Will this be a game changer for light rail in Canada?
For over thirty years, lawned rights-of-way have been the norm on European tramways and light rail operations; even the Deutsche Bahn (German Federal Railway) investigated lawend rights-of-ways for the main line railways.
Today, the lawned R-o-W’s are a fixture of the modern tram.
The new tramway in Luxembourg has extensive lawned rights-of-ways
Not so in Canada, where local bureaucrats, ever so scared of change, would not allow lawned R-o-W’s with excuses such as they were a fire hazard or emergency vehicles can’t us them (well if properly designed, they can).
Years ago in the early 90’s, at a City of Vancouver open house for concepts for the Arbutus Corridor, Zwei had a display of modern LRT, with every picture showing the then revolutionary lawned R-o-W, which contrasted quite well BC Transit photos of start gravel and asphalt R-o-W’s.
A gentleman approached me and said” I live on the Arbutus and if they did that (install a lawned R-o-W), I could not mount much of an objection“.
The chap from BC transit, overhearing the comment, quickly added; “But here in BC, they would be a safety and fire hazard”
Zwei thinks the real issue was that modern light rail, operating on a “Green” lawned R-o-W would be a positive ‘sell’ to the public and with light rail having operating characteristics that surpass light metro, would forever relegate the much more expensive and politically acceptable light metro to that dead branch of transit evolution.
A Paris tram, operating on a lawned R-o-W.
Toronto thus becomes the first Canadian city to have lawned-R-o-W’s, after years of kicking and screaming entrenched anti Green cabal. Toronto is laying “Green” track and joining the modern world of Light Rail Transit.
The first of three green track areas along Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s at-grade section is being installed at Warden Avenue’s Golden Mile stop.
Construction of the Eglinton Crosstown light rail transit (LRT) project continues to progress, and one of its latest milestones may have you seeing green.
Portions of the at-grade section, east of Brentcliffe Road, will feature green tracks to help integrate the new transit line with Eglinton Avenue’s many parks and green spaces.
The ’green’ will be made up of grass and additional foliage planted down the middle of the LRV route.
A mock-up of the green tracks, totalling 16 metres in length and 92 square metres in area, has been installed at the Golden Mile stop east of Warden Avenue.
The installation of each section of green track takes three months after the final design is approved. Each section will include irrigation chambers, water supply, and an energy supply to power the irrigation system.
The partially installed green track mock-up at Warden Avenue’s Golden Mile stop looking east. (Metrolinx photo)The partially installed green track mock-up at Warden Avenue’s Golden Mile stop looking west. (Metrolinx photos)
Not only do the green tracks look good, but they serve a purpose.
Swapping out concrete for grass can help keep temperatures down in the heat of summer. Grass and other vegetation can also act as a sound dampener, absorb rain to reduce run-off, and even minimize the spread of dust.
It’s all part of Metrolinx’s goal to provide environmentally sustainable light rail transit service across Toronto.
Story by Katherine Abraham, Metrolinx Community Relations Specialist
Surrey, ever trying to out do Vancouver to be number one in the city, is building with light metro, because Vancouver has one. The following quote caught my eye.
Gurugram is not a walkable city, and has very limited public transport connectivity for the masses. While it is connected to Delhi by the Metro, and its own Rapid Metro is meant for movement within the city, its scope is limited. A car is almost a necessity for even short distances.
This describes Surrey and Metro Vancouver, both have a very expensive light-metro system, yet the car is the only real means to get around both cities.
With the extension of the Expo Line to Langley, Surrey’s future will be etched in stone and like its clone Gurugram, India,
This is the most recent model of a very old format of city-building,” says Rahul Srivastava, a Mumbai-based urbanologist and co-founder of design planning and research collective urbz. “It represents the harsh, capitalist vision of taking over space.”
The City of Surrey, yesterday’s city, being built today!
India’s glittering Gurugram remains a model of how not to build a new city
Gurugram, India’s Millennium City, has exploded in recent decades, but beneath its gleaming high rises lie haphazard infrastructure and stark inequality.
Gurugram, a bustling tech and finance center on the outskirts of New Delhi, encapsulates the fast-paced capitalism and bourgeois aspirations of a new town. Nicknamed the Millennium City, it stands in contrast to Delhi’s old neighborhoods with their sarkari (bureaucratic) offices and centuries-old monuments.
But come monsoon season, the paradox of Gurugram plays out on its streets. Year after year, rain water floods spanking new roads and underpasses, causing immense traffic snarls, and leaving wealthy residents locked inside their condominiums.
“Gurugram is the most recent model of a very old format of city-building,” says Rahul Srivastava, a Mumbai-based urbanologist and co-founder of design planning and research collective urbz. “It represents the harsh, capitalist vision of taking over space.”
He points towards Mumbai, which was built on reclaimed land with a similar vision by the British. The city then called Bombay was built as a challenge to Surat, a port town and thriving mercantile centre in the western state of Gujarat, he says. “This meant defeating nature and traditional ways of land use,” Srivastava adds. And like Mumbai, Gurugram, too, has slums, hidden from plain sight and away from the multi-million dollar homes that face the sprawling golf course.
Even the most gleaming Indian metropolises are rooted in colonial origins and foundations built on inequality. Gurugram may represent India’s future, but its poor infrastructure, segregated housing, and unreliable public transportation mean it can never escape its past. Instead, it has become a beacon of how not to build a modern city.
The lack of any master plan at all—blueprints for a city and its buildings—has played a major role in this inequitable growth. And this gaping hole in city planning has roots in how Gurugram developed as an urban center.
How Gurugram Came Up
Over 30 years ago, Gurgaon, as it was then called, was just large swathes of land. These land parcels were either owned by the state government of Haryana or by wealthy farming families. The first time it appeared on India’s socioeconomic map was in 1981, when Maruti Udyog, then a government-owned automobile company, set up its first factory in Gurgaon.
A year later, Maruti Udyog would turn into a joint venture with the Japanese automobile giant Suzuki, marking Gurgaon’s first official entry on the global map. And yet, it was still what present-day Gurugram residents see as “old Gurgaon.”
“It wasn’t until 1995, ’96 that the Gurugram we know today began to be developed,” says Manish Aggarwal, a managing director for JLL India, a real estate services company. This was the time that DLF, one of India’s largest real estate developers and instrumental in the creation of this modern city,built the first large office space for General Electric.
This was a new city, one that DLF envisioned as a space where people work, live, and play. The real estate company began developing Gurugram in phases. In the national capital region (NCR), which includes Delhi and its satellite towns, it was the first time high-rise apartment buildings of good quality were constructed. Delhi’s other satellite town, Noida, would not allot land to private developers at the time, so for nearly a decade, Gurugram had a niche for itself in the market. Today, because of that head start, Gurugram has nearly 60% of the 10.9 million square feet commercial space in the region, according to JLL.
“Seeing this progress and the possibilities, other private developers like Unitech also started buying parcels of land and developing them in the early 2000s,” Aggarwal explains. Gurugram’s high rises made it the shiny new thing compared to Delhi’s low-rise housing and commercial buildings. It was also the first to tap into India’s newly liberalized consumer sentiment with large shopping malls.
“I remember while growing up, Gurugram was always the first for many things. People from Delhi would come to visit the malls here,” says Amrita Singh, a 24-year-old PR executive with an Indian startup. To her mind, Gurugram was the city of modernity, way ahead of the cities around it. Singh’s family was one of the early investors and residents of Gurugram, and she grew up and went to school in this new city.
After a slow start to building, Singh suddenly witnessed an explosion. “All of a sudden, every part of Gurugram was being developed. There was never a time there was no construction in Gurugram,” Singh says.
And yet, Gurugram’s municipal body had no master plan. “All this construction was happening at an independent level by the developers and was completely haphazard,” Aggarwal explains. So much so, that entire condominiums were built without an active sewage connection, or a centralized power grid. This meant property developers had to account for this infrastructure in-house, including arranging waste treatment plans inside the complex. “As a result, the maintenance fee in Gurugram apartments was very high,” Aggarwal says.
The master plan finally came into existence around 2009, and now the infrastructure comes under the purview of the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon. But the 15-odd years of development that preceded this regulatory change had already wreaked havoc on the shared infrastructure in the city.
The roads, for instance, have historically been a problem. “I remember once my sister and I were the last to be picked up from school because our parents were stuck for hours on a rainwater-filled road,” Singh says. That story hasn’t changed today, and only keeps repeating itself every rain storm.
Singh, who saw New Delhi as an inferior neighbor of Gurugram as a child, has come to enjoy the green and historic spaces in the national capital. But others are still lured to the glamour of Gurugram, potholed roads and traffic snarls aside.
The City of Migrants
Gurugram is a destination for Indians looking for jobs, and as such, it is a city with few “original” residents. Everyone is a migrant, even if their hometown is just 25 kilometers (16 miles) away in Delhi or nearby towns like Manesar in Haryana.
Gurugram’s initial boom, which rode on the back of the global corporations setting up offices in the new complexes, also made it not just a city of Indian migrants, but a robust expatriate community. For instance, a Gujarati event organized by GurgaonMoms, an online community of 30,000 mothers,saw Korean, Japanese, and Malaysian expat women dancing to garba tunes, says Upasana Mahtani Luthra, director of PR, events, and the book club at GurgaonMoms. “It is a city that makes you feel welcome at once,” she says.
Even those who find Gurugram to be a concrete jungle often relocate for the convenience and amenities. “A friend of mine from Delhi was never a fan of Gurugram, said Neela Kaushik, the founder of GurgaonMoms. ”But once she had a child, she found the infrastructure and safety much easier to manage. As was the availability of good schools.”
But these conveniences are, of course, not universally shared.
An Unequal City
The gentrification of Gurugram has an obvious consequence in the lack of diversity in the city. “Most kids who I went to school with were either kids of landowners, businesspeople, or corporate executives,” says Singh. The city, she says, is very segmented.
The new Golf Course Road has some of Gurugram’s most expensive luxury properties. That part of Gurugram is home to the DLF trifecta of the Aralias, Magnolias, and Camellias—three condominiums with designer interiors, concierge services, club houses, and access to the golf course. And then there is old Gurugram. “Some parts of Gurugram look almost rural. Others are practically clones of Singapore or Dubai,” she says.
Gurugram is not a walkable city, and has very limited public transport connectivity for the masses. While it is connected to Delhi by the Metro, and its own Rapid Metro is meant for movement within the city, its scope is limited. A car is almost a necessity for even short distances.
Thousands of blue collar workers—guards, gardeners, domestic helpers, janitors, construction workers—all live in the unorganized and hidden slums of Gurugram. While Gurugram cannot move without them, they rarely are a policy focus in the city.
It is also attractive as an antidote to the “old memory of an earlier middle class, tired of socialist rule and Delhi’s sarkariness,” says Srivastava of urbz. “As a private-sector dominated space, Gurugram is a futuristic site. It can be the backdrop of a dystopian fiction 20 years from now. Ugliness and harsh aspirations sit over there,” he says.
Manavi Kapur is based in New Delhi and writes about everything culture, from books, films and art to religion, gender and politics. She has a master’s degree in literature from Delhi University and has worked with Business Standard as a feature writer for close to six years. She loves all things vintage and is a strong proponent of postcard writing. When not planning her next museum-centric holiday, she can be found obsessively reading fiction of all kinds.
The real story here is not about replacing the expansion joints on the Sky Bridge, it is what TransLink’s new CEO Kevin Quinn (remember the chap worked for Baltimore’s MTA, which saw a 2% decrease in ridership every year Quinn worked there) said, revealing ridership numbers.
For that week, total system-wide boarding’s were 48. 2 per cent of pre-COVID ridership levels.
48.2% of what?
TransLink is infamous of not revealing actual ridership numbers, but uses percentages mostly to confuse people. TransLink just gives what ever ridership numbers they see fit.
“The problem with TransLink is that you can never believe what it says; TransLink never produces a report based on the same set of assumptions.”
Former West Vancouver Clr. Victor Durman, Chair of the GVRD (now METRO) Finance Committee.
How many of that 48.2% are using the U-Pass?
Here is the ridership problem in a nutshell; there is no independent audit of ridership on the SkyTrain light-metro system and no one in charge wants an independent audit of ridership on the SkyTrain light-metro system, thus TransLink can claim any number they want and if the numbers are not impressive, they use percentages which are absolutely meaningless.
In Europe and the USA, there are agencies who conduct independent audits of ridership to keep the operating agencies honest as subsidies, as well as future planning in many jurisdiction is based on accurate ridership numbers.
The SkyTrain bridge connecting Surrey with New Westminster is being single-tracked for upgrades during the biggest bump-up in ridership since the beginning of the pandemic.
Service from July 31 to August 7 and August 14 to August 21 will be single-tracked between Columbia Station and Scott Road Station as construction crews replace expansion joints that are more than 30 years old. TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn told the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation on Thursday that the joints have reached the end of their useful lives.
“We’re going to keep customers moving as quickly as possible between stations,” Quinn said. “We’ll have trains crossing two at a time in each direction providing 15-minute service during peak periods and at other times one train will cross in each direction providing 12-minute service. And of course we’ll have SkyTrain staff out there on-site to assist customers at the affected stations in Surrey and New Westminster, and to monitor service levels.”
This is happening as ridership is increasing along the line during weekdays and weekends.
“The week of July 12 was actually the highest week of ridership since the start of the pandemic nearly 18 months ago,” Quinn said. “For that week, total system-wide boardings were 48. 2 per cent of pre-COVID ridership levels. As you can imagine this jump in ridership is very welcome news, and certainly a move in the right direction.”
Since the summer of 2020 SkyTrain ridership levels plateaued at 40 per cent of pre-COVID levels, Quinn noted, “so we’re so pleased to see more customers returning to the system this summer and we certainly expect to see ridership continue to increase in the weeks ahead as more of the provincial health officer’s restrictions are lifted.”
Quinn addressed the council just six days into his job, coming from Baltimore where he was CEO of the Maryland Transit Administration.
New Westminster Mayor Jonathan Coté, chairman of the mayors’ council, remarked that it’s “encouraging to see some life starting to come back in ridership increase.”
“I was recently taking the SkyTrain and I didn’t get a seat for the first time in probably well over a year and a half,” he said. “I’m going to take that as a positive sign for our system and I think we know we still have a long way to go and we need to make sure people feel comfortable and safe on our system but we do need to get our riders back, it’s critically important to our transportation system and our public transit system.”
TransLink is not noted for honesty and candor and the ponderous bureaucracy seems very worried these days. The senior bureaucrats at TransLink’s ivory towers in Sapperton, seem to be somewhat desperate.
On Facebook there is deluge of advertisements almost pleading for people to return to transit and woe to anyone who states the obvious that TransLink’s product is not user friendly and taking the car is so much easier. Recent criminal events happening on the light metro also has people thinking twice about taking transit.
The Daily Hive, TransLink’s “Pravda”, now is desperately trying to convince readers that LRT is only supported by older people, with younger people, evidently much smarter, support SkyTrain.
Zwei’s take is that older people actually pay the onerous taxes to build and operate SkyTrain, while younger people ride on the cheap with their dollar a day U-Passes.
This smacks of desperation on the part of TransLink, who now must source a minimum of $800 million to complete the Expo Line extension to Langley.
With gas now hovering at CAD $1.70 per litre, those living in Surrey and Delta are waiting for the boarder to open to access far cheaper gas, currently about CAD $1.10 a litre in Bellingham and Point Roberts!
This has made TransLink executives, with their six figure salaries, generous car allowances and more, very nervous.
But there is another issue, the environmentally sensitive Serpentine Valley, between Surrey and Langley.
As LRT was originally going to cross the Serpentine Valley into Langley, there was no need of extensive engineering. With the Expo Line being a light metro and being elevated across this peaty valley and cost estimate has been made for this. This means that the current estimated cost of $4.95 billion may exceed this amount by 10% to 20% because of the special engineering needed to carry an elevated guideway across the boggy valley.
This has TransLink very worried.
As well, the growing need for a major rehab of the Expo and Millennium Lines, especially the almost 40 year old Expo line is desperately needed. The Burrard station rebuilding and the expansion joint replacement on the Sky Bridge are just a minor prelude of expenses to come.
The $2 billion to $3 billion rehab of the “MALM” Lines is much needed, but TransLink has nor sourced any budget for this, indeed, most regional and provincial politicians remain woefully ignorant of this near future cost.
Then there are the MALM cars themselves, as Alstom now owns the production Line for the proprietary cars and it seems they are none to happy with this Bombardier product and would like to see the end of it. In now looks like Bombardier was the sole bidder for the last TransLink order but TransLink, ever fearful of the truth, refuses to provide a list of bidders, for fear of revealing the truth that MALM is indeed a proprietary transit system, and a decade of deliberate misinformation may have serious legal consequences.
With huge tax increases needed to keep the SkyTrain light metro operating and with the taxpayer in no mood for new taxes has created a huge problems for regional politicians facing civic elections next fall.
So, it is of no surprise that TransLink has turned to their propaganda machine, the Daily Hive, to regurgitate fake news and alternative facts to any and all who will listen.
It was this very sort of propaganda campaign that got president Trump elected.
Is common sense finally making its way with politicians in Victoria?
Is the $4 billion price tag for the 16 km Expo Line extension to Langley (the Reelection Line) scaring the provincial treasury?
Has BC’s explosive fire season, capped with record breaking temperatures, finally conveying the message that politcal prestige must take a back seat to political reality?
Probably a combination of all three.
There ar many hurdles that must be crossed for the “return of the interurban”, including the entrenched SkyTrain Lobby, but the shock of extending the Expo Linr to surrey will cost around $250 million per km. versus the $9 million/km for a full build Leewood Study, connecting Vancouver/Richmond, to North Delta, central Surrey, Cloverdale, langley, Abbotsford, Sardis.Vedder, and Chilliwack.
For the cost of a 16 km extension of the Expo Line to Langley, we could build a regional passenger rail system connecting Richmond/Vancouver to Hope, on both sides of the Fraser River, with a train every 30 minutes to and from Vancouver!
It is time to think out of the “SkyTrain” box and invest in a proven regional railway network, starting with a Richmond/Vancouver to Chilliwack passenger service using the former BC Electric Railway route.
For more information about Rail for the Valley Click Here.
For more information about the Leewood Study Click Here.
B.C. considering Interurban for future transit
TransLink rejected the route, local advocates have lobbied for it
The provincial government is considering the future of the old Interurban rail link through Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack.
Bowinn Ma, B.C.’s minister of state for infrastructure, visited a number of transit hubs along the Trans Canada Highway in Langley on Wednesday, July 21.
Ma said that the government is looking at land use and how the highway interacts with other transit options, including SkyTrain, as well as other potential rail commuter projects such as reviving the Interurban.
“We are taking a serious look at seeing whether that’s a viable option,” Ma said.
The Interurban line existed from the early 1910s to the 1950s, and was officially known as the British Columbia Electric Railway.
At its peak, it extended all the way from Vancouver through Burnaby, New Westminster, across the Fraser River to Surrey, and through Langley as far east as Chilliwack.
It provided passenger and light cargo service for what were then predominantly rural communities south of the Fraser River and out into the Valley.
The rail lines are still in place and are used by mile-long fright trains as part of the Southern Railway of British Columbia.
Ma said the province is looking at how various transit and road components fit together as part of an Integrated Transportation Development Strategy.
The resumption of the service has been promoted by South Fraser Community Rail, with involvement of local political figures like former Langley Township mayor Rick Green and former premier Bill Vander Zalm, who held “Rally for Rail” events in 2019.
However, a 2019 TransLink report said the existing rail route would be expensive and in many areas it does not connect high-density neighbourhoods. The rail line is close to Cloverdale and passes through downtown Langley’s core and the Gloucester Industrial Park, but much of its length in Langley is in rural areas.
Ma also said the province will extend the route of BC Transit’s Fraser Valley Express bus, which currently stops at Langley’s Carvolth transit hub, all the way to the Lougheed SkyTrain Station in 2022.
Removing transfers between TransLink jurisdictions and BC Transit areas helps reduce inconvenience, Ma said.
Prime Minister Trudeau wants cool photo-ops for the federal election, coming sometime this summer and fall.
The mayor of Surrey wants cool photo-ops for next years civic election in 2022.
Premier John Horgan wants cool photo-ops for anything not involving Covid and wildfires and for the provincial election in 2024.
Politicians need a good back drop for cool photo-ops, showing voters of themselves smiling, while spending billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money on politically prestigious transit projects. And what makes a better backdrop for cool photo-ops is thousands of tons of concrete in the guise of the Movia Automatic Light Metro, otherwise known as “SkyTrain”.
The Expo Line extension to Langley should be called the Reelection Line, because that is what it has become and not better transit.
Yet, the very same politicians singing hosannas for the “Reelection Line” do not mention the higher taxes, higher user fees and fare increases needed to pay for their “Edsel” light metro. Higher taxes, higher user fees and fare increases make for very bad photo-ops.
The “Reelection Line” bill will come sometime after 2024, keeping all politicians safe for another election cycle.
This is standard for how transit is planned in BC and has been successful for over 40 years!
The Reelection Line brought to you by the tax and spend federal, provincial and civic politicians where the taxpayer is always held for ransom.
We all know about the $3.95 billion 18 km extension of the Expo line to Surrey with all the hype and hoopla of the SkyTrain Lobby is in full swing.
Back in the Waterloo region of Ontario, $2.2 billion buys you 37 km of light rail!
The comparison between Surrey and Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, (the urban areas of Waterloo Region) is uncanny. Similar growing populations, basically suburban municipalities on the edge of a larger City region. The only difference is the choice rail transit.
Ion Stage 1 opened in June, 2019, the final cost was $868 Million for 19 km. Stage 2 is expected to start construction in 2028 and opened by 2032. The cost of the 18 km extension is expected to be $1.36 Billion. That’s 37 km for $ 2.228 Billion that’s considerably less than $3.95 for 18km of SkyTrain.
More route mileage for LRT, means more destinations served, means far more user friendly, means a far better chance of attracting the all important motorist from the car and I like those apples!
Stage 2 ION light-rail project receives provincial clearance
The move allows the Region of Waterloo to seek provincial and federal funding for the 11.18-mile light-rail project.
An ION light-rail train operating through the snow.
Region of Waterloo
The government of Ontario has approved the Transit Project Assessment for the Stage 2 ION light-rail project in the Region of Waterloo, clearing the way for the municipality to seek funding from provincial and federal sources.
“We’re thrilled to be able to proceed with delivering Stage 2 of ION light-rail transit to residents in Waterloo Region,” said Karen Redman, Regional chair of the Region of Waterloo. “Stage 1 has been an incredible success getting people to where they need to go in a fast, reliable and affordable way. We’re committed to providing this much-needed service to community members in Cambridge.”
Stage 1 ION LRT opened to the public on June 21, 2019, and has carried millions of riders along 19 kilometers (11.8 miles) of light rail with 19 stations between Conestoga Station in Waterloo to Fairway Station in Kitchener.
Stage 2 ION will nearly double the number of light-rail miles and link Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge through 18 kilometers (11.18 miles) of light rail with eight stations.
By 2051, Waterloo Region’s population is expected to reach more than 900,000 residents.
“The city of Cambridge is excited about this milestone that brings us closer to seeing rapid transit in our community,” said Mayor of Cambridge, Ontario, Kathryn McGarry. “ION will give Cambridge residents a convenient and sustainable alternative to travelling by car and move people seamlessly not only between the other two urban centers, but to the many businesses and amenities within our own community. When finished, ION will help create an even more connected and inclusive Waterloo Region.”
Along with providing a safe mode of transportation for the growing community, light rail has also fostered local economic development, with more than C$3.5 billion (US$2.83 billion) in investment in the central transit corridor.
“We’re creating a world-class community that’s sustainable, inclusive and positioned for the future,” added Chair Redman. “Stage 2 of light-rail transit will continue to make Waterloo Region the ideal place to live, work and play.”
Where is the almost $1 billion in funding needed to make the Expo Line extension to Langley a go?
Second Question:
Mr. Horgan and the Mayor’s Council on Transit, what taxes have to be increased to pay the estimated $1 billion in outstanding funding?
Now, the story in question.
Not even a week has gone by and Surrey council has shown what their real SkyTrain agenda is all about.
It is all about development and rubber on asphalt. This is what Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Horgan are supporting, as the province is burning around them mainly due to climate change.
These guys want more of the same!
The City of Surrey and the two Langley’s, by acting as the ultimate spoiled child and now have got the SkyTrain toy so their city’s can be just like Vancouver.
The $3.95 billion, 18km SkyTrain is a showcase of dated thinking, tinged with corruption, yellow journalism and gross politcal malfeasance.
Back in the 1970’s 80’s, Vancouver was just like any other city with rush hours in the morning and afternoon, taking workers to and from the city from the suburbs. Ridership was assured and new public transit philosophies were quietly ignored, as the good burghers “knew best.
Today public transit has changed dramatically; the old rush hour in and out philosophy doesn’t work as well anymore as the demographic shift in downtown Vancouver has changed from offices to high rise condo’s and towers. Business have relocated to the outer reaches of Metro Vancouver and beyond, up the Fraser Valley, where the car is needed to access them.
A good example is Molson’s Breweries, which was an icon on Burrard in Vancouver, has now relocated to Chilliwack.
Surrey’s new land rush along the $3.95 billion, 18 km Expo line extension has begun, with new highway construction through the ecologically sensitive Green Timbers. The one question that is ignored is that where are the commuters commuting too? Again, demographic change tells me, more are going east than west.
For all the angst, duplicity getting a $3.95 extension to the Expo line, the City of Surrey and the two Langley’s are getting a dated piece of kit, designed for 1980’s transit solutions and not for transit in the 2020’s, where flexibility in operation is key attracting new ridership. In essence, they are buying an Edsel
When completed, by 2030, Metro Vancouver will be in endemic gridlock; the war on the car will see wholesale change in councils to more car friendly politicians and SkyTrain will continue to suck scarce transit monies, subsidizing a museum piece.
Not only are the NDP paving paradise and turning it into a parking lot, so is Surrey Council!
SkyTrain line through Surrey’s Green Timbers forest involves four-lane Fraser Highway
‘Optimized’ project plan OK with president of Green Timbers Heritage Society, but not others
Now that prep work for Surrey’s SkyTrain line extension has been given the green light, attention has turned to the road through Green Timbers Urban Forest where tracks will be built.
The city plans to four-lane Fraser Highway to “optimize” the rapid-transit project, in one of the city’s most congested road corridors.
“Staff have worked with TransLink to optimize the project design,” concluded Scott Neuman, Surrey’s general manager of engineering, “including the ability to complete SkyTrain plus four-lane widening using an approximate (27.5-metre) optimized cross-section through GTUF (Green Timbers Urban Forest) entirely within the road allowance, with no impact to GTUF and only an incremental increase in tree loss compared to TransLink’s original two-lane design.”
Don Schuetze, president of Green Timbers Heritage Society, says there’s been talk of widening that stretch of Fraser Highway since the 1990s. “I’ve got a folder just filled with discussion about it – lots of ink spilled on it, and blood and sweat and tears,” Schuetze told the Now-Leader.
“My understanding is they’re going for a more minimal concept now, and that’s important,” he added.
“A few years ago they were talking about 45 metres across, for LRT. They’ve obviously done some thinking about how they did it with 100th Avenue, which they widened a couple years ago – and I think they did a good job. It was, ‘How narrow can we make this so that we impact the forested area the least amount?’ I think they’re following that same line of thinking with Fraser Highway.”
(Story continues below)
Drawing of SkyTrain line and four-lane Fraser Highway from 144 Street to 148 Street with eastbound view, from a report to Surrey city council. (Image: surrey.ca)
Schuetze said “it’s not a great idea to encourage more traffic through a forested area like that, just like it’s not a good idea to encourage more in a school zone, for example. But if you’ve got to do it, then I think they’ve put some thought into it. They’re asking for opinions and are being as reasonably sensitive as they can, given the constraints they have.”
On Monday (July 12), Surrey council awarded a $5,384,600 contract to B&B Contracting Ltd. to widen Fraser Highway from 96th Avenue to 148th Street in preparation for construction of the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain expansion.
Surrey heritage advocate Jim Foulkes questions the need for four lanes on that highway section.
“The only congestion on Fraser Highway is caused by the light at 144th (Street). You go out there and look, that’s what causes the backup into Green Timbers, it’s not the two lanes through Green Timbers that’s backing things up.
“With SkyTrain,” he added, “it’s gone from rails on the ground to putting the monstrous noisy thing up in the sky. So why would you build a wider highway for cars when you have rapid transit? Make up your mind. Why do we need four lanes there? You know, in Vancouver on Cambie Street they put the whole damn SkyTrain underground, they tunneled it. Why don’t do they do that in Surrey? Why are we a second-rate cousin like that?”
Fraser Highway has become the busiest two-lane road in Surrey, with more than 28,000 cars per day, according to the city report.
The “optimized design” on the stretch through Green Timbers aims to reduce the road footprint and protect high-value trees along the north side of Fraser Highway, the report says.
The 22.5-metre, four-lane design “only slightly impacts additional Bylaw Trees, relative to TransLink’s base two-lane design, requiring tree removal to accommodate SkyTrain. All of these trees are within the existing road allowance, and there are no trees within GTUF being impacted by the optimized design. Furthermore, staff’s optimized design is a significant improvement from the original 40m wide, four-lane LRT design, as it prevents approximately 300-350 Bylaw Trees from being removed within the road allowance.”
Despite the churlish comments who oppose Zwei’s views on transit, claiming that I somehow invent issues and more, the following comment came via a chap I was corresponding with in Ontario and I just cannot help but agree.
Canadian transportation is now so hideously politicized that I just don’t see how we can bring any common sense and fiscal responsibility back into the issue.
In Metro Vancouver, when you have major universities resorting to a transit version of Lysenkoism ……….
Lysenkoism is a term that identifies as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.
……….. to promote a transit mode, once supplied by Bombardier Inc. and actively promoting hugely expensive mega projects, the Broadway subway and the Expo Line extension to Langley, such planning boarders on professional and academic misconduct.
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Only in Vancouver, with the backing of graduate planners and engineers, the SkyTrain light metro system is extended and not just ignoring light rail, they actively condemn the mode through dubious claims and grossly misleading information.
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The grossly overstated density issue is one of these issues and the SkyTrain light metro network is not being built to provide better transit, instead it is to promote densification of properties along its route. This densification sees the replacement of affordable housing and replaced with unaffordable high rise condos and towers, which translates to big profits by land speculators and land developers.
You folks need to get soothing, worthwhile hobbies. If you’re going to keep bashing your heads against the Canadian transportation brick wall in your spare time, you’ll all be coronary cases before long. Fixing this situation is now an impossible task thanks to generations of politicians operating on behalf of their corporate bagmen, who are the ultimate profiteers.
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Our formerly semi-credible and affordable public transportation system is gone and I don’t see it returning thanks to, as Captain Renaud says in Casablanca, “the usual suspects.”
It is a no-brainer why SkyTrain light-metro is being extended to Langley and it is the same for the Broadway subway, with a combined cost of $7 billion.
Three guesses and the first two don’t count.
It all about land speculation and land development.
SkyTrain acts as a driver for municipal councils to relax zoning (up-zone) properties along the light-metro route. Assembled lands that are up-zoned for development means huge profits for land speculators and developers. Huge profits for developers means large politcal donations for the “right sort” of civic politicians at election time.
Those who support SkyTrain expansion are amply rewarded.
So the tiresome circle of building SkyTrain → land speculator profits → developer profits → demovictions → politcal contributions → higher fares → reduced transit service → more SkyTrain planning → building SkyTrain → land speculator profits → developer profits → demovictions → politcal contributions, and so on, and on, and on.
And to think the taxpayer and the transit customer is paying for this $7 billion grift!
Better transit for the Fraser Valley? Er no, just new condos at Whistler, Mexico or Hawaii for the privileged few, paid courtesy of the taxpayer.
It’s difficult to compare how land prices in areas around the Surrey to Langley line will increase compared to what happened in other SkyTrain corridors.
Joanne Lee-Young
Jul 14, 2021
Presale condo sales near the proposed Surrey-to-Langley SkyTrain corridor are growing faster than in surrounding areas, according to real estate experts.
“We have noticed some additional activity in the City of Langley, where the line will terminate, as well as along parts of the line in Surrey,” said Michael Ferreira, managing principal at Urban Analytics, which tracks presale condo projects.
The tricky part, he said, is figuring out what can be attributed to the SkyTrain as opposed to the lift of the “crazy pandemic” real estate market.
Based on Urban Analytics’ own data, said Ferreira, there has been “an approximate 15- to 20-per-cent increase in sale values of condos and townhomes in these areas from 2020 to 2021 compared to a 10- to 15-per-cent increase in neighbourhoods of Surrey and Langley not influenced by the SkyTrain line.”
When it comes to land sales, the interest is more stark. Connor Edinger, manager of land and asset data at Urban Analytics, looked at sites with multi-family development potential along that future Surrey-to-Langley SkyTrain corridor.
He compared the average price per square foot land prices from 2016 to 2019 for these properties with 2020 to May 2021, and found that prices for lots designated for medium- and high-density multi-family development, such as apartments up to and above six storeys, increased 24 per cent while prices for low-density sites, such as townhomes and row houses, rose 32 per cent.
Total sales for multi-family development sites sold in Langley City in 2021 are on pace for about $73.4 million, based on sales of $30.6 million between January to May, said Edinger.
That would be slightly down from the $90.1 million in 2020, although still a significant jump from $33.8 million in 2019 and $35.2 million in 2018 — and even from the boom years of 2017 and 2016, when sales were $57.4 million and $31.9 million, respectively.
Last week, the federal government officially committed $1.3 billion to fund the SkyTrain extension from the King George station in Surrey along Fraser Highway to 203rd Street in the City of Langley.
For now, it is a corridor marked by a lot of older car dealerships, some vacant land and strip malls in the Surrey portion, with more patches of bare land as it heads into Langley.
It is impossible to predict how surrounding land values will escalate compared to the way they did for commercial properties and single-family home lots when the Canada Line was built along Cambie Street in Vancouver or the Millennium Line by Brentwood Mall in Burnaby.
“It’s quite difficult to quantify,” said Kevin Murray, a senior sales associate at CBRE’s national apartment group. “Even the Broadway corridor (in Vancouver) is still up for speculation. Ultimately, the driving factor for land value is the rezoning potential and the change in the official community plan allowing for increased density due to the planned SkyTrain. If a property is in close proximity to the SkyTrain, but it doesn’t allow for an upzone, the value won’t change all that much.”
He said only properties that allow for major development potential, such as building a high-rise, will see a significant increase.
He pointed to the properties on Fraser Highway that have been owned by Bucci Developments since the mid-1970s. One is assessed at around $6.5 million and the other at $9.6 million, but they are “worth a lot more based on their density and development potential.”
In recent years, Bucci has been planning a major redevelopment just east of what is being presented by TransLink as a future SkyTrain station near 160th Street. The vision includes condo towers that are 30 storeys high and an extensive, mixed-use hub. But for now, the Bucci sites are occupied by a pair of small, low-slung, used-car dealerships.
“Overall, any properties that are on the corners of the SkyTrain stops will probably see the largest increase and demand from prospective investors/developers,” said Murray.
Bucci Developments hopes to get shovels in the ground in two years, said Peter Kiidumae, Bucci Investment Corp.’s director for asset management.
“There is no doubt (the SkyTrain) will impact real estate values and encourage more intensive development as evidenced by the increased interest of investors and developers enquiring about purchasing our properties.”
Langley City Mayor Val van den Broek said a final draft of its new official community plan and zoning bylaw updates was signed off in June, and these will go to a third reading for approval.
“This will be an entire revitalization,” she said. “We want (our transit-oriented developments) to be pre-planned. We want to say to developers, ‘This is what we want here.’”
SkyTrain in Surrey. (File photo: Tom Zytaruk)
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