The trouble with TransLink, they promise the moon and the stars, but in the end, deliver the same old user unfriendly, expensive transit planning, ever hoping for different results.
Case in point, TransLink’s new CEO, from Baltimore. Well good old Zwei sent an email to Baltimore and what I got back was would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
You are about to get a new CEO of Translink in the person of Kevin Quinn. this is a good news/bad news situation. Good news is we are rid of him, bad news you are getting him.
Mr Quinn may be the nicest yes man you will ever meet. he is very personable and friendly but have yet to actually see him in 6yrs have an opinion of his own and if he has any use for light rail he has kept it well hidden.
Hopefully you will have better luck than Baltimore, ridership is off (before pandemic) 2% year over year since he took over.
Well, we can predict the outcome of Mr. Quinn’s appointment as CEO, he will be as useless as the last. With TransLink, things never change, except for mediocrity.
Letters: Just more poor transit planning
So the TransLink planning pantomime continues
Editor:
I see TransLink’s traveling dog and pony show has reached Delta, promising visions of rapid transit to cure our transportation needs. Well a few weeks back, they promised the same for the North Shore.
TransLink’s big problem is that their six-figure salaried bureaucracy (numbering almost 1,000) doesn’t really know what they are talking about, as well, slept through their math classes. Those billions of dollars for rapid transit add up, something well-heeled civil servants don’t like talking about, like the much needed $3 billion rehab for the Expo and Millennium Lines.
The base cost to extend SkyTrain (not including cars), is now over $200 million/km; triple it for subway construction!
TransLink can’t even define rapid transit and misinforms everyone what rapid transit is. Modern light rail is not rapid transit, but could be and rapid bus is nowhere close to be rapid transit and is merely a limited stop express bus.
Light rail is a modern tram, which operates not on streets like a streetcar, but on a reserved or dedicated rights-of-way, thus obtaining operational characteristics of rapid transit, but at far cheaper cost. LRT made SkyTrain rapid transit obsolete by the mid 1980’s, but no one told our politicians that as they squander billions of dollars on what are no more than prestige projects, for photo-ops at election time.
So the TransLink planning pantomime continues, selling snake oil to gullible politicians and the public, yet I have not heard one politician calling TransLink out on their expensive traveling road show and calling it for what it is, pixie dust and sparkle pony planning.
The current hype and Hoopla about driverless cars, tend to be a little naive on the facts.
Zwei remembers a meeting with TransLink Planners, back in the early 2000’s, where i was shown videos about guided and driverless buses.
Embarrassingly for TransLink I knew more about the subject than they; I knew that autonomous bus could operate, but in revenue service many severe problems arose.
History has shown that guided and/or autonomous buses have not fared well, being extremely problematic in operation.
China bought the now obsolete technology and tried to sell it to the gullible rubes in North America. The “trackless tram” was all the rage in the media for about six months and even those who should have known better, such as university professors, jumped on the autonomous bus band wagon.
Well, except for Facebook, where “johnny come lately types”, extols the virtues of the driverless bus, those in the know, just chuckled and quietly thought;
“There is a sucker born every minute.”
Driverless cars, buses and commercial vehicles will come eventually, but for now I am not holding my breathe.
The Costly Pursuit of Self-Driving Cars Continues On. And On. And On.
Many in Silicon Valley promised that self-driving cars would be a common
sight by 2021. Now the industry is resetting expectations and settling
in for years of more work.
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By Cade Metz
May 24, 2021
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It was seven years ago when Waymo discovered that spring blossoms made its self-driving cars get twitchy on the brakes. So did soap bubbles and road flares.
New tests, in years of tests, revealed more and more distractions for the driverless cars. Their road skills improved, but matching the competence of human drivers was elusive. The cluttered roads of America, it turned out, were a daunting place for a robot.
Slick graphics help sell the idea of autonomous cars. The reality is somewhat different.
The wizards of Silicon Valley said people would be commuting to work in self-driving cars by now. Instead, there have been court fights, injuries and deaths, and tens of billions of dollars spent on a frustratingly fickle technology that some researchers say is still years from becoming the industry’s next big thing
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Now the pursuit of autonomous cars is undergoing a reset. Companies like Uber and Lyft, worried about blowing through their cash in pursuit of autonomous technology, have tapped out. Only the deepest-pocketed outfits like Waymo, which is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet; auto giants; and a handful of start-ups are managing to stay in the game.
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Late last month, Lyft sold its autonomous vehicle unit to a Toyota subsidiary, Woven Planet, in a deal valued at $550 million. Uber offloaded its autonomous vehicle unit to another competitor in December. And three prominent self-driving start-ups have sold themselves to companies with much bigger budgets over the past year.
The tech and auto giants could still toil for years on their driverless car projects. Each will spend an additional $6 billion to $10 billion before the technology becomes commonplace — sometime around the end of the decade, according to estimates from Pitchbook, a research firm that tracks financial activity. But even that prediction might be overly optimistic.
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“This is a transformation that is going to happen over 30 years and possibly longer,” said Chris Urmson, an early engineer on the Google self-driving car project before it became the Alphabet business unit called Waymo. He is now chief executive of Aurora, the company that acquired Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit.
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So what went wrong? Some researchers would say nothing — that’s how science works. You can’t entirely predict what will happen in an experiment. The self-driving car project just happened to be one of the most hyped technology experiments of this century, occurring on streets all over the country and run by some of its highest-profile companies.
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That hype drew billions of dollars of investments, but it set up unrealistic expectations. In 2015, the electric carmaker Tesla’s billionaire boss, Elon Musk, said fully functional self-driving cars were just two years away. More than five years later, Tesla cars offered simpler autonomy designed solely for highway driving. Even that has been tinged with controversy after several fatal crashes (which the company blamed on misuse of the technology).
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Perhaps no company experienced the turbulence of driverless car development more fitfully than Uber. After poaching 40 robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon University and acquiring a self-driving truck start-up for $680 million in stock, the ride-hailing company settled a lawsuit from Waymo, which was followed by a guilty plea from a former executive accused of stealing intellectual property. A pedestrian in Arizona was killed in a crash with one of its driverless cars. In the
end, Uber essentially paid Aurora to acquire its self-driving unit.
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But for the deepest-pocketed companies, the science, they hope, continues to advance one improved ride at a time. In October, Waymo reached a notable milestone: It started the world’s first “fully autonomous” taxi service. In the suburbs of Phoenix, anyone can now ride in a minivan with no driver behind the wheel. But that does not mean the company will immediately deploy its technology in other parts of the country.
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Dmitri Dolgov, who recently took over as Waymo’s co-chief executive after the departure of John Krafcik, an automobile industry veteran, said the company considered its Arizona service a test case. Based on what it has learned in Arizona, he said, Waymo is building a new version of its self-driving technology that it will eventually deploy in other places and other kinds of vehicles, including long-haul trucks.
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The suburbs of Phoenix are particularly well suited to driverless cars. Streets are wide, pedestrians are few, and there is almost no rain or snow. Waymo supports its autonomous vehicles with remote technicians and roadside assistance crews who can help get cars out of a tight spot, either via the internet or in person.
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“Autonomous vehicles can be deployed today, in certain situations,” said Elliot Katz, a former lawyer who counseled many of the big autonomous vehicle companies before launching a start-up, Phantom Auto, that provides software for remotely assisting and operating self-driving vehicles when they get stuck in difficult positions. “But you still need a human in the loop.”
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Self-driving tech is not yet nimble enough to reliably handle the variety of situations human drivers encounter each day. It can usually handle suburban Phoenix, but it can’t duplicate the human chutzpah needed for merging into the Lincoln Tunnel in New York or dashing for an offramp on Highway 101 in Los Angeles.
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“You have to peel back every layer before you can see the next layer” of challenges for the technology, said Nathaniel Fairfield, a Waymo software engineer who has worked on the project since 2009, describing some of the distractions faced by the cars. “Your car has to be pretty good at driving before you can really get it into the situations where it handles the next most challenging thing.” Like Waymo, Aurora is now developing autonomous trucks as well as passenger vehicles. No company has deployed trucks without safety drivers behind the wheel, but Mr. Urmson and others argue that autonomous trucks will make it to market faster than anything designed to transport regular consumers.
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Long-haul trucking does not involve passengers who might not be forgiving of twitchy brakes. The routes are also simpler. Once you master one stretch of highway, Mr. Urmson said, it is easier to master another. But even driving down a long, relatively straight highway is extraordinarily difficult. Delivering dinner orders across a small neighborhood is an even greater challenge. “This is one of the biggest technical challenges of our generation,” said Dave Ferguson, another early engineer on the Google team who is now president of Nuro, a company focused on delivering groceries, pizzas and other goods.
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Mr. Ferguson said many thought self-driving technology would improve like an internet service or a smartphone app. But robotics is a lot more challenging. It was wrong to claim anything else.
The first application of autonomous vehicles will be for niche applications, such a delivery vehicles in city centres.
“If you look at almost every industry that is trying to solve really, really difficult technical challenges, the folks that tend to be involved are a little bit crazy and little bit optimistic,” he said. “You need to have that optimism to get up every day and bang your head against the wall to try to solve a problem that has never been solved,
and it’s not guaranteed that it ever will be solved.” Uber and Lyft aren’t entirely giving up on driverless cars. Even though it may not help the bottom line for a long time, they still want to deploy autonomous vehicles by teaming up with the companies that are still working on the technology. Lyft now says autonomous rides could
arrive by 2023.
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“These cars will be able to operate on a limited set of streets under a limited set of weather conditions at certain speeds,” said Jody Kelman, an executive at Lyft. “We will very safely be able to deploy these cars, but they won’t be able to go that many places.”
Cade Metz is a technology correspondent, covering artificial
intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality, and other
emerging areas. He previously wrote for Wired magazine. @cademetz
A version of this article appears in print on May 25, 2021, Section B,
Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: It Turns Out It’s a
This post is pertinent today with the $4.6 billion, 12.8 km extensions to the Expo and Millennium Lines.
One of great criticisms of old Zwei back in the day, was the claim that the Evergreen line was the unbuilt portion of the Millennium Line, which was piggybacked on the previous light rail plans for the Broadway/Lougheed Rapid Transit project. As the ART Millennium line was far more expensive to build than LRT, the project was divided into parts, with the Evergreen Line being the second part of the project.
Every jeer and barb made, basically pointed to the fact that the Evergreen Line was an independent transit line and anything else was, to put politely, talking through one’s hat.
Well today, there is no Evergreen Line, just the Millennium Line, which caters to traffic flows that only justifies a married pair of Mk.2 trains.
It is now very apparent that TransLink’s $4.6 billion extensions to the Expo and Millennium lines, including the 5.8 km Broadway subway, light-metro again, is being built to act as a driver for increased density, which in the end not provide the ridership to justify the expense.
The huge increased density, in the form of high rise condos, built around the Millennium Line in the past ten years, has not translated into transit ridership. The 2-car trains used on the Millennium Line certainly indicates light ridership and I am afraid the same will be true of the Broadway subway and the Fleetwood extension.
Just sayin.
Interesting news item, from all places, the SkyTrain friendly CKNW radio station.
VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980)
10/7/2011
Just as the mayors vote today on funding for the Evergreen Line, a report by the transportation commissioner says TransLink’s ridership predictions may just be wishful thinking.
The Province newspaper reports commissioner Martin Crilly wrote last week that the growth predictions for ridership on the proposed Evergreen Line appear somewhat optimistic, and may not be based on logic.
His skepticism stems from the Evergreen Line being built in the relatively low-density Tri-Cities area.
The problem I have with Mr. Crilly is that he is stuck in the density trap and seems to be of the school that massive densification is needed to justify “rapid transit“, while forgetting the fact that modern LRT being much cheaper to build, would require much less of his cherished density to operate economically.
Being soundly criticized and booted from many so-called transit friendly blogs because I advocate a simple message that “Transit is to move people not create density.”, I have been amazed at the nonsense being passed as good transit philosophy.
Development will happen along transit lines but the massive densification advocated by the rapid transit/SkyTrain types maybe counter productive, especially if the populace of the newly densified areas do not work nor commute anywhere near where the rapid transit lines go and take the car instead.
The (N)Evergreen Line is a forgotten spur line of the original Broadway-Lougheed LRT projects and was omitted because we could only afford a much smaller SkyTrain Millennium Line (same was true of the original Expo Line which originally terminated in New Westminster and was much smaller than the original 3 line LRT plan) and now another $1.4 billion is needed to complete it.
The problem with the Millennium Line is that TransLink has been telling ‘Porkies’ about ridership all along, first exposed by Gerald Fox’s 2008 letter –
From: A North-American Rail Expert (Gerald Fox)
Subject: Comments on the Evergreen Line aBusiness Case
Date: February 6, 2008
Greetings:
The Evergreen Line Report made me curious as to how TransLink could justify continuing to expand SkyTrain, when the rest of the world is building LRT. So I went back and read the alleged Business Caseai (BC) report in a little more detail. I found several instances where the analysis had made assumptions that were inaccurate, or had been manipulated to make the case for SkyTrain. If the underlying assumptions are inaccurate, the conclusions may be so too. Specifically:
Capacity. A combination of train size and headway. For instance, TriMet’s new Low floor LRVs, arriving later this year, have a rated capacity of 232 per car, or 464 for a 2- car train. (Of course one must also be sure to use the same standee density when comparing car capacity. I don’t know if that was done here). In Portland we operate a frequency of 3 minutes downtown in the peak hour, giving a one way peak hour capacity of 9,280. By next year we will have two routes through downtown, which will eventually load both ways, giving a theoretical peak hour rail capacity of 37,000 into or out of downtown. Of course we also run a lot of buses.
The new Seattle LRT system which opens next year, is designed for 4-car trains, and thus have a peak hour capacity of 18,560. (but doesnai??i??t need this yet, and so shares the tunnel with buses). The Business Case analysis assumes a capacity of 4,080 for LRT, on the Evergreen Line which it states is not enough, and compares it to SkyTrain capacity of 10400.!
Speed. The analysis states the maximum LRT speed is 60 kph. (which would be correct for the street sections) But most LRVs are actually designed for 90 kph. On the Evergreen Line, LRT could operate at up to 90 where conditions permit, such as in the tunnels, and on protected ROW. Most LRT systems pre-empt most intersections, and so experience little delay at grade crossings. (Our policy is that the trains stop only at stations, and seldom experience traffic delays. It seems to work fine, and has little effect on traffic.) There is another element of speed, which is station access time. At-grade stations have less access time. This was overlooked in the analysis.
Also, on the NW alignment, the SkyTrain proposal uses a different, faster, less-costly alignment to LRT proposal. And has 8 rather than 12 stations. If LRT was compared on the alignment now proposed for SkyTrain, it would go faster, and cost less than the Business Case report states!
Cost. Here again, there seems to be some hidden biases. As mentioned above, on the NW Corridor, LRT is costed on a different alignment, with more stations. The cost difference between LRT and SkyTrain presented in the Business Case report is therefore misleading. If they were compared on identical alignments, with the same number of stations, and designed to optimize each mode, the cost advantage of LRT would be far greater. I also suspect that the basic LRT design has been rendered more costly by requirements for tunnels and general design that would not be found on more cost-sensitive LRT projects.
Then there are the car costs. Last time I looked, the cost per unit of capacity was far higher for SkyTrain. Also,it takes about 2 SkyTrain cars to match the capacity of one LRV. And the grade-separated SkyTrain stations are far most costly and complex than LRT stations. Comparing 8 SkyTrain stations with 12 LRT stations also helps blur the distinction.
Ridership. Is a function of many factors. The Business Case report would have you believe that type of rail mode alone, makes a difference (It does in the bus vs rail comparison, according to the latest US federal guidelines). But, on the Evergreen Line, I doubt it. What makes a difference is speed, frequency (but not so much when headways get to 5 minutes), station spacing and amenity etc. Since the speed, frequency and capacity assumptions used in the Business Case are clearly inaccurate, the ridership estimates cannot be correct either. There would be some advantage if SkyTrain could avoid a transfer. If the connecting system has capacity for the extra trains. But the case is way overstated.
And nowhere is it addressed whether the Evergreen Line, at the extremity of the system, has the demand for so much capacity and, if it does, what that would mean on the rest of the system if feeds into?
Innuendos about safety, and traffic impacts, seem to be a big issue for SkyTrain proponents, but are solved by the numerous systems that operate new LRT systems (i.e., they cana’ be as bad as the SkyTrain folk would like you to believe).
I’ve no desire to get drawn into the Vancouver transit wars, and, anyway, most of the rest of the world has moved on. To be fair, there are clear advantages in keeping with one kind of rail technology, and in through-routing service at Lougheed. But, eventually, Vancouver will need to adopt lower-cost LRT in its lesser corridors, or else limit the extent of its rail system. And that seems to make some TransLink people very nervous.
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 taxpayer’s interests are protected. No SkyTrain project has ever passed this scrutiny in the US.
Victoria
But the BIG DEAL for Victoria is: If the Business Case analysis were corrected to fix at least some of the errors outlined above, the COST INCREASE from using SkyTrain on the Evergreen Line will be comparable to the TOTALCOST of a modest starter line in Victoria. This needs to come to the attention of the Province. Victoria really does deserve better. Please share these thoughts as you feel appropriate.
As one can see, TransLink’s business case is on very shaky ground and now Mr. Crilly is sounding alarm bells on the project. The problem with the Evergreen Line is that for transit customers wishing to go to Vancouver, the West Coast Express is a faster and seamless ride and those who wish to commute elsewhere, other than Metrotown or Lougheed Mall, will need to inconveniently transfer to another SkyTrain or bus.
Like the Canada Line, for many, the Evergreen Line will be inconvenient and taking the car will just be a better option.
Until we design our regional rail and transit system to cater to customer needs, instead of academic, bureaucratic and political needs, taking the car will be the option for those who can afford to, leaving the rest of the transit system to decay, mainly being for the poor, the elderly and students. Why should the taxpayer ante up two cents more a litre for that?
A never used section on the Belgium Charleroi pre-metro.
Over optimistic ridership numbers, doomed some completed lines to rust away, never seeing a paying customer.
An accident has happened on the fully automated (driverless) Advanced Rapid Transit (ART) system in Kuala Lumpur.
The Kelana Jaya line is a twin of Vancouver’s millennium line and uses MK.2 cars.
Being fully automatic, this accident should not have happened, but it did and should pose serious questions about safety on Vancouver’s SkyTrain light-metro system, especially the now aging Expo Line.
Kuala Lumpur metro train crash injures more than 200 passengers
More than 200 people have been injured in a train crash in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
A metro train carrying 213 passengers collided with an empty one in a tunnel near the Petronas Towers, at about 20:45 (12:45 GMT), police said.
The empty train had just been repaired, and was going in the opposite direction on the same track as the full one.
District police chief Mohamad Zainal Abdullah told reporters there was no sign of foul play.
“We are still investigating the incident… but we suspect that perhaps there was a miscommunication from the trains’ operation control centre,” he said.
Of the 213 injured, 47 people are in a serious condition while the other 166 have sustained minor injuries, he added.
Images and footage posted on social media in the hours after the incident showed bleeding passengers lying on the floor of the train carriage, which was covered in broken glass.
image copyrightEPA
image captionPrime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has ordered an investigation into the incident
In a statement posted on Facebook, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the crash, which happened near the city’s busy KLCC station, was “serious”.
He added that he had asked the train operator Prasarana Malaysia Berhad and the country’s transport minister “to conduct an in-depth probe to find out the cause of the accident”.
Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong said in a separate statement that the crash was the metro system’s first major accident in the 23 years it had been operating.
This has just happened and file it in “I told you so” department”.
When things go wrong, they go wrong very badly.
When aerial tramways fail, the result is catastrophic.
Those who promote exotic transit modes do not think about safety or the constant maintenance needed to keep the transit mode safe.
A recent comment by Mr. Cow has all of a sudden become very relevant:
The subject came up about the possibilities of urban sky gondola technology, like the planned one to Simon Fraser University. This technology doesn’t move a lot of people unless you spend a lot, on a truly grand and significantly complex 4 plus cable operation (2 or more suspension cables traveling in each direction). The huge operating and maintenance costs as well as the rate at which Translink wants to subsidize the operation has never really been made clear, I promise you it won’t ever make an operational profit. I guess the public is going to have to talk with ski resort operators to find out just how pricey these systems truly are.
And then, we have our resident cable car cable cutter, who has sabotaged the Sea to Sky cable car twice in as many years.
Do we really want to spend $300 million for a aerial tramway to SFU, with yet undetermined operating costs, instead of spending $30,000 for good snow tires for buses?
Italy cable car fall: Nine dead after accident near Lake Maggiore
image copyrightHandout via Reuters
image captionEleven people were on the Stresa-Alpine-Mottarone cable car when it crashed
Nine people have been killed after a cable car fell on a mountain near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy on Sunday.
The accident happened on a service transporting passengers from the resort town of Stresa up the nearby Mottarone mountain in the region of Piedmont.
An image posted on social media by emergency services showed the wreckage of the car lying in a wooded area.
Officials say two children were taken from the scene by helicopter to a Turin hospital.
They are the only survivors of 11 passengers who had been on board when the cable car crashed, a spokesman for Italy’s alpine rescue service confirmed to the Reuters news agency.
Officials said a call to emergency services came just after 12:00 local time (11:00 BST) on Sunday.
Walter Milan, another alpine rescue spokesman, told RaiNews24 television that the cable car was left “crumpled” after falling from a high height.
The cause of the incident remains unclear, but local reports suggest the cable carrying it may have failed about 300m (984ft) from the top of the mountain.
image copyright@emergenzavvf
image captionEmergency services shared an image of the deadly crash on Sunday
image copyrightHandout Via Reuters
image captionPolice were among emergency service rescuers working at the scene
The website for the Stresa-Alpine-Mottarone cable car said it usually takes 20 minutes to transport passengers 1,491m above sea level.
Mottarone is situated between Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta, offering scenic views of the region for tourists.
The cable car service had recently reopened following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions, Reuters news agency reported.
If anyone who has traveled into the upper Fraser Valley, especially the Chilliwack/Sardis/Vedder areas and seen the huge growth and the associated congestion must realize that a rail connection from Vancouver to Chilliwack, via North Delta, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, Vedder, Sardis and Chilliwack is most needed.
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Rail for the Valley , over a decade ago, engaged Leewood Projects (UK) to do a viability study on using the former BC Electric interurban route. Released in 2010, the Leewood Study found that establishing a passenger rail service from Vancouver was both doable and affordable.
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Rail for the Valley also understands the desirability of the passenger service to reach downtown Vancouver, giving the transit customer a seamless journey from the upper Fraser Valley to Vancouver proper!
The following, from the Leewwwod Study gives the estimated cost in 2010 and updated to 2021 dollars.
Stage 1 Phase 1- Chilliwack to Scott Road [Diesel/hybrid option] summary capital cost.
CAD $491,819,424.00 (2021 CAD $594,847,133.00) or CAD $5.02 m per km (2021 CAD$6.07m per km)
For total 138 km route, Vancouver Central to Rosedale
CAD$ 998,519,424 (2021 CAD $1,207,692,027.00) or CAD $7.2 million per km (2021 CAD $8.71 million per km)
So let us compare: $1.7 billion to built a 7 km extension of the Expo line to Fleetwood in Surrey and a$1.3 billion for a 130 km regional passenger service connecting Vancouver to North Delta, Surrey, Cloverdale, Langley, Abbotsford, Sardis/Vedder and Chilliwack: Which would give a better transit service? Which one would reduce auto traffic on the #1 highway through the Fraser Valley?
It seems the taxpayer knows, the question is, do the politicians?
southfrasercommunityrail.ca image
Poll says 88% of South Fraser adults want passenger trains between Surrey, Chilliwack
The poll was conducted by Research Co. on behalf of the South Fraser Community Rail Project
A new poll suggests 88 per cent of the adults residing in six communities south of the Fraser River would like to see hydrogen-powered trains provide daily passenger service along a re-activated rail corridor in this region.
The poll was conducted by Research Co. on behalf of the South Fraser Community Rail Project. Mario Canseco, president of Research Co., said 83 per cent of respondents in North Surrey, 85 per cent in North Delta, 82 per cent in the Township of Langley, 76 per cent in the City of Langley, 93 per cent in Abbotsford and 89 per cent in Chilliwack gave the concept a thumb’s up.
The trains as proposed would run along 99 kilometres of publicly owned line known as the Interurban Corridor, from Scott Road Station to Chilliwack, connecting 16 cities and communities, eight First Nations communities, Abbotsford International Airport, 14 post-secondary institutions, and industrial parks along the way.
Today the line is used only for freight. The passenger train project would take about three years to get underway, at an estimated cost of $1.38 billion, and significantly reduce traffic congestion on Highway 1, by an estimated 49 per cent.
Research Co. polled 800 adults between on May 5 to May 8, with a margin of error at +/- 3.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20. The respondents were asked two questions. The first was “From what you have just seen, read and heard about the South Fraser Community Rail project, do you support or oppose it?”
Four per cent said they are not sure, seven per cent opposed it and 88 per cent supported it.
The second question was “If the South Fraser Community Rail project is reactivated to connect 16 cities and communities, eight First Nations communities, 14 post-secondary institutions, industrial parks and the Abbotsford International Airport, how likely are you to use it, either for work or leisure?”
Six per cent responded not sure, 16 per cent not too likely or not likely at all, and 78 per cent responded very likely or moderately likely.
In 1992, the region woke up to a GVRD study that exposed the deceit of many politicians of the day who claimed that SkyTrain operated without subsidy. The truth was just the Expo line to New Westminster was heavily subsidized, more than the combined diesel and trolley buses!
I add this because the old TransLink propaganda machine is up and running claiming “because SkyTrain is driverless, it’s cheap to operate.”
In 1993 the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), now known as metro Vancouver and the province of British Columbia released a report entitled “Transport 2021“, part of the 2021 study was the study, “The Cost of Transporting People in the British Columbia Lower Mainland“.
On page 15 of the “The Cost of Transporting People in the British Columbia Lower Mainland” study is a chart showing the breakdown of financial studies for public transit in 1991. The chart showed that the total subsidy for SkyTrain was $157.6 million. The huge subsidy for SkyTrain sent howls of “shock and disbelief” from BC Transit and the SkyTrain lobby, which until then maintained the myth that SkyTrain operated without subsidy and in fact suggested that SkyTrain paid its operating costs, a myth that remains today.
In early 2004, the late light rail campaigner, the late Des Turner, confirmed with TransLink that the annual SkyTrain subsidy, with the opening of the Millennium Line, surpassed $200 million a year! Alas, Mr Turner has since passed away and his meticulous records have been lost to the ages.
With the $100 million concessionaire’s fee for the Canada Line and adding provincial debt servicing charges for the metro, the annual subsidy for the mini-metro system has now surpassed $300 million!
When politicians or media types claim that “SkyTrain operates without subsidy“, or “pays its operating costs“, just remind those cheer-leading for mini-metro of “The Cost of Transporting People in the British Columbia Lower Mainland” and that the annual subsidy for mini-metro has surpassed $300 million annually! One can also add, that the $300 million pus annual subsidy has hamstrung financially TransLink and its public transit operations.
The following is reproduced from”The Cost of Transporting People in the British Columbia Lower Mainland“.
Exhibit III-1
Breakdown of financial subsidies for public transit in 1991 ($millions)
For all those who have deluded themselves that SkyTrain will be extended via tunnel, under Burrard Inlet, think again.
TransLink has been spinning a lot of stories about transit expansion, but every story ignores a fundamental fact – funding.
TransLink’s well oiled propaganda machine, which includes the mainstream media and “Hive”, all talk the big talk but ignore funding.
So, the next time someone claims that SkyTrain will be built here or built there, ask about “funding” and the silence following will be self explanatory.
Quebec City tunnel beneath St. Lawrence River to cost $7B, take 10 years to build
by The Canadian Press
Posted May 17, 2021
Quebec Premier Francois Legault says a tunnel to be built under the St. Lawrence River connecting Quebec City and Lévis, Que., will cost $7 billion and take 10 years to complete.
The tunnel was a major campaign promise for Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec, which enjoys strong support in the provincial capital and promised to begin the project within its first mandate.
Legault told reporters today the final price tag could rise by as much as 35 per cent when borrowing and other unexpected construction-related costs are factored in.
The 8.3-kilometre tunnel will have a lane dedicated for electric buses and will become the third road link connecting Quebec City to the south shore.
Legault says construction is expected to begin in 2022, the same year as the next provincial election.
The tunnel is the second major project announced this year by Legault for the provincial capital, following a $3.3-billion, 20-kilometre tramway system that is expected to be completed in 2027.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 17, 2021.
It has all been said before the many issues that plague the Broadway subway but never keep a politician from a grand photo-op to show the public how politicians squander money.
Liberal and NDP cabinet members, with the federal Liberals election ready, will attend, eager for the public too see how they squander taxpayer’s money and they are well taught in the issues of shoveling money off the back of a truck.
The following politicians may attend, most virtually.
Hey say what you want but make sure they spell my name right:
* The Honourable Catherine McKenna, federal Minister of Infrastructure and Communities
* Rob Fleming, B.C.’s Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure
* George Heyman, B.C.’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy
* Bowinn Ma, B.C.’s Minister of State for Infrastructure
And of course, from TransLink the mastermind of this scam.
* Gigi Chen-Kuo, interim CEO of TransLink
Regional mayors may also be there, desperate for a chance of a photo-op, plus assorted bureaucrats and other spin doctors that always follow the politcal train.
The media will attend as this sod turning is to be a pure photo-op with with only “puff” questions asked. Of course, the provincial government, the City of Vancouver, Metro Vancouver, the Mayor’s Council on Transit made sure the subway would be a reality by eliminating any hint of public involvement in the planning process.
You are getting a subway, whether you damn well want it on or not!
The city empowered goons to shout down people at what few meeting there were and scaring the elderly into submission. This how things are done in Metro Vancouver and British Columbia today. The bicycle lobby, latter day Quislings, sung hosannas about the subway, waiting for their promised bike lanes.
Prime Minster Trudeau’s new Spanish friend, Acciona, finding jobs for his former SNC-Lavalin friends, is the engineering firm of choice. Acconia has a lot of experience with costly BC mega projects including Site C (with a $9.4 billion cost overrun), the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant ($500 million+ cost overrun), the Pattullo Bridge (construction yet to begin, but cost overruns expected) and now for the Broadway Subway (estimated cost, $2.83 billion, for 5.8 km of line. Actual cost expected to increase past $3 billion).
A cost overrun here, a cost overrun there, politicians don’t care, just make sure it is a good photo-op.
Here are the questions the mainstream media have not or will not ask.
How many “new to transit” customers are estimated will use the subway?
The 99 B-Line bus has a maximum capacity of 2,000 pphpd, yet in North America, subways are only built when ridership exceeds 15,000 pphpd on a transit route, why an almost $3 billion subway?
As it turns out that Broadway isn’t the busiest transit route in Canada and TransLink only claims it is “our most congested bus route“, isn’t the congestion on Broadway a management issue and not an almost $3 billion engineering issue?
Transit customers using the Expo line, must now transfer twice, if they are going past Arbutus (Expo Line transfer to Millennium Line and Millennium Line transfer to the B-Line), most times savings claimed by the new subway, in fact will not exist because of the new transfer. How many transit customers will stop using transit because of this new transfer?
What bus routes will be changed, forcing customers onto the subway? Like the Canada Line’s P-3 concessionaires (SNC Lavalin & the Caisse De Depot) inked a secret agreement with TransLink not allowing direct bus service from South of the Fraser (Richmond, South Delta & Surrey) to continue to downtown Vancouver and forcing Vancouver bound customers to transfer to the Canada line at Bridgeport Station.
As the new density added, including high rent towers and high rise condo’s along Broadway, demolishing much present affordable housing, will this only add to the renoviction housing crisis in metro Vancouver?
It is estimated that the subway will add about $40 million more annually to TransLink’s operating costs and on a route mainly used by UBC students, faculty and workers using their dollar a day U-Pass, ride at will transit pass, will not this added annual operating cost be funded in the form of new taxes, fares and reduced services elsewhere?
Photo-ops and puff questions will be the order of the day, business as usual in British Columbia.
This is a new one, thin wheels and wide track causing problems with Honolulu’s light metro horror show.
What was a $5.3 billion project in 2010 has now turned into a $12.4 billion project in 2021; that is $15 billion Canadian dollars! Put another way, the HART light metro in Honolulu costs as much as the total cost for Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain light-metro!
Just gotta love politicians and their gadgetbahnen.
The same is true in metro Vancouver and the beloved SkyTrain light-metro system where the system costs three times more than if LRT were to be used.
The only difference between metro Vancouver and Honolulu is that the American media do investigative reporting on transit and Metro Vancouver’s mainstream media do not.
HI: Honolulu’s rail project plagued with wheels too thin and tracks too wide
The trains built for Honolulu’s troubled rail project have wheels that are too narrow for the track, and solving the problem will lead to more issues or more delays.
Dan Nakaso
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser (TNS)
May 10th, 2021
May 7—The trains built for Honolulu’s troubled rail project have wheels that are too narrow for the track, and solving the problem will lead to more issues or more delays.
Replacing the wheels will add too much weight to the trains. Replacing the tracks would push the timeline back a year.
Like many aspects of the rail project, there is no easy solution ahead.
Lori Kahikina, interim CEO and executive director of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, told HART’s Project Oversight Committee on Thursday that the wheels are about a half-inch too narrow at the “frogs, ” the places where rail tracks cross.
One option would be to replace the wheels with wider ones. But Kahikina said thicker wheels would make the trains overweight.
Replacing the tracks with narrower ones would set the project back at least a year, Kahikina told HART board member Kika Bukoski.
“One solution that is being contemplated right now is maybe changing the wheels on all of the cars, ” Kahikina said. “It’s a faster solution and a cheaper solution, but one drawback to changing the wheels is that you’re adding weight to the cars, and so they’re going to go over the threshold. So you have to subtract weight somewhere. … If you have to change the track, that’s estimated to be maybe one year just to manufacture the new track and ship it over here, whereas the wheels could be much quicker. I’m sorry. I don’t have a good answer, Kika, just because the solution hasn’t been determined yet.”
Asked whether the wheel problem will delay turning rail operations over to the city, Kahikina told Bukoksi, “This solution will delay that.”
The too-thin wheels are in addition to other problems at the frogs, including subpar welding and sandblasting that created cracks.
The 20-mile, 21-station project is now budgeted to cost $12.449 billion, is not scheduled for completion until March 2031 and has no easy away to plug a $3.577 billion shortfall.
Kahikina said rail officials and Mayor Rick Blangiardi are expecting to present federal officials with a plan in the next few months outlining how to build rail all the way to Ala Moana Center and make up for the budget shortfall.
But Kahikina did not rule out the possibility of halting construction “somewhere in downtown.”
Bukoski asked Kahikina whether the issue of stopping rail at Middle Street—4 miles shy of its Ala Moana Center final destination—came up during a quarterly meeting with the Federal Transit Administration this week that included Blangiardi.
Kahikina responded that Blangiardi is aware of the funding gap, but made no mention to the FTA about stopping short of Ala Moana Center, the state’s busiest transit hub.
Sometime around July or August, the city expects to return to the FTA “with a plan on how we’re going to get there, ” Kahikina said. “Mayor is committed to getting all the way to Ala Moana Shopping Center.”
In the meantime there is hope that general excise and transit accommodation taxes, which were crippled during the COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of tourism, will return “higher than expected ” and provide needed revenue, Kahikina said.
“Middle Street is not going to work, ” she said. “If we could get somewhere in downtown, I don’t know, we’d have to look at that. We’d have to look at the different scenarios, and then HART is trying to put together a plan in conjunction with the mayor and then talk about this. And once we have a plan going forward, myself and mayor will go to FTA and speak to them about it.”
The question of stopping construction at Middle Street continued to hover over HART on Thursday.
Board member Roger Morton, who used to oversee the city’s TheBus system, said, “After spending billions of dollars to get where we’re at … Middle Street is not as good. … We still have that tremendous traffic congestion. … There’s no good way to get into town.”
Board member Joe Uno, who has been urging the board to discuss an unspecified “Plan C ” for the future of rail, pushed back.
“I don’t feel it’s (stopping at Middle Street ) been studied as a stand-alone alternative, ” Uno said. “Certain options probably have not been discussed or even thrown up on the table—things like having express buses run in express lanes and that type of thing.
“I think we should be prepared … and keep an open mind if it does come down that we’re requested to study those a little bit more in depth, ” Uno said.
The (N)Evergreen Line is a forgotten spur line of the original Broadway-Lougheed LRT projects and was omitted because we could only afford a much smaller SkyTrain Millennium Line (same was true of the original Expo Line which originally terminated in New Westminster and was much smaller than the original 3 line LRT plan) and now another $1.4 billion is needed to complete it.
image copyrightHandout via Reuters
image copyright@emergenzavvf
image copyrightHandout Via Reuters
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