Farnsworth Is Selling Porkies – So What Else Is New!
The NDP’s master of the screw-up with the Surrey police fiasco and now the minister responsible for SkyTrain, Mike Farnsworth took to the corporate media selling porkies about the Broadway subway.
Farsworth is sticking to the creative accounting by TransLink and the NDP government, that the cost for the 5.7 km subway project will still be under $3 billion.
Really?
Recent cost estimates by independent experts put the cost of the project at around $3.5 billion. Ian fisher, one of TransLink’s top bureaucrats, in a item in Modern Tramways, put the cost at $3 billion.
Farnsworth is also playing games with the capacity of the subway as he gave the percentage increase of the Millennium Line only and not hard numbers.
According to Thales 2022 news release the Millennium Line (Broadway subway) will only have a maximum capacity of 7,500 a 96% increase in capacity.
This means that the Millennium Line’s present maximum capacity is a mere 3,000 pphpd!
This raises serious questions about the Evergreen Line’s Business Case, which analysis assumed a capacity of 4,080 for LRT, on the Evergreen Line which it states is not enough, and compares it to SkyTrain capacity of 10400!
What is startling is that LRT can handle traffic flows as high as 20,000 pphpd, yet the Evergreen Line (later merged with the Millennium Line) had a capacity of a mere 3,000 pphpd – 7,400 less than what the Business Case assumed.
I wonder if a criminal investigation is needed!
I wonder if any current SkyTrain business Case can be trusted?
When the programme is fully implemented, the Expo Line will be able to accommodate 17,500 passengers per hour per direction, and the Millennium Line will be able to handle 7500 passengers per hour per direction, a 32% and 96% increase respectively.
It seems to me that the NDP government in doing a preemptive media strike against bad news, because we all know; “that telling a big SkyTrain lie and keep repeating it, the public will tend to believe it“.
Our friends at Alstom are enjoying your Translink’s karma as they control the SkyTrain game.
Revenge is being dished up very cold and poor Translink do not know why they have to jump through so many hoops, but yes Alstom has long memories and they were treated very badly with the Canada Line misadventure, especially when they worked so hard to provide a much better bid than your inhouse SNC Lavalin!
The humour continues when a senior manager complained that they will take their business elsewhere and he was tersely reminded there is no elsewhere, as we are the only company that produces compatible cars.
“Don’t like it, take us to court” was Alstom’s senior manager’s reply, we only inherited SkyTrain and for us, an eyeopener, maybe you would like to see some evidence…………………..”
It seems that was the last thing TransLink wanted?
The millennium line has 80 meter platforms and they still short trains less than 40 meters. Why? Part of the expo line does overlap the millennium line so you do see longer 4 car trains between production way and Lougheed stations. Both lines operate between these two stations, one with 4 car trains and other with 2 car trains. Kind of silly.
The extension to arbutus will be great. So fed up with over crowded and slow buses. There is always delays when the stroller people load and unload their huge baby movers.
It’s not silly @Joe, it’s simple math. The part of the Expo Line that runs onto the Millennium Line is a branch line. Branch Lines have limited capacity, yes they may run 4 car trains but they are only expected carry a small portion of the total capacity of the Expo Line. All while the main portion of the Expo Line going into Surrey carries the remaining capacity,which is a far larger portion of the Expo line’s total capacity.
They (Translink) don’t worry very much about it because the actual capacity on the Millennium Line is quite low. Even if the line goes to U.B.C. eventually, the maximum capacity of the Millennium Line’s signaling system and software will be limited to 7,500 passengers/hour/direction, according to the people actually providing the system upgrade. 7,500 p/h/d on the Millennium Line and 17,500 p/h/d on the Expo Line.
7,500 p/h/d can easily be carried by properly managed surface Busways, (seen it done and have been involved in several BRT projects myself). It could also easily be done by surface LRT (and that can be done easily as well). Both surface BRT and LRT can handle significantly more capacity than that and can cost way less than Skytrain.
It is simply the desire of Vancouver politicians and senior staff to do nothing but build amazingly expensive Light Metro (AKA SkyTrain). A Light Metro System that moves slightly less than half the capacity of the existing Toronto Subway and Montreal Metro Lines but costs 75%-80% as much as those full scale Metro lines to build. That’s not counting the fact that, Toronto’s Line 1 has been upgraded to a CBTC based system which greatly enhances the line’s total passenger carrying capacity (Line 2 will soon start that painful process as well). Montreal is soon expected to start boosting capacity on its Orange and Green Metro Lines as well.
The big joke is both the Montreal and Toronto’s Metro systems don’t cost much more than a Skytrain Line to operate (20%-30% on a per hour basis), according to the data from CUTA. Remember those Metro lines carry a whole lot more people than the Skytrain, with actual drivers included and no small army of Skytrain attendants needed. The main problem is the basic flawed premise of the Light Metro.
$6 Billion for a 16km above grade Light Metro Line to Langley, $1 Billion more if you actually include the greatly needed OMC #5. It will move fewer people on opening day than the 99 bus was carrying in 2019. A big rethink is needed here in Vancouver (especially in the outer suburbs and exhurbs). Diesel and Electric Multiple Units or Tram-Trains on existing and or modified railway lines (think Ottawa’s Line #2 & #4) is the definitely the way to go if choosing a rail option.
I am still processing some news, but it seems the NDP has some bad news re Transit and it has to do with a growing public pushback with current projects.
YouTube is filled with scores of glad-handing stories about the Putullo Bridge replacement and golly gee whiz, how good SkyTrain is and we need more.
Road Pricing is back on the table but with a single seat majority in the legislature and with the dull thud of the recent announcement of building four ferries in China and not releasing the details of the deal publicly has pushed back the time table.
The growing healthcare fiasco in the interior, would make any SkyTrain announcement counter productive at this point in time.
Even diehard TransLink/SkyTrain supporters want Minister in charge Farnsworth removed as he has proven clueless on regional transit issues. It is now widely seen he was placed as Minister in charge of transit because of his dismal showing with the surrey police fiasco where now shake-down gangs are running rampant and the police seem uninterested.
a lot of this goes unreported because the local print media is in crisis and several weeklies have been discontinued and the legacy corporate media are loath to report on anything negative, lest they offend someone.