Bus or Light Rail, the Evidence Is Clear

Public transit is a necessity in today’s congested cities, yet politicians and their planners tend to ignore the importance of public transit in the 21st century city and either invest in the “cheap and nasty” rapid or express buses, or overly expensive gadgetbahnen like our Skytrain and Canada Line mini-metros. There is also the disturbing notion that by building a subway, will solve all transit woes along a given transit route; sadly not so.

The following two studies should give insight to the fact that modern light rail, built either as a streetcar (tram) or as LRT complete with a reserved rights-of-ways and priority signalling at intersections out performs both bus and gadgetbahnen, in economy of operation; ease of use; and the ability to attract the motorist from the car.

New light rail projects in study beat BRT Evaluating New Start Transit Program Performance: Comparing Rail And Bus

Modern light rail is not a panacea, but it’s proven ability to provide an attractive alternative to the car, while at the same time not bankrupting the taxpayer has made LRT the first choice of transit planners around the world. This singular fact disturbs the LRT naysayers and their beloved SkyTrain, but SkyTrain is nowhere to be seen in the following studies and the reason why is very simple. Despite the shrill cries to the contrary, modern LRT has made gadgetbehnen like SkyTrain obsolete and unless induced by senior governments or questionable politics, no one builds with SkyTrain any more and only three (soon to be two) of the seven SkyTrain type systems built are seriously used as “rapid transit”.

Many politicians do not want to invest in good public transit at all and instead promote BRT or Bus Rapid Transit. BRT is nothing more than an express bus with a dedicated rights-of-way and such is only somewhat cheaper than LRT to install and operate and many so-called BRT operations are merely a tarted up bus operating on only a few kilometres of dedicated R-o-W’s and hardly worth the name “rapid transit”.

Transit Ridership – Rail vs. Bus

It is clear the Metro Vancouver Region needs public transit improvements, but the region has already spent over $9 billion on just three gadgetbahnen lines which merely regurgitates bus riders as rapid transit riders, with only a 3% increase in ridership in 20 years! At the same time auto mode share has remained static at 57%, hardly a statistic to boast about.

The much ballyhooed Evergreen line will not change a thing, as it is merely the uncompleted portion of the Millennium Line, which was too expensive to complete.

The region needs to drag its transit planning from the 1970’s dogma it finds itself in and enter the 21st century and embrace modern LRT. It is modern LRT that has proven to give the biggest transit bang for the buck than any other transit system or mode available and this singular fact worries a great many planners and bureaucrats in Metro Vancouver.

Not so reliable, our SkyTrain – Eh?

SkyTrain is on the fritz again. The problem with proprietary transit systems is that they age very poorly.

 

SkyTrain delayed by communication system disruption

Vancouver Sun March 28, 2014

METRO VANCOUVER – TransLink says there are system-wide delays on SkyTrain today following a disruption to the communication system.

SkyTrain is running single-track between Broadway and Nanaimo stations. All Millennium Line trains will only travel between Columbia and VCC-Clark stations.

TransLink asks riders to allow for extra time when planning their journey on SkyTrain.

Ai?? Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

From the Halifax Herald

SkyTrain Strike?

One of the big advantages touted by the then Social Credit government for the SkyTrain ALRT system, was that is was an automatic transit system and being driverless could not go on strike.

Ha, ha, ha, the joke is on TransLink, as the 537 SkyTrain operators, attendants, dispatchers, andAi??office andAi??maintenance staff have voted 95% to strike. The news item also sheds some light on how many people are employed by the SkyTrain system and 537 unionized workers seems a tad too much for a transit system this size.

Also important, is that the number of employees listed do not include management, nor those who work on the Canada line.

It is just another solid indication that the operating costs for the SkyTrain light-metro, despite the fact of being automated and driverless, when compared to modern LRT is very much higher.

by Stephen Hui on Mar 24, 2014

SkyTrain workers represented by theAi??Canadian Union of Public Employees have voted 95 percent in favour of a strike mandate.

Streetcar Porkies From Vancouver

You just got to hand it to Vision(less) Vancouver and its lap-dog bureaucracy in finding ways to discredit the heritage streetcar.

The Olympic Line, which operated just two Bombardier Flexity trams (3050 & 3051), had about 550,000 boardings in its short two month run and was proven to be extremely successful, so successful in fact it won the Light Rail Transit Association’s ‘Worldwide Project of the Year’ award in 2010!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver_Downtown_Historic_Railway

Vision(less) Vancouver has now sold its soul to the SkyTrain Lobby and wants a multi billion dollar SkyTrain subway under Broadway and in true Orwellian fashion is making the successful Heritage railway and Olympic Line, unsuccessful;Ai?? making truth, untruth.

ai???The most effective way to destroy modern light rail in Vancouver is to deny and obliterate any understanding of successful LRT in Vancouver’s history, history.ai??? (Apologizes to George Orwell.) The mayor and the rest of Vision(less) Vancouver’s councilors and their compliant bureaucracy are creating a regime of untruths about LRT in any form, starting with the, until now, successful Olympic Line.

Shame on Vision(less) Vancouver and shame on Peter Judd, a manager of engineering.

Addendum: This is an updated post to correct a mistake. There were two trams in operation and not one as originally reported. Zwei shut off comments because of a mass of spam(over 80) and inflammatory comments.

Ai??By Matthew Robinson, Vancouver SunMarch 23, 2014

Vancouverai??i??s historic streetcar line is a bust, according to a recent memorandum to city council on the viability of maintaining the service.

The Downtown Historic Railway, designed in the late 1990s to promote the use of streetcars in the city, has been plagued by service disruptions, carries less passengers per year than an average city bus route does in a day, and should not be revived, according to the report, prepared by Peter Judd, a manager of engineering with the city.

ai???It is a novelty,ai??? wrote Judd, who recommended the cityai??i??s cash and effort be permanently directed away from passenger service on the railway, which has not been in use for a few years.

The line normally runs from July to October and is serviced by a pair of city-leased, vintage streetcars, according to the report.

But not only do the cars tend to serve few passengers when theyai??i??re working, wrote Judd, when theyai??i??re broken, staff find themselves bartering with collectors and museums to bring in replacement parts.

His report also points to the potential for collisions ai??i?? there have been ten to date, costing the city $90,000 ai??i?? as well as liability for rail operations and the risk of third party claims as reasons why now should be the end of the line for the streetcar.

ai???The risks and challenges have certainly impacted the reliability of the service and therefore made a scheduled service extremely difficult to maintain,ai??? wrote Judd. ai???As such, it does not provide a useful or reliable transportation service.ai???

The railway originally ran from Granville Island to Science World, but it was chopped in half during the 2010 Winter Olympics, and now only stretches as far as the Cambie Street corridor.

Tourism Vancouver told city staff the railway is a nice tourist experience, but the report notes that it does not appear to be an economic driver.

One of the two streetcars will be turned over to the Transit Museum Society and the other will be repaired and delivered to its private owner, according to the report.

mattrobinson@vancouversun.com

 

Ai?? Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Vancouver+streetcar+service+costly+novelty+marred+problems+report/9652682/story.html#ixzz2wtDv0NaM

Trolled by trolls

ai???If you tell a SkyTrain lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The SkyTrain lie can be maintained only for such time as the provinceAi?? and TransLink can shield the people from the political, economic and/or transit consequences of the SkyTrain lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the province to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the SkyTrain lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the province and TransLink.ai???

The SkyTrain lobby are up in arms because they refuse to believe basic transit facts. To bad.

There is a magic aura about the internet and many think that everything that is posted is honest or truthful; sad fact is the opposite is true. Today, I can prove via the internet that the holocaust did not happen and that aliens have landed and there is a great cover up. I can give you the links if you wish, but I rather not.

The internet is home to some of the most fanciful and illogical nonsense ever thought of, yet here are many that believe.

The SkyTrain boys and girls just can’t get over the fact that no one builds with it anymore and the world has moved on from light-metro. Many of the studies supporting light-metro are so badly skewed in favour of the mode, it becomes laughable, yet there are still those who still believe. One can visit the ‘skyscraper’ SkyTrain page to get ones fill of stuff and nonsense. The empty rhetoric that is breathtaking.

Many transit studies are not on line and can be purchased for a fee. Zwei has invested $500 for the four Hass-Klau, “Bus of Light Rail – making the right choice” series of studies which do not appear on line. In fact, Zwei has invested over $2000 on studies in the past decade or so and non of these appear on line, yet they are important studies. The same is true with industry periodicals, which again many are not on-line.

So to Richard and Rico please answer this simple series of questions, please link when you can, if you dare to:

1. SkyTrain has been on the market since the late 1970’s, yet only seven such systems have been built, why?
2. During the same period over one hundred and fifty LRT systems have been built. If SkyTrain is so superior to LRT why doesn’t anyone build with it today?
3. Not one of the SkyTrain systems built ere allowed to compete directly against light rail, why?
4. Though the SkyTrain Lobby claim that SkyTrain is cheaper to operate, why has Translink refused to compare SkyTrain with LRT in a “apples to apples” comparison, why?
5. Why do the SkyTrain Lobby claim that SkyTrain has a larger capacity than LRT, despite the fact the contracted capacity of the present SkyTrain system is 15,000 pphpd, while at the same time modern LRT can and does carry more during peak periods?

Answers please.

 

Subway Economics

The difficulties of making subway lines run at a profit have existed for over ten years and, up until now, no solution has been found.
It’s obvious that simply relying on revenue from ticket sales is not enough to cover the sizable operating costs.
Attempts to replicate the Hong Kong model have also proved unsuccessful, with most city governments instead being forced to pay out billions of yuan each year to subsidize operations.

Subway Economics: Why D.C. Needs More Chains

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2011/01/25/subway-economics-why-d-c-needs-more-chains/

Relationship Economics

http://www.relationshipeconomics.com/shorter_pieces/subway_v_starbucks.htm

Subway USA have a standard price of $5 for a number of foot long subs and back this up with heavy advertising. However, Subway restaurants in San Francisco are the only place in the USA not to offer this deal and they blame the newly increased minimum wage. The city of recently implemented a minimum wage of $10.24 per hour (compared to the mandatory federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour). This has meant that the $5 foot-longs are simply not profitable in San Francisco.

Worldwide Tram Market Review – 2014

The Cardinal posts hereAi??the schedule ofAi??Worldwide Tram orders as of March 2014, courtesy of Tramways & Urban Transit

Manufacturer	City’s	Orders	Options	Sub-Total		Orders Pending
				OrdersAi??	Options
Alstom	Aubagne, Avignon, Bordeaux, Constantine, Cuenca, Dubai, Montpellier, Nottingham, Ottawa, Oran, Paris, Rio, SAi??tif, Sidi Bel AbbA?s, SNCF, Toulouse	374	214
AnsaldoBreda	Genova, Firenza, Kayseri, Zhuhai	70	7
Astra	Arad	24	51
Bombardier	Antwerp, Basle, Berlin, Brussels, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Ghent, Gold Coast, Halle, Karlsruhe, Krefeld, Linz, Manchester, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mulheim, Nanjing. Plauen, Rotterdam, Suzhou, Toronto, Waterloo-Kitchener, Vienna	802	128
Brookville	Dallas	2	2
CAF	Birmingham, BesanAi??on, Budapest, Cagliari, CuiabA?, Cincinnati, Debrecen, Freiburg, Houston, Kansas City, Kaohsiung, Stockholm, Sydney, Tallinn	257	144
CNR Dalian	Manila	48	0
CSR Tangshan	Samsun	5	0
CSR Zhuzhou	Izmir, Guangzhou	37	0
Durmazlar	Bursa	10	0
Inekon	Almaty, Olomouc, Seattle, Tashkent	70	21
Kinkisharyo	Los Angeles	175	97
PESA	Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Moscow,Ai?? Pavlodar, Sofia, Torun,Ai?? Warsaw	383	6
Siemens	Calgary, Charlotte,Ai?? Den Haag, Doha,Ai?? Minneapolis, Munich, Portland, San Diego, Vienna	282	0
Solaris	Braunschweig, Jena, Olgztyn	38	0
Ai??koda	Bratislava, Konya, Miskolc, Prague	153	30
Stadler	Basel, Bergen, Bochum, Croydon, Potsdam, St Gallen, Stuttgart	102	0
Vossloh	Chemnitz, Chengdu, Gmunden, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Leeds/Sheffield, Rostock, Santos, Wuppertal	240	98
Transtech	Helsinki	40	95
United Streetcars	Portland, Tuscon, Washington	12	0
				3124	893	1619
					Total Orders	5636

Memo to theAi?? infantile trollsAi??retained by Translink, please take note of the figures in the above table.

Fifteen months ago one of the twins said:

“Worldwide, I would expect the number of metros is closer to that of trams and LRT. What is for certain, is that the number of people who use metros far exceeds the number who use trams and LRT.”

Really!

…Ai??hardly correct to say that was it?

TransLink’s Subway Fiscal Time Bomb – A Repost from 2013

The SkyTrain/metro Lobby remain mute on the long term fiscal effects of operating subways, especially on routes that have low ridership, say less than 15,000 pphpd.

Building a subway is a very expensive proposition and many factors should be considered before embarking on such a costly investment. The first questionAi??any knowledgeable transit planner must ask is; “Is the traffic flow along the subway line enough to sustain it?”

Generally speaking, if average traffic flows are less than 15,000 pphpd, a subway is not needed , as a surface transit route would be more economic. If a subway is built on a route with low ridership, then the subway must be subsidized, with the lower the ridership, the higher the subsidy.

There are many other expensive problems associated with subways, but one that is seldom admitted to is the extremely high maintenance costs that come with a subway. Subways must be cleaned as the accumulated debris and dirt because the piston like action of every passing train acts like a sandblaster on signalling and power equipment. As a subway ages, the maintenance costs escalate. German cities that joined the subway mania in the 60’s and 70’s are now ruing the decision as onerous maintenance costs for the subways have all but bankrupted many transit companies.

It is sad that Vancouver City hall and TransLink are infected with the subway mania and our transit planning shows this as it is 40 to 50 years out of date!

The Broadway SkyTrain subway is a throwback to earlier days, where “mass transit” schemes were built to win votes, built at a time when money was thought ‘cheap’ to borrow and ; “hell anyways, it is just built for show as we must keep the road clear for cars.“

In 2013, politicians lose elections due to bad transit decisions; money is not cheap; there are way too many cars on the road, so much so that gridlock is a daily occurrence, and the European light rail Renaissance has not yet reached Vancouver.

 

The following is from a transit specialist from Germany.

When some light rail subway systems over here (Koeln, Bochum) converted some lines built for high-floor cars in the 60/70s to low-floor cars, they simply filled the trackbed in the stations with enough ballast to lift the rails up.

The operating and maintenance cost for all those escalators, lighting and ventilation of the tunnel stations (not to mention cleaning) etc. might kill such a project, however. Over here, the electricity bill just for all that tunnel-specific equipment is already typically higher than that for traction energy of the rolling stock.

Decades ago, they wanted to put the streetcars on grade-free tracks in order to reduce cost by running them driver-less.

Today, all transit operators that have buried their streetcars face serious financial problems due to the operating and maintenance cost of the grade-free infrastructure. It’s those operators that did not follow the “tunnel-mania” that have the lowest operating cost today. Burying streetcars turned out as a huge mistake.

Cutting edge to the cutter’s torch. (A repost from 2011)

What happens to old transportation technology?

It becomes less valuable than scrap!

The Birmingham airport MAGLEV was cutting edge transportation technology in 1984 (two years before the SkyTrain Expo Line opened) but by 1995 was scrapped as obsolete.

This is reminiscent of another cutting edge transportation technology more than a century ago, the atmospheric railway. Touted in the 1840’s as a replacement for the new steam railway, a decade later it became but a bad memory for its promoters. The first practical use of the system was on the Dublin and Kingstown Railway’s Dalkey Atmospheric Railway between Kingstown (DA?n Laoghaire) and Dalkey, Ireland. This 1.75-mile (2.82 km) line was built by Vignoles and surprisingly operated between 1844 and 1854, only slightly shorter than the eleven year run of the Birmingham Airport MAGLEV. The few other atmospheric railways built barely lasted a year in operation.

The lesson to be learned in this sad tale is that today’s ‘state of the art’ transit system is tomorrow’s obsolete transit system, something that TransLink hasn’t realized with the automatic proprietary SkyTrain light-metro system.

---

Birmingham Airport’s MAGLEV carriage resold for A?100

 

 

A magnetic carriage that transported people from Birmingham Airport to its railway station sold for just A?100 after a A?25,100 eBay bid was not paid.

The airport used a Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) line between 1984 and 1995 before replacing it with cable cars.

The Maglev carriage attracted 35 bids and was sold on the internet auction site eBay in November for A?25,100.

The bidder defaulted but Andy Jones from Warwickshire snapped it up and is moving it to his home near Kenilworth.

Mr Jones said: “The Magnetic Levitation Line came out of use back in 1995 and was put to one side by the Birmingham Airport people and at the back end of last year they decided to sell it on eBay.

Maglev memories

“The bidding went up to A?25,000 but whoever bought it the deal didn’t go through so it went back on eBay again at the start of this year for Help the Heroes and a hospice.

“So I thought I would get things going by putting in an opening bid of A?100 and nobody else bid for it.

“As a consequence I’ve got a five tonne train to get shifted into a field opposite my house and I’ve now got to find a suitable use for it.”

He said he used to be a frequent flyer from Birmingham Airport and remembered riding on the Maglev.

He said: “As a British invention of its day I thought it was absolutely tremendous. It was the forefront of its technology and a high speed Maglev has just been opened up in Shanghai which I think is a direct development of what took place in the old days.”

He plans to work with local companies to refurbish it and to install lighting and seating and said he wanted to hear from any groups who thought they could put it to good use.