Grenoble’s Tram
Grenoble tramway system is one of the very successful new build light rail line in France.
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Tramway de Grenoble |
| Locale | Grenoble, Rhône-Alpes, France |
| Transit type | Tram |
| Number of lines | 5 |
| Number of stations | 81 |
| Daily ridership | 233,700 (2015) |
| Operation | |
| Began operation | 1987 |
| Operator(s) | Société d’Économie Mixte des Transports Publics de l’Agglomération Grenobloise (SEMITAG) |
| Technical | |
| System length | 42 km (26.1 mi) |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
Video
A Tram Ride In Karlsruhe Germany
And you thought 90 second headway's were close on SkyTrain.
So, let’s ride a tram in Karlsruhe.
Question:
Why didn’t TransLink defend light rail in Surrey?
Why was the CEO telling porkies about SkyTrain instead of setting the record straight on light rail?
A ride on Ottawa’s New Light Rail.
Let’s take a ride on Ottawa’s new light rail.
Let\’s take a ride on Ottawa\’s new light rail.
Surrey Must Pay Back $70 Million To TransLink!
Surrey must pay back the $70 million already spent on LRT, if not, TransLink and the region must halt all transit planning in Surrey!
The Light Rail project was ten years in the making, with much work and money spent during this time, $70 million dollars and just on the eve of letting contracts, an old man is elected as mayor and claims, without any documentation or any credible plan, that he can build SkyTrain for the same cost as light rail, withdraws Surrey’s support for light rail.
After spending $50,000,000 in engineering and planning and another $20,000,000 in pre-construction costs for the LRT, and the end result being nothing, TransLink and the region should be refunded the $70 million spent, before another penny is spent in Surrey.
Businesses which located in Fleetwood, on the basis of light rail being build, should also consider their options, as well and investigate suing the City of Surrey for “Breech of Promise”.
And, if SkyTrain cannot be built for the same cost of light rail, then legal action by TransLink and Metro Vancouver should take legal against the Mayor of Surrey and the Councillors involved.
I just love to see the SkyTrain for Surrey folks in court for the defense!
What is really sad, is that once again Surrey and Vancouver, demonstrate the incestuous nature of transit planning in the region. Again the world sees us as a bunch of uneducated “hicks” from the sticks.
No SkyTrain For Surrey For A Decade
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Didn’t old Zwei didn’t try to warn everyone, the Mayor of Surrey’s juvenile anti LRT crusade may mean no SkyTrain in Surrey for ten years or more and if Bombardier closes down production of SkyTrain cars, could mean no SkyTrain period.
The indoctrinated believers, will still demand the obsolete SkyTrain, and spread lies and deceit about light rail at will.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.’ — George Orwell, 1984
This is SkyTrain’s foundation, the same sort of foundation for pyramid and ponzi schemes.
With our politicians so inept; so ignorant about regional transit, the countdown for a complete fiasco, which will make the FastFerry fiasco, a mild child’s game.
The following is from our Mr. Cow, read and weep.
1 ALL FEDERAL CAPITAL TRANSIT FUNDING IS P-3! You can’t have federal funding without it being private public partnership. This policy started under Harper in 2009 and was continued under Trudeau’s Liberals.
2 Considering after spending $50,000,000 in engineering and planning and another $20,000,000 in pre-construction costs for the LRT, and the end result being nothing, I would be pretty pissed.
3 In exchange your getting, a line with no Federal funding (all your federal LRT money was officially shelved by the Infrastructure bank in Ottawa yesterday), until a new Environmental Assessment is done and a new P-3 framework set up.
4 No guarantees that senior levels of government will even fund the more expensive Skytrain project.
5 A minimum of 4-5 years, probably longer, before construction can even begin.
6 On top of it all, you are getting inferior Skytrain operating technology that’s more expensive to operate than LRT.
7 When the project is ready it will be competing for funding for stage 2 of the Broadway line and the total upgrade of the original section of the Expo Line. You will loose to both those projects.
8 Skytrain technology could be completely out of production by the time the Langley extension is ready. Bombardier is laying off 5000 more workers, 2500 in Quebec, from both the rail and aviation businesses. 8 Rail plants in Europe will be shut down as well. This means a much lower production capacity for rail vehicles.
You have been scammed! You won’t get anything for any Surrey line for a decade.
The Idiot’s Delight In Surrey Cancels Light Rail
Will Surrey soon have an incomplete SkyTrain Line, like Jakarta, due to having not enough funds to complete it?
Well its done, the idiots delight of new politicians in Surrey have voted to stop light rail.
Now they think they can build SkyTrain to Langley for the same cost as light rail..
Laughable.
The HATCH Report, planning to build SkyTrain to Langley put the cost at $2.95 billion, in 2017 dollars.
So Surrey new batch of Councillors are going to forgo a fully funded light rail line and instead will try to source $1.55 billion in new funding to build SkyTrain to Langley.
Mayor McCallum is on record saying that;” they can build SkyTrain at grade to reduce cost”.
Really, doesn’t the idiot realize that the guideway for the driverless light metro must be protected by a 10 foot, razor wire topped fence, as it is in Vancouver? Building SkyTrain at-grade is akin to building a Berlin Wall!
Surrey will be now mired in endless congestion and its associated costs.
As for metro Vancouver, it is fast becoming L.A. North.
Rail transit will not be built in Surrey until 2035 or more; rail transit will never get to Langley.
Madness!
Oh what fools these mortals be!
McCallum’s $2.9 Billion Question
From the 2017 Steer Davis Gleave – HATCH report, the total cost for SkyTrain, including fifty-Five new cars is $2,914,798,721.00. As 2019 nears, the cost is rising.
Memo to Doug McCallum: we are not building SkyTrain to 1980’s cost of construction.
Memo to Gord Lovegrove: I think you need to join the Light Rail Transit Association and learn about LRT.
Memo to Steer Davis Gleave – HATCH: What we call SkyTrain is now known as ART or Advanced Rapid Transit, which patents are owned by SNC Lavalin and Bombardier Inc.. ALRT was repackaged as ALM the early 1990’s, when the UTDC patents for ALRT were sold to Lavalin, which promptly changed the name to Automated Light Metro. When Lavalin amalgamated with SNC to form SNC Lavalin, they retained the engineering patents and sold the technical patents to Bombardier Inc.
Question for Doug McCallum, how do you calculate that the ART Line to Langley will only cost $165 million?
Let’s see your math sunshine or has that envelope been thrown in the incinerator?
Experts weigh in on the costs of SkyTrain vs. LRT in Surrey
Studies and past projects don’t seem to support mayor-elect’s SkyTrain cost estimates
October 29, 2018
A decision to ditch light rail transit plans in Surrey in favour of a SkyTrain extension would give up on a vision to grow the city and come with a price tag that is ‘magnitudes higher,’ experts say.
Doug McCallum, that city’s mayor-elect, told Postmedia News this weekend that a SkyTrain extension from King George station to Langley City could be completed for $1.65 billion — the same price as a planned LRT system that would connect Surrey City Centre to Guildford and Newton.
But that figure is far lower than a $2.9 billion estimate engineering firm Steer Davies Gleave & Hatch provided to TransLink in a July 2017 study. That estimate, in 2022 dollars, covered an eight-station, grade-separated, 16-kilometre rail line that would run cars consistent with those designed for the Expo and Millennium Lines.
McCallum has previously stated the project could be done for far less than that $2.9 billion if about half the SkyTrain line was at grade. It is unclear if McCallum’s $1.65 billion SkyTrain figure is supported by any reports, but he cited the roughly $1.4 billion spent on the 11-kilometre Evergreen Line in reaching that number. McCallum did not return a request for comment Monday.
Gord Lovegrove, an associate professor at the University of B.C.’s School of Engineering, said the last time he checked, each kilometre of SkyTrain line could be expected to cost around $150 million to build.
His per-kilometre estimate is not far off the 2011 dollar costs of the Evergreen line once they are adjusted for inflation. It is also consistent with an estimate in 2016 dollars that Steer Davies Gleave & Hatch provided for the Surrey to Langley SkyTrain extension.
“You have order of magnitude differences in costs” between LRT and SkyTrain systems, Lovegrove said.
He said the problem North Americans tend to have with light rail, which is relatively new on the continent, is that “we want to have our own exclusive right-of-way. We’re not willing to take the risk safety-wise, timetable-wise or schedule-wise to have it run with traffic.”
But Lovegrove said exclusive right-of-ways need not be the case any longer, citing Hamburg’s system as proving you can run at grade in traffic.
“I would just recommend maybe take a second longer look. Otherwise, if you’re spending an order of magnitude more, then you’re just not able to do as much with that same taxpayer dollar.”
Anthony Perl, a professor of urban studies and political science at Simon Fraser University with a focus on transportation, said that in every category he could think of, SkyTrain “costs more and does less.” Among other things, the automated system demands separated infrastructure, he said.
For Perl, part of the problem with SkyTrain is that it creates “development deserts” between stations. In contrast, the LRT system would have encouraged more density, he said.
“If the City of Surrey goes ahead and cancels the LRT plan, it’s going to set public transit back by 20 years south of the Fraser River,” Perl said.
Peter Hall, an associate professor in SFU’s Urban Studies Program, said swapping LRT through Surrey for SkyTrain to Langley was not just a change in transportation technology.
“It seemed to me that light rail was an attempt to give something to Newton as a node and give something to Guildford as a node, while at the same time building up the central area,” he said.
“You’re giving up on a vision on how you want to build Surrey as a place with a strong core and a set of well-developed successful sub-centres. I don’t get it. I don’t get why they’re so keen to turn their back on this.”
An Idiot’s Delight In Surrey
Delusional, is all what Zwei can say.
The LRT in Surrey is not a Surrey project, it is a TransLink and Metro Vancouver project and Metro Vancouver has shown no signs that it will cancel LRT as of yet.
The Money earmarked for the LRT is not transferable, so if Surrey manages to stop light rail, the funds will be withdrawn.
TransLink, some years ago, estimated the cost to extend SkyTrain to Langley, was about $2.9 billion. The problem is, the cost of cement and steel are rising at three times that of the rate of inflation, thus the cost to build SkyTrain to Langley, after a further five years of planning will be very much higher, with the added danger that there may not be any cars available to operate on the new line if and when it is built.
Then there is the $3 billion or so rehab of the Expo and Millennium Lines or the Innovia Lines before any extensions to SkyTrain can be made.
So Mayor McCallum, where are you going to to get over $6 billion in funding for your grossly ill informed, if not delusional promise to switch from LRT to SkyTrain?
One wonders if Surrey voters would have been so eager to switch from LRT to SkyTrain, knowing the real costs and the massive tax hikes required for extending SkyTrain anywhere?
The SkyTrain roller coaster ride is just beginning
McCallum breaks his silence, says Surrey’s LRT project will be cancelled at first council meeting
LRT will be replaced with SkyTrain for the same $1.65-billion price that LRT was estimated to cost, all of which is funded by three levels of government, McCallum said.
Surrey mayor-elect Doug McCallum broke his silence with Postmedia News on Sunday and emphatically hammered home the point that light rail will be spiked as soon as the new council first meets Nov. 5.
It will be replaced, McCallum said, with SkyTrain for the same $1.65-billion price that LRT was estimated to cost, all of which is funded by three levels of government.
“I think that most of the region, this is what they want,” McCallum said Sunday. Postmedia had previously left messages with the mayor-elect since the municipal elections Oct. 27. Sunday was the first time he replied.
“A large majority of people in Surrey want SkyTrain,” he said. “Voters wiped out the whole previous council. The new team is solidly with residents who want SkyTrain and not light rail.”
McCallum beat Surrey First challenger Tom Gill by 17,000 votes, ending a decade-long dynasty for the party in the city. McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition elected seven councillors, while Surrey First elected just one, and she is new to council.
“I think the reaction to the election in B.C., and to a certain degree nationally, was a bit of a shock,” McCallum said. “But the people of Surrey are in complete agreement they want a change and they showed up at the ballot box.”
There has been $50 million already spent on LRT in Surrey, according to TransLink, and Surrey has spent $20 million in pre-construction costs.
Some other regional mayors on the Mayors Council, such as Richard Stewart in Coquitlam and Malcolm Brodie in Richmond, have expressed their opposition to McCallum’s plans, while Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver’s mayor-elect, said he would do what he could to help Surrey get SkyTrain.
Critics of switching at this late date say SkyTrain would cost another $1 billion to $1.5 billion, but McCallum scoffed at that figure, saying based on what it cost to complete the Evergreen Line, SkyTrain could be built along the Fraser Highway to Langley for the same $1.65 billion already given the green light.
“All we ask is that they change the technology from light rail to SkyTrain and apply the money to SkyTrain,” McCallum said. “I don’t think (up to $1.5 billion in estimated added costs) is very accurate, TransLink has a history of not having costing right.
“I think we can build SkyTrain along the Fraser Highway for that $1.65 billion.”
Surrey’s Hobson’s Choice – A Choice Of Taking What is Available (LRT) or Nothing At All.
First posted April 18, 2018
Updated
Surrey has a big transit and transportation problem, and now with the announcement by mayor elect, Dough McCallum, now leaves the LRT project in doubt.
The cacophony of the SkyTrain Lobby with their half truths, cherry picked data, and intimidating innuendo are demanding a change from light rail to the proprietary Innovia SkyTrain.
With their campaign of deceit and deception now ended, one fact remains for Surrey, either build LRT now or wait twenty or more years for a SkyTrain Line; which will be assuredly out of production and will end up building with LRT in the long term!
Surrey faces a classic Hobson’s Choice: Either build LRT now, or get nothing.
Why?
The problem with SkyTrain, is SkyTrain itself. Extending the Expo Line means a $3 billion refit of the Innovia system must take place. This refit or rebuilding is to increase capacity; increase the electrical supply; a host of track and switch replacements: and expand the station platforms on all stations on the entire Innovia network.
This means a $2.5 billion (current budget for LRT – 3 lines) SkyTrain expansion in Surrey could cost $5.5 billion or more for one line and there is no money budgeted for that!
There is no money for an elevated Light Metro SkyTrain line to Langley or any money for one down the King George. The existing federal funds are not transferable and are program specific because all federal government transit money is done using a Private-Public Partnership or 3P structure. Money for basic design, planning and engineering has already been spent by contractors to the LRT project. Even though the main build, design, finance, operate and maintain consortium holder hasn’t been chosen yet! Both Translink and the Feds have to pay the contractors because as per the 3P agreement, they the early contractors, went out and got private money from Banks to complete their early design planning and engineering work in good faith and now await payment. This early work is already in the 10′s of millions of dollars. As soon as Translink and Surrey accepted federal money, they were committed legally to LRT!
Remember ALL FEDERAL TRANSIT MONEY IS PROJECT SPECIFIC, it’s been that way since 2009 and the alternative finance model or 3P structure is the only way you can get their money for transit! The era of just getting a certain dollar amount of federal money for transit and you can do whatever you want with it, is dead and gone forever! If you take the federal money, the project is set in stone! If you change your mind and plan to change the scope of the project you have to give the money back and wait for new funding for your new project! McCallum will find that unfortunately, at the end of a very long line.
The region can only afford one rapid transit project every decade ans even with a windfall of federal money, a change from LRT to SkyTrain may prove to be too expensive and the project deferred. This will be a bonus for the now $3.5 billion Broadway subway as politicians may divert Surrey’s LRT money to complete the politically prestigious subway project – even to UBC.
This will leave Surrey with no money for SkyTrain unless road pricing and congestion charging is in place and that will not happen any time soon.
Surrey Mayor Doug Mc Callum and Council should take heed. You will have a Hobson’s choice with light rail;
“Either build with LRT or build with nothing at all.”
An Idiot’s Delight In Langley
Idiots, what can I say, complete idiots, the pair of them.
SkyTrain is an obsolete proprietary light metro system, made obsolete by light rail! This has been known by all competent transit planners since the late 1980’s!
The proprietary SkyTrain system patents are owned by both Bombardier Inc. and SNC Lavalin. Again, well known by transit specialist around the world.
Today only 7 SkyTrain systems have been built, in the past 40 years and of these 7, only 3 are used seriously for urban transit. Not one new build SkyTrain has bee built in the past decade.
During the same period, over 200 new build LRT have been built and many more are under construction.
In revenue service, SkyTrain has proven to be not only more expensive to build, it is more expensive to operate and maintain. As well SkyTrain is extremely limited in capacity as Transport Canada’s Operating Certificate allows a maximum capacity of only 15,000 pphpd. To increase capacity, which is needed to extend SkyTrain to Langley, over $3 billion must be spent rehabbing the existing lines.
The latest rejection of SkyTrain came from Ottawa, where their politicians did due diligence and sent a fact finding committee to Vancouver to research SkyTrain.
Langley mayoral candidates Peter Fassbender and Val van den Broek, by wanting SkyTrain built to Langley, are going to increase taxes, to build with an obsolete light-metro that may be out of production by the time the planning is done.
Langley mayoral candidates Peter Fassbender and Val van den Broek are going to delay any sort of transit to Langley until the late 2030’s.
Langley taxpayer’s are being advised by dishonest political wannabes.
Peter Fassbender says plans for LRT along Fraser Highway aren’t ‘based on reality.’
Jesse Johnston · CBC News ·
City of Langley mayoral candidates Peter Fassbender and Val van den Broek both prefer SkyTrain to LRT. (Atomic Taco, via Wikimedia Common)
There are plenty of issues that Langley mayoral candidates Peter Fassbender and Val van den Broek don’t agree on, but they’re on the same page when it comes to the biggest transportation project in the city’s history.
Fassbender and van den Broek agree that when rapid transit is built from Surrey to Langley, it should not be light rail.
“I will take LRT if it comes down to it and that’s all TransLink is going to go for, but I am definitely pushing for SkyTrain,” van den Broek said.
“We’ll have to talk to whoever is elected in Surrey because that’s going to be a huge, huge item right off the bat.”
In 2014, the Metro Vancouver Mayors’ Council laid out its 10-year vision for transportation projects in the region.
LRT in two phases
The first phase of the plan calls for an LRT line that will run in an ‘L’ shape from Guildford to Surrey City Centre along 104 Avenue and then proceed along King George Boulevard to 72 Avenue.
The second phase includes a second LRT line that will run for 16.5 kilometres along Fraser Highway between Surrey and Langley.
Former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts and outgoing mayor Linda Hepner both advocated for LRT.
Fassbender says SkyTrain is a better option, even if it is much more expensive.
“Mayor Watts and then mayor Hepner both were passionate about at-grade rail and I don’t think it was based on reality but based on a vision that they had for the downtown core of Surrey,” Fassbender said.
“I didn’t agree with them now and I don’t agree with that direction now.”
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