TransLink’s Desperate Ploy
The Canada Line and SkyTrain light-metro’s are the real cause of TransLink’s financial mess!
Wednesday morning October 3, 2012, from about 8:50 amAi??to 10 am, TransLink took to the airwaves on CKNW radio (the Bill Good Show)Ai??to try to convince the great unwashed, that TransLink really needs your tax money to survive. On board with the Bill Good and his show were Bob Paddon, Executive Vice President Of Strategic PlanningAi??and Public Affairs, TransLink, Nancy Olewiler, TransLink Board Chair, andAi??Eric Miller, Professor, University Of TorontoAi??and Ai??Director of the University’s UrbanAi??Transportation Research andAi??Advancement Centre.
Click here for NW’s audio vault.
http://www.cknw.com/news/audiovault/index.aspx
The first question I pondered was, “why did we not have a local academic, like ProfessorAi??Patrick Condon (UBC)Ai??on the panel“, but soon my question was answered as the befuddled Toronto professor, when trying to answer a question from Good, claimed; “that TransLink is used as a model for Toronto and the rest of Canada………“.
Really?
Well Vancouver doesn’t operate streetcars or trams nor does it operate a heavy-rail subway and Toronto is tearing down it’s SkyTrain (Scarborough Line) to be replaced by light rail. While TransLink does operate a very limited commuter train service (5 trains & 5 trains out), Toronto has the Go Trains, offering a regular scheduled regional passenger rail service for the immediate region. I do not think Toronto even considers Vancouver a model for transit, I rather doubt that Toronto considers Vancouver at all!
The 75 minute “Support you local TransLink” radio show had everything that TransLink’s ‘spin doctors’Ai??are famous for, but not for one instance was real the problem with TransLink’s insatiable financial appetiteAi??discussed and that was the hugely expensive SkyTrain mini-metro andAi??massive amounts of money it sucks from the transit budget, both TransLink’s and the provincial governments (almost $300 million annually from the provincial government alone!). Predictions by real transit experts in the 80’s that SkyTrain would be a financial burden on local taxpayers have proven true, yet SkyTrain is held up as a model for other cities byAi??our localAi??media and the porkers who regularly slurp at the TransLink trough.
Then there was the call for BRT, which like SkyTrain, is based more on ‘huff & puff’ than fact. Really, just where has BRT been all that successful?
“Those who tell the SkyTrain or BRT lie over and over again, soon come to believe in the lie!”
Until TransLink and the mainstream media come to terms with the real reason for TransLink’s financial malaise and that is building light metro on routes that do not have the ridership to support the mode, TransLink will make annual pilgrimages to the politicians with cap in hand for ever more tax money. Until the public actually vote for politicians who have demonstrated a knowledge of regional transit and transportation issues and have the courage to stop Translink’s annual shakedown of the regional taxpayer, the financial black-hole known as TransLink will just expand until the region is made pauper.
Well, I guess you are kinda technically correct. SkyTrain and the buses are reducing driving much faster than expected causing the drop in fuel tax revenue. However, most of the new funding is for expanded service which will cost money regardless of what type of transit is used. Streetcars and LRT do cost money too. Your tram to Chilliwack will probably have a similar cost per passenger km as the Evergreen Line or SkyTrain to UBC.
Zweisystem replies: Thou jests. SkyTrain and the buses are not reducing driving, in fact transit usage just keeps pace with population growth. The drop in gas tax revenue can be attributed to people gassing up in Abbotsford and across the boarder. Several trucking firms, which are located inside the TransLink gas tax zone regularly fuel up in Abby, saving about 10 cents a litre.
The RftV tramtrain would cost much less to operate per passenger mile than SkyTrain and yes, at a fraction of the capital costs. A $4.5 billion UBC SkyTrain subway would bankrupt TransLink once and for all. As always the SkyTrain lobby just doesn’t get it, never have and never will. Just wait until the multi billion dollar refurbishing of the metro lines starts in about 20 years!
I find the comment “that TransLink is used as a model for Toronto and the rest of Canada………“, spurious indeed. The fact of the matter is, Vancouver is more of an example of how not to build a rapid transit line. Bad public consultation and very questionable methods of securing bids, have made Vancouver rather a joke with the international transit crowd. In fact, Canada is regarded as the home of Bombardier and except for the eccentric province of Alberta, Bombardier products hold sway over the entire country.
The citizens of Ottawa learned the hard way, by reneging on a contract with Siemens for their proposed LRT and were forced to pay a $34 million penalty so they could again be forced to deal with Bombardier.
I took time to listen to the interview and it seemed the moderator was in the pay of TransLink.
Sadly for the taxpayers in metro Vancouver, ‘in the field of transit development in Vancouver, was so much paid by so many taxpayers, for such little transit.”
What’s that saying, birds of feather fly together? Guess who just won the rigged bid to build the new Evergreen Line? Yes – SNCL suspected by many to have ties to the mafia in Quebec. Yes, SNCL mired in scandal for “performance payments” to corrupt officials in the Middle East is buddies with TransLink. Yes, corruption riddled SNCL with the very real reputation of buying officials for work has won the right to build the Evergreen (SkyTrain) Line (I bet, if you hung certain individuals at TransLink by their heels, gold coins from SNCL would fall out of their pockets):
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/selects+Lavalin+group+preferred+bidders+billion+transit+line/7345806/story.html
TransLink is in very good company with SNCL and will have a marvellous time over the next four years at our expense – sad and too bad. I should be disappointed but I’m not, this useless 11 kilometre line from nowhere to nowhere will cost $2.5 billion to integrate into the existing Millennium Line and heads will eventually roll at TransLink when the SkyTrain network (already literally crumbling) crashes, as a result – you just can’t extend the Millennium Line which wasn’t designed for the Evergreen Line and expect it to work without major and unanticipated technical problems costing a great deal of “unbudgeted” money from taxpayers to solve.
TransLink is going to use the payments intended for the Evergreen Line (from the federal government) to pay off its current mounting SkyTrain and Canada Line debts in order for the swine at TransLink to keep their high paying jobs for another four years. That’s the crux of it and that’s the most upsetting and disgusting thing about it all. Maybe, the NDP will make an issue of it and force TransLink to scrap the Evergreen Line in favour of an independent tram line costing one-third to one-half as much during the next election, let’s hope so.
Zweisystem replies: I am sorry Chris, I have been told by NDP MLA’s that the Evergreen Line is part of Mike Farnsworth’s election platform. The NDP, sadly, is part of the SkyTrain lobby.
Actually Eric, the Evergreen Line is just the uncompleted portion of the Millennium Line. Both are true SkyTrain Lines, unlike the Canada line which is a truncated metro. The real question is how the Evergreen line will connect to the Millennium Line. If the connection with the M-Line is west, passengers must transfer to complete ones journey to downtown Vancouver and if the the connection is to the South, passengers for Vancouver face an overly long (approx 60 minute) trip. Taking the WCE and/or drive will be just easier.
The Evergreen line is the epitome of TransLink’s flagrant disrespect for the taxpayer.
I find CKNW not worth listening too.
@Evil Eye, thanks for the clarification on the Millennium Line (ML), good to know. My guess is that the Evergreen Line (EGL) will connect west to bring people into Vancouver or to encourage people who are living in expensive Vancouver and who could never afford a car to drive in Vancouver – to move out to Coquitlam, to save up money, to start a family and to buy a car – then to abandon transit as appears to be the case with SkyTrain riders elsewhere.
Even though the Expo Line (EL) is independent from the ML and EGL, how well the decrepit EL can handle the added transit demand arising from transfers from the ML and EGL is questionable, and from a design stand point, it would be much more economical to build a separate tram line which is independent from the existing SkyTrain network rather than to upgrade the EL (costing $1.1 billion) to keep expanding the obsolete SkyTrain network.
@Eric
A lot of tram fans forget that trams are actually needed and places to store those trams are needed as well. Not a big deal for lines that just carry a few people a short distance. When proposing a tram line as an alternative to a high capacity medium distance rapid transit line it is a big deal. While the station costs are significant, the majority of the $1.1 billion Expo Line Upgrades is for vehicles and storage yards. More trams would be needed to carry the same number of people as the at grade tram line would be significantly slower than grade separated SkyTrain. As well, more spares are needed due to collisions with motor vehicles.
Still, it would be interesting to cost out that and other options. In the end though, any solution would likely be a similar cost.
Zweisystem replies: Again, Richard you have it wrong, in fact fewer trams would be needed than SkyTrain as a modern tram has the capacity of a married pair of SkyTrain cars. If there is some operation on a RRoW and priority signaling for a tram, the tram service is quite a lot faster with revenue commercial speed determined by the number of stations per route km. SkyTrain has less than half the average number of stations, thus has a faster commercial speed than comparable LRT operations. Funny though Richard, you never admit to the fact that no one buys with SkyTrain anymore – I wonder why?
I can tell you as non Vancouverite and a person who works in the planning industry that yes Vancouver is looked at as a model of combining competant transit planning built environment and environmental planning creating a great place to live. Yes we know it is expensive, yes we know that most locals have to live 1000 miles from nowhere to have a house that will not be turned into a condo tower and we know that your wonderful skytrains (especially Toronto born transit and transportation planners) are expensive rinky dink little trains compaired to subways and the large capacity 30 metre plus modern light rail vehicles. However, you still have a nice place to live anyway.
You are correct when it comes to the operation of the transit system and the problems it faces that the staff and planners at the TTC and Metrolynx could care less about what is being done in Vancouver. The Greater Golden Horseshoe and Toronto at it’s centre have transit and general transportation issues that are a order of magnitude larger than Vancouver. Almost 8 million people live in the Greater Golden Horseshoe and it is growing at 200,000 people a year whether the economy slows down or not. For those who don’t know, the Greater Golden Horseshoe is the area commuter shed around Greater Toronto including Hamilton, Niagara, Guelph, Kitchener Waterloo (their building LRT as well) and Peterborough.
To those who think that skytrain technology is the way to go you need a wake up call. The replacement parts for the motors and drive system are very expensive compaired to standard electric motors used with light rail and subways and metros. You have built probably because of a policy created years ago, a very expensive physically segregated right of way that is already starting to degrade, as one of our company’s engineers pointed out to us on a recent visit. The cost of high grade light weight concrete is going up faster than the cost of oil. The dirverless technology costs extra money during the building phase because all aspects of the operation must be segregated operationally and physically this rules out forever, street and most surface running money saving options. The money you save operationally by not having operaters is lost by having your army of attendants and the largest control room crew this writer has ever seen anywhere with a major transit operation. Yes, street running LRT can be slower even with modern transit controlled traffic light soft ware and hardware than grade seperated Skytrains. Steet running LRT like the Sheppard or Finch West LRT lines in Toronto are designed with stops every 500-700 metres so that buses are no longer needed along those streets causing the TTC to either eliminate them or redistribute those vehicles to improve service on other routes. The savings from simple on street stations that can be easily lenghtened is a big advantage compared with maintaining multi story above grade stations that are really too short and require large expensive pieces of propperty. You are stuck with one company and it’s suppliers. No other large car builder will ever provide replacement vehicles if Bombardier decides to end the skytrain line because they will have to pay Bombardier’s patent and license fees. Finally the capacity of the Skytrain technology is a joke compaired with new LRT technology or a real subway/metro. Just because most LRT systems in North America are new and do not yet have the ridership of the Skytrain does not mean that it has a higher operational capacity. Once Ottawa is operating a few years or Calgary finishes it’s current upgrades Vancouver high level of ridership will be left in the dust in comparison.The Expoline Skytrain is going Just a few things to think about during your debates.
Sorry my children prematurely ended my statement. The Expo line Skytrain is going to need major electrical and infrastructure upgrades just to accept higher ridership levels than it has right now. I have never seen a light metro system like this top out at 12-14000 people per hour per direction like the Skytrain technology. The simple upgrades Cagary is undergoing and what Ottawa will have by design will give much larger system capacity at a lower operational cost. Just a few things to think about during your debates.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
You will always have SNCL Lavlin involved with Skytrain because they still own a lot of the Engineering patents that they purchased when they bought out the Urban Transport Development Corporation of Ontario. Bombardier only bought the technology involved with the vehicles from them not the engineering patents for the guigeways and support systems. The driverless software is a Bombardier product because the original program is obsolete and has been non functional since the mid to late 90’s.
Oh yes one other thing. Do not be surprized that yes, Vancouver is seen as a shinning example of transit planning. You guys are local and live with the system daily and are highly crtical because you are very familiar with it. Familarity breeds contempt. You sometimes are highly positive of other cities transit technologies and systems. I bet you there are locals in those places who say how much their transit systems, transit technologies suck compaired to what you have and would defend their opinions on similar websites to their dying breath.
Zweisystem replies: Points taken.
The cities which I think have done a good job is Calgary, Portland and overseas, Karlsruhe Germany. The one LRT line I think has a failing grade is Seattle’s hybrid light metro/LRT, Vancouver’s transit system does move a lot of people, but at a huge cost and we must remember that the SkyTrain/Canada Line light-metros are first subsidized by the provincial government by over $200 million (in 1993, the Expo alone Line was subsidized by the province by $157 million – Cost of Moving People in the GVRD Martin Crilly) money that otherwise could have been better invested in transit. Building more SkyTrain just adds to this hidden subsidy.
It is interesting that when the newly formed TransLink went on an European junket (oops, it was a fact finding tour), they only visited metro systems and not LRT or tram systems TransLink today still suffers a major case of metro mentality.
@ Richard
`A lot of tram fans forget that trams are actually needed and places to store those trams are needed as well. Not a big deal for lines that just carry a few people a short distance. When proposing a tram line as an alternative to a high capacity medium distance rapid transit line it is a big deal. While the station costs are significant, the majority of the $1.1 billion Expo Line Upgrades is for vehicles and storage yards. More trams would be needed to carry the same number of people as the at grade tram line would be significantly slower than grade separated SkyTrain. As well, more spares are needed due to collisions with motor vehicles.’
I can see from your comment that you have no real knowledge or understanding of modern transit/LRT/public transport planning, design or operations.
Your argument is flawed, your logic suspect and your reasoning spurious.
And another thing: Yes, Sktrain down Fraser Highway would speed up Langley-t0-Vancouver trips. It also spdees up Langley-to-downtown-Surrey trips. I’m honestly not sure how it’s even relevant to worry about whether those trips terminate in Surrey or in Vancouver. It means faster transit within Surrey, whether one chooses to extend their trip across the Fraser or not.