A reality check for the Broadway Subway – Are you Listening Mike Farnsworth?
The following is a letter received from Rail for the Valley www.railforthevalley.com, a great source of information, commentary, and analysis on transportation planning issues, with a special focus on the Metro Vancouver region.
This is in partial response to recent media coverage, including almost non stop postings in the media and on YouTube and other social media platforms.
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Reality check for the Broadway Subway
I am always astounded by those who support a subway to UBC, especially those who deem a subway to be a game changer. It’s not.
Mike Harcourt is not a transit expert. In fact, he knows little or nothing about public transport and his input is both uninformed and damaging for regional transit in Metro Vancouver and for the province.
Most politicians, once elected, think themselves transit experts, yet few ever take public transit except for photo-ops at election time.
Even the mighty TransLink is bereft of real transit experts and is now staffed by a large cadre of six-figure salaried bureaucrats and yes-men, having earlier fired those who dared to opine that Broadway did not have the ridership that would demand a subway, as TransLink did before with those who supported modern light rail!
Subways are not a transportation nirvana. Far from it, they are both expensive and user unfriendly and due to their high cost and in North America, are not considered (except for strictly political purposes) on routes with peak-hour traffic flows of around 15,000 persons per hour per direction or more. In Europe, which has a long history of subway construction, planners do not consider building a subway unless traffic flows on a transit route exceed 20,000 pphpd. This is partly due to the fact that trams (streetcars) can handle traffic flows in excess of 20,000 pphpd. By contrast, the maximum capacity allowed by the signalling of the Expo and Millennium Lines is 15,000 pphpd and 4,000 pphpd!
Even after Thales $1.47 billion re-signalling of the Expo and Millennium Lines, the maximum capacity of the the Millennium Line (Broadway Subway) will be a mere 7,500 pphpd!
Broadway’s current maximum traffic flow on the Broadway B-99 Express Bus, operating a peak-hour schedule of three minute headway’s (20 trips per hour), has a maximum peak-hour traffic flow of just over 2,000 pphpd!
Broadway is not the most heavily used transit route in Canada or in North America. This is merely political hearsay by Vancouver politicians and bureaucrats, and has no corroborating evidence to support it. TransLink has even stated that Broadway is merely “our most congested bus route”, which is not a valid reason to build a multi-billion dollar subway.
The other issue with the Broadway Subway is that the proprietary Movia Automatic Light Metro system will be used.
We must remember that the name “SkyTrain” is the name for our regional light metro system, and the system consists of two very different railways. The Canada Line is a conventional heavy rail railway, operating as a light metro, and the Expo and Millennium Lines use the MALM system, now owned by Alstom after they purchased Bombardier’s rail division.
MALM, originally called Intermediate Capacity Transportation system, has a very chequered history. ICTS was developed using cast-off technology from the failed Asea Brown Boveri TransUran MAGLEV, developed in the 1970s. ICTS used Linear Induction Motors (LIMs) for propulsion, making it a proprietary railway, and unlike the modern tram or streetcar, it could not operate with any other railway vehicle.
Only two were built — in Detroit and Toronto — with the latter being forced upon the Toronto Transit Commission by the Ontario government, whose Crown Corporation, the Urban Transportation Development Company UTDC), owned the proprietary ICTS system.
Studies by the TTC showed that “ICTS could cost up to ten times more to install than light rail, for about the same capacity.”
There were no further sales.
The name was changed to Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT), to compete against the more popular LRT, and only one was sold to Vancouver, but with its huge costs and lack of performance, there were no other takers.
The UTDC was sold to Lavalin, and they renamed the light metro from ALRT to Advanced Light Metro (ALM), and it went bankrupt trying to build a system in Bangkok, Thailand.
The remains of the UTDC were returned to the Ontario government, which promptly sold it at a fire-sale price to Bombardier, which promptly did a complete rebuild of the proprietary railway, using their universal Innovia body shell, which was longer and had more capacity than the “spam cans” used in Toronto, Detroit, and Vancouver. After SNC absorbed the bankrupt Lavalin, the new SNC Lavalin retained the engineering patents for the proprietary railway, with Bombardier owning the technical patents.
Bombardier renamed the newly-rebuilt proprietary railway Advanced Rapid Transit (ART), and only sold four such systems, with controversy following each one.
The ART system sold to Korea, which later saw Bombardier charged with bribery for paying “success fees” to senior bureaucrats and politicians to ensure a sale was made.
The ART system sold to Malaysia again saw Bombardier and SNC Lavalin charged with bribery and more, for paying “success fees” to senior bureaucrats and politicians to ensure a sale was made.
The Port Authority/JFK Airtrain, in New York, was funded by the Canadian Overseas Development Bank, because the American government, upon peer review (all new transit systems using federal funding are peer reviewed), found the system hugely expensive and badly designed and built, and rejected the use of federal funding, forcing the Canadian government to step in to fund construction to save face for Bombardier!
The Chinese government bought one to gain technology, with two results, the Chinese government obtained patented items and may have copied them unlawfully (China does not recognize intellectual property) and that Canadian users could not legally buy spare parts originating in China and the Chinese government never built another one, but they sold “coned cars (basically the original 1990’s ART design)” to Kuala Lumpur, where past Canadian misdeeds made any bid from a Canadian manufacturer untenable due to past corruption.
There was a fifth ART built and that was the Millennium Line in Vancouver, which the then NDP government flip-flopped from much cheaper LRT to ART, and one wonders what inducements or success fees were paid to have this system built?
Lack of sales saw Bombardier group all its light metros under one banner, Innovia transit systems, and just prior to the sale to Alstom, all the metro systems were grouped into the Movia brand with ICTS/ALRT/ALM/ART/Innovia, designated and Movia Automatic Light Metro. Only seven transportation agencies (cities) bought the system, which has had six rebrandings and no sales since 2005.
It has been rumoured that Alstom will cease production of MALM, as Vancouver is the only remaining customer, after the last paid-for orders are completed, and that also includes spare parts.
Alstom has put the Kingston plant up for sale, which is the home base for MALM production and that also includes the test track for the proprietary vehicles.
It is also interesting to note that Bombardier, after their legal issues, stated that the MALM system should not be used on any route without a peak-hour ridership of over 8,000 pphpd!
The current Broadway Subway plan, is just the original 1990’s LRT plan before the NDP flip-flopped to ART and it stopped at Arbutus, because of the then-planned future use of the former double tracked interurban route, the Arbutus Line, to Marpole and to downtown Vancouver.
The current Broadway Subway, as well as any expansion to UBC, will garner very little new ridership, except for those using the deeply discounted dollar-a-day ride-at-will U-Pass.
The now almost $4 billion for the present 5.7 km subway, plus a minimum of $8 billion investment to build it to UBC, will not attract much new ridership for several reasons, including that subways are non user-unfriendly, with stops about every one kilometer apart; subways deter those who suffer from claustrophobia (a lot more people suffer from this than most think); and the Millennium Line doesn’t go to any major destination other than UBC, which means customers will have to make troublesome and time consuming transfers (which deter ridership).
Example: Those using the Broadway Subway to downtown Vancouver, either will have to make a transfer onto the capacity-constipated Canada Line or travel to Commercial and then double back on the Expo Line, unless TransLink operates a dedicated bus service with frequencies to match the ridership demands of the subway to cross False Creek at Burrard or Granville to downtown.
I predict, based on the more transit-savvy transit users in Europe, that people will avoid the subway and drive instead. It is worth noting that the European tram or light rail Renaissance came about due to the high cost of hugely expensive rapid transit projects like subways, and that subways tend to deter ridership.
The following graph is from Ontario’s MetroLinx, comparing the 50 year costs of various transit modes.
Due to the larger construction and maintenance costs of MALM, the 50 year costs would rival that of a subway!
The huge cost of the Broadway subway to UBC, about $8 billion, could fund the following:
- A completely rebuilt E&N Railway from Victoria to Courtney as a modern, 230 km regional railway providing a maximum three trains per hour per direction ($4 billion)
- A modern 130 km regional railway connecting Vancouver to Chilliwack, using the former BC Electric interurban route ($2billion)
- A modern European-style 25 km tramway connecting BCIT to UBC and Stanley Park ($2 billion)
Instead, we are building [the proposal is] a very short $8 billion subway to UBC to cater to a bus route which presently carries a peak-hour passenger load of just over 2,000 pphpd, with future taxpayers left to pay the huge costs associated with subways!
Sad to say, the Broadway Subway to UBC, if built, will be a financial fiasco for future generations, not just in Metro Vancouver but the entire province, paying the cost of Vancouver’s politically-prestigious subway megaproject.
Rail for the Valley
