The B.S. line, an apt name for the proposed Broadway SkyTrain subway.
What is more remarkable is that Postmedia allowed this to be printed.
Could it be that the SkyTrain Lobby in Postmedia is beginning to weaken?
Here is the real reason why the Broadway subway should not be built.
The Canadian and North American standard for customer flows on a transit route to justify a subway is over 15,000 pphpd.
In Europe, customer flows that would justify a subway is over 20,000 pphpd because light rail is able to cater to such traffic flows much cheaper than a subway.
Current customer flows, based on the the 99 B-Line’s scheduled peak hour servcie of 3 minute headway, combined with the twp trolley bus lines that use Broadway, under 4,000 pphpd. Not enough to even justify light rail, just a basic streetcar!
The Broadway subway line to UBC, with the appropriate acronym the “BS-Line,” has been accepted by Vancouver council, based on a consultant’s report some question as being more of a political document than a technical report. Within a week of release and with no public consultation, only two councillors voted against it, Colleen Hardwick and Jean Swanson.
The recent Vancouver civic election showed the public’s desire for a change in direction. An upcoming citywide planning process is intended to deliver that change, including to reconsider the Transportation 2040 plan. But now that the subway to UBC has been accepted by council — and the policies of the ousted Vision Vancouver government remain in place — that will predetermine the land use across the city and make the citywide planning process nothing more than implementation of a predetermined outcome of tower luxury condos like at Oakridge and along the Cambie corridor.
Last-minute council amendments for collaborative consultation after the fact is meaningless when funding partners such as the University of B.C., Jericho Lands and other developers are expected to contribute based on density bonuses to pay for the subway rather than public amenities. It’s not what most people had in mind.
Using what author Naomi Klein has described as disaster capitalism, Mayor Kennedy Stewart backed by Vision-appointed city staff, framed the need to pre-empt the planning process by insisting that there is only a small window of opportunity to get federal funding in an election year.
However, the federal government is nowhere near ready to approve where the infrastructure money will go across Canada. Vancouver is already getting a large amount of federal funding currently allocated for transit while they are lining up against other cities that have none. More funding is not likely to be a priority to a government wanting to spread it around in an election year.
Now the region is being pressured into approving the technology of subway/SkyTrain to UBC. Many regional mayors have raised concerns about equity, given that Vancouver already has a lot of transit infrastructure and about $3 billion of new transit funding recently allocated, while many municipalities have little to none.
Although adding rapid transit to UBC is important, there are many reasons why the subway is a terrible idea and other options should be considered.
Patrick Condon, founding chairman of the UBC Urban Design Program, has confirmed his opposition to subway/SkyTrain. He says it isn’t green (lighter infrastructure is more green and can be delivered faster), it is the costliest option (depriving the rest of the city and region), and it widens the wealth divide with the related luxury condos and out-of-scale development based on economics.
The growth and ridership numbers are designed for a predetermined outcome that favours SkyTrain. In fact, the current bus system to UBC has been underserved for over a decade in efforts to justify a subway. This could be rectified immediately on multiple routes with little cost if there was the will to do so.
The city’s underlying assumptions on population and unit growth need to be reconsidered since targets are much high than justified by population projections. Staff recently confirmed the numbers at council in response to questions from Hardwick. Head planner Gil Kelley previously confirmed that existing zoned capacity already is significantly beyond what is required to meet projected growth.
So the question is, do we really need to provide for so much more of the market supply? The city even confirms that we have been building too much of the wrong type of supply.
However, council meeting rules have been changed, seemingly on the fly, including muzzling the public by calling it out of order if concerns are raised over assumptions and recommendations of staff and consultants.
To put broader growth issues in context, it is important to understand how Vancouver and UBC have developed over time.
Vancouver is inherently a transit oriented streetcar city that was designed before the common use of the automobile. Its arterial grid of short blocks has everywhere within a 10-minute walk of transit on an arterial. The streetcars were updated to trolley buses.
UBC was designed as a small campus at the end of a peninsula in the forest, also served by streetcar. It was never intended to be a city centre. However, rather than building student and staff housing onsite, UBC has been developing its forested lands for market luxury condos to subsidize operations. It is increasingly becoming a development corporation rather than an educational institution.
Metro Vancouver tried to rein in that unsustainable growth, but developers influenced the province to take direct control so the growth could continue unopposed. Now, UBC has taxation without municipal representation and no regional oversight.
Instead, UBC expects the regional transportation system to heavily subsidize a $7-billion subway to serve their condo growth and the students who are not housed onsite that commute from across the region. This is the most unsustainable and undemocratic model in B.C.
Transit is no longer about transporting people and is mainly about delivering market condo development.
For a fraction of the money proposed for this subway to UBC, that would take 10 to 15 years to implement, the city and region could be much better served quicker. Within a couple of years, the Broadway corridor could be served by surface rail all the way to UBC. Also, immediately, upgraded peak-hour electric bus service, including express to UBC, should be added to multiple routes.
There is immediate urgency for the climate and affordability crisis to act now in the broader interests of the city and region that the subway proposal does not achieve.
It is important to note that the claimed environmental advantage of public transit is the ability to increase transportation mode-share toward modes having lower GhG emissions. But the consultant’s report concludes that “given the large number of trips occurring regionally, it is expected that the alternatives would show little improvement to the regional mode share,” and also that LRT would provide the greatest benefit to improving the transit mode share for Vancouver. The mode-share shifts are shown to be little different for the three rapid-transit alternatives, and that SkyTrain provides only a 0.2-per-cent improvement for the region over the existing B-Line bus and only a 0.3-per-cent improvement in Vancouver.
We need to look at the bigger picture and ensure that public funds are spent wisely. The Broadway subway would undermine planning for a sustainable future at too high a price.
Elizabeth Murphy is a private-sector project manager and was formerly a property development officer for the City of Vancouver and for B.C. Housing. info@elizabethmurphy.ca
Thanks to the Ford’s in 2010, the SRT remains in place instead of the planned LRT conversion that was supposed to up and running either late last year or this year. It would not only cover the exiting line, but the 1980 plan extension to Melven Town Centre. Then got to thank Mayor Tory for pushing a subway that will not be ready until 2030, if then at an extra $2 Billion and counting. The SRT will not last until the subway opens.
Let us not forget, the aging Expo Line is in dire need of a complete rehab, costing around $3 billion, or the core system may go the way of the SRT, making the $1.65 billion Fleetwood extension and the $3.5 billion Broadway subway a hugely expensive floundering beached whales, as the core transit system collapses due to age and lack of attention.
Scenes like this will become commonplace as the Expo Line ages
Kamran Karim arrived at Kennedy station and waited 30 minutes for the RT to arrive before realizing it was out of service — again.
“There is no sign. There is no notice,” he said, pointing to a gate barring access to the the stairs leading up to Scarborough’s elevated rail transit system, which was working on and off in the days after the snowstorm that bore down on the city Monday.
Kamran Karim was among thousands of TTC riders whose commutes were disrupted after the snowstorm knocked the Scarborough RT out of service. (Richard Lautens / Toronto Star)
The record snowfall and the polar ice freeze that followed wreaked havoc on portions of Toronto’s transportation system, but in particular the aging and vulnerable elevated train service in Scarborough — dubbed the RT, the SRT, or more recently, Line 3 — that is supposed to connect residents of the suburb to the rest of the city to the southwest.
It was a grim reminder of what residents of Scarborough are in for as they wait for construction to begin on the Scarborough subway extension, a project that successive city, provincial, and federal governments have supported for years but whose ultimate design and completion date are uncertain.
Meanwhile the SRT is nearing the end of its useful life, raising the prospect that riders will be left taking the bus if a replacement isn’t built soon.
Residents of Scarborough are among the city’s super-commuters — spending an hour to two hours or more getting downtown to work or study — connecting by bus from their homes to the RT train service that brings them to Kennedy subway station, the eastern terminus of the Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth) subway. From there it’s a long ride west on the subway and then south into the heart of Toronto.
About 35,000 people use the SRT’s six stations on a typical weekday.
Among them is Jackie Abrokwa, 25, who said it takes her about two and a half hours to get to Humber College’s lakeshore campus from her home in east Scarborough. The shuttle buses meant to replace the RT in recent days were much slower, and added another 30 to 45 minutes to her commute, she said.
“As someone who has been taking the TTC for a very long time, I am kind of over it,” said Abrokwa.
“In this weather it makes the whole thing really difficult,” said Joy Moro, who commutes from Scarborough to downtown Toronto for her tech job each day. “But if you don’t get to work, you don’t get paid, so you have to do what you have to do.”
The latest issues for the SRT started Monday, when the city was walloped with more than 20 centimetres of snow. The transit line went down at about 4 p.m., and though the TTC was able to get it up and running again for a few hours Wednesday, it was soon forced to shut it down again.
Regular service resumed Friday morning, but a mechanical problem forced one of the line’s six trains out of commission and the TTC had to supplement service with buses.
Although the SRT opened in 1985and is nearing the end of its service life, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said the problems in recent days were “not a product of age, rather extreme weather conditions.”
He said the issue was high winds blowing loose packed snow onto the SRT’s traction rail, which powers the train. Snow on the line causes the vehicles to lose power.
“As quickly as we’re clearing it, another section gets covered,” Green said.
While the line was shut down the agency deployed between 15 and 20 shuttle buses as a replacement to SRT service.
Green couldn’t say if the service outage was the longest SRT users have been forced to endure, but said about seven years ago there was also a winter shutdown that lasted several days.
Councillor Jennifer McKelvie, who represents the ward of Scarborough—Rouge Park and also sits on the TTC board, said transit users from her part of the city are “tired of being left out in the cold.”
McKelvie, who is serving her first term at city hall, said the solution is building the Scarborough subway extension and Eglinton East LRT as soon as possible. She blamed previous terms of council for not getting a replacement for the SRT built quickly enough.
“For years we’ve been debating, revisiting, voting, revoting on Scarborough transit. It’s time that we get on with building the transit that Scarborough deserves,” she said.
Although council has voted several times about the specifics of the Scarborough subway extension, the subway option has been the official plan for six years, since Rob Ford was mayor.
Council approved a three-stop Scarborough subway extension in 2013, opting for that project over a cheaper seven-stop light rail line that at the time would have been fully funded by the provincial government.
The three-stop subway was initially projected to cost about $3 billion, but as costs ballooned council voted in 2016 to scale back the plan to a single stop at the Scarborough Town Centre, and to supplement the subway extension with a 17-stop Eglinton East LRT, which would run from Kennedy to U of T Scarborough.
The Green line has now secured funding to commence building the $4.6 billion, 28 station, 46 km line, which includes a short subway under downtown Calgary, which will have three stations of which one is already built.
By comparison, the proposed 6 km. Broadway subway to Arbutus will cost $3.5 billion.
I wonder which set of taxpayers are getting the better deal!
Mayor Naheed Nenshi insists ‘this project’s getting built’ whether or not government changes in election
Rachel Ward · CBC News · Posted: Jan 30, 2019
Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has pledged $1.53 billion toward Calgary’s Green Line LRT project, which she calls “the most ambitious LRT project in Calgary’s history.”
The Green Line would be a massive public transit line that would stretch 46 kilometres across 28 stations from 16th Avenue North to Seton in the city’s southeast.
“This is really a big day for Calgary,” Notley said Wednesday in downtown Calgary.
She presented the funding with Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Finance Minister Joe Ceci at 10th Avenue and Macleod Trail S.E., where work is being done to prepare for Green Line construction.
The Green Line is being built in stages. This first segment, expected to begin in 2020, was previously promised
The federal government previously committed $1.53 billion to this first stage, which runs from 16th Avenue North to 126th Avenue S.E. Work is expected to begin in early 2020.
On Wednesday, the province signed an agreement with the City of Calgary that secures both promised investments, Notley said.
The first segment is scheduled to open in 2026, and is expected to cost $4.65 billion for capital construction, according to the city’s website.
Environment, community, jobs
The funding comes through Alberta’s Climate Leadership Plan, she said. Revenue from the carbon levy is being used through that plan to fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This project will improve transit services, which will in turn put more people on trains instead of cars, Notley said.
“The Green Line is the biggest transit project in the history of Calgary. It will transform the way Calgarians move around the city. It will generate enormous social and economic benefits for generations to come,” Notley said.
“It’s good for the economy, it’s good for the community, it’s great for the environment and it is great for everyone in Calgary.”
She also estimated the construction would generate thousands of jobs and spark private development along the line.
Nenshi said the Green Line, when complete, will double Calgary’s current light-rail network and move more than 60,000 people daily.
“Now that this agreement is signed, it means we can move forward,” the mayor said.
“We can push forward on getting this project out to market, we can push forward on creating 20,000 direct and indirect jobs in Calgary — something that’s absolutely critical in terms of economic stimulus.”
In a tweet after the funding announcement, United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney expressed his support for the project and suggested it would go ahead under a conservative government.
In the past, he has questioned the source of funding for the Climate Leadership projects.
“I reject the premise that the carbon tax is funding those projects,” Kenney recently told CBC.
“That is just a political accounting gimmick. There is one general revenue fund for the Province of Alberta that all revenues go into, including carbon tax revenues.”
He promised to cut the tax if elected in this year’s provincial election. Notley, in turn, said that if the carbon levy were cancelled, the Green Line would be cancelled.
According to the province’s fixed-date election legislation, the next election must be held sometime between March 1 and May 31, 2019.
At the Green Line announcement, Notley said contract language can be tightened to secure funding, should there be a change in government.
However, she said that if Kenney were elected and wanted to change the funding, he could by passing legislation.
“If they cancel the Climate Leadership Plan … the many, many programs that are funded out of it will disappear,” Notley said, before gesturing to the nearby transit construction.
“And what we will end up with is a hole in this part of Calgary as a testament to that kind of ‘forward-thinking.'”
‘Train has left the station’
Nenshi noted preparatory construction had already begun and the procurement process would get underway immediately.
“This project’s getting built. There are holes in the ground, there will be more holes in the ground,” Nenshi told reporters.
“So of course the legislature could do anything. They could dissolve the City of Calgary tomorrow if they really wanted to.… But in reality, this train has left the station.”
Patrick Condon is the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founding chair of the UBC Urban Design program.
must apologize to the poor soul who casually mentioned to me Vancouver city council may soon endorse running the proposed Broadway SkyTrain all the way to the UBC campus. The person could not know this is my trigger. They didn’t expect me to sputter and yell. They probably now think I’m nuts.
Maybe I am. Friends seem alarmed because — as we are discussing almost any civic issue, from housing to climate-change to transit — I am never more than 10 minutes away from blurting: “That’s why the Broadway subway is such a terrible idea!”
I understand their worries on my behalf. After all, we hear the opposite from many civic leaders, including UBC President Santa Ono, who published in Business in Vancouver his thoughts under the headline: “Extending SkyTrain to UBC Would Encourage Economic Growth and Prosperity throughout the Region.”
To prove my sanity, or perhaps regain it, I will do my best to explain why building this subway to UBC, far from being an economic boon, will trigger bad consequences for the city, the region, and even for UBC itself.
“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.”
Gerald Fox, 2008
Malcolm Johnston, 2019
Please deliver to Mayor and Council.
My name is Malcolm Johnston and I have been involved in Metro Vancouver transit issues since 1986 and I again involving myself with the proposed Broadway subway, which is being supported by a foundation of deceit and deception which sadly, seems the common story today in BC.
I find it odd that what we call SkyTrain, has been rejected around the world as being hugely expensive to build than light rail and also has been found to cost more to operate and maintain.
Bombardier Inc. the sole vehicle supplier of the proprietary railway has now folded the Innovia Metro (Mk. 2 & 3 vehicles) line into the existing Movia Metro Line of vehicles. Bombardier likes it so much that ART SkyTrain isn’t even identified as a separate product anymore. It been buried into the larger, better selling Movia line. This means every bit of technology on the SkyTrain is now a design option and not connected permanently to the product. As far as Bombardier is concerned, the SkyTrain has now become indistinguishable from its other Metro and Light Metro products!
I am disturbed that Translink’s old SkyTrain ruse is still so effective, but without any investigative reporting by the mainstream media and so many politicians who want to jump on the subway band wagon the decision to build a subway really does not surprise me.
According to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), the North American standard for building a subway is a transit route or portion of a transit route that has customer flows in excess of 15,000 persons per hour per direction.
Simple and straight forward.
Calculating the maximum traffic flow on Broadway, using TransLink’s timetabled bus schedule, found the maximum capacity TransLink offered on Broadway was under 4,000 pphpd. Thus customer flows would be about the same.
In no way is there the customer flows on Broadway to justify a subway.
Yes, one can build a subway, but one must be prepared to pay high subsidies to keep the subway operating.
But, TransLink will already be paying extra high subsidies for the subway because the route is heavily used by U-Pass holders, which means, TransLink’s most expensive transit route will be unable to generate much revenue.
This means the Broadway subway must find additional revenue sources.
The TTC estimates that a new 6.5 km subway will add over $40 million in additional operating costs, thus it is safe to assume that the Broadway subway, just to Arbutus will increase TransLink’s operating subsidy by at least $40 million a year.
Combine the operating subsidies needed for the subway, plus the operating costs, the cost to the taxpayer will be in excess of $100 million annually!
This is no surprise as the annual operating subsidy for the original Expo line to New Westminster was estimated by the GVRD at $157 million annually!
From the Cost of Transporting people ….. GVRD 1992.
Has anyone ever thought about the long term financing for the subway?
The following is from a 2012 email from Wolfgang Keller, a German Transportation Engineer, should give pause to reflect that subways do have an expensive down size.
“Over here in Germany where they had this tunnel-building mania from the 60s to the early 90s, at least they’ve stopped now. Simply because the municipalities ran into the fact that while building those tunnels is cheap (for them, not for the taxpayer), since 90% of the cost is financed with state and federal subsidies, they cannot finance maintenance of the fully grade-separated lines at all, so the expensive infrastructure they have built since the early 60’s is slowly rotting into a state of near-inoperability.”
Has anyone looked at the long term finances of this subway?
TransLink planning veterans Tamim Raad and Brian Mills were fired because they asked those same questions and didn’t like the answer. They did not support the subway and were fired.
Now, let’s continue with TransLink’s pro SkyTrain biases.
American Transportation Engineer, Gerald Fox, was asked in 2008, by a Victoria group wanting streetcars in Victoria to look at the business case for the Evergreen Line.
His comments on the Evergreen Line’s business case was telling telling.
“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.
Fox concluded:
“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 taxpayers interests are protected. No SkyTrain project has ever passed this scrutiny in the US.”
The report by McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd is badly flawed from the start, just as the Evergreen Line’s business case was. The consultants apparently have no background light rail or light metro and make many fundamental errors.
From the very beginning the study is biased against light rail and treats light rail as TransLink did in Surrey, planning LRT as a poor man’s SkyTrain.
I have found the Summary of Rapid Transit Technology Alternative Evaluation had too many instances where the analysis had made assumptions that were inaccurate, or had been manipulated to make the case for SkyTrain. Thus, if the underlying assumptions are inaccurate, the conclusions will be too.”
The study gives LRT a practical capacity of 6,120 persons, at the same time ignoring the fact that modern LRT has a practical capacity in excess of 20,000 pphpd, well known since the 1980’s
An extreme example is Karlsruhe Germany. The huge success of its regional tramtrain system, saw the main tram (streetcar) route through the city seeing a peak hour service of 40 second headway’s with coupled sets of trams and tramtrains giving a hourly capacity of in excess of 35,000 pphpd!
The “gelbe Wand” or yellow wall (referring to the yellow trams) on Kaiserstrasse in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Karlsruhe is now building a subway for that portion of route!
Before Toronto built its first subway, the Bloor-Danforth route saw coupled sets of PCC cars operating in peak hours, offering an hourly capacity of 12,000 pphpd!
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the Bloor Danforth streetcar line in Toronto saw
coupled sets of PCC cars operating in peak hours obtaining a capacity of 12,000 pphpd!
To say that a modern LRT line has less capacity than an old streetcar line’s capacity, seventy years ago is more than a farce, it is deliberately dishonest!
Another questionable statistic is reliability as there has been no study offered to back up the claims that SkyTrain is unreliable.
Most if not all LRT lines operate to a strict schedule, no so for SkyTrain as there is no strict schedule at all, only a train every few minutes.
Any claim that is based on the reliability figures given should be immediately discounted.
The numbers given for light rail in the study are not just unreliable, they are deliberately skewed to favour SkyTrain. Thus the study is based on dishonest statistics and is useless as a planning document.
It is another glaring example of TransLink using their cunning method of manipulating analysis to justify SkyTrain in corridor after corridor, and has thus succeeded in keeping its proprietary rail system expanding.
Just as a reminder only seven of the proprietary SkyTrain systems have been built since the late 1970’s; only three are seriously used for urban transit; two are mired in court cases and investigations; one will soon be torn down as it is fast becoming “life expired”.
Not one SkyTrain built has ever been allowed to compete directly against light rail and this study by McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd. Is to ensure LRT does not compete against SkyTrain for transit on Broadway or in Metro Vancouver.
Thus the McElhanney Study is a political document masquerading as a technical document.
Addendum:
The following excerpt is from the December 1983 edition of Modern Tramway’s article The direction of TTC Planning in the 1980’s.
Clearly, the elderly Toronto trams were able to move more people in 1983, than what McElhanney Consulting Services Ltd.would have us believe what a modern articulated tram can move in 2019.
The Mayor of Vancouver and the Mayor of Surrey discuss the Broadway Subway. What could go wrong?
It takes a lot of money to operate a transit system and subways tend to be a financial black hole and are avoided unless ridership on a transit line demands.
Just the SkyTrain subway to Arbutus will cost TransLink an additional $40 million in operating costs, but there is worse to come. Subways needs a lot of intensive maintenance or servcie deteriorates over time.
TransLink is well known for doing the bare minimum of maintenance needed to keep the mini-metro in operation.
The following is from Wolfgang Keller who now works as a safety engineer in Germany and before the SkyTrain Lobby sneer at this, in Europe, safety is taken much more seriously than TransLink would ever do!
Especially since full grade separation requires loads of technical
equipment, especially in the stations; escalators, elevators, lighting,
ventilation, etc. which all require maintenance and thus, staff.
Besides the fact that for a typical european grade-separated mass
transit system, the energy consumption of elevators, lifts, lighting
etc. is already higher than the energy consumption of the rolling
stock. Not to mention cost for cleaning of all those vast surfaces in
the access tunnels, pedestrian levels, station platforms, etc. and so
on. Another topic that has also been misjudged by many operators is the
requirement to clean the tunnels themselves regularly, because
accumulated dust and garbage of all kinds can easily catch fire and
then fill up the tunnels with smoke and toxic gases, interrupting
operation. Some operators have purchased “vacuum cleaner” trains to
solve this issue.
Line B at Rennes will cost 10**9 EUR for 12.7km. For a line that can
only operate 52m*2m (length*width) trainsets. That’s not more capacity
than any of the modern streetcar lines in France, at a much higher cost.
I must add, that the Canada line can operate only 41 metre long train-sets, thus has less capacity than Rennes!
Over here in Germany where they had this tunnel-building mania from the
60s to the early 90s, at least they’ve stopped now. Simply because the
municipalities ran into the fact that while building those tunnels is
cheap (for them, not for the taxpayer), since 90% of the cost is
financed with state and federal subsidies, they cannot finance
maintenance of the fully grade-separated lines at all, so the
expensive infrastructure they have built since the early 60’s is slowly
rotting into a state of near-inoperability.
No one is asking about the long term operating costs associated with subways. No one is countering Translink’s CEO, Kevin Desmond’s completely dishonest claims about LRT.
This gross dishonesty is badly affecting any hope of getting Valley Rail in operation!
How will the $40 to $50 million in additional operating fees affect Translink’s finances?
Kevin Desmond and the mayors Council on Transit is leading the taxpayer on a one way ride that will end in fiasco, making the FastFerry scandal in the 1990’s, child’s play.
A new TTC report is sounding the alarm about what the agency says is billions of dollars worth of unfunded work required to keep Toronto’s transit system functional over the next 15 years, a finding that could raise the stakes for the provincial government’s contentious plan to take ownership of the subway system.
The TTC capital plan was released Friday along with the agency’s proposed 2019 operating budget, which recommended a 10-cent fare increase. Both documents were reported by the Star Thursday before they were made public.
The capital plan says the agency will require $33.5 billion of capital investment over the next decade and a half in order keep the system in a state of good repair and meet expected ridership growth. A staggering $23.7 billion of those costs, which don’t include the expense of building new transit lines, is currently unfunded, according to the TTC.
Projects it says are required include increasing capacity on subway lines, replacing the bus fleet, building a new bus garage, buying up to 100 new streetcars, and replacing streetcar track and power systems.
“Without the investments outlined in this plan, service reliability and crowding will worsen,” warns the report, which is signed by TTC CEO Rick Leary.
“This is the fate now faced by some other major transit systems in North America that allowed their assets to badly deteriorate. Our customers, our city, our province and our nation can’t afford to let that happen.”
TTC board member Councillor Shelley Carroll said the new capital plan marks the first time in memory the city has had a clear accounting of the transit system’s infrastructure needs. She said it should be a wake-up call for government to “start having a real conversation about the system” and find ways to fund the existing network instead of focusing on building new lines.
Of the $33.5 billion in costs the report identifies, about $22 billion worth is related to subways and stations. That includes $8 billion for Line 1 and Line 2 capacity improvements, $650 million for a new automatic train control signalling system, $1 billion to expand Bloor-Yonge station, and $1.26 billion for platform edge doors.
A little more than $16 billion of the subway investments are unfunded.
The subway costs in the report are far greater than the $160 million a year the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have pledged to spend on the network if they execute their plan to upload ownership of the lines and stations to the province.
Carroll said she’s concerned that if Queen’s Park follows through on that plan, the province will deem much of the capital work unnecessary.
“Oh it’s necessary all right, and we need to be honest about it and make sure that this system can keep running,” she said.
When asked Friday if the province would commit to funding the capital backlog if it takes over the subway, Ontario Transportation Minister Jeff Yurek replied with a statement that said only: “The government is working with its special adviser Michael Lindsay on the details of the upload, including the financing.”
On the operating side, the TTC budget requests the city increase the subsidy it provides the transit agency and its Wheel Trans service this year to $763 million, a 3-per-cent increase over 2018 that would buck a city directive for all departments to freeze their net budgets.
Among the major drivers behind the increase is $14.4 million in additional costs for the new two-hour transfer policy, and $8.5 million for capacity improvements. There’s also $18.5 million associated with the Presto fare card system.
The agency is predicting 526.3 million riders this year. That’s up from 521.4 million in 2018, but a decrease from the 533.2 million in 2017.
The budget proposes raising $25.8 million in additional revenue by instituting a 10-cent fare increase that would apply across the board to adult, senior, and student rides. An adult fare using a token or Presto fare card would rise to $3.10, while an adult monthly pass would cost $151.15, up from $146.25. The fare hike would go into effect April 1.
“The TTC is still deeply unaffordable for many people in our city. We already pay more than our fair share,” she said.
In a statement Friday, TTC Chair Jaye Robinson, who told the Star earlier this month she wouldn’t support a fare hike, stressed the need to “balance the cost of capital and service improvements with affordability,” but didn’t say if she would back the increase now that it’s been recommended by transit staff.
“What I can say is that I will be listening very closely at next week’s meeting to transit users, to TTC staff and to board members,” she said.
Don Peat, a spokesperson for Mayor John Tory, said the mayor wouldn’t pre-empt the TTC board’s decision on the fare increase. But he asserted Tory’s administration has “made additional and record-setting investments” in the transit agency, including in popular initiatives such as the two-hour transfer.
The TTC board will consider its 2019 budget at a meeting Thursday.
By the numbers
$3.10 — cost of adult tokens and Presto fares after proposed 10-cent increase
$2.15 — cost of student and senior tickets and Presto fares after proposed 10-cent increase
4 — number of years in which fares will have gone up since John Tory took office in 2014, if the 2019 increase is approved
$1.47 billion — annual capital work subways and stations will require over 15 years, according to TTC
$160 million — annual amount Ontario PCs pledged to spend on capital work if the province takes over the subway system
Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr
The Broadway SkyTrain subway grift continues with a new band of suckers who will waste billions more of taxpayer’s monies on a politically prestigious transit project.
So, Vancouver’s carpet-bagging Mayor (former Burnaby NDP, MP) is continuing the subway grift, where Vision Vancouver was so rudely interrupted by the voters in last falls civic election.
Facts don’t change (except for TransLink that is), the North American standard to build a subway is a transit route with customer flows exceeding 15,000 pphpd, yet customer flows along Broadway are under 4,000 pphpd in the peak hour.
The result is easily predicted.
Operating costs will be an additional $40 million or more annually.
Ridership will be dismal.
U-pass will be in jeopardy.
Taxes in metro Vancouver will skyrocket.
Transit South of the Fraser will be cannibalized to subsidize the City of Vancouver and UBC’s $7 billion subway folly.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, land speculators and land developers will reap fortunes from up-zoned properties along the subway line, selling high-rise condos to the foreign money laundering crowd!
I am so glad that the former NDP MP, now mayor of Vancouver is so on the side of land speculators, land developers and money launders at the same time paying lip service to the homeless and housing affordability.
Subways make affordable housing impossible.
So reassuring!
SkyTrain at grade and the Berlin Wall effect.
New report says SkyTrain is recommended in expansion to UBC
A new report says SkyTrain is the preferred rapid transit service for UBC
The Metro Vancouver mayors’ council will discuss the recommendations
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — When rapid transit is expanded to the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver’s Point Grey district, the preferred option is SkyTrain.
That’s what Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart is saying about recommendations to be reviewed by the Metro Vancouver mayors’ council on Jan. 24.
“Seems to be a lot of enthusiasm among the other mayors for this project, and very excited that’s moving forward. I think everybody’s seeing this as a regional project where, for example, the mayor of Coquitlam’s very excited about getting students to UBC, as well as other mayors around the region,” Stewart says.
Back into the swing of things at City Hall with my first media briefing of the new year. I mentioned my work on SkyTrain to UBC, motions to review the empty homes tax and increase support for Councillors, and upcoming meetings with the Prime Minister & Premier.
— Kennedy Stewart
The report, reviewed in private last week, will be openly discussed at the Metro Vancouver mayors’ council meeting and Stewart is confident other mayors will support these plans, even if they don’t know yet how much it will cost.
“It will vary. At UBC there seems to be some will to be above ground, so that, for example, would reduce costs. We have to approve the technology, then they can do the business case and then we can see what it would cost per kilometre.”
Stewart adds the report recommends planning should fall in line with construction of the Broadway to Arbutus line which is slated for completion in 2025.
“What we’re trying to do is develop a parallel planning process, so we can maximize the efficiency of building that line. That’s why approving the technology from Arbutus to UBC is so important. The senior governments are looking for us to really put in cement what that is going to be.”
More details, including how much this extension might cost, will be discussed at Thursday’s meeting.
Stewart also plans to talk about it with Premier John Horgan Tuesday Jan. 22, and on Monday Jan. 28 with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Some transit blogs seem to think that building a subway is easy peasy , costing only a little more than a surface operation. This train of thought comes from a grand ignorance of subway construction and operation; with Translink’s grand subway plans based on the myth that subways carry more people.
As we all know in BC, all mayors are experts are experts on transit and the holy grail in transit planning is a subway.
Yippee!
The mayor’s council on transit is like an old boys rugby game, thirty one referees on the field, but I digress.
The staggering costs for subway construction is clearly evident with subway planning in Toronto.
The following quote should put an end of any discussion for new stations for the Canada line or future stations on the Broadway subway.
“The three stations recently built on New York’s Second Avenue line reportedly cost about $644 million-$812 million (U.S.) each.”
In Canadian funds this cost is $856.2 million to $1,079.5 billion!
Staggering!
Memo to Ontario Tories — there’s no such thing as a free subway
Ah, free transit. Is there anything our politicians like promising more?
Remember departed former mayor Rob Ford promising the private sector would construct a Sheppard subway extension in Scarborough at no cost to taxpayers? Remember when current mayor John Tory promised that the life-changing magic of Tax Increment Financing would deliver a 22-station “surface subway” at no cost to property taxpayers?
Now, as reported by the Globe and Mail, Premier Doug Ford, through his Transportation Minister Jeff Yurek, promises to change the one-stop Bloor-Danforth Scarborough extension back into a three-stop extension, with private sector developers entirely picking up the difference in cost.
They love the idea of something for nothing. I get the appeal. When it comes to prices, $0 looks pretty attractive.
Thing is, you tend to get what you pay for — and to not get what you don’t. Instead of free transit, basing plans on skipping out on the bill might ensure we remain transit-free.
That would be my primary concern when examining the provincial government’s recent idea to revert to the three-stop subway plan in Scarborough. “The developer would pick up the cost of those stations (in Scarborough) as we go forward, and it will not be a cost to the taxpayer,” the Globe reported Yurek saying on the weekend.
Let’s be clear about a something up front.
Wherever and whenever we are building transit, we absolutely should be working with developers to put intense commercial and residential uses on the station sites themselves if possible. It provides job sites and housing in transit-served locations, and can bring in significant revenue for the governments doing the building.
The hitch is that that money — decent as it may well be — is unlikely to be enough to cover the costs of the stations. Not nearly.
The three-stop subway extension was estimated to cost about $1 billion more than the one-stop version, partly because the topography of the area requires the stations and tunnels to be deep underground, and partly because subway stations are monstrously expensive to begin with. (The three stations recently built on New York’s Second Avenue line reportedly cost about $644 million-$812 million (U.S.) each.)
So if this is coming free of cost to the taxpayer, as Yurek says, we’d need a developer to essentially pay the province $500 million each for development sites at Lawrence and Sheppard.
It’s hard to know, in general abstract terms, how much land and development rights above a subway station at Lawrence and McCowan would be worth.
Right now, there’s a two-acre strip mall-and-housing site in Scarborough a few blocks from the proposed subway site listed for sale for $9.7 million. But land in the area would no doubt be more valuable with a subway line there, and land directly atop a subway more valuable still.
How much more valuable? It’s hard to know, exactly. But to get some sense, how about looking at a spot directly beside Finch subway station on the Yonge line with an underground tunnel connected to the subway station? That’s about as close to being on top of a station as a building can get.
Last year, such a building on Yonge St. in North York, a fairly new 18-story office tower, LEED certified and with 92 per cent of its 274,000-square-feet of commercial and retail space leased to mostly government and credit-grade tenants, sold for $85.15 million. That was for an existing highrise tower in an area of the city that is already fairly densely developed and populated.
Or, to look at it from another angle, in 2017 a developer bought a site at Yonge and Steeles — where a subway extension to the 905 is one day expected — with hopes of putting three condo towers and a hotel on it. The price? $53.9 million.
I don’t know which may be a better comparison to a site like the ones Yurek is discussing. But perhaps between the three examples, we see the ballpark value for commercial real estate of that type. It’s a big-league park — the numbers are huge!
But if the province essentially needs someone to buy the land and development rights above a station for $500 million in order for us to get a free subway station, we’re talking about a different order of magnitude.
Some might shrug and say, “Well, so what? This is still more real estate revenue than we were discussing before. It’s better than nothing.”
Perhaps. My concern is that when you promise something for nothing, and it turns out that something may instead cost hundreds of millions of dollars, you either wind up with a shocking and unexpected bill, or you get exactly what you planned to pay: nothing. Both results are as disappointing as they are sadly familiar.
It seems TransLink is reading the Rail for the Valley blog and is worried that Bombardier Inc. has folded the Innovia Metro line into the existing Movia Metro Line of vehicles and that Innovia production may cease cease altogether.
With the aging pygmy size MK.1 cars working two to three times harder to carry the same amount of people as a a modern metro car, they are showing a lot of wear an tear after 34 years of regular service.
TransLink needs to renew the fleet before maintenance issues overtakes operations and the system goes ka-put on an all too regular basis.
Thus TransLink is ordering 200 new MK. 3 cars.
200 cars means 50, 4-car trainsets. Now 200 MK. 3 cars heralds out right replacement of all Mk. 1 consists, which equals to 25 – 6 car consists. This is the equivalent to about 30 – 4 car MK. 3 trainsets. This leaves 20 for new service. That remaining 20 will be just enough for a partial Broadway (6.6 km worth) and a full 17 km extension. This leaves the 14 4-car Mk. 3 trainsets already on order to handle future extensions and extra capacity on the Millennium Line.
So yes, they will have just enough trainsets available but they are now fully committed to keeping the aging Mk. 2 vehicles going as well, while the MK.1 cars are sent to pasture.
Questions:
Is the stage 3 funding needed to complete the order?
Is this order even covered in the current 10 year transit funding plan at all?
Or is this just a re announcement of previous and planned new orders from the current 10 year plan, just with the numbers redistributed into different groups?
Why does TransLink continue the sham bidding process for car procurement? ART Innovia SkyTrain is a proprietary railway and only Bombardier Inc. makes the cars to operate on ART Innovia Lines. TransLink will pay what Bombardier tells them to pay.
In spring 2019, TransLink will issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to procure approximately 200 SkyTrain cars.
In response to customer requests, refinements to the interior layout of the new SkyTrain cars are being considered.
Have your say by participating in this short, approximately 5-minute survey. The survey will remain open until January 25, 2018.
A letter sent to the Mayor and council’s of the Two Langley’s and Delta, sent by Malcolm Johnston, on Jan. 2, 2019.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken.
Carl Sagan
On December 13, 2018, the mayor’s Council on Transit was bamboozled by both the mayor of Surrey and TransLink.
A decades worth of transportation and regional planning was tossed out the window, with the Mayor’s Council on Transit agreeing to change from LRT, to SkyTrain This condemns the two Langley’s without having any rail transit for at least a generation, if ever.
SkyTrain cannot be built for the same cost as LRT. Unless the LRT is designed to operate as a light metro and even still, studies have shown that light rail designed and operated as a light metro, operating on a grade separated rights-of-ways, would still be about 5% cheaper overall to operate than SkyTrain!
SkyTrain is not coming to the two Langley’s. The funding, including inflation will mean the Surrey extension will end in Fleetwood, most likely terminating at 168th Ave.
Photo: At-grade SkyTrain. The Berlin Wall effect.
The cost for SkyTrain increases dramatically every year because the cost of cement is increasing at a rate of three times the rate of inflation and by 2022, because of the escalating cost of cement and specialty steel, the price to build with SkyTrain will increase by at least $100 million annually.
SkyTrain uses about ten times the amount of cement as LRT.
It has been known since the early 1980’s, by BC Transit and now TransLink that SkyTrain costs a lot more to build than LRT with no benefit. BC Transit and now TransLink have masqueraded this fact by over engineering light rail planning, in short gold-plating LRT projects to make LRT look like it costs almost as much to build as SkyTrain.
This dishonest approach to transit planning continues as evidenced by the vast costs of Surrey’s proposed LRT.
Added to this dismal picture: With no sale of SkyTrain in the past decade, with only 7 built in the past 40 years (only 3 seriously used for urban transit), and zero interest in SkyTrain internationally, Bombardier may cease production altogether; even before the completion of the Surrey SkyTrain extension. This will leave the Langley’s standing at an empty station platform, waiting for a SkyTrain that will never come.
There is another way.
In 2009, the Rail for the Valley group engaged Leewood Projects of the UK to do a study on the viability of reinstating a modern version of the former BC Electric interurban servcie from Vancouver to Chilliwack. The Leewood Study was released in 2010, finding such a servcie was viable, using TramTrain, a version of LRT that can operate both on-street and on the mainline railway. The cost in 2010 for such a service was CAD $7.3 million per km to build. Accounting for inflation, the cost in 2018 would be $8.4 million per km.
What I propose is an abridged Leewood plan, using light diesel multiple units, such as the Stadler GTW traveling from Trinity Western University to Vancouver’s Central passenger station, a total distance of 52.5km.
Using the Leewood Study distance matrix (page 77) the distance by rail from Trinity Western University to Scott Road is 30 km. and the distance from Scott Road to Vancouver Central station, by rail is 22.5 km.
The travel time terminus to terminus would be under 60 minutes, faster than by SkyTrain!
The cost per kilometer for the full build system proposed by Leewood Projects was $7.235 million per kilometre.
Accounting for inflation the cost in 2018 would be $8.47 million per/km.
The cost for the 52.5 km route using the Leewood Study figures, updated to 2018 plus a 25% contingency would be $555.8 million.
There is more.
The master agreement that came with the sale of the former BC Electric, rights-of-way (from 180th St. to 232nd St., approx. 10 km) to CP Rail stipulates.
That passenger servcie is guaranteed up to 33% wheelage on the route.
That owner railway is liable for all upgrading costs for passenger service!
The distance from Trinity Western University to the junction at 184th St. is 10 km. thus the cost to implement a Vancouver to Trinity Western University rail servcie, with two trains an hour (30 minute service), minus the 10km. portion of track which will upgraded at the CPR’s expense. This would reduce the cost considerably, with a revised cost of around $450 million!
The Stadler GTW
The rail-cars or diesel multiple units to be used would be the Federal Railway Administration approved Stadler GTW.
The Stadler GTW can come in may configurations including a ‘two rooms and a bath articulated car with the diesel section in the middle and a five section double motor articulated car. As many as four units can be coupled together in multiple unit operation.
Stadler GTW
The basic concept of the Stadler GTW is rather unconventional: the car is driven by a central “power module”, also known as a “power-pack” or a “drive container”, powered on both axles. Two light end modules, each with a truck, rest on the power module, which produces useful traction weight on the driving axles. The end modules also use the space very effectively, although the railcar is divided into two halves by the power module. Most units have a path through the drive container for passenger access. The end modules can be delivered with standard pulling devices or buffer gears, or with central buffer couplings. They are built with a low-floor design except above the bogies and at the supported ends (more than 65% of the rail car is low-floor). All of the usual comforts to be expected in a modern local network rail car are provided, such as air conditioning, a multi-purpose room, vacuum toilets (in a washroom suitable for the disabled) and a passenger information system. The GTWs can be Diesel-electric or electric-powered (via overhead wires or third rail). Maximum speed 115 to 140 kph. Up to four trains can be operated in multiple unit. A Bistro unit is also available.
Operation
To start, simple stations or stops would be located at Western Trinity University; City of Langley between the Fraser Highway and 200th St.; Cloverdale; King George Hwy.; and Scott Road just in Delta; and Vancouver Central.
Photo: A simple station near Boston.
More station/stops can be added where demand merits and the operation can be extended to Abbotsford and Chilliwack, when funding is made available.
Due to the affordable cost to implement the service the new rail service can be built and operated as a real P-3 project, which could both include Stadler and the Southern Railway of BC, costing the taxpayer little or no money to operate!
An user-friendly rail service, built around the concept of economy and affordability would be a success, serving the many destinations along its route.
The reverse flow of traffic may entice tourists to venture into the Fraser Valley with the knowledge that a comfortable train will whisk them back to Vancouver, when their exploring is done.
Photo: A Diesel TramTrain in the French countryside
Instead of a SkyTrain that will never come, a passenger DMU service from Vancouver to Trinity Western University, servicing North Delta, Central Surrey & Cloverdale and the two Langley’s could be up and running before the Fleetwood extension is completed and by building it with a real P-3, would see real railway experts, plan what would be the most affordable way to proceed.
TransLink need not be involved at all!
Agreements must be made with the SRR of BC and the BN &SF and CN Rail, but this is the job for our provincial and federal Ministers of Transportation, to ensure pathways are available for a two train per hour per direction service.
The plan is there; the tracks are in situ and what only lacks is the politcal will to make it happen.
It is time for Langley politicians not be left lonely at the station, waiting for a train that will never come.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/city_hall/2019/02/01/breakdown-of-scarborough-rt-a-grim-reminder-of-what-may-be-in-store-for-transit-riders/srt.jpg)
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