. Destroy your system from the outside and you will have no control over what happens next also you will have no warning of what is coming till its far too late to stop.
Zweisystem replies: We never had any control over TransLink, in fact one can say it is a rogue bureaucracy as there is absolutely no oversight. Simple truth is TransLink is run from the Premiers Office and transit planning is at the whim of the Premier. Over and over again the transit authority has reluctantly planned for LRT and at the last minute after several brown envelopes are passed, the Premier’s office orders more SkyTrian or a facsimile of SkyTrain as in the case of the Canada Line. TransLink could disappear tomorrow and the transit system would run happily along with West coast Mountain Bus and the Rapid Transit corporation running things.
Learn to Lobby! Transit and transportation planning is as much a political exercise as it is a technical one. That is the reality, learn how to insert your group into the political game. Denying it and complaining about it afterwards is pointless and eventually destroys the cause you are desperately trying to bring to fruition!
@Haveacow,
Good advice. There are a few politicians who SNCL hasn’t bribed and who aren’t stooges. They might have more influence after the next municipal election in November. I’ll touch base with them.