The Tours Tramway
The newly opened tours tramway, classic French design.
Tours:Ai?? Population:Ai?? City 136,000; Metro Area 400,000
Distance:Ai?? 150 miles southwest of Paris, 1A? hours
System Length:Ai?? 14.5 kilometres
No. Lines:Ai?? 1
No. Stations:Ai?? 29
Year Opened:Ai?? 2013
Rolling Stock:Ai?? 21 Citadis 402
Passengers: 45,000 a day
Cost: ai??i??369.1 million Euros (2009) CAD $518.595 (20014)
An Artist rendering of the tours tramway
Classic street view of the tours tramway
The foundation for lawned rights-of-ways
A Letter To The Mayor’s Council
My name is (Name withheld) and I have been involved advocating for improved public transit in the region since 1986. I have been a member of the international Light Rail Transit Association since 1984 and being a member in good standing for thirty years, I have had much correspondence and meetings with transit professionals in both North America and Europe. It was my connection with the LRTA, that I was able to secure the funding to engage Leewood Projects of the UK to do a study of the feasibility of once again operating a Vancouver to Chilliwack interurban style rail service, for the Rail for the Valley group.
The Leewood/Rail for the Valley study showed that a Vancouver to Chilliwack TramTrain (a streetcar that can operate on the mainline railway) offering a peak three trip an hour service, could be had for about $1 billion. An hourly Vancouver to Chilliwack service using diesel light rail could be installed for about $750 million.
TransLink was not interested.
Next spring, voters in the Metro Vancouver are going to be asked to vote in a referendum to further fund TransLink by various means of taxation or user fees. It is my opinion that regardless of the question asked, the referendum will fail for many reasons.
The main reasons that TransLink is held to such high odor by the public, is the apparent incompetence of the organization; it’s blind adherence to an outdated and very expensive transit mode, light-metro; and general user unfriendliness of the transit system.
Our SkyTrain system is part of a family of unconventional proprietary transit systems, that were the flavour of the 1970’s and 80’s. In1978, as development of our SkyTrain light-metro progressed, what we now call Light Rail or LRT started a new era of city transport with the opening of Edmonton’s new light rail line. In just over a decade LRT had made light-metro obsolete, as modern LRT could be built to be faster, carry more people, at one quarter to one half the cost of light-metro. LRT could also be built as a light metro, on a fully segregated rights-of-ways at a cheaper cost than SkyTrain ALRT/ART. Fiscally prudent transit authorities rejected Skytrain out of hand and still do today, with Vancouver’s Skytrain being a lesson of doing it wrong.
Today, over 150 new build light-rail systems have been built and a further 50 are either under construction or have been approve for construction. During the same period, only seven SkyTrain type systems have been built (one to torn down within the next five years) and only three seriously used for urban transit, with the remaining four being a demonstration line, and three theme park/airport people movers. All seven SkyTrain lines built have been financed by secret deals and LRT was never allowed to compete against any of the SkyTrain’s built.
Strange then that TransLink keeps building with SkyTrain?
Not exactly, because the Canada line is not SkyTrain at all but a heavy-rail metro, dumbed down as a light-metro which is not compatible with the rest of the SkyTrain network.
As the Canada Line’s construction costs began to spiral out of control at a pace greater than the decade earlier Fast Ferry fiasco, the scope of the project was greatly reduced. The Canada Line construction was truncated to such an extent that it has 40 metre to 50 metre station platforms that only large enough to accommodate two car trains. The Canada line was at capacity since the day it was built and only gives an illusion of high ridership. The Canada line, as built, has less capacity than a simple streetcar line built at a fraction of the cost.
A Freedom of Information request has shown that in 2012 TransLink paid a SNC Lavalin lead consortium $145 million to operate and maintain the line, which is two to three times higher than comparable transit lines.
This extremely high operating cost is part in due to the line being in a subway in Vancouver.
The UBC Sauder School of Business recently reported that the three light-metro lines have cost the taxpayer over $9 billion dollars to date, yet there is no proof that this $9 billion in investment has taken any cars off the road at all. In fact, the inconvenience of the three light-metro lines may have forced transit customers off transit and back into cars as the mode share for cars in the region has remained at 57%.
Now TransLink has announced two more big projects, the Broadway subway and the Surrey LRT.
A Broadway subway may bankrupt TransLink in the future because there isn’t the ridership today or in the foreseeable future to sustain underground operation. Even TransLink’s own modelling shows rather dismal ridership on a UBC subway, which leads to only one conclusion, massive subsidies must be paid to maintain and operate the subway and by extension taxes and fares must be raised to dizzying heights to pay for and maintain the subway.
Subways tend to be “black holes” for the taxpayer as the expense to just operate a subway with lighting, escalators & elevators, signalling, ventilation, pumps, etc., which cost much more than operating the vehicles themselves. Then there is the structure itself as subways age very poorly and need an ongoing program of expensive preventative maintenance.
These added expenses do not exist with modern light rail.
A simple European tram or streetcar can carry upwards of 20,000 pphpd at a much cheaper cost.
Surrey’s planned LRT is doomed to failure because TransLink, with no experience planning or building with modern LRT and with no desire to build with the mode has designed the Surrey LRT as a poor-man’s SkyTrain and repeats every transit mistake it has made with SkyTrain. Hugely costly to build, Surrey’s proposed LRT act strictly as a feeder to the SkyTrain line and really doesn’t offer any incentive to use otherwise.
This is not a modal problem, rather a management and design problem and TransLink seems to have a lot of management problems of late.
The regional mayors must reevaluate their support for TransLink’s planning and even for TransLink itself, which its stumbling and fumbling bureaucracy seems only wanting to do the same thing over and over again, ever hoping for different outcomes, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
The Usual Suspects Shill for a Yes Vote for the Upcoming TransLink Referendum
Yikes, the Vancouver Sun is at it again, blindly shilling for a yes vote in the not yet announced TransLink referendum. This only makes me guess that internal polling shows that a yes vote is far from certain.
All the usual suspects, the B.C. Federation of Labour; The B.C. Board of Trade; and the various post secondary student societies are on the stump begging voters to approve the TransLink referendum, even before anyone knows what the question will be. Even the University of Victoria’s Norman Ruff displays his naivety about transit and transit issues, talking about American transit referendums.
Note to Ruff: In the USA all financing for transit investment is approved by voters on a regular basis; all transit referendums or ballots, first go through the scrutiny of honest public debate and many do not pass. Transit referendums in the USA are not a one shot deal as the TransLink referendum will be.
But the chorus of big business and big labour, supporting the referendum is one of self interest as many members of B.C. board of Trade stand to make handsome profits from a yes vote and big labour will get more members and more union money onAi?? major transitAi?? investment. The students of course, get almost free transit with the U-pass, with now over 110,000 issued.
Oh, by the way, is this the same B.C. Board of Trade which shilled for the Canada Line, which costs were spiraling so out of control and that the line was so truncated that stations are small with 40 metre to 50 metre long platforms which can only accommodate two car trains and was at capacity when built?
That the Canada line is well patronized is an illusion as bus customers are forced to transfer onto short 2 car trains. Let us not forget that the Canada line is operating standard heavy-rail multiple unites or EMU’s on a grade separated railway and is not compatible in operation with the Expo and Millennium Lines.
The Canada Line’s capacity is restricted
due to 40m to 50m long station platforms
which can only accommodate 2 car trains.
Note to the B.C. board of Trade: From documents in the Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink; the Canada Line’s real cost was in excess of $2.5 billion and that the presiding judge, Pittfield, called the Canada Line P-3 a “charade”. An F.O.I. from 2012 shows that TransLink paid the operating consortium $145 million in annual operating costs, operating costs that are two to three times higher than comparable transit lines.
Speaking of the U-Pass, TransLink never discloses how many are actually being used and what is the cost to the taxpayer? It is also a strange coincidence that TransLink’s cash flow problems started with the U-pass!
So here is what the Vancouver Sun; The BC Board of Trade; the B.C. Federation of Labour; and post secondary students do not tell you, that the main reasons for TransLink’s financial malaise is an adherence to the light-metro operating philosophy and the continued planning with SkyTrain and/or light metro, which is proven to cost more to build, maintain and operate, than LRT and a plethora of cheap fare U-Passes, without any audit what so ever determining the cost to the taxpayer.
TransLink and the usual suspects want the status quo: screw the taxpayer for more money and keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
A Conflict of Interest – The Broadway Subway
TransLink, unfortunately digs very deep holes for itself and Mr. Chris exposes what they want the public to believe as fact, is in fact pure invention.
There are two points I would like to explore, from Mr. Chris’s letter , posted on this blog on November 18.
In 1986, the Light Rail Transit Association defined LRT thus:
“LRT is a transit mode that can economically cater to traffic flows of 2,000 to 20,000 persons per hour, thus effectivelyAi?? bridging the gap between the maxim flow of what buses can carry and that of a heavy-rail metro.“
TransLink’s SNC and Steer-Davies-Gleave Study deliberately dumbs down the capacity for LRT for the Broadway, by claiming that light rail’s assumed capacity along Broadway varies between 5,800 to 7,200 persons per hour per direction, while at the same time put the assumed capacity of a Skytrain subway at 13,000 pphpd.
Really?
In Ottawa, Alstom put the capacity of a coupled set of Citadis trams at 600 persons and at 3 minute headway’s (20 trips per hour is the current B-Line bus peak hour schedule), would equal 12,000 pphpd! At two minute headway or 30 trips per hour, the capacity would be 18,000 pphpd or put another way, LRT on Broadway could have the potential to carry more than the maximum capacity of a SkyTrain subway, which is limited to 15,000 pphpd!
Obviously the study pulled numbers out of the air to make light rail look inferior when compared to SkyTrain, therefore if the TransLink study is using phoney numbers, then the entire study must be treated as suspect; in fact the transit study is phoney! Yet, TransLink has gotten away with this nonsense for over a decade and BC Transit before that!
Noted American transit planner, Gerald Fox had it right all along about TransLink’s dubious transit planning.
It is interesting how TransLink has used this cunning method of manipulating analysis to justify SkyTrain in corridor after corridor, and has thus succeeded in keeping its proprietary rail system expanding. In the US, all new transit projects that seek federal support are now subjected to scrutiny by a panel of transit peers, selected and monitored by the federal government, to ensure that projects are analyzed honestly, and the taxpayers’ interests are protected. No SkyTrain project has ever passed this scrutiny in the US.
Secondly, isn’t it a strange coincidence that SNC Lavalin which cosponsored the study also holds half the patents for the proprietary SkyTrain mini-metro system and has a financial stake if the mini-metro is built and more so, if it is built in a subway?
Let us not forget the presiding judge over the Susan Heyes lawsuit, called the Canada Line bidding process……
“a charade“.
I call that a blatant conflict of interest.
As usual for TransLink, due diligence never happens and for good reason, truly independent transit studies would never support SkyTrain.
In fact, for 35 years, no independent transit study ever has.
Ai??*****
Ai??The first paragraph of Mr. Chris’s (PE) letter………
Dear TransLink Board, Mayorsai??i?? Council and Minister Stone,
Iai??i??d appreciate an explanation (sooner than later) for TransLinkai??i??s waste of time, money and resources to produce its fraudulent study favouring s-train based on the s-train lineai??i??s supposed increased capacity over the LRT line to UBC.Ai?? TransLink is bending the truth to keep the ones who are responsible for the massive fraud (that s-train has more capacity than other modes of transit) from being jailed for the rest of their lives.Ai?? Hoaxers at TransLink are essentially bilking taxpayers of billions of dollars by circumventing fair and competitive bidding from Alstom and Siemens proposing tram or LRT lines in order to sole source contracts to Bombardier and SNC Lavalin for the s-train line to UBC, at a greatly inflated cost to taxpayers.Ai?? ai???Assumedai??? capacity of LRT ranges from 5,800 pph to 7,200 pph while ai???assumedai??? capacity of s-train (RRT) is 13,000 pph in the study by SNC Lavalin and Steer-Davies-Gleave (summary on page x)?Ai?? Whatai??i??s wrong with the ai???realai??? capacity?
Subway Stations Flood
Some that TransLink and its allies, the Broadway subway lobby fail to mention is that subways and subway stations, by their very nature become massive sumps, if there is a flood, either by storm or by water-main breaks.
Subway station flooding is not uncommon, especially on older systems, which the underground utilities above the station age as well.
So the next time the shills and claques beat the drum for a Broadway subway, remind them of station flooding and what measures (read expensive) will be taken to prevent it.
*****
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority [MTA] restored subway service Sunday to a flooded Bronx station, the Time Warner Cable News “NY 1” site reports:
Water main break floods Bronx subway station
“Train Service Restored at Flooded Bronx Subway Station
10:01 AM (Sunday, Nov. 23, 2014)
(VIDEO)
Play now
6 train service has been restored in the Bronx after crews finished cleaning up the mess left by Saturday’s massive water main break.
They had to pump out 800,000 gallons of water, that spilled into the East 143rd Street station.
Then crews had to clean up the muck and debris on the tracks.
That meant commuters had to find other ways to get aroundai??i??by taking shuttle buses.
No word on what caused the 48-inch water main to break.
The Le Havre Tramway
Le Havre:Ai?? Population:Ai?? City 180,000; Metro Area 300,000
Distance:Ai?? 125 miles west northwest of Paris, 125 minutes
System Length:Ai?? 13Ai?? kilometres
No. Lines:Ai?? 2
No. Stations: 23
Year Opened:Ai?? 2012
Rolling Stock:Ai?? 22 Citadis 302
Cost – Vehicles: ai??i??45m (CAD $62.62m)
Cost of project: ai??i??395m (CAD $550m) which includes a 575 metre tram tunnel
In France, one third of construction costs go for streetscapes, parks and public amenities.
A tram on a lawned R-o-W, just before the tunnel portal, which goes under a hill.
A tram stop in town
The tram runs quite safely through residential areas.
The tram route now operates on a former six lane motorway, not unlike Broadway.
Photos courtesy of Jack May
Civic Elections Done, Now It’s Time For the TransLink Referendom
This spring’s TransLink referendum has a good chance of going off the rails, simply because the bureaucratic behemoth is sailing into very dangerous uncharted waters. Translation, the taxpayer wants to get even.
Why do I say that? TransLink has had “0” public input since its inception and today is so estranged from the public it is supposed to serve, that the organization has become a leper in the minds of the taxpayers.
There is great fear from all the piggies feeding at the TransLink trough that the gravy train is about to stop. Many regional mayors, despite having absolutely no knowledge of modern public transit and its practices, do not input from the taxpayer, rather they act as potentates and demand the ‘great unwashed’ do as they say. Such action is a clarion call for a taxpayer revolt.
The Surrey Leader has a good story, one of many to come, about the referendum, but the real story is very plain to see; TransLink operates a very expensive light metro system in the region that costs more to build, maintain and operate than light rail. By building with SkyTrain, we just keep digging TransLink into a deeper financial hole.
Kevin Falcon’s dirty little secret.
Kevin Falcon, Gordon Campbell’s Minister of Transportation has a dirty little secret which may be exposed in the upcoming referendum, the Canada Line, the only heavy-rail subway in the world that has less capacity than a streetcar!
The Canada line, which is not Skytrain and is not compatible in operation was built on the cheap, if you call $2.5 billion cheap. But the mini-metro has stations with 40 metres to 50 metres long and can only accommodate 2 car trains. Operating 2 car trains gives the illusion that the line is well patronized, but in reality it is not. I call this “Hocus-pocus” planning.
As built, the Canada Line was at capacity and the vast majority of it’s ridership comes from from forced transfers from bus customers who wish to go to Vancouver proper. The cost to increase capacity and rebuild station platforms and guideways, $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Thus to extend the Canada line, it will cost taxpayer’s dearly.
A recent FOI showed that TransLink paid the operating consortium of the Canada LioneP-3 $145 million to operate the line in 2012, which is two to three times more than the operating costs of comparable transit lines!
This makes the $450 million cost overruns of the FastFerry fiasco seem like small potatoes, but no because Vancouver wants a subway!
Vancouver wants a subway and will hold its breathe like a spoiled child until it gets one.
Vancouver wants a subway under Broadway, even though the route does not have the ridership that comes near in the investment needed for a subway. Even TransLink’s own modelling for 2041, shows that Broadway will not have the ridership to justify a A $3 billion to $5 billion subway. Instead of affordable LRT which may cause inconvenience to car drivers, the region’s taxpayers are expected to give until it hurts and then give more.
Surrey’s Poorman’s SkyTrain
TransLink has never understood modern light rail and has spent most of its times decrying the mode, but Surrey wants LRT and so TransLink has disguised Surrey’s proposed LRT as a poorman’s SkyTrain costing two to three times more than it should to build.
SkyTrain’s $2 billion to $3 billion mid-life refurbishment.
The title says it all, but TransLink and our regional mayors have been so ever quiet about this. The present SkyTrain system needs a very expensive mid life facelift which will add further to the tax burden.
Despite the hype and hoopla of those benefiting from TransLink’s largesse, one should consider the real issues and vote accordingly, but one thing is for sure, a no vote in the referendum will put a halt in TransLink’s spending habits and put a spotlight on where the cash really goes and that is into the SkyTrain/light-metro money pit, which greatly worries TranLlink’s executives and NDP/BC Liberal party members.
The Broadway Subway – Vancouver’s Phallic Symbol
Vancouver’s politicians and elites desperately want the city to be a “world class city” and by their definition, a world class city must have subways.
The Canada Line, the only heavy rail metro in the world that operates as a light metro, runs in a subway under Vancouver’s streets because city politicos, in effect, held their breathe like a spoiled child until they got their way. The reason? Their political supporters didAi?? not want modern light rail on the Arbutus Corridor, so the region picked up the tab for construction.
Today, the Canada Line carries a sizable amount of ridership, or it seems too, because the trains are packed during peak hours. The truth is a little different.
The Canada Line’s construction costs were spiraling out of control and to curb a massive cost overrun (about three times or that of the ‘Fast Ferry’ debacle) the scope of the project was reduced to the point that the system could only operate two car trains, with stations having platforms 40 metres to 50 metres long. This means the Canada line was at capacity the day it was built! The other cost cutting measures included switching from a ‘bored tunnel’ to ‘cut-and cover’, which in turn ruined businesses and bankrupted shop owners along the route.
To counter the negative reporting about the Canada Line a professional troupe of highly paid claques were constantly interviewed by the media, spinning the story to such a degree, that those loosing their life savings by cut-and-cover construction along Cambie Street, were cast as greedy money sucking villains. This theme even entered Canada’s court system doing untold damage to those who were deliberately bankrupted by the Canada Line.
The following is what one will not hear from the SkyTrain subway lobby:
- Ai??Capacity on the Broadway subway will be limited to 15,000 pphpd, unless a further $2 billion to $3 billion is spent upgrading the millennium and Expo line stations and electrics.
- A subway will greatly increase operational costs for the Broadway route, as subways are power hogs and the power needed for escalators, elevators, lighting, ventilation, pumps, etc. will far outstrip the power needed to operate the trains.
- The electric trolleybuses will go the way the trolleybuses did on Cambie St.
- People, who’s transit journey is less than 7 km. will find they will have increased journey times.
- Cut-and-cover construction will be used as the precedent was set with the Canada line subway.
- The subway will not attract much new ridership and many people will think it user unfriendly.
- Future maintenance costs will further exacerbate TransLink’s financial position.
- Municipalities South of the Fraser may find the subway too extravagant and lobby for partitioning of TransLink.
- The high cost of subway construction/operation may do away with the U-Pass.
- Congestion along Broadway will increase as only a small percentage of people who will purchase the proposed new Condos and Apartments will use transit.
Today we have many bloggers pitching the virtue of a SkyTrain subway under Broadway, with many having close connections to those politicians who champion the subway projects. Like the claques and shills for the Canada Line a decade ago, most of the bloggers supporting a Skytrain subway will not deal with the reality of the costs today, or twenty to thirty years down the road because they are pitching the construction of what is tantamount to a massive phallic symbol to show that Vancouver is ‘world class’ to those who care and screw the rest of the region.
Tunnel Vision Versus Green Vision
Ai??
TransLink Report On SkyTrain Out
From what I can see, the problems that plagued SkyTrain last summer, were ones of very bad management and deferred maintenance.
TransLink’s bad management is legendary and the outfit continues its oppression of transit customers with gestapo like ticket checks and its general anti transit customer attitude.
The question of deferred maintenance is another matter and one that plagues many public transit systems around the world. The problem is that with a driverless system, deferred maintenance issues have a much greater effect on the traveling public than on conventional transit systems.
The study did not look at management problems and one has to assume, that major problems will still haunt the Skytrain system for years to come.
TransLink to adopt all 20 recommendations after this summerai??i??s SkyTrain shutdowns
Disruptions led to passengers walking on electrified tracks
By Jeff Lee, VANCOUVER SUN November 18, 2014
METRO VANCOUVER – TransLink said Tuesday it will adopt all 20 recommendations from an independent expert review of two critical failures of its SkyTrain system that left thousands of passengers stranded for hours.
The changes, which range from installing new emergency power supply systems to installing an auto-restart system it initially declined to buy 20 years ago, will cost TransLink $71 million. The expenditures will be phased in, but TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis said the most critical upgrades will be done first.
The review by former Toronto GO Transit president Gary McNeil, looked into the reasons for two massive and prolonged failures of the SkyTrain system on July 17 and 21. In short, he found that the causes of the two incidents were not related, but the outcome from them certainly was. In the first case a circuit board governing the SkyTrain Expo line east of Royal Oak failed. In the second case, an electrician using a non-insulated screwdriver shorted out the entire control centre, including the emergency ai???uninterruptible power supplyai???.
The failures occurred against the backdrop of a SkyTrain system increasingly pressured by maintenance costs and a growing number of alarms of the automated guideway intrusion system.
That track-level alarm system, which puts the brakes on trains, is activated by so much as a pop can, a bird, or even the weight of a newspaper. McNeil said in his report that in recent years the system was suffering from 275-300 intrusions a month. But in November, 2013, technicians adjusted the sensitivity to the point that there are now about 450 guideway intrusions recorded a month, causing trains to frequently stop.
As a result, he said, ai???this increase in delay events may give the public a general perception that the system is aging and more maintenance issues are present than reality would attest.ai???
However, SkyTrain has also been forced, it said, to do more with less. Since the system went into service in 1986 the length of the line has gone up by 223 per cent, the number of stations by 220 per cent, and the operating kilometres by 349 per cent. But over the same time, the operating budget has only increased from $55 million to $107 million, an increase of 195 per cent.
ai???Customers have every right to be angry and frustrated, especially those who were stuck on trains for a prolonged period of time,ai??? Jarvis said in a statement. ai???We have taken these incidents very seriously and we fully accept and are acting on all 20 recommendations. We have already started the work.ai???
Ai?? Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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