Common Sense From Aus

Metro Vancouver is not alone with transit ills and this item from the Australian – Sydney Ferry Blog certainly fits with our transit woes.

When it comes to transit and commonsense, TransLink’s planners and senior bureaucrats, as well as metro politicians, academics, the Ministry of Transportation and the Premier, seam to lack any at all, preferring vanity projects for personnel, political or bureaucratic prestige!

I would add the Engineering Profession as well, which many think they are experts in everything!

The following two quote sums up TransLink problems;

1. “Often the proponents are urban planners or architects who practice the art of professional imperialism – extending the reach of their particular discipline to subjects about which they have no real expertise.”
2. “…….a public transport network which focuses primarily on moving commuters to work will fail to compete with the private car.”
   

ai???Common sense is not so common.ai???

Voltaire

Ai??Thursday, 11 February 2016

Does NSW transport need a big new idea or just clearer purpose?

NSW Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Andrew Constance, announced yesterday he was “calling on the world’s brightest tech minds to find the next big idea that would shake up transport in NSW”.

It is good to seek ideas from elsewhere – I’ve done it myself – but technology is not a substitute for purpose. If you don’t know what port you’re sailing to, no wind is favourable.

Building new infrastructure, introducing smartcards or changing the fare structure do not of themselves constitute a purpose. They may be beneficial in some way, but what precisely are they directed towards achieving? Australian public transport planning has long failed to articulate a purpose or set of guiding principles for achieving it.

This shortcoming is puzzling. There is an established “science” of public transport which is taught in tertiary institutions across Australia, often assisted by funding from transport departments. Ai??Many overseas countries practice this science assiduously (the Swiss do it best). But strangely, in this country, the science rarely seems to percolate to the surface of public policy. More often than not, a public transport “solution” is proposed in the context of individual urban developments. The bigger picture of providing better mobility for city and suburbs as a whole seems to fall below the radar.

One particular mode – say a Metro or Light Rail – are frequently advocated as “solutions”. Often the proponents are urban planners or architects who practice the art of professional imperialism – extending the reach of their particular discipline to subjects about which they have no real expertise.

Economists are the great masters of professional imperialism, but a kit bag of arcane econometric models is a poor substitute for in depth operational knowledge of transport systems. This has not stopped the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART), an agency blissfully unencumbered by knowledge of the complex science of public transport, from being given the task of redesigning NSW’s public transport fare structure.

So what are the main features of the science of “good” public transport, which seems so curiously hidden and poorly understood? This blog post can’t do it justice, but here are a few pointers.

Public Transport objective

To be effective, public transport must compete with the private car, not just for travel to work or travel to the central business district, but for all journeys – shopping, social and recreational travel. Public transport can only compete with the car if it enables the user to:

• get from wherever they are
• to wherever they need to go
• at a time that suits them.

In other words, a city’s public transport network must be multi-destinational. As only 15% of all journeys in Sydney, for example, are trips to and from work, a public transport network which focuses primarily on moving commuters to work will fail to compete with the private car. It won’t accomplish its purpose.

How to achieve this objective

1. Good network design

If people are to get from wherever they are to wherever they need to go, it is not practical or efficient for the network to connect all origin-destination pairs with single, direct trips. The best public transport networks are high frequency grids, where users can make transfers at connecting nodes with short waiting times – like the London Underground or the Tokyo Metro. Ai??But it doesn’t have to be a metro system. It may be a combination of modes, including suburban trains, buses, light rail and ferries.

The key is quality network design. The mode selected for individual corridors is based on technical, geographic and cost considerations, which are contextual and pragmatic. So no one mode can be said to be better than any other.

In areas of lower demand, where high frequency services can’t be justified, the network should be designed as a pulse timetable, so waiting times are short at nodes even if service intervals are 30 or 60 minutes.

Well designed networks are also highly legible – stopping patterns are consistent and timetables are clockfaced. It is easy for passengers to figure out how to use the system.

2. Network design guides infrastructure

The Swiss Federal Railways design timetables 20 years in advance. This allows them to prioritise infrastructure projects needed to achieve improvements in the timetable. This is the most efficient way of planning and building infrastructure because it ensures that what is built – and the technology used – is only what is necessary.

Technology has a role to play, but it should never lead. Technology should be the servant of network design.

3. Fare structures that encourage public transport travel

The fare structure needed for successful public transport systems is the opposite of what mainstream economists think we should have. Economists like “pay as you go” fares, because then users have the tendency to ration their use of taxpayer subsidised services. Many users also like the idea of only paying for what they use.

But if our objective is for public transport to compete effectively with the car, the fare structure should provide an incentive to people to use public transport for as many trips as possible, including shopping, social and recreational trips. This is best achieved with highly discounted periodical fares (weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual travel passes), so every additional trip taken appears to the user to be free.

TransLink names Kevin Desmond new CEO

New TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond (right), beside Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Photograph by: Michael Mui, 24 hours

METRO VANCOUVER — When TransLink’s new CEO Kevin Desmond starts his job next month, he will have a tough task ahead of him: to restore the transit authority’s beleaguered and battered brand and boost ridership.

But how he plans to do that is still anyone’s guess, as Desmond says he has yet to develop a game plan to tackle the issue.

“I understand TransLink has suffered a bruise to its brand and the last couple of years have been challenging …,” he said Wednesday at a news conference. “Restoring the public trust and confidence in the transportation system I believe to be No. 1.”

For the rest of the story………..

Subway Blunders in Europe ai??i?? Can “Old Dog” TransLink Learn From Otherai??i??s Mistakes?

Subway Blunders in Europe ai??i?? Can TransLink Learn From Other’s Mistakes?

Herr Keller is a German transit specialist from Germany and gives wonderful insight to the pitfalls of building new subways for the sake of building new subways. The following mail shows theAi??problems and counter productiveAi??resultsAi??of building subways and metros, where ordinary trams would do just fine. There are lessons to be learned, but Iai??i??m afraid TransLink is an ai???oldai??? dog that just canai??i??t be taught new tricks!

Nuremberg has both a driverless metro and trams (streetcars).

 

Muenchen and Nuernberg show pretty well how Europeans fail at transit system design, too.

In Muenchen, at the beginning of the 60s, experts had recommended to extend the existing streetcar system out to the periphery on new lines built on separated row, even with grade-free road crossings where possible at low expense. Work on this had already been started in the 50s and got pretty far. The result was an excellent, extensive and
dense network, attractive for both passengers and the operator.

For the city center, the experts had recommended building a few tunnels under the main choke points and especially under the entire area which is today pedestrian zone. After municipal authorities had taken over planning of these tunnels, however, they got more and more extensive, eventually creeping into a plan to replace the entire streetcar network by a full-blown subway. This plan was decided nearly 50 years ago.Today, after ai???investingai??? a few billion EUR, the subway network does not cover a larger area than the streetcar network around 1965-1975 and it doesnai??i??t allow to travel significantly faster, if travel time is measured from door to door. In fact on lots of (especially tangent) relations where the streetcar network offered a direct connection, today you are forced to make detours and change trains, losing time.

Another issue is that the dense surface network was replaced by just three trunk lines (which are split up into branch lines towards the ends), which resulted in hopeless overcrowding of some stretches during rush hours and especially of the connecting stations. Besides, the subway network offers less stations, so walking distances have been
significantly increased for the passengers. When living in Muenchen, I almost always preferred to go by bicycle because it was faster than the subway.

In the end, the streetcar network has never been entirely replaced, some lines that had been closed, but without replacement by subway, even had to be reopened because buses were inefficient in handling the volume of passengers who stubbornly refused to take a detour underground.

Today, the streetcar network is slowly being revived and new lines are being planned. One streetcar extension line that had been planned in the early 60s and for which the row had already been reserved, eventually got opened in 2011. One streetcar line that was closed without replacement by subway in 1983 got reopened the next year after protests by the citizens flooded the town hall, closed again in 1993 and might be reopened again in the near future.

For the north and the southwest of the city, there are now plans for the construction of entire new streetcar sub-networks, including some stretches of extension lines built in the 50s/early 60s which were closed in the 80s/90s.

One important short tangent connection, which was planned as part of a loop line around the entire city before WW1, never got built due to WW1, depression and then WW2, and it was the only segment of that loop line that was never completed. Today, the only thing that prevents it from finally being built is the county government whose opposition to the city councilai??i??s decision is nominally based on the false pretension that the streetcar line would wreak havoc to park it has to pass through. On a row where currently diesel busses operate, the tarmac would be replaced with grassed tracks. A few hundred meters north of this row, a six lane ai???highwayai??? passes through the same park. The real reason of course is just that the county government is in the hands of a different political party than the city council and is has been like this for decades now.

The ai???tunnel maniaai??? of the subway planners gave some ai???interestingai??? results. For example, when the technical university of Muenchen moved some of the engineering faculties to a new campus outside the city in the middle of nowhere, it took roughly a decade to built a subway line there. This line passes underneath a place named Garching, essentially a tiny village, they have a maypole on their village square with a subway station underneath. Next to this village, the tunnel passes even below a potato field (or is it a cow paddock?) before reaching the campus.

During the decades of subway tunnel construction, suburbanisation has progressed further outward, creating more traffic. With the result that the suburban commuter network (ai???S-Bahnai???) got overloaded, especially on its main trunk line which passes in a tunnel under the city. Plans for adding two separate tracks for commuter trains and connecting stations with the urban network to an existing surface bypass line south of the immediate city center have been put aside by the politicians. They could have been implemented by now, at comparatively low cost.

Instead, a new tunnel parallel to the existing one was planned, with connection to the existing urban network at stations which are already hopelessly overcrowded. The cost for the tunnel, as usual, rose during the planning stage and in the end financing could not be warranted so the project is stalled.

So while a foreigner coming to Muenchen might think this city has an excellent transit network, as someone who has lived there for a few years I beg to differ. After decades of tunnel construction with >10 billion EUR (CAD 15.6 billion) wasted, large areas of the city still have no decent connection while the subway and the commuter network are overcrowded and unable to handle more traffic. Besides the fact that tangent connections are missing and buses (not only on these relations) arestuck in gridlock during rush hours.

In Nuernberg, which mostly imitated the system at Muenchen, they built a single-track (!) subway tunnel to the airport, which before was served by 12m buses every hour or so. Right before arriving at the airport, the tunnel passes underneath paddocks, community gardens and a small forest.

The Nuernberg system is really a ai???niceai??? example how to screw up an outrageously expensive transit system. One false pretense for building the subway was, among others, that it would provide a higher capacity than the streetcar. But actually, the subway was built with stations only for 75m train sets, very narrow platforms at some stations and few and narrow staircases.

As it happens, one of the most cramped stations is the one that has to handle the most passengers, during the annual Christmas market, which is *the* touristic event in this city.

Sincerely,

W.

Perils of a Proprietary Transit System

Bombardier Inc. loves proprietary transit systems, because of the “gotcha” factor. Once a transportation authority purchases a proprietary transit system, they are stuck with one manufacturer and if problems arise, too bad.

This is what happened in Caen, where in 2002, the city’s transportation authority purchased the proprietary Guide Light Transit guided bus system or GLT but after the parent company stopped their support of the transit system, the city of Caen, was left out in the cold and are now replacing GLT with a tram.

GLT is legally defined as a bus in France, but is guided by a double flange wheel on a single rail, thus not needing steering on a transit route but still retains the ability to be steered manually if need be and by all accounts, this happened more often than not.

From Wikipedia:

Critics of the system also point out that, unlike a conventional tramway, GLT is a proprietary system, meaning that once having installed it, a city would face difficulties in purchasing vehicles from any manufacturer other than Bombardier. A standard tramway, by contrast, can easily accommodate vehicles from multiple suppliers; Nancyai??i??s neighbour Strasbourg, for example, has chosen the Citadis tram from Alstom to supplement its existing Bombardier Eurotram fleet.

Because of the significant problems encountered by the cities which have opted for the Bombardier Guided Bus, one of which has demanded compensation for the costs it has had to pay for the GLT, Bombardier will not sell any more GLT systems, at least until all the issues have been resolved.

Another new tram line in France is in the offing, bringing with it a cautionary tale of the “perils of a a proprietary transit system.”

Another Suicide

In Europe, EEC Health and Safety rules mandate that all driverless or automatic passenger transit systems must have platform gates to prevent suicides or accidental falls onto tracks. Not so in Canada, as “Death by SkyTrain” continues unabated.

 

UPDATED: Massive delays after SkyTrain medical emergency

Terry Schintz

February 02, 2016

 

Crowds pack SkyTrain platform / Stanley Lai – Twitter

UPDATED: SkyTrain service should resume by about 6:45-7 p.m.

 

Commuters across Metro Vancouver are reporting transit chaos, after a medical emergency at Burrard Station set SkyTrain delays in motion.

The issue affects both the Expo and Millennium Line.

Trains are still running, but only single track.

Offficials have also set up shuttles between Waterfront and Main Street stations, and passengers coming into downtown on SkyTrain will need to switch trains at Stadium Station.

With rush hour in full swing, thatai??i??s meant major delays and lineups at many stations.

Attendants on site tell CKNW there is no timeline yet for resumption of regular service.

Professor Condon on CBC Radio

 

UBC Planning Professor Patrick Condon was on CBC Radio on Jan. 29, echoing the growing concern about the proposed Broadway SkyTrain subway sucking away federal monies from other local transit needs.

Interesting, that the good professor, states that TransLink’s two top planners were fired because of their support for light rail, which would cost a third to build than a subway!

Listen to the broadcast here.

The White Elephant Line

A white elephant is a possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness.

To recap, the Canada Line is not a true P-3, rather a mock P-3, where SNC Lavalin/Bombardier, bid against, SNC Lavalin/ROTEM. Judge Pittfield who resided over the failed Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink, called the bidding process a “charade”.

The Canada Line is the only heavy-rail metro built in the world as a light-metro and being only able to operate 41 metre long, two car trains, has much less capacity than a modern tram costing a fraction to install!

At a minimum of $83.4 million to operate annually, calling the Canada line a “White Elephant” is too kind!

Surrey urged not to repeat Canada Line P3 mistake

Passengers wait to board a Canada Line train to Vancouver from Bridgeport Station in Richmond.

ai??i??Ai??image credit: Black Press file photo

• byAi?? Jeff Nagel – BC Local News
• posted Jan 29, 2016

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan says Surrey must avoid repeating the costly mistakes made when the Canada Line was built as a P3 partnership now that the city is clamouring to build new light rail lines.

Corrigan has been pushing TransLink to disclose details of the Canada Line arrangement, which he says forces the transit authority to pay the private partner not just a higher interest rate than if it had borrowed directly but also additional inflationary and other adjustments.

Those payments cover the cost of operating the line as well as the $721 million in private capital ai??i?? nearly one third of the $2.1-billion rapid transit line ai??i?? that was fronted by the partners after direct contributions from TransLink and senior governments.

The deal to secure and repay the “magic money” through the P3 has financially hobbled TransLink, leaving it unable to afford better transit service in the years since the Richmond-Vancouver line opened in 2009, Corrigan told the Metro mayors’ council Jan. 27.

For the rest of the story………….

Lund Sweden – New TramWay to Cost $23.3 Million/km to Build

Contrary to TransLink’s habitual gold-plating of its LRT projects, modern light rail can be built reasonably cheaply, when compared to other modes of transit.

The cost of the 5.5 km. starter tram line in Lund Sweden, with seven trams is estimated to be CAD $128.1 million or about $23.3 million/km to build.

Not bad considering that Surrey’s planned LRT is said to cost a minimum of $80 million/km. to build!

Maybe the City of Surrey should forget about TransLink and hire the same people designing Lund’s new tram line to design LRT for Surrey.

The city of LUND at the southern tip of Sweden with a municipal population of nearly 111,000 has begun the tendering (Request for Proposals – RfP) process for construction of the city’s first light rail (modern tramway) line, the “railway gazette international” site reports. The starter 3.41 mile (5.5 km) route would require seven trams and would cost USD $91.1 million (CAD $128.1million):

<http://tinyurl.com/jllp8l2>

“Lund tram tendering begins 27 Jan 2016

Professor Patrick Condon: Dear PM: Don’t Waste Billions on Bad Transit Projects

I see the good professor is taking the same track a Zwei, with my earlier letter to the PM.

Expensive vanity projects like the Broadway subway drive up transit costs, yet provide negligible transit improvements.

The only benefit a Broadway subway will bring is excessive profits to land speculators and developers, who are now assembling land on Broadway.

SkyTrain’s expensive costs has driven up TransLink’s Cost per revenue passenger

over one third higher than Toronto, Calgary and Edmonton. A Broadway subway would greatly increase

TransLink’s cost per revenue passenger numbers.

Dear PM: Don’t Waste Billions on Bad Transit Projects

Toronto and Vancouver subway wrong for taxpayers, riders and planet.

ByAi??Patrick M. Condon, Today, TheTyee.ca

The Scarborough RT system could have been upgraded for only $500 million. Instead,

Toronto council opted to scrap it for an expensive subway extension.

Dear Mr. Trudeau,

Congratulations on your recent victory. I was happy to see that you support infrastructure investments, particularly in transit. Good on you! I was even happier to see that you want to spend your extra $6 billion a year on transit, green infrastructure and housing.

But I have a concern: You only have about $2 billion a year to spend on transit. Not much.

And the talk is that the money will go to “shovel ready” projects. That worries me, because it means you could spend all the money and more building a few kilometres of subway lines in Toronto and Vancouver each year. Not much benefit in a country this big!

I’m worried about the money disappearing into two specific holes in the ground: $2 billion for the 5.7-kilometre Broadway subway line in Vancouver, and $3.6 billion for the 7.6-kilometre Bloor subway line extension in Toronto.

Wow, I thought the Broadway line was expensive at $350 million per kilometre, almost three times the per-kilometre cost of the Canada Line. But the cost of the Scarborough extension of the Bloor subway line in Toronto will be pushing $475 million a kilometre!

For the full article…….

Good News Everyone – Valley Rail One Legal Step Closer

The following is from our friend Mr. Haveacow, from Ottawa, who is a transportation engineer.

Zwei has always stressed that for modern LRTAi?? and TramTrain to operate in BC, the legalities of both must be dealt with.

For trams and LRT, the rules of the the road must be addressed, such as who has the legal rights-0f-way and laws concerning the motorist and trams, must be updated to 21st century standards; just what is happening now with driverless cars.

For TramTrain, the rules and legalities must be addressed for track-sharing.

If TramTrain is being allowed to operate in the UK, then it should be of little problem to do the same here as the UK has some of the toughest railways rules and regulations on the planet.

As Ontario’s transit needs are being met, by updating Transport Canada’s rules and regulations, so shall B.C.’s

Over to you Mr. Cow!

Photo: A TramTrain under trials in Sheffield, U.K.

Just a little note about the release of the possible Smart Track Line Reports in Toronto. If you didn’t know about this lineAi??and its connection to where your interests are is this:

*

1. Smart Track is a surface Heavy Rail/Subway/Metro type operation that plans to use existing GO Transit Lines and or available railway track and their rights of way. The reports were very positive for the proposal except in the western section which also happened to mirror the planned phase 2 section of the Eglinton LRT. Well surprise, surprise the experts agreed, keep the western section an LRT line, its cheaper and will attract more people. So two lines one surface Metro/Heavy Rail line running on railway corridors and a surface LRT line as well. A total of 53km of service in all, for about $8 Billion.

*

2. GO Transit is building part of its RER (Regional Express Rail) System along the same set of lines (Cost: $13.5 Billion over the next 10 years). The Ontario portion of the Smart Track proposal is actually the major infrastructure improvements required in the RER program.

*

3. This is the important part for you, I’m only 1/3 of the way into the new reports released yesterday but, it has been identified that legally speaking, to allow surface running Metro/Subway type trains to operateAi??on GO Transit owned,Ai??main line railway rights of way, the Transport Canada rules which actually forbid it, have to be changed. The Federal Liberals have already said they plan to honor the election promise for $2.6 Billion in fundingAi??for the line. The clarification was needed because it was originally a Conservative Election promise and yes, it is confirmed,Ai??Toronto will get its cash and soon.Ai??Since the Feds are behind it, I sense a growingAi??desire for change suddenly appearing at Transport Canada.Ai??This makes your Tram-Train for the first time, really for the first time buddy, an affordable real alternative to certain Skytrain lines.Ai??

*

As I pointed out yesterday, the Broadway Line from VCCAi??to Arbutus, length 6.5 km is set to cost between $2.1-$2.5 Billion to build. That is, $323-$390 Million per km. The over budget, full scale subway extension (not a Light Metro operating technology) to the SpadinaAi??SubwayAi??in Toronto, can currently handle slightly more than twiceAi??the theoretical peak load of the Skytrain System using the existing 60 year old signaling system, not the new updated one that is currently being installed across the whole Yonge University Spadina Line. The new signaling system, whichAi??is being installed asAi??the basic signal system on the Spadina Subway extension isAi??expected toAi??increase the peak load anywhere from 15-25%. TheAi??over budget and late, Spadina extensionAi??costs only $373 Million per km. The next extension to the Montreal Metro’s Blue Line from St. Michel to Anjou which also greatly surpasses the peak capacity of the SkytrainAi??system, is only expected to cost $250-$300 Million per km!

*

If you are going to put something in a tunnel it better be really worth it.*

Sincerely,