Getting Valley rail on track – the South of the Fraser Rail Task Force
An article in the Abbotsford News about the South of the Fraser Rail Task Force, headed by Langley Township Mayor Rick Green.
Letters to the Editor of the Abbotsford News are strongly encouraged! (Email newsroom@abbynews.com)
Excerpt:
A regular train service arrives in downtown Abbotsford from Surrey and Langley, collecting passengers and transporting them to other areas of the city or as far east as Chilliwack.
It may sound like a long-term dream for rail enthusiasts, but according to a newly formed group pushing for the service, it could become a reality sooner rather than later.
The South of the Fraser Rail Task Force is currently looking for the backing of Valley municipalities in its push for rail connectivity.
Should that happen, it wants to see a A?ai??i??Ai??demonstration projectA?ai??i??A? conducted on the old interurban line, to determine whether the track is a viable long-term option to help link communities.
The group has been put together by Langley Township Mayor Rick Green, and task force member Peter Holt was in Abbotsford on Monday to pitch the groupA?ai??i??ai???s case to mayor and council.
(click here for the full article)
STRASBOURG – Beautiful City – Beautiful Trams
The French city of Strasbourg (Ai??Ai??populationAi??Ai?? 276,867Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??in 2006),Ai??Ai??which its historic city centre was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, decided in the early 1990’s toAi??Ai??build a modern tramway system,Ai??Ai??using theAi??Ai??innovative and attractiveAi??Ai??ADTranz Eurotram rolling stock .Ai??Ai??In 1994 Line A opened, with a north-southAi??Ai??route running from Hautpierre-Maillon (north-west) to the city center (where a tunnel section runs under Gare Centrale railway station) to the south, passing through the main hospital, the stadium, the university and Baggersee suburb). So successful was Strasburg’s initial light rail line that it was extended in 1998 from Baggersee to Illkirch Lixenbuhllatter and with more lines to come.
Line B-C started its operations in 2000; their track is articulated in 3 branches converging in the city center (Place de la Republique). Line B runs south (Lingolsheim terminal, opened in May 2008 after Elsau-Lingolsheim extension) – north (Hoenheim Gare), While Line C connects suoth-western (Elsau) to south-eastern (Rodolphe Reuss terminal, opened in August 2007 after Esplanade-Rodolphe Reuss extension) areas. Line B and C serves many important urban polarities, the tramway depot area (Elsau), the university (south-east), the congress center (north), the suburbs of Schlitigheim, Bischheim (north) and Ostwald, Lingolsheim (south).
Line E opened in 2007 running from Baggersee (south-east) to Robersau Boecklin (north-east), serving the European Parlament.
Line F should will open in 2010, as the urban section of a new tram-train line connectin the railway station to Entzheim airport and to Vallee de la Bruche (Gresswiller, Mutzig) and Piemont des Vosges (Obernai, Barr) agglomerations; LRT and tram vehicles will share the existing TER Alsace railway tracks by 2014. Line F will connect Gare (with a new tramway surface stop) to Robersau Boecklin (serving the European Parlament) and Vauban, running along part of Line B-C (Homme de Fer-Republique section) and Line E (Republique-Wacken) tracks.
| Country | France |
| Line | Line A, Line B, Line C, Line D, Line E |
| Inhabitants | City 270.000, District 610.000 |
| Date opening | 1994 |
| Future development: | Line F (urban section of a future tram-train line connecting the airport to the city center) |
| Length (km) | 53.7 |
| Track sections | Linea A: 12.6 km; Linea B: 15.1 km; Linea C: 9.9 km; Linea D: 5.5 km; Linea E: 10.6 km ground level, with the exception of a tunnel section under Gare Centrale |
| Stops | 59, average distance m 550 |
| Platforms | — |
| Platform doors | — |
| General characteristics | — |
| n. of vehicles | Bombardier: 53; Alstom: 41 |
| n. of cars per vehicle | Bombardier:3-4; Alstom: 7 |
| Type | steel wheels, bi-directional |
| Vehicle dimensions (m) | Bombardier: lenght: 33.10 (3 cars), 43.10 (4 cars), width 2.4 Alstom: length: 45.06, width 2.4 |
| Vehicle capacity (pax) | Bombardier: 285 (86 seated) 3 cars; 370 (92 seated) 4 cars Alstom: 288 |
| Frequency | 3’/15′ |
| Current/Voltage | 750 V DC overhead |
| Type of guide/gauge | standard gauge rails (1435 mm) |
| Speed Km/h | Comm 20, Max 60 |
| Accel./Decel. (m/sec2) | — |
| System capacity | 6.000 pphpd |
| Ridership | — |
| Total cost | 20 M Euro/km CAD $31.7M/km. |
| Staff | — |
| System builder | BOMBARDIER, ALSTOM |
| Model | Bombardier: Eurotram; Alstom: Citadis 403 |
| Ai?? |
Alaskan Way Viaduct – Earthquake Simulation – from U-Tube. Could this be deja vu for SkyTrain?
The following video from theAi??Ai??Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), showing the effects of a 7.0 earthquake in Seattle is telling and is very much worth a watch. Even though Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct isAi??Ai??long past its primeAi??Ai??and not designed for catastrophic earthquakes, it’s collapseAi??Ai??plus theAi??Ai??failure of other aged infrastructure is chilling.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hos_uIKwC-c]
The late transit expert, Des Turner, was always concerned about the effects of a large earthquake and on the mostly elevated Expo and Millennium light-metro lines. In theory, theAi??Ai??SkyTrain viaductsAi??Ai??should survive an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter Scale with minimal damage, with few exceptions, such as if a support column fails due to local soilAi??Ai??liquefaction or earth movement.
Unlike at-street/at-grade light rail, failure on any section of viaduct would mean several months of disrupted service on the metro until new columns and guide-ways could be rebuilt and emplaced. Large scale failure of the SkyTrain viaduct may even lead to line abandonment.
InAi??Ai??summer 1995, aAi??Ai??letter from a US engineer specializing in earthquake resistant design to Mr. Turner, expressedAi??Ai??a worry thatAi??Ai??if a 7+ earthquake were to hit Vancouver, the elevated SkyTrain guide-way would fail in several sections,Ai??Ai??just like what happened in Kobe Japan in 1995, where once thought earthquake resistant viaduct design failed, with devastating consequences.
Vancouver doesn’t haveAi??Ai??60 year oldAi??Ai??decaying elevated double-deck highway viaduct to worry about, but it does have a large elevated light-metro network, which some sections are now approaching some 30 years old and one wonders that TransLink has an earthquake plan, if and when the unthinkable happens.
Let’s ride on the Clermont-Ferrand TransLohr GLT -Courtesy of U-Tube
This is an interesting U-Tube of the TransLohr GLT or guided bus. The centre rail is for guidance only as the tram like bus is propelled by standard rubber tires.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTJgh50vuuw]
Detailed Map
Rail for the Valley supporters – at the Bridge to a Cool Planet rally
Rail for the Valley supporters were part of Saturday’s big Bridge to a Cool Planet Climate Action event in Vancouver. We were even briefly covered on the CTV News.
Special thanks to D’Anne Davis for transportation of banners.
Tram on Tires – Guided Light Transit (GLT), the ultimate BRT
Guided Light Transit or GLT is a hybrid bus/tram system, where rubber tired vehicles are guided by a single rail and the TransLohr GLT falls into this category. It has been long realized that for a bus to obtain higher performances to compete against LRT, it must be guided. The Achilles heel of BRT in busways is that the kinetic envelope needed for BRT operation is much greater than LRT, thus the land take for a busway was much more expensive than for light rail. The Ottawa busway cost more to build than for originally planned for LRT! To reduce the kinetic envelope for buses, they must be guided and the German O-Bahn addresses this problem by side wheels running on a cement guide-way. Visually ugly, the guide-ways have not proven popular and are almost impossible to locate in city centres, which means the O-Bahn operates just as a bus in the city. In Germany, this problem has been some what overcome by O-Bahn track-sharing with LRT on reserved rights-of-ways and in tunnel; though problems still persist.
By guiding a bus by a single rail (monorail?), flush with the street (like a tram), enables the GLT to safely operate in city centres, within its kinetic envelope thus providing the bus with most of the benefits associated with light rail- but at a cost as GLT became only a little cheaper than LRT, but with a much more limited capacity than light-rail and limited productivity as GLT buses can’t operate in multiple unit. In Paris, GLT is more expensive to build than tram!
The new ParisAi??Ai??tram-on-tire or GLT line Saint Denis-Sarcelles (6.6 km) will serve some popularAi??Ai??destinations, as wellAi??Ai??trying to revitalize strategical urban areas. Many modal interchange points will be located along the route: Marche de Saint-Denis (T1 tramway line), Saint-Denis Basilique (metro Line 13), Garges-Sarcelles (RER local railways Line D), besides many other bus interchange stops.
A further standard tram line (steel wheels) will also serve Seine-Saint-Denis department, connecting Saint-Denis, Epinay-sur-Seine, Villetaneuse and serving UniversitA?A? de Paris XIII-Villetaneuse. It will interchange with metro L13 (Saint-Denis Porte de Paris stop) and tram T1 (Gare de Saint-Denis stop), but not directly with Saint Denis-Sarcelles line.
RATP (official site)
What is interesting to see is the cost ofAi??Ai?? Paris’s new GLT, CAD $52.7 million/km is much higher than Le Man’s new LRT line costing $31.2 million/km. or Paris’s tramway T-3 cost of $42.5 million/km! It seems the TransLohr GLT or tram on tires is very expensive for what it does and like SkyTrain,Ai??Ai??be built in very numbers.
It is important to note, when provincial politicians espouse the notion of Bus Rapid Transit as an alternative to LRT, Rail for the Valley must expose this nonsense asAi??Ai??both BRT and GLTAi??Ai??could beAi??Ai??more expensive to installAi??Ai??than light rail and certainly GLT/BRT will cost more to operate than LRT.
| Country | France |
| Line | Saint Denis-Sarcelles |
| Inhabitants | District 11.175.000 |
| Date opening | 2011 |
| Future development: | — |
| Length (km) | 6.6 |
| Track sections | — |
| Stops | 16, average distance 400 m |
| Platforms | — |
| Platform doors | — |
| General characteristics | — |
| n. of vehicles | 15 |
| n. of cars per vehicle | 3 |
| Type | rubber tyres bi-directional |
| Vehicle dimensions (m) | length 30, width 2.2 |
| Vehicle capacity (pax) | 127 |
| Frequency | 5’/ |
| Current/Voltage | — |
| Type of guide/gauge | central rail |
| Speed Km/h | Comm. 18, Max — |
| Accel./Decel. (m/sec2) | — |
| System capacity | — |
| Ridership | 30.000 pax/day |
| Total cost | 33 M Euro/km |
| Staff | — |
| System builder | LOHR |
| Model | Translohr STE3 |
Mobilien: Paris Version of Bus Rapid Transit. But could LRT do a better job?
The followingAi??Ai?? U-Tube presentation of Paris’s Mobilien BRT is interesting and shows what buses can do in congested cities,Ai??Ai??such asAi??Ai??Paris.Ai??Ai??The observation can be made:Ai??Ai?? “that for a few dollars or Euros more, would not the modern tram bring more benefits to both the city and transit customers on these routes?” The articulated diesel buses used by Paris’s Mobilien,Ai??Ai??pollutes the air and spews diesel particulate a proven carcinogen, while LRT, run by electricity, is very environmental friendly. If electric buses wereAi??Ai??to have been used, then the cost difference betweenAi??Ai??BRT and LRT would greatly decrease. Ai??Ai??The higher commercial speeds for MobilienAi??Ai??are achieved by usingAi??Ai??dedicated rights-of-ways and preemptive signaling, which by strange coincidence is more basic that a trams, yet there is no howls of protest that BRT will cause accidents at every street corner as we constantly hear from the anti-LRT crowed.
In France, exhaustive studies done between bus and tram and a few interesting points have been made. To be competitive with a tram BRT must be guided, like the O-Bahn or the various proprietary GLT systems. Unguided BRT has a poor record in attracting new ridership has transit customers just think it is a bus and is the main reason that GLT vehicles (buses) look like trams! LRT lines cost about 30% more to build than GLT, but with the higher price for light-rail, one gets higher productivity, higher capacities, and higher commercial speeds and is for those reasons, many towns have opted (most by public vote) to build with light rail.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9l0oUpZ44]
One interesting aspect of France’s LRT program is that one third of the cost of tramway is set aside for landscaping, etc. but with BRTAi??Ai??the subsidies must be used for road layout or other measures which facilitate bus services, such as dedicated bus lanes, studies to give buses priority at intersections and can’t be used for landscaping or public amenities, which in France, is an important concern when one is planning for rapid transit.
From the Guardian.Co.UK. – London transit executives may head to New York to consult on subway
Ai??Ai??The recent visit byAi??Ai??Janette Sadik-Khan serving as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, seemed to create a blog frenzy about how New York was today’s transit nirvana, but with a population of over 8 million (or about the same population as BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan combined), the city does have the population to sustain a large metro network. But not all is well with New York’s subway and the following article from the Guardian shows some of the finical dilemma’s facing the operators of large metro systems.
London’s transportation agencies have followed the 21st century operating philosophy that: “Public transit is seen by the public asAi??Ai??a product and if the customer (public) do not think they are getting good value for the product or do not like the product, they will not buy the product.”
One wishes TransLink would enter the 21st century and offer quality transit products, instead of forcing vast amounts of bus riders onto SkyTrain or RAV and pretend all is well.
Ai??Ai??
London transit executives may head to New York to consult on subway
The battle between two of the world’s great urban train systems enters a new chapter
Ed Pilkington in New YorkAi??Ai?? Friday 23 October 2009
guardian.co.uk
The perennial rivalry between two of the world’s great underground railways, the New York subway and the London tube, has erupted once more after the subway announced that it plans to fly over Transport for London executives to advise it on how to modernise its systems.
The apparent admission of inferiority on the part of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority towards its equivalent public body across the pond has been greeted with predictable anguished cries. The New York Times carried the news under the headline Will Subway Riders Start Calling It the Tube?
Under the plan, pending MTA board approval at a meeting on Wednesday, some $500,000 (Ai??A?350,000) would be spent jetting in senior Transport for London staff to act as consultants to the subway. They would be paid up to $200 an hour, have their travel and hotel expenses covered, and stay for two to four weeks at a stretch.
As an added twist, the plan is the brainchild of the subway’s new chief, Jay Walder, who until 2006 worked for Transport for London. He took over as chairman of the MTA earlier this month, and brought with him from London Charles Monheim, his chief operating officer.
Together, they plan to introduce to New York some of the innovations that Walder has been credited with successfully implementing in London A?ai??i??ai??? notably the Oyster card automatic payment system, and electronic boards informing passengers how long they will have to wait for the next train. Studies have shown that riders are three times more anxious about waiting when they have no idea how long the delay will be.
In comparison with the tube, the New York network is starting to look distinctly antiquated: it long ago removed the graffiti that clung to its carriages, but it lacks the digital convenience that Londoners have come to expect. New York’s attempts to introduce electronic boards have been beset with problems and currently only exists on one subway line and on bus stops in one midtown street.
A Transport for London spokesperson confirmed today that talks were under way: “We are in discussions with the MTA on a proposed cooperation agreement under which we might work together, at no cost to London’s fare payers or taxpayers, on areas of mutual interest.Ai??Ai?? We will ensure that this arrangement financially benefits London, as well as providing New York with the benefit of London’s experience in Oyster technology and the provision of customer information. The details have yet to be finalised.”
If this sounds like the ultimate victory for the London tube over the New York subway, think again.
Walder is himself a native of the New York borough of Queens, who cut his teeth on the subway and taught at Harvard before leaving America to become planning and finance director of Transport for London in 2000.
So it could be argued that it took an American to spruce up the London tube, and having taught the British how to do it he is now bringing the trophy back home. “This is truly a homecoming for me,” he said recently.
“I’m a kid from Queens. I grew up riding the subway.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/23/new-york-london-subway-tube
Ai??Ai??
From the Vancouver Sun – Metro Vancouver mayors vote for an extra $130-million for TransLink. As Barnum Observed, There Is a Sucker Born Every Minute.
Metro mayors caved in to TransLink’s slick propaganda campaign, to bad because TransLink and the provincial government will forever treat municipal politicians as mindless patsies. It was time to draw a line in the sand, but regional politicians just didn’t have the stomach for it and continue to be just tax and spend politicians who don’t care about the future.
It was time to say just NO and let the chip fall where they may! The problem with TransLink isn’t money, it is an ineffectual bureaucracy stuck in the past, squander millions of dollars following a largely discredited transit philosophy based on a few expensive light-metro lines being force fed by buses. Doesn’t work – doesn’t attract the all important motorist from his car. But, no fear, TransLink will continue with this drivel until the public finally compel politicians to change it of be forced out of office.
Doing the same thing over and over again and wishing for different results has been defined as madness.
Knowing that they are dealing with rubes, TransLink will be back demanding more money faster than you can say sucker!
What $130 million buys you in planning!
Metro Vancouver mayors vote for an extra $130-million for TransLink
By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver SunOctober 23, 2009 3:14 PM
Metro Vancouver mayors “reluctantly” voted for a $130 million supplement plan for TransLink today saying it would give them some breathing room while they tried to find more money to run the transit system.
The so-called stabilization plan will see a three-cents-a-litre increase in gasoline taxes as well as transit-fare increases, starting next year. TransLink also plans to resurrect its parking stall tax. The fare increases come into effect April 1, pushing up the price of a one-zone farecard from $73 to $81 or adding 10 cents to a fare-saver ticket.
Despite a high level of frustration, mayors would not support a suggestion by Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan to vote against the plan and use impending cuts to force the province to help with funding.
Corrigan had suggested the province would respond in such a crisis situation especially before the 2010 Olympic Games.
But other mayors argued the price of the cuts would be too high for their communities and said they will take Transportation Minister Shirley Bond at her word that she will work with them.
Although Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said ther is “no guarantee the provincial government will listen to any of us,” the $130 million will help keep the transit system limping along.
“I don’t think it’s responsible to throw up our hands, cut the system into shreds and force the government in a corner,” she said. “It’s a very tenuous situation as it is.”
TransLink CEO Tom Prendergast said the decision has staved off drastic cuts which would likely have occurred following the Olympics.
But he said TransLink now faces finding the money to expand the system and honour its commitment to building the Evergeen Line connecting Burnaby, Coquitlam and Port Moody.
Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini, who voted against the plan, had suggested mayors defer the vote until it could find out if road pricing was an option. His motion was defeated.
More to come.
Recent Comments