New But Unused – The Yongin SkyTrain EverLine White Elephant.
The new but unused EverLine white elephant in Yongin Korea
The following item from Railway Gazette International has raised Zweisystems’s eyebrows; “Following arbitration, the South Korean city of Yongin has revised the contract for Bombardier to operate the completed but unused 18Ai??5 km (11.4-mile) EverLine automated light metro. Opening is now planned for April 2013, with Bombardier to run the line for three years and the council to provide an operating subsidy if required.”
According to the SkyTrain Lobby, the Yongin EverLine has been happily working for some time now, carrying many thousands of passengers a day, but it is not.
What is even more laughable is that the SkyTrain for UBC group have since 2009, advertised that the EverLine was in full operation and Zwei has been insulted many times about the great Yongin SkyTrain – A SkyTrain Line that has been built but remained unused up to now!
From Wikipedia:
The EverLine Rapid Transit System will be a fully automated 18.5-kilometre rapid transit system in the city of Yongin, South Korea connecting the Everland amusement park to theAi??Seoul Metropolitan Subway. The new line will serve 15 stations. The mostly elevated system will use Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit vehicles controlled by Bombardier CITYFLO 650 automatic train control technology.
In July 2004, the city of Yongin awarded the contract for the line to Yongin LRT Consortium, of which Bombardier Transportation is the lead member.
Ground was broken for construction in November 2005.
Since November 2009 the operating company has conducted trial runs of the trains. The line was due to open in July 2010, but was delayed. The current opening date is unknown due to construction, noise complaints, and ongoing litigation in the International Chapter of the International Arbitration Court. The opening was planned to coincide with a southern extension of the Bundang Line creating a transfer station between the two lines.
It can be truly said, they built a SkyTrain in Korea, but nobody came.
As for the SkyTrain Lobby, just another instance of SkyTrain fiction, before fact.
The SkyTrain lobby should be ashamed of themselves as they have touted the EverLine or White elephant SkyTrain Line as a working urban transit system.
The time it took Bombardier Inc., four years, to operate their own proprietary SkyTrain Line speaks volumes of the undesirability of SkyTrain.
When will TransLink realize that SkyTrain is a joke and start planning for real regional transit with light rail?
Agree, all that is missing in the picture are the large number of high frequency and mostly empty diesel buses getting people to the elevated stations located miles apart in distance – essentially negating any carbon reductions. Students at UBC have been influenced by the continual propaganda from TransLink wanting to extend another elevated line to UBC from Commercial Drive.
TransLink was very cunning in brainwashing impressionable UBC students into believing that elevated transit is the only possible option for UBC. To this end, TransLink has conditioned UBC students with express 99 B-Lines operating much like the elevated transit – distant stops with the 99 B-Line operating every two to five minutes during the day.
As has been alluded to many times in many posts here and elsewhere, a “tram line” from downtown Vancouver across a new cycling-tram bridge, then along the current tracks on West 6th Avenue, then up the current tracks on Arbutus Street and then along the grass meridian on West 16th Avenue to UBC would solve the so called transit over crowding to UBC swiftly and for a relative pittance.
There is no real over crowding to UBC and two-thirds of the seats on the buses to UBC are empty, even though the 99 B-Line is crowded occasionally. This is due to TransLink making it easy for riders to take 99 B-Line and hard or inconvenient for riders to take the trolley buses going to UBC.
Tram lines to UBC would also rid W 10th and W 4th Avenue in Vancouver of the crummy articulated #44 and #99 B-Lines destroying the air quality, upsetting residents with harrowing noise levels and clogging up the roads. Of course if this were done, TransLink would be out of business – shucks.
What’s wrong with the COV taking over transit from TransLink to run tram lines to UBC? It would save taxpayers billions of dollars, and plenty of other municipalities run transit – Edmonton, for instance.
What is interesting about the Yongin SkyTrain is that the line is designed to operate single cars only. I doubt there is any great expectation of high ridership. Why was the line built in the first place?
Zwei has a funny feeling in his stomach that there was major politicall/business interference with this line, so much so that no one wants to operate it.