Real Light Rail For Surrey – The WKW Line
It has has been five years year since I entertained the idea of the Whalley ai??i?? King George ai??i?? White Rock LRT Line and in 2016 the WKW Line is still superior to what TransLink is planning for Surrey.
Surrey needs a bold new vision for modern LRT and I believe the Whalley ai??i?? King George ai??i?? White Rock or WKWAi?? LineAi?? would provide the vision to implement a strategic and affordable light rail network for Surrey and communities south of the Fraser river. Failure to plan and build sustainable light rail and to continue to plan and build with the hugely expensive SkyTrain light-metro, will beggar the region with ever escalating taxes, driving out business and residents out of the region.
The goal of the new light rail line is to serve customer needs and offer the ability to provide an attractive alternative to the car, it also must serve a multitude of destinations. Building LRT as an extension of the SkyTrain light-metro system will fail to meet expectations as LRT will not be designed to its best advantage. It is not ai???rocket scienceai??i?? to design a transit line to be an attractive alternative to the car.
The Light Rail Line
The 22 to 24 kilometer Whalley ai??i?? King George ai??i?? Rail for the Valley ai??i?? White Rock line (WKW Line for short) would be a solid foundation for an attractive light rail system in Surrey. The proposed light rail would be a classic LRT, operating on a ai???reserved rights-of-wayai??i?? (RoW) in the median of the roads involved.
The route of the WKW Line would start at at 108th Ave. & the King George Hwy. and would continue South to the Southern RR of BC (formerly the BC Hydro R.R.)Ai?? This portion of the route would service the Central City shopping district; Surrey Memorial Hospital; Queen Elizabeth Secondary School; Bear Creek Park; and the Newton shopping district.
The WKW Line would then network south-east along 4 km of the former BCE interurban line and proposed Valley Rail Vancouver to Chilliwack TramTrain route to 152nd. Traveling mainly through industrial lands, which would provide the ideal location for the Light Rail storage and maintenance yards. This portion of track would be double tracked and adequately signaled for safe freight/Interurban/tram operation.
There is the possibility of futureAi??joint operation with the RftV/Leewood interurban, enabling South Surrey and White Rock transit customers the option of a direct or no-transfer service to downtown Vancouver.
From 152nd Street, the KWK Line would go straight south to White Rock crossing the Nicomakle /Serpentine River valley basin. Along here, the line must be raised above flood plain and three new bridges across the Super Port Railway Line, and the Serpentine and Nicomakle rivers must be built. It is this portion of line that will be the most expensive.
Rising out of the small river valley the KWK Line would continue south along 152nd Ave., terminating in downtown White Rock
In the summer, the light rail line would bring congestion relief to White Rock by providing a quality transit alternative for the many thousands of people who come in cars to the popular beaches. Also close to the KWK Line is the South Surrey Athletic fields, which many fields and arenas are constantly busy with hockey, baseball, soccer, rugby, and football games, twelve months of the year. The KWK Line would also provide an excellent transportation access for the burgeoning housing estates, such as Morganai??i??s Crossing in South Surrey and White Rock.
An approximate map of the WKW route as Google maps do not use existing rail lines.
http://goo.gl/maps/jbOmS
The Cost
The the total cost of the KWK Line, including bridges and/or viaducts should cost no more than $1 billion, based on comparative LRT lines now being built The high cost of major engineering in the Nicomakle/Serpentine valley, would be mitigated by simple on-street construction on 152nd and the King George Highway and track sharing for 4 km on the Southern Railway of BC Line bisecting Surrey .
It is interesting to note that the total cost for the 98 km RftV/Leewood Chilliwack to Scott Road Interurban using Diesel LRT and the 23 km KWK Line would be about $1.6 billion or put another way we could build 121 km of modern LRT lines in the Fraser Valley for just a little more than the 11 km Evergreen Line!
Unlike present light rail planning, where development is encouraged to take place along a LRT/SkyTrain route, the KWK Line can pass through sensitive agriculture and ecological areas, without the need for land development. Building the KWK Line would provide a potential capacity ofAi?? around 20,000 persons per hour per direction on the route, well able to handle future passenger demands, yet still can be built much cheaper than its SkyTrain/light-metro competitors. The cost for a SkyTrain along the KWK Line? About $3 billion at a conservative cost of $130 million per km to build!
A modern LRT Line in Madrid, Spain ai??i?? A template for the WKW Line?
Using low-floor trams, with convenient stops, ensures an obstacle free journey for all transit customers including the mobility impaired, without the need of expensive stations and equally expensive to maintain elevators and escalators.
The KWK Line can provide traffic calming where needed, yet still supply ample capacity for future transit needs. By providing a regular and efficient transit service from White Rock to Surrey Central and by servicing many destinations along its route the proposed LRT line would attract ample ridership, including the all important motorist from the car. The KWK Line would also easily integrate with the RftV TramTrain interurban service from Vancouver to Chilliwack and could provide in the not too distant future a direct White Rock to Vancouver TramTrain service, faster than the present bus and Canada line service.
The WKW Line would bring 21st century transit solutions to Surrey, transit solutions that are too long overdo.
All right, let’s scrap the Massey Boondoggle and build this đ
Zwei replies: $3.5 billion will buy you one 10 lane bridge or The WKW Line, the Leewood Rail for the Valley line and a new road/rail bridge replacing the Patullo Bridge.<
There is a huge savings in not building stations. Why must we always built fancy gold plated projects when a cheaper, simpler solution will work just as well. A concrete pad and a metal awning is about as much as it needed, less in rural area in a Chilliwack line, where gravel park n ride lots can be set up
Skytrain for Surrey, not LRT
1. Skytrain is Faster than LRT
According to a TransLink document “Surrey Rapid Transit Alternatives Analysis Findings to Date “, Surrey City Centre to Langley Centre, Skytrain will take 22 minutes, but LRT will take 29 minutes.
Zwei replies: Wrong, SkyTrain seems to faster because it has much fewer stations than LRT. In fact some LRT vehicles scan operate at 120 kph, R-o-W permitting.
2. Skytrain is Safer than LRT
According to YouTube video “Destroyed in Seconds Houston Metro Rail” there were 62 accidents in just 1 year.
Calgary LRT is not safe either. Just Google the following news.
Pedestrian killed by CTrain was 43rd accidental death on LRT system (Calgary Herald)
2 pedestrians hit and killed by CTrains in 24 hours (Global News)
And What about Edmonton LRT?
Metro LRT to cause major traffic delays – Edmonton – CBC …
Edmonton’s Metro line LRT broke down 11 times in November
edmontonjournal.com âș News âș Local News
2 killed by Edmonton LRT train ID’d – Edmonton – CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/…/edmonton/2-killed-by-edmonton-lrt-train-id-d-1.883854
Skytrain is in Vancouver since 1985. It has proven to be a very safe system.
Zwei replies: Wrong. The deat rate on SkyTrain is over twice as much as Calgary’s LRT and most on both systems, are due to suicides.Aboout 100 people have been killed by SkyTrain.
3. Skytrain is Cheaper than LRT
Initial construction costs may be lower for LRT, but Skytrain saves time and time has a money value. 100,000’s riders will save time every single day for 100 plus years. The present value of time-savings, according to conservative estimates, is $12.58 Billion. Thus Skytrain is much, much cheaper than LRT.
(For details, please visit http://www.SurreyBCnews.com/skytrain_for_surrey)
Skytrain is much better than LRT. Skytrain also has a better frequency than LRT. Other cities like Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby, New Westminster, and Coquitlam have the Skytrain system. Skytrain stations also attract huge development. Just look at Metrotown, Brentford, New Westminster, Lougheed Centre, Richmond Centre, Marine Drive, Oakridge, Surrey Centre, Gateway, and King George stations
There’s absolutely no logic to have LRT, no business case whatsoever.
It is insane to think of LRT on 104 Ave. between City Centre and Guildford Centre as this portion of the road is already too congested. There are also too many lights. This will become even worse with time. I think best option for this portion of the route would be subway.
Zwei replies: This is pure bullshit, SkyTrain cost a lot more to build than LRT, it is just TransLink jacks up the cost of LRT to make it look bad.
OK Mr. Peila, if SkyTrain is so good, why does nobody build with it? Why is Toronto tearing theirs down? Why has only seven such system been built in 40 years? Why has SkyTrain never been allowed to compete against LRT in a fair and open bidding process? Please go and peddle your nonsense elsewhere..
Kuldip gets it wrong on just about every count.
1. Skytrain is not faster than LRT when you take into account what engineers call âplatform access timeâ. The TRAM is right there in the street. You see it when you are shopping or sipping a coffee at a sidewalk table. Skytrain (and subways) require us to ride escalators to reach the platform. 5 minutes is not an over-estimate of how long it takes to reach a Skytrain platform. Multiply by 2x for journey start and destination. Thatâs 10 minutes added to every trip.
2. Skytrain is safer⊠Iâm glad the blog has responded with data. It is always safer to be closer to the ground where you can just climb out of a window and safely reach the sidewalkâthatâs from a passengerâs perspective. Skytrain and subway stations also donât feel safe at night or when there is nobody else around. On the street, there is always the cafe and the convenience store open all night to give the âsense of safteyâ to the sidewalk.
3. As far as being âcheaperâ than LRT that is inconceivable. Construction above ground (or boring tunnels below) is always more expensive than laying track down on a concrete slab on grade that is maybe 10 feet wide and one foot deep. Thatâs just plain construction logic, either for transit or buildings.
What Kuldip really shows us is that there is a lot of misunderstanding around. Much of it due to just thinking in the abstractâŠ
4. Yes, a train in the sky is better because it is âseparateâ from traffic. However, when we work through the details it turns out to be something altogether different.
5. The resulting quality of the urbanism is better with tram on the street. Skytrain blights the places it crosses. Tram adds human scale to its routes. Businesses flourish from pedestrian traffic filling the sidewalks. Skytrain just sucks that pedestrian traffic away.
6. Trains in the sky or below ground free up loadspace for cars. On the Canada Line cars have taken over the street space freed up along Cambie Village. Congestion is there at almost any time of day. And the number of cafe tables on the street underperforms numbers achieved in pedestrian oriented places.
Folks should keep an open mind about running tram in our streets. The years of building Skytrain are hopefully behind us.
It is hard for people to understand modern LRT after almost forty years of denial and anti tram rhetoric. LRT is not a transit panacea, rather it is a proven and cost effective way to move people and also has the proven ability to attract the motorist from the car. To date there are over 350 “heritage tram systems in operation (the majority are upgrading or have been upgraded to LRT specs and now over 200 new LRT systems.
Only seven SkyTrain type systems have been sold – why?
Primarily, LRT is user friendly (on the pavement, easy to use); LRT is adaptable (TramTrain, streetcar, trams for rent, party trams, light metro, restaurant trams, bistro trams etc.), while ICTS/ALRT/ART SkyTrain is not. SkyTrain costs more but delivers less. That is the real world view of SkyTrain.