Trams At The Heart Of The 21st Century Metropolis

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.

Trams at the heart of the 21st century metropolis

Holiday Post – The Modern Tram

Here are some pictures of trams in operation around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Less Transit For More Money – The Canadain Way

Here we go again.

2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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).
5. Lack of sales caused Bombardier to fold ART into their line of Innovia proprietary transit systems.
6. 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.

Quebec City’s $3.3 Billion Transit Plan – 23 km of LRT, 16 km Of Real BRT & More!

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!

Go figure!

Funding confirmed for Quebec City transit plan

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.

Calgary LRT Angst

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.

 

 

OPINION | Green Line revisited: Why these former transit managers now say buses are better than rail

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

 

 

The Canada Line – Mediocrity Is Deemed Successful In Metro Vancouver

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!

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?

TransLink, of course, remains silent.

Canada Line celebrates a decade of success

by Taran Parmar and Kathryn Tindale

Posted Aug 17, 2019

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.

No, It Does Not Make Sense

It is as I predicted, the people in the Fraser Valley are awakening to the realities of TransLink, poor transit and high taxes.

Politicians have such poor memories of the 2015 plebiscite.

For too long TransLink has done what the City of Vancouver’s wants, continuing the city’s perverse desire to have a gold plated, Edsel style transit system, built strictly to drive property development, with the rest of the region paying for Vancouver’s largess. The Fraser Valley, is seen by Vancouver’s politico’s as a “Milch Cow” with an unlimited ability to pay more and more taxes.

Sadly, far too many Valley politicians tend go along with this perverse philosophy!

With realities of a recession looming, tax monies will become scarce and major projects must be able to prove their worth and bureaucrats will also must prove their value.

During an era of unprecedented investment in regional transit systems, where success is eagerly copied, not one city has copied Metro Vancouver’s transit strategy; not one city has copied metro Vancouver’s transit planning and not one city has copied Metro Vancouver’s exclusive use of light metro, a.k.a. SkyTrain.

Something to think about.

LETTER: Langley man shakes his head at TransLink and Mayors’ Council decision making

TransLink can’t provide Langley with better transit but can hike the CEO salary, local man writes.

Vancouver Will Need To Adopt Lower-Cost LRT In Its Lesser Corridors

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.

Gerald Fox, 2008.

 

Here is the big crunch which TransLink seems deathly afraid of, do they continue with the now obsolete and often renamed and now called Movia Automatic Light Metro, or join the rest of the world and build with light rail?

Here are the cost comparisons so far.

1. McCallum’s Expo Line extension to Langley – $3.2 billion and climbing ($1.6 billion funded).
2. The original LRT plan – $1.6 billion and climbing, (but not so much).
3. Broadway subway to Arbutus – $3 billion plus (funded to $$2.8 billion).

Another Look At Gerald Fox’s Review Of The Evergreen Line Business Case

I cannot stress enough the importance of this short letter as it shreds TransLink’s Business Case for the Evergreen Line.

I did not support the Evergreen Line because from what I gleaned from all the studies and documents, that there was not the ridership to sustain the uncompleted portion of the Millennium Line to the Tri Cities.

From what I can see, my prognostications have proven true as the Evergreen line extension and in fact the entire Millennium line can only sustain 2 car trains, which have less capacity than a modern tram!

I observed in the fall a 6 minute headway on Sundays.

So, let us once again revisit how TransLink perverts the truth to bamboozle regional and provincial politicians (federal politicians don’t give a damn unless they are invited for a photo-op) to support the unsupportable SkyTrain light metro expansion.

Translink’s business cases for extending the light metro system are not worth the paper they are printed on.

From Gerald Fox…

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 Case (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 Type 4 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 doesn’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 can’t 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 analysed honestly, and the taxpayer interests are protected. No SkyTrain project has ever passed this scrutiny in the US.

Politcal Penis Envy Drives Subway Costs

This is rather old news and one questions why the media have not picked up on this earlier.

Subways cost a lot of money to build, yet they provide no better service than modern light rail, unless traffic flows on the transit route surpass around 20,000 pphpd.

Vancouver does not have one route that has traffic flows surpassing this number and it well to remember that the three light metro lines have many bus routes transferring their customers onto the light metro, instead of providing a direct service to downtown Vancouver.

If the cost of elevated and subway construction was, instead, spent on at-grade LRT, we could build many North/South – East West lines giving a far better and more comprehensive transit service, providing a much more user-friendly, seamless or no transfer journey, which has proven to attract ridership.

Until taxpayer’s wake up and understand that they are being taken for a very expensive ride to provide “politcal penis envy” for regional politicians, a quality transit service for the metro Vancouver region will prove to be extremely elusive!

In US Dollars

2010

Canada’s soaring subway construction costs need to get back on track

As transit planning in Toronto is wracked by a political tug-of-war, one of the most important issues has been almost completely ignored: New York has the highest construction costs in the world, but Toronto is a strong competitor for second place. The city is spending a vast sum on a very ambitious transit-expansion plan, but is getting far less track for the buck than most other places around the world. It’s a national problem, too: Other Canadian cities’ transit construction costs are not far behind.

In the past year, price estimates for Toronto’s Relief Line and Scarborough subway extensions have ballooned. The Relief Line’s projected costs rose to $7.22-billion, or about $1-billion for each kilometre. The Scarborough subway one-stop extension is now projected to cost $3.48-billion for a 6.2-kilometre line. While the Scarborough extension may seem like a bargain by the Relief Line’s standards, subway stations are usually the costliest part (about 75 per cent of the itemized costs in New York), and thus a single-stop line which should be cheap, isn’t.

In contrast, the median urban subway around the world costs less than $300-million for each kilometre. This includes complex projects such as Grand Paris Express, an automated network bored under dense inner suburbs including the office tower cluster at La Défense business district.

And Paris is just the median: In cheaper cities such as Seoul, Stockholm and Madrid, urban subways under historic city centres or waterways cost $100-million to $150-million a kilometre.

Even the new Ontario Line plan – a transit line in Toronto proposed by the provincial government and meant to cost less than the Relief Line proposal – is still expected to cost $735-million per kilometre, and much of it isn’t even underground. Curiously, Canadian costs were not always especially high by world standards. Toronto’s Sheppard subway was completed in 2002 for about $166-million a kilometre.