Osaka, a Japanese city famous for rugby and trams.
Hankai Tramway Co., Ltd. (Hankai Denki Kidō Kabushiki Gaisha) is a company which owns two tramway lines in the cities of Osaka and Sakai, Osaka, Japan. The parent company is Nankai Electric Railway Co., Ltd.
Osaka prefecture’s last remaining streetcar, known affectionately as “Chin Den,” is still used by the people of Osaka today. There are two lines, the Hankai Line, which runs from Ebisucho, just steps away from Tsutenkaku to the area in front of Sakai’s Hamadera Station, and the Uemachi Line which links Tennoji Station with Sumiyoshi. The Hankai Line’s predecessor, run by the former Hankai Tramway Co., Ltd. began operation in 1911. Meanwhile, the Uemachi Line’s predecessor began running in 1900 under the operation of the Osaka Carriage and Tramway Co., Ltd. As the name suggests, at the time, horse-drawn carriages ran along the rails. Along the line is Abe no Seimei Shrine, said to be the birthplace of Abe no Seimei, a famous ‘onmyoji’ yin-yang diviner, as well as Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine, also known as Settsu Ichinomiya. Along the route, you’ll also find Akiko Yosano and Sen no Rikyu’s Sakai Plaza of Rikyu and Akiko, the Sakai City Traditional Crafts Museum, Nanshuji Temple, Daianji Temple, and many other famous temples. Also recommended is the one day “Teku Teku Kippu” free pass, ¥600 for adults and ¥300 for children.
The term choo-choo, used by ill informed opponents of light rail is standard across the country but really has no basis as LRT remains one of the most effective way to move people.
The problem in North America is that our universities are still mired in the 1950’s and all subjects pertaining to urban transport support almost mythical solutions. Canadian Universities to not teach modern public transportation, nor to they offer degrees in urban transport and sadly most graduates from Canadian universities, with engineering and planning degrees largely remain ignorant of light rail.
If modern public transport was taught at universities, there would not be the misinformed angst by Engineers and Planners.
Today, light rail, in its various forms from streetcars and trams, light rail itself or tramtrain is both the most popular and safest mode of public transport in the world. Built properly the modern tram has a proven record in attracting the motorist from the car: a record envied but not matched by those championing various proprietary and more expensive transit modes.
Alas, in Vancouver our blinkered and inept band of politicians, still living in the 1950’s, continue to pursue gadgetbahen, such as Movia Automatic Light Metro (was once called ICTS; ALRT; ALM; ART; Innovia) and not allow the much cheaper and more flexible LRT from being built.
Congratulations to Ottawa on its opening of light rail.
LRT’s early champions mark bittersweet victory
‘Cuckoo choo-choo’ finally arrives, but advocates ponder what might have been
CBC News ·
As politicians cut the ribbon on Ottawa’s Confederation Line on Saturday, there were dozens of public transit advocates quietly watching from the sidelines, knowing they’d all had some small part to play in the decades-long struggle for light rail in Ottawa.
“It’s hard to believe, but it has taken 30 years,” said longtime LRT proponent and former city councillor Peter Harris, who remembers when the crusade began.
Attitudes change. It’s just an evolution of thinking.– Peter Harris, former Ottawa city councillor“That was back in 1989. The region of Ottawa-Carleton had a whole different philosophy on transportation. They were sold on the bus transitway. They had plans in the works to do expressways for cars.”
Harris believes LRT’s arrival could have come much sooner if there had been the political will.
“I opposed the bus tunnel, and I was told at the time I should know better.”
Unsung heroes
David Jeanes is the former president of Transport 2000, later renamed Transport Action Canada. (CBC)
David Jeanes, another early proponent of commuter rail, helped launch Transport 2000, later renamed Transport Action Canada, and was front and centre in 1997 when the former regional council finally decided to explore the possibility of LRT.
“Despite the 22 years that have elapsed … I am pleased that we are finally getting a viable system,” Jeanes said. “It includes many elements that I have been one of the first to promote, including the airport extension, which I had proposed back in 2000, the Parkway-Richmond Road routing, which I proposed in 2008, the location of the tunnel portals which I proposed to the task force in 2007, and the retention of a Trillium Line maintenance facility in the vicinity of Walkley Yard.”
There were others along for the ride, Jeanes said, and they became known as Friends of the O-Train.
“Tim Lane, Michael Richardson and Steven Fanjoy were the driving force behind the Friends of the O-Train opposition to a combined bus transitway/LRT across downtown, instead promoting east-west electric LRT only in the core.”
Harris added to the list of citizens who helped shepherd in the LRT era in Ottawa.
“I teamed up with Michel Haddad and Greg Ross, and we formed Citizens for Alternative Transit,” Harris said. “We did our research and had a meeting right in regional headquarters. It had about 200 people. And CP Rail sent a representative, Bombardier, Siemens, on what we could do with rail, what had been done in other cities, and I was impressed with the number of people in Ottawa that really knew about rail.”
‘A cuckoo choo-choo’
While the movement had political allies including Coun. Pierre Bourque and Mayor Bob Chiarelli, there was no shortage of opponents, among them Knoxdale-Merivale Coun. Gord Hunter, who was concerned about the cost.
“I thought it was a cuckoo idea, a cuckoo choo-choo. It just didn’t make sense to be doing it,” he said.
The City of Gatineau was planning to expand its bus network despite the opportunity to tie into Ottawa’s proposed rail system, and the National Capital Commission said it had no interest in the plan. The head of Ottawa’s airport authority showed a similar lack of enthusiasm.
“Eventually the faces changed, people retired, the head of OC Transpo moved on,” Harris said. “And now the Ottawa airport is for rail. So things change. Attitudes change. It’s just an evolution of thinking. I think support was always there, but you had to somehow facilitate the discussion, and I think that’s what the volunteers and the community have done over the years.”
Still, Harris can’t help thinking about what might have been. Growing suburbs such as Barrhaven and Greely continue to grapple with gridlock, with no relief in sight. Scrapping the previous light rail plan, which cost the city millions in legal penalties, has put any solution even further out of reach.
“The route was already there. It would have been finished a long time ago,” Harris said. “In hindsight, I think that was a mistake. But there’s not much we can do about it now.”
The new 16.2 km tramway in Caen, France has opened after a nineteen month build.
Granted the new tramway has used the the previous trouble prone, 15.7 km, TVR rubber tire guided bus line, which opened in 20o2 and abandoned in 2017.
The Euro €260 million (CAD $373 million) tramway opened six weeks earlier than forecast and now carries over 64,000 passengers a day. The previous TVR guided bus system carried 42 thousand passengers a day.
The Caen tramway operates three Lines and serves 37 stations.
Twenty of the twenty-six, 33 metre Citidis 305 are used at one time, providing a 10 minute service throughout the day on the three line system.
The 26 vehicles cost €52 million ($73.3 million) and the OHE and substations were reused from the previous TVR operation.
And just to think, Metro Vancouver is spending $4.6 billion to build 12.8 km the dated Movia automatic Light metro system.
Footnotes: The author, Adrienne Tanner, was city editor at the Sun, a newspaper that prevented any real reporting of our regional transit issues and took orders from back east to report “SkyTrain” in a positive light. As well, there was little investigative reporting on SNC-Lavalin’s B.C. operations.
Detroit’s ALRT system officially called a People Mover (locally known as the “Mugger mover”) is a 4.73 km single track loop sold as an ICTS system. Today, only about 4,300 people a day use the system.
So, what else is new.
The decision to use the then renamed ALRT system instead of LRT on the first “rapid transit” line in Metro Vancouver was a crass politcal deal between then Social Credit Premier Bill Bennett, to obtain the famous Bill Davis Blue Machine, to win an election. The Social Credit Party, at the time, held a one seat majority.
The Big Blue Machine, a cadre of advertising, public relations, and polling professionals who advised the Ontario premier during campaigns and in government and in turn, the Bill Davis Conservative government sold BC the Ontario Crown Corporation Urban Transit Development Corporation’s obsolete and unsalable Intermediate Capacity Transit System, renamed Advanced Light Rail Transit for the benefit of the Premier of BC.
The Social Credit won the next election and we have been building with ALRT or its variants ever since, except for one exception, the Canada Line, which was a Gordon Campbell driven faux P-3 project.
The NDP were induced to build more of ALRT, now called ART with the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs, with a fabrication plant built in BC.
The Canada line was phony BC Liberal P-3 project which in the end, seemed more like a giveaway to SNC Lavalin and the Quebec Caisse.
Politics dictated that LRT was not to be used.
The Evergreen line was again ART because it was the unfinished portion of the millennium line, as the mini-=metro was far too expensive to build to the Tri Cities.
More politics, more squandering of money.
The present plan to spend $4.6 billion for 12.8 km of now called MALM (Movia Automatic Light Metro, the most recent renaming of the now obsolete ICTS/ALRT system) is all about civic penis envy, as the former NDP MP, and now Vision Lite mayor of Vancouver continues the city’s quest to build subways.
“Because subways make Vancouver world class.”
The argument that there is not the ridership to justify a subway anywhere in Metro Vancouver is politely ignored, unless one works for TransLink, then you are fired if you are an employee or sent to Coventry by the mainstream media.
Tut-tut, facts you say, pity.
The Mayor of Surrey want light metro because Vancouver has three and as to the cost, who cares, he is the civic potentate and believes he can stop the tide and light rail for that matter.
Zwei was told some years ago by a European transit specialist;
“Vancouver’s approach for planning regional transit was unprofessional and extremely expensive. From our viewpoint, it seems your politicians truly believe your streets are paved with gold.”
The LRT plans for metro Vancouver. For the cost of LRT from downtown Vancouver to Richmond, Lougheed Mall and Whally, the region got ALRT to New Westminster.
In late August, at the beginning of the pre-federal election hype, TransLink’s Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation is raising a second rallying cry for a traffic congestion relief fund.
The idea, originally pitched in the spring by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, makes infinite sense. It calls for the federal government to stop project-by-project transit investments and instead contribute $3.4-billion annually to a fund that would be divvied up among Canadian cities based on ridership.
For TransLink, it would amount to a contribution of $375-million each year.
That amount of stable funding would allow TransLink to deliver on long-term plans and essentially strip the politics out of transportation funding. While this may
sound reasonable by any measure, it’s unlikely to happen.
Transportation funding has forever been driven by politicians seeking headlines for projects in ridings they hope to keep or win. And that’s too bad because it leaves municipalities continuing to scrounge to pay for less glamorous transit necessities from other sources.
TransLink is required by law to plan 10 years ahead, which is far longer than any election cycle. The lengthy horizon is necessary because transportation projects are so expensive that funding for any region typically only allows for one or two at a time. The SkyTrain line from Surrey to Langley is expected to cost $3.12-billion; Vancouver’s train to the University of British Columbia could top $4-billion. The price tags on both projects are so high that so far, funding is only in place to build both to the half-way mark.
While they are being built, those plum projects for Surrey and Vancouver will suck up most of the available cash, leaving other Lower Mainland mayors waiting for their turn. The mayors are only willing to be patient if they can look at a long-term plan and see their projects moving higher in the lineup.
However, transit planning is predicated on contributions from municipal, provincial and federal levels of government. And when the higher levels of government jump the queue to pick and choose projects, long-term plans fall by the wayside.
This presents challenges for the less sexy necessities, like maintenance centres for transit lines — items which need funding, but don’t lend themselves to flashy ribbon-cuttings, says Johnathan Cote, who chairs the mayors’ council. And that’s where the trouble lies. Big ticket transit projects, like trains and SeaBuses, are big hits with the public – you might recall the lineups of riders keen to try out the Canada Line on opening day in 2010. It’s understandable that federal and provincial politicians, who always have their eye on the next election, like nothing better than to announce an attention-grabbing new train line.
Buses, which form the backbone of the transit system, don’t have the same cachet, so garner less federal investment.
Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart points out the opportunity for municipalities to pull together any kind of big transit or housing deal is far shorter than the four years between elections.
“It’s a very short window when all three levels of government are stable enough to sit down and plan without thinking about, ‘who’s going to vote for me.’”
Mr. Stewart supported the FCM congestion fund request even though he doubts it will come to fruition, and feels transit is still secondary to housing on Vancouver’s needs list. He lobbied for the FCM to launch a pre-election push on housing but lost because outside of Vancouver and Toronto, housing isn’t top of mind for most Canadian cities.
To be sure, transit is a key election issue in the Lower Mainland – total ridership increased by seven per cent in 2018, to reach an all-time high. Mr. Stewart, himself a former NDP MP, is using this pre-election window to meet with all parties to stress how much Vancouverites depend on transit.
The parties have all been receptive, he says. However, the real work will come post-election to make sure promises are kept.
It would be nice if the money was delivered through a beefed-up congestion relief fund. But it’s more likely that the politically motivated announcements will continue. And perhaps it doesn’t matter that much. Ultimately what counts is that transit investment continues so we can keep moving in ways that simultaneously reduce congestion and greenhouse gasses.
With nearly 600 tram and light rail systems in operation around the world, this is hardly surprising.
With Vancouver being the odd-ball city, insisting that the light-metro is the way to go, taxpayers have to have extremely deep pockets, to pay for the politicians foolish financial excesses.
During an era of record investment in urban transport, where success is quickly copied and failure is not duplicated, no other city in the world has copied Metro Vancouver’s transit planning and Metro Vancouver’s building strictly with light-metro, especially with the extremely dated but often renamed, Movia Automatic Light Metro.
This makes Vancouver unique, sadly unique also means expensive.
The return of trams in cities confirms the important role they play in the 21st-century urban landscape. Nearly 120 cities have introduced their own tram systems since 2000. This study published by Eurogroup Consulting, compares and ranks the performance of 32 tram systems around the world.
Three categories of tram systems were studied:
recent tram systems in large cities with more than 500,000 residents,
recent tram systems in mid-sized cities or serving neighbourhoods of large cities with under 500,000 residents,
historic tram systems that have never been retired, such as those in Vienna, Zürich, Melbourne and Berlin.
The performance criteria used for the study included multimodal integration, speed, pricing, reliability and ridership.
Lyon, Dijon and Zurich head up the comparative study
In large cities, the Lyon, Paris and Bordeaux networks top the ranking. The Lyon tram network scores highly in terms of the high level of multimodal integration that it enjoys with bus routes, the metro, stations and soft transport modes as well as the tram corridor potential with three of the network’s five lines carrying more than 100,000 passengers every day.
In mid-sized cities, Dijon and Tours in France and Bergen in Norway are distinguished. According to the study, the Dijon tram network scores above average in several criteria, notably its ticketing system where Open Payment has been introduced so passengers can now use their contactless bank cards instead of tickets. The tram’s introduction in 2012 gave a major boost to public transport usage in the city with the numbers of people using it increasing by 40% in three years.
Among historic tram systems, Zürich is distinguished in the top spot, performing well in terms of ridership as well as making good use of resources and enjoying a high level of multimodal integration. Thanks to regular investments designed to modernise the network and enhance its longevity, the Zürich tram is delivering a performance comparable to those of younger systems.
Rather than demonstrating a straightforward renewal, the results of the study show that the tram provides a mobility solution that complements structural transport networks, such as metro systems, as well as visibly revitalizing city centres in the era of green mobility.
Philipe Menesplier
Tram trends in 2019
The study also looked at tram trends in different fields including regional, management and industrial and technological trends. In regional terms, the tram is strengthening its position in a number of regions including Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China and Australia.
Regarding management trends, although globally the public management model remains the most widespread, the study observes that transport authorities are increasingly awarding the operational management of tram systems – and more widely of their public transport networks – to private operators which are specialized in operation, maintenance and asset management. Indeed, in addition to day-to-day operational management, these operators are tasked with modernizing and transforming networks as part of long-term contracts which are sometimes longer than 10 years.
Find out about the 32 tram systems, five tram trends and the 10 keys to the success of tram networks in the attached study.
The combined naivete of regional mayors about regional transportation and the abandonment of their fiduciary duty protecting the taxpayer from ill advised “prestige projects” such as the Broadway subway and the Expo Line extension in Surrey, is just simply breathtaking!
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Both the ill conceived Broadway subway and the now equally perverse decision to proceed extending the Expo Line, will suck precious transit monies into two hugely expensive and politically prestigious transit projects, yet not improve regional transit at all. Both projects will not take a car off the road.
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It is simply unbelievable that regional mayors could be so collectively ill informed.
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Let us not forget the 2015 TransLink plebiscite, which saw 62% of voters reject more funding to TransLink and now in 2019, after large tax increases in many areas in the region, I would think it foolhardy that politicians would come cap in hand for more taxes to pay for their favourite gadgets and gizmos.
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Metro mayors have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
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Why is Vancouver continuing to build with light-metro and especially with a proprietary light metro, as used on the Expo and Millennium Lines?
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Why is TransLink deliberately misinforming the public about light rail, even though it is the most popular rail mode for public transport around the world, used in one form or another in almost 600 cities around the world?
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What is SkyTrain and why has it created such a fascination with local politicians?
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The following may prove enlightening.
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SkyTrain is the name of our regional light-metro system which consists of two very different railways, the Canada Line which is a conventional railway and the proprietary and now called Movia Automatic Light Metro system used on the the Expo and Millennium lines.
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The MALM system uses Linear Induction Motors which makes it a proprietary transit system as it is not compatible in operation with any other transit system, save its own family of seven systems.
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Automatic train control, is not proprietary but is a signalling issue and driverless trains have been around since 1927 (London’s Post Office Railway). What is now called MALM is not even the first automatic metro as London’s Victoria Line is considered the first automatic metro in the world, opening in the late 1960’s.
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Chronology of the Movia Automatic Light Metro:
First called Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS), the automatic proprietary light metro was developed by the Ontario Crown Corporation, the The Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC) in the late 1970’s, using cast off technology from previously failed proprietary transit systems. The LIM’s came from the Krauss Maffei Transurban MAGLEV. Two systems were built; Detroit as a single track demonstration line and Toronto system, forced upon the TTC by the provincial government. The 1983 IBI and ART Studies commissioned by the Toronto Transit Commission found that ICTS could cost anywhere up to ten (10) times more to build than light rail for about the same capacity. The market for ICTS collapsed overnight!
The UTDC promptly changed the name from ICTS to Advanced Light Rail Transit (ALRT) and sold one system to Vancouver. The name change did not fool anyone, except for the then Social Credit Party and later the NDP. The name was altered slightly to Advanced Light Rapid Transit, which again fooled no one, except in Metro Vancouver an it still seems to fool present politicians.
Lack of sales forced the province of Ontario to sell the UTDC to Lavalin, which promptly changed the name to Advanced Light Metro (ALM) and just as promptly went bankrupt trying to sell ALM to Bangkok, Thailand. As per the agreement, the patents and assembly plants were returned to the Ontario government (except for the patents filed by Lavalin which were then absorbed by SNC when it became SNC Lavalin), which sold the lot to Bombardier Inc. at a fire sale price.
Bombardier completely rebuilt ALM, using one of their universal Innovia body-shells and renamed the proprietary light metro Advanced Rapid Transit (ART) and sold only four systems. The four, Kuala Lumpor (which has embroiled Bombardier and SNC Lavalin in massive corruption scandal); the New York Port Authority, financed by the Canadian (Liberal) government; Youngin Korea (which is suing Bombardier Inc. because it can only operate one car trains) and Beijing (where the Chinese built one to steal technical patents).
Lack of sales caused Bombardier to fold ART into their line of Innovia proprietary transit systems.
After a decade of no sales, the ART Innovia light metro was folded into the Movia metro range of product in 2018 and was renamed Movia Automatic Light Metro (MALM) with LIM’s a customer added option.
Meet the Surrey SkyTrain – B.C.’s sequel to the Scarborough Subway
Published 1 day ago
Less transit for more money – it’s the Canadian way.
The opening instalment of what has become a movie franchise debuted in Toronto nearly a decade ago, when a plan to build light rail transit (LRT) in Scarborough was transformed into a shorter, more expensive subway, serving fewer people. Spoiler alert: nothing’s been built, and the bill is still rising.
Audiences drawn to transit tragicomedies will want to catch the sequel, “Skytrain to Nowhere,” set in the Metro Vancouver municipality of Surrey. A sprawling suburban city of more than half-a-million people, it covers about as large an area as Vancouver, Richmond and Burnaby combined.
Surrey was designed for the car. Its population density is less than a third of that of Vancouver’s, but it’s growing fast. If most trips continue to be made by car, gridlock will ensue.
In a 2012 report on transit options, a dozen scenarios involving dedicated bus lanes, LRT and SkyTrain were proposed. The best plan – a cost-effective approach for covering ground, moving people and cutting emissions – appeared to be the bus system.
However, the regional mayors’ council for transit in 2014 endorsed an 11-kilometre LRT running south and east from Surrey Centre, where the SkyTrain line from Vancouver ends. At $1.6-billion, it wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was a good second choice. It gained provincial and federal financial backing, and construction was poised to begin.
Re-enter Doug McCallum. First elected Surrey’s mayor in 1995, he won two subsequent elections but lost in 2005. Last fall, he returned to office with a promise to ditch the LRT plan in favour of the worst option – extending a SkyTrain line through Surrey to Langley. Mr. McCallum claimed this could be done for $1.6-billion.
Spoiler alert: Not even close.
This came as a shock to no one, as the transit authority, TransLink, had said the SkyTrain would be almost double the cost. It turns out the existing $1.6-billion will build less than half of the SkyTrain line Mr. McCallum imagined. This truncated version will end in Surrey’s Fleetwood neighbourhood, where only 63,000 people live. The Vancouver region’s mayors, however, voted for this plan in late July. Never mind that the 2012 report said that, built in stages, a single SkyTrain line was the worst of all ideas.
To finish the SkyTrain, a lot more money is needed. The mayors’ council has already started asking the federal and provincial governments for another handout. If Ottawa and Victoria deliver, that would not be good news. SkyTrain will suck resources away from needed improvements to other transit routes within Surrey, covering areas where the majority of the city’s people live.
In this case, a SkyTrain line simply cements suburban sprawl. It’s an expensive half-measure. Among the opponents of the plan is the Surrey Board of Trade. It wants the LRT revived – it could have already been under construction – and calls SkyTrain, an elevated subway, “antiquated, noisy and expensive.”
The fact remains that the best vehicle for a sprawled suburb like Surrey is the bus, with increases to existing service and dedicated bus lanes. But between the LRT and Skytrain, the LRT plan is clearly superior, serving more people at lower cost.
LRT is the backbone of transit in Calgary, another sprawling city. Its CTrain network is about to be nearly doubled in length by the $4.9-billion, 46-kilometre Green Line, expected to begin construction in 2020. Montreal is building a huge new light-rail network. The $6.3-billion REM project will cover 67-kilometres with 26 stations; the first leg will open in 2021, with the entire system finished by 2023.
Extending regional transit deep into Montreal’s suburbs didn’t involve extending the city’s Metro system. That would have been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and wasn’t justified by density.
Meanwhile in Toronto, transit has once again been upended, this time by Ontario Premier Doug Ford. His government has taken a giant eraser to a carefully drafted plan for a subway Relief Line and replaced it with a napkin sketch.
As for Surrey, it’s looking at the worst of all possible outcomes. Ottawa and Victoria should reject calls for additional funding. Instead, Vancouver-area mayors should take a hard look at their SkyTrain fantasy. This film’s plot doesn’t make sense. The script needs a rewrite.
An interesting comparison can be made with the just approved Quebec City light rail and BRT projects and Metro Vancouver’s Mayor’s Council/TransLink project, extending the light-metro system.
In Quebec City, $3.3 billion will buy you 3.5 km of tunnel, 23 km of LRT, 2 lines totaling 15 km of electric powered BRT, 16 km of fully segregated Bus Lanes and a massive update and upgrade to Quebec City’s Express Bus Network.
Back in metro Vancouver, $4.45 billion buys the locals 12.8 km of SkyTrain light-metro, 5.8 km from VCC Clark to Arbutus and 7 km from King George to Fleetwood and that doesn’t even include the cars!
Quebec City, gets one hell of a bigger bang for their transit buck, getting a lot more, for $1.15 billion less!
Once complete, Quebec City’s public transit network will include two trambus lines over a total of 15km, as well as a 23km-long tramway line.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was on hand in Quebec City to announce joint funding to establish a public transit network project which will integrate several modes of public transit.
Once complete, Quebec City’s public transit network will include two trambus lines over a total of 15km, as well as a 23km-long tramway line.
The funding announcement will also improve current Métrobus lines and build 16km of dedicated bus lanes and four new park-and-ride lots.
Four hubs will allow users to transfer from one system to another within the transit network, and two new automated links will make travel between Lower Town and Upper Town easier.
“Our major contribution will help Quebec City build a modern, 21st-century public transit system. This new infrastructure will enhance access to sustainable means of transport, and make it easier for residents to travel, so they spend less time in traffic and more time with their loved ones. More than ever, we have great hopes for Quebec City, and we are committed to building a greener future for all,” said François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, in a media release.
“Today, full funding for the largest public transit project in Quebec City’s history has at last been confirmed. The structuring public transit network is an ambitious project, custom-made for Quebec City. Its primary goal is to positively transform citizens’ quality of life for decades to come and make our city the most attractive in the country. The network will be planned and built in a spirit of transparency, and we will regularly consult with citizens. Quebec City will now be among the Canadian cities with over 500,000 residents that have modern public transit infrastructure. I would like to thank the governments of Quebec and Canada for their support for and confidence in this project,” added Régis Labeaume, Mayor of Quebec City.
The Government of Canada will invest up to $1.2 billion in Quebec City’s structuring public transit network through the Investing in Canada infrastructure program. The Government of Quebec will invest $1.8 billion to deliver the project, and the City of Québec will provide $300 million.
The anti LRT schlock continues from the mainstream media.
The BRT/LRT debate has been long over, but not in Canada it seems, where disgruntled bus-boy types whine that buses are cheaper.
Well no, not really.
The problem is that about $2 billion of the estimated $4.9 billion cost is a 4.2 km subway under the Bow river. It has been said that the proposed subway will have the deepest subway tunnel in North America!
The public have been convinced to support a subway solution for fear of disrupting auto traffic. Calgary, has the second largest system in the world of above grade pedestrian access bridges to many downtown buildings, known as the +15 System (15 feet high).
Thee whole concept of of at grade light rail is to reduce road space for cars, a form of active traffic calming to entice motorists to use transit.
Cost effective, real light rail alternatives have been abandoned in favour of politically prestigious subways and to hell with the cost!
This is the complaint I have had with Canadian light rail projects, they tend to boarder on expensive light-metro and not classic LRT. Calgary’s LRT is a good example as it was a copy of the German Stadtbahn, planned at a time before the use of the term light rail was not in general use.
Still, Calgary’s Green line will be able to handle future traffic loads economically, unlike BRT with its limited capacity and large operational and maintenance costs, cannot economically handle future ridership.
It is probably too late, but the City of Calgary should consider constructing the Green Line as a bus rapid transit (BRT) route rather than light rail transit (LRT).
Why?
Because BRT is not only the most cost-efficient option, it would also better serve the needs of Calgarians.
I make this statement after a recent coffee chat with Neil McKendrick, the former manager of transit planning at the City of Calgary, who did much of the early north and southeast transit forecasting and planning. I love meeting with retired city and private sector professionals because they no longer have to toe the city or company line.
They can freely speak their minds and are often willing to give me the real story.
The original Green Line plan was to build a BRT route at a cost of about $1.5 billion that could be converted to an LRT route when ridership and funding was sufficient to support it. However, in 2015 the federal government offered the city of Calgary $1.5 billion to build an LRT, if the province and city matched it.
City politicians took that money, dropped the idea of a BRT and jumped right to what had been phase two of the Green Line, i.e. building the much more complex and expensive LRT.
“Calgary politicians were positively giddy Friday after the federal government pledged $1.53 billion for the city’s long-sought LRT Green Line, despite numerous challenges still facing the project.”
— Calgary Herald, July 24, 2015, Trevor Howell
Indeed there have been challenges, many of which could have been avoided if the city had developed the Green Line as a BRT first.
McKendrick offered five key ideas for the project:
1. There is no reason to connect the north and southeast sections of the Green Line, as the number of people riding from the north to the south will be very low. It is not like the existing south and northwest C-Train lines that connect those living in the south to major employment and student hubs like the University of Calgary and SAIT, in addition to downtown.
2. If you don’t connect the north and southeast lines, you don’t need a tunnel. Each line can terminate downtown at grade and people can walk a few blocks to connect to other BRT and LRT lines, as needed. This happens in cities around the world and would enhance pedestrian activity in the downtown.
3. If you don’t build the tunnel, the funds saved could be used to complete the entire, originally proposed north and southeast legs as BRT routes, and perhaps the southeast leg as an LRT, because it is the cheaper line, per kilometre, and would be easier to build than the north line.
4) The north LRT line at grade will not be rapid. In fact, it will only be marginally faster than the existing bus services, as it has to negotiate the same at-grade crossings as the buses. Trains do not operate quickly in mixed traffic environments. Even the Seventh Avenue transit corridor, with no car traffic, doesn’t move very quickly.
5) BRT would serve the needs of Calgarians almost as well as LRT.
McKendrick’s ideas about the Green Line will, no doubt, surprise a lot of Calgarians, even those of us who have been following this story closely.
Since they seem to run counter to most of the messaging that’s been coming out of city hall, I decided to take them for a test drive with two other experts in the transit field.
The original plans for the Green Line saw the new transit route running from 160 Avenue in the north to Seton in the southeast. (City of Calgary)
Dave Colquhoun was the manager of transit planning for the City of Calgary before Neil McKendrick. He is not only in agreement with the above five key ideas, but believes “neither LRT line is being extended far enough to achieve public expectations for improved transit service that should result from such a large capital expenditure.”
Colquhoun says most users of the proposed new LRT service “will spend a disproportionate amount of time on feeder buses to access the north and southeast stations, with the result that there will be no travel time savings compared with today’s bus service.”
As a result, he says “the full ridership benefits of a $4.5 billion investment in new LRT infrastructure will not be achieved and I expect that the city will be criticized for lacking foresight in its decision making.”
The latest iteration of the Green Line, recently approved by city council, shows a much shorter route and a hefty $4.9-billion price tag. (City of Calgary)
Bill Lambert is a recently retired, Vancouver-based transit and transportation consultant with 30 years of experience. He also agrees with McKendrick and adds “LRT services operating at ground levels in the north and southeast corridors will be very disruptive to cross-traffic movements at traffic intersections all along the corridors and create increased traffic congestion.”
Lambert cautions: “Due to the high capital costs of LRT services, it may be a long time before the province of Alberta and the City of Calgary have sufficient funding to build the required future LRT service extensions and additional stations required for both of these services to be effective and efficient, and serve the desired markets. So by splitting limited funding for the north and southeast LRT services today, neither line will be fully successful.”
He recommends that “if it is determined LRT service is really desired, rather than BRT, do the complete line with the highest ridership demand — the north corridor.”
What is BRT?
BRT routes have dedicated lanes for buses only, which means they don’t get caught up in traffic jams. They also have fewer stops than traditional bus routes, which helps shorten travel time. As well, they use technology to give them priority at traffic lights, so they can move quickly in mixed traffic areas.
BRT routes have bus stations rather than stops to provide a more pleasant waiting area for riders. They also have the flexibility to move off the line if there is an accident. Riders pay in advance and can board the buses from all doorways, just like an LRT train; this shortens loading and unloading times.
The biggest negative when it comes to BRT service is the fact that maximum capacity on an articulated bus is 150 passengers, while LRT trains have the capacity to carry 700 to 800 people. However, this is offset but the fact that buses are cheaper to purchase and operate, so you can have more buses offering more frequent service in the off hours, rather than operating a train that is often 60-per-cent empty.
An artist’s rendering of a new Green Line LRT station. (City of Calgary)
Hundreds of cities around the world have created successful BRT transit systems that have the capacity to carry a large number of riders city-wide.
Curitiba, Brazil (population 2 million), has a model bus rapid transit system. The buses run frequently (on some routes as often as every 90 seconds), service is reliable and the stations are convenient, well-designed, comfortable and attractive.
Curitiba’s bus system is composed of a hierarchical system of routes. Minibuses travel through residential neighbourhoods feeding passengers to the five main arteries leading into the centre of the city, like spokes on a wheel. This is very similar to Calgary and could serve as a template for our future transit system.
Approximately 70 per cent of Curitiba’s commuters use the BRT to travel to work, a goal Calgary should aspire to.
BRT vs. LRT
The planning for the north and southeast corridor (before Ottawa promised $1.5 billion for the Green Line) was to build a busway along the LRT right-of-way that could be converted to LRT when ridership warranted.
McKendrick told me: “The stations would look like the ones recently completed along 17th Avenue S.E. in Forest Lawn that could be converted for use by LRT, since the new trains will be low floor that do not require a platform much higher than a normal curb.”
An artist’s rendering of one of the new BRT stations along 17th Avenue S.E. (City of Calgary)
The advantages of a BRT transitway would be flexibility, as buses could drop people off at designated stations or could continue into suburban communities as needed. They also have the potential to drop riders off at various points in the downtown rather than just at a station.
Another advantage of BRT is buses could skip stops when full, something very difficult to do with LRT. Also, buses can be added mid-route as needed to provide better service. And local and corridor bus services can also use the transitway and stations for part of their journey to bypass traffic congestion.
“With the BRT model there would be fewer transfers, which makes it much more user friendly,” McKendrick said.
“Travel speeds along the transitway would be a bit slower, since trains have better acceleration/deceleration capabilities, however the BRT option is significantly cheaper than the LRT option, as you are just building a two-lane road. BRT would allow both legs to be built in their entirety, which is critical to their success.”
North LRT problems
According to McKendrick, the north LRT, as currently designed, will not improve transit service to north Calgary community residents. It will not be much faster than the current buses, due to the many at-grade crossings south of Beddington Trail.
LRT trains do not operate quickly in a mixed traffic environment. An elevated line would have enabled LRT-type speeds and capacity benefits, but would be more expensive and require customers to use stairs, escalators and elevators to get up to the track level.
But it’s in the downtown where the biggest disadvantage of the north LRT plans are seen. Riders on the new service will have just two stops on Second Street S.W. to board or exit the trains. That compares rather poorly with the current bus routes that travel along Fifth and Sixth avenues, with multiple stops in the downtown.
Downtown riders on the Green Line will have just two stops on 2nd Street S.W. to board or exit the trains. That compares rather poorly with the current bus routes that have multiple stops in the downtown, says Richard White. (City of Calgary)
As McKendrick notes, “LRT lines built to date (south, northeast, northwest and west) all replaced bus services that had very good ridership and experienced increasing delays due to operating in mixed traffic. The reason for building LRT along these corridors was to primarily address the need for greater capacity, reduce operating costs and provide faster, more attractive service. The Green Line is being pursued simply to give two additional areas of the city an LRT service.
“Yes there are urban development opportunities, but the lines won’t have the ridership to attract new urban development. And in the north, the proposed LRT service will not improve on the current bus services — it may even be worse.”
Let’s learn from the past
Dave Colquhoun recalls: “Due to funding constraints, the northwest line could only be built to McMahon Stadium in time for the 1988 Winter Olympics.”
“When the line opened in 1987, it was ineffective in serving the transit needs of northwest Calgary residents due to excessive feeder bus commute times to the end station. Responding to complaints from transit customers, Calgary Transit was obligated to operate parallel express bus services to the downtown for people living west of Dalhousie and Varsity. It was only after the line was extended in 2003 (16 years later) that the line achieved our expectations for ridership and customer satisfaction.”
Perhaps we should listen to the voices of these experienced transit planners and dust off the old plans for a north and southeast BRT transitway, which could be built in its entirety with the current funding, and forget about LRT for the moment.
In one of the most biased reporting yet by the media yet, the Canada line is deemed a success.
Really?
The $2.4 billion plus projects paved the way for Vancouver to get rather ineffectual regional and provincial politicians to sign blank cheques for subways in Vancouver; paid for of course, by higher gas property taxes. Wow, those six figured salaried regional mayors just love higher taxes.
The Canada line was never a true P-3 because the SNC Lavalin lead consortium operating the mini-metro never accepted risk, which is the hallmark of a P-3 project and the line won a gold medal seemingly for deceit and deception.
Judge Pittfield, who presided over the Susan Heyes lawsuit against TransLink, called the bidding process a “charade“.
Gold medal material indeed! No, it was another ‘precipitation award, which are handed out and reported on far too regularly.
Business as usual it seem in BC.
The Canada Line paved the way for the city of Vancouver’s utterly dishonest planning for subways, because at best, the present line can’t carry more than 6,000 pphpd and even with new cars, its capacity will be limited to around 9,000 pphpd because of short 40 metre long station platforms.
The North American standard for building a subway is a transit route with traffic flows in excess of 15,000 pphpd!
Toronto streetcars in the late 40’s and early 50’s were able to handle traffic flows in the region of 12,500 pphpd on select streetcar routes!
Coupled sets of PCC cars offered capacities of 12,500 pphpd in Toronto.
The Canada line is the only heavy-rail metro in the world, designed as a light-metro and has less capacity than a modern streetcar. Not one city has copied it, except for Montreal, where the REM project is a Canada line clone, which will make billions for the consortium involved.
Making profit for the consortium involved was the sole reason why then premier Gordon Campbell forced the Canada Line P-3 onto TransLink. The Canada line was a BC Liberal “grift”, just like selling off BC Rail!
A very big problem is that capacity cannot be increased beyond about 9,000 pphpd, as the cost to rehab the Canada Line to obtain a higher capacity, is now around $1.5 billion and the capacity of the Canada Line must be increased before any extension of the line is even considered!
What the news item is really about is a slow news day and gullible reporters who do not do any research, being played by TransLink, in their quest to justify a Broadway subway.
The Canada line, is deemed internationally as a White Elephant.
Note #1: The prevalence of the dollar a day, ride at will, U-Pass (over 130,000 issued) inflates boarding’s. Not taken into consideration is how many bus customers are forced to transfer to the Canada line at Bridgeport and how many linked trips are involved. Over 80% of the Canada line’s ridership is forced to transfer onto the mini-metro!
Note #2: There is not charge for those traveling along the Canada Line at Sea island and how many employees use the line from their “free” parking lots. Does Translink count them?
Note#3: TransLink does not release the numbers of multiple trips taken by U-Pass holders on the Canada line, with some reports stating that some U-Passes are used up to 8 times a day on the Canada Line!
How many new transit customers did the Canada Line attract?
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Today marks ten years since passengers were first able to catch a ride on the Canada Line.
It took four years to build, with a price tag of more than $2 billion, and the 19 kilometre route wasn’t an automatic hit with taxpayers and some politicians.
TransLink spokesperson Ben Murphy says while there was some uncertainty about ridership targets, the line is now a transit staple in Vancouver and Richmond.
“People didn’t think it would achieve the ridership targets we were planning. It really smashed those targets pretty much immediately,” he says, adding it’s clear it has become a ‘success story’ for the region.
“Back when this was being planned there were people who wanted it to be light rail,” he says “We went with the SkyTrain option because over the decade, it’s proven to be hugely popular and one of the big success stories for the region.”
In its first year, the Canada Line recorded more than 36 million boardings, and ridership continues to grow year over year. Murphy says since then, the average weekday ridership is 147,000 passengers, up five per cent from last year. He adds ridership is growing at YVR Airport Station, as there were three million boardings from the station, up 14 percent from last year.
“You’ve also got YVR, that’s been a success story in its own respect,” he says. But they did a survey last year and according to their numbers nearly one in three people are using transit to get to YVR. Of course the Canada Line plays an enormous role in that.”
The Canada Line received a Gold Award for Infrastructure from the Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships in 2009.
So, what else is new.
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