Common sense: something that TransLink, the City of Vancouver, the Mayor’s Council on Transit, TransLink and its CEO, Premier Horgan and is entourage lack.
Common sense: the industry standard for customer flows on a transit line needed to even think of building a subway is 15,000 persons per hour per direction.
Common sense: the actual customer flows on Broadway, under 4,000 pphpd, based on TransLink’s schedule of peak hour 99B-Line service of 3 minute headway’s or 20 buses per hour per direction.
Common sense: huge subsidies must be paid for subway operation on Broadway, which operating costs will be in excess of $40 million annually.
Common sense: realizing what a “FastFerry” fiasco is, before it happens.
Common sense: moving out of Metro Vancouver due to high taxation to fund politically prestigious “FastFerry” style transit projects, that do little to offer a transit alternative, except bleed the taxpayer dry.
The Charleroi Metro, built but never used and remains semi abandoned to this day. Subway operation cost too much for the operating authority and the stations, tracks and infrastructure never used.
Transportation infrastructure influences the shape of cities for centuries. The road pattern of ancient Rome still provides settings for a thousand sidewalk cafAi??s, long after most Imperial buildings have crumbled to dust.Ai??Yet governments seldom think carefully about how their transit decisions will influence future city form and the quality of experience enjoyed byai??i??or inflicted onai??i??our children and grandchildren. This is evident in Vancouver, where I am a professor of urban design at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Along part of the cityai??i??s Broadway Avenue corridor, current officials insist on building an absurdly expensive ($400-million per kilometre, and rising) subway. Why? Ostensibly because itai??i??s faster, doesnai??i??t conflict with street traffic, and is theoretically capable of moving more people. But other high-capacity surface rail options can be had at less than a fifth of the cost.Ai??Toronto also has donned blinders in insisting on an as-yet-unfunded $3.5-billion one-stationAi??subway extension of the Bloor-Danforth line. Their choice is especially shocking given an earlier provincial government offer to pay for a high-capacity surface light rail system to serve the same district. Toronto is leaving billions on the table to satisfy its urge for a subway, seemingly compelled by a desire for Very Big Things.
The alluring high-speed underworld. Photo by Aaron Yeoman.
This is sad, because both cities once enjoyed extensive surface rail transportationai??i??systems that served not just one corridor, but many. Both Vancouver and Toronto are examples of North American ai???streetcar cities,ai??? built largely between 1890 and 1930, when migrant workers flocked to them and electric streetcars that served every arterial in the city. The legacy of this system is all around us. Both cities have a ai???sense of placeai??? derived from their low-rise linear corridors that are now some of the most attractive and vibrant neighbourhoods. These residential districts have been fertilized by the street railway system that served them. Surface rail provided an even number of customers for each street section, insuring a similar distribution of commercial and then cultural services everywhere. The system induced a perfectly walkable density, with a symbiotic relationship between the customers and streetcars.
So if surface rail works efficiently and affordAi??ably, then what is the impetus behind such a costly venture as a multi-billion-dollar subway extension? Well, follow the money. Around every station will sprout a forest of high-rise condo towers, both to supply the astronomical need for density needed to both feed and justify the subway, and the development taxes needed to pay for it. Our future cities will boast shimmering necklaces of these towers strung along our rapid transit system. But what of the vast majority of residents who will live far beyond a ten-minute walking distance of the stations?Ai??For the cost of one short piece of subway, you could provide high capacity, comfortable, surface rail for an entire city. This more evenly distributed approach would capitalize on the huge investment made in the last century to create these ai???streetcar cities,ai??? and would reinforce the qualities of the neighbourhoods that we hold dear.
City builders are now faced with a choice: we can construct a few expensive subway lines to serve largely unaffordable tower districts, while outlying neighbourhoods depopulate and their commercial streets decline. Or we can capitalize on what already existsai??i??the above-ground worldai??i??with a surface-transportation system that strengthens the existing structure of our cities, and restores urban enclaves that are more walkable, affordable and sustainable.
Which kind of city do we want?
Could this be the fate of the Broadway SkyTrain subway?
The current transit philosophy is that transit be used to density the route it travels, to increase ridership potential. In Metro Vancouver, this has been taken to the extreme, where properties along a transit route have been up-zoned to permit high rise condominiums. The downside, of course, is that affordable accommodations are torn down and one needs to earn about $50 an hour to live in the new high rise condo’s!
Those who are dependent on transit are forced to move and the condo’s are sold to overseas investors who have the money to buy stacked “shoe boxed sided condominiums.
This has failed miserably and what is being planned will fail, with those responsible for this nonsense rewarded handsomely.
Transit is to move people, not to develop land. Land development comes after transit is built, not before and is regulated by city councils.
Heresy, you scream.
No, from the earliest history, public transport was to move people.
The horse drawn Omnibuses, enabled people to live outside a walking distance from their place of employment to their dwelling.
As artisans who lived in the slums could now live further afield, more housing became accessible along the omnibus routes.
With the railway, the middle class could now quit the disease infested inner cities to live in semi garden estates 10 to 30 miles way.
Thus began the suburbs.
Fast forward to the 50’s and the car largely replaced public transit. Though bus routes remained to cater to the poor, the elderly and students, most commutes were made by car.
By the 60’s, congestion and smog, made livability in major cities almost as poor as they were a century and a half ago.
Then came rapid transit, which was to be the cure all for all urban ills, but some forms worked and others, well not really, but for many, the family chariot was the only way to get to work.
Instead of building “rail” transit as cheaply as possible and building lots, to serve as many destinations as one could afford, most cities built a very expensive, showcase “rapid transit lines”, that did little if anything in reducing the evils of congestion and pollution.
Smart cities built with light rail, which was and is a very inexpensive form of “rail transit”and with foresight, planned tram networks which has the proven ability attracting the motorist from the cat if they live and work within the network.
Not so smart cities built with politically prestigious light metro or subways, believing (falsely as it turned out) that glitzy transit will attract ridership and when that didn’t happen, forced every bus passenger onto the glitzy and expensive light metro or subway, pretending it to be successful.
Very stupid cities and politicians do the same thing over and over again, ever hoping for different results.
Metro Vancouver falls under the very stupid category and why they plan to force people out of their cars, because they have failed to provide a user friendly transit system.
User friendly transit, an oxymoron in Metro Vancouver if there was ever one and why Metro Vancouver’s politicians believe in the transit myth and not transit reality.
The unintended consequences of transit planning are embarrassingly many. What planners expected did not happen and the unexpected, proved challenging.
In Germany in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was a big push to build subways.
Subways were thought of great public works projects and many cities decided to abandon their surface tramways and build subways and it was generally accepted that by the year 2000 only a handful of tramways would be left in operation in Germany.
Did not happen that way.
Transit authorities ran out of money and taxes skyrocketed as the subways proved much more expensive to build than was originally thought. The subways carried a lot of customers, but overall ridership fell when compared to before tramway abandonment. For many transit customers, taking the car was easier.
Subway construction deterred overall transit ridership and greatly increased fares. Transit became user unfriendly.
Cities that built with subways, had smaller systems and the cities that opted to keep their urban tramways, saw both a greatly expanded transit systems and much higher ridership!
For many cities and politicians, the lessons of subway construction have been ignored, much to the unease of local taxpayers.
The unintended consequences of the guided bus is another example.
In the 60’s and 70’s, transit planners trying to improve bus service came to the conclusion was made that buses had to be more tram like and thus was born the guided bus.
There were three options for guided bus:
Kerb guided, where small vertically mounted wheels guided the bus via a raised kerb.
Rail guided, where the bus is guided by a single rail embedded in the street or bus way.
Optically guided, where the bus was steered by an optical system, following lines on a road or in a variation, by an embedded metallic cable.
All three variations were produced and marketed, but revenue service showed that for all the extra costs for guided bus, they did not attract the transit customers, unlike trams. Today, guided bus, which to replace small trmways, was itself replace by the tram.
Locally, combining rapid transit expansion with densification has had the opposite results than that were intended. As affordable apartments were torn down and developed into high rise condo’s, rents became unaffordable and those who were most dependent on transit had to move to areas where rents wee cheaper and transit poor.
Former Premier’s Glen Clark flip-flop from LRT to SkyTrain in the late 90’s is another example of things not quite going to script.
After the Expo Line went into operation, it was soon found out to be very expensive, not only to build, but to operate and maintain.
A large numberAi?? of of academics, engineers and planners, spent a lot of time planning for LRT to be built on what was then called the Broadway-Lougheed Rapid Transit Project. Political shenanigans by the provincial NDP government with Bombardier and SNC Lavalin and the NDP flip-flopped from LRT to the proprietary SkyTrain.
Instead of getting a vote “getter” with SkyTrain, most people washed their hands of the party and the flip-flop helped contribute to the embarrassing loss in 2001 and the two seat rump for the next Parliament.
Today, the Mayor’s Council’s 10 year plan for transit in the region is strictly amateur hour planning, where the two big items, the now $3 billion 5 km Broadway subway and the estimated $2.5 billion, 11 km Surrey LRT, will not take a car off the road, rather they will greatly increase the cost of transit, yet provide a shoddy service.
With Road Pricing and/or congestion charging just around the corner, the NDP may face having no seats after the 2021 elections. We shall wait with baited breathe for the unintended consequences of the much ballyhooed Mayor’s Council’s phase two plans.
Urban planner is cautiously optimistic about ways Metro Vancouver mayors plan to collect money to fund transit projects
A city planner says the model may hurt a city when it negotiates for public amenities in exchange for building permit
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) ai??i?? While the paralysis on municipal funding for Lower Mainland big transit projects has subsided, an urban planner is cautiously optimistic about the ways the Metro Vancouver mayors and TransLink plan to collect the money.
On Friday, the Mayorai??i??s Council announced its blueprint to cover its $2.5-billion share of the $7-billion worth of upgrades for phase two of the Mayorsai??i?? 10-Year Vision for Metro Vancouver Transportation Plan.
The plan includes charging developers up to $600 more per home they build, a model which may hurt a city when it negotiates for public amenities in exchange for building permits, according to city planner Brent Toderian.
ai???The cities are going to have less negotiation position because of this new charge because essentially the province is saying some of that now has to go to pay for transit and so it wonai??i??t be available for things like daycare facilities, heritage preservation, parks and community and cultural facilities,ai??? Toderian said. ai???In a way itai??i??s another form of provincial download.ai???
Phase two of the plan includes a new light rail line in Surrey, extending SkyTrain service along Broadway and boosting overall bus service eight per cent.
Transit fares will also climb two per cent starting in 2020, something Toderian says may run counter intuitive to encouraging more people to take transit.
Toderian does applaud the shift in the amount of funding municipalities were expected to contribute from 30 per cent to 20 per cent.
ai???The trap transit had been put in was it was dependent on local municipalities finding a third of the funds for public transit while just collect eight cents out of ever tax dollar. Itai??i??s a recipe for paralysis that we have been in,ai??? Toderian said.
Additional funding methods include raising property taxes by up to $5.50 annually per household in some areas starting next year and bumping parking rates by 15 cents per hour.
Light-metro, the great philosopher’s stone for urban transportation in the 1970’s has turned out to be nothing more than a wet squib.
BC’s provincial politicians have continually forced light-metro onto metro Vancouver, forcing bus riders by the tens of thousands to make transfers to pretend there is high ridership.
Light-metro was so expensive that a new science of “denisification” was created by embarrassed academics, planners and engineers, to justify building with it.
And what do we have in return?
A somewhat mediocre light-metro system that has cost the taxpayer well over $10 billion to date, that has not created the all important modal shift from car to transit.
Gridlock in the region intensifies.
The bus system is fractured.
The fare system is expensive overly complicated.
A transit system so expensive that TransLink is pleading for the region to impose “road pricing”.
A new word coined for land development, “demoviction”, where renters are forced out of affordable apartments and move to transit poor regions, then the affordable apartments are demolished to provide hugely expensive condos, designed for overseas investors.
Transit in Vancouver has been hobbled by light-metro. The taxpayer can only afford a $1 billion to $1.5 billion small expansion every decade.
The region has invested over $10 billion on light-metro, yet gridlock has increased unabated.
Vancouver is continually haunted by the lack of vision by city and regional planners who all believe that “they will get it right with he next SkyTrain Line built”.
Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results has been labeled as the definition of insanity.
Itai??i??s the largest investment in public transit the city has seen in decades, but critics warn of a fatally flawed plan that could haunt the region for years.
It sounds like the kind of project cities donai??i??t dare to dream of anymore: a massive new transportation network on par with the great mass transit buildouts of the 20th century.
The RAi??seau express mAi??tropolitain (REM), French for metropolitan express network, is slated to be the largest investment in Greater Montrealai??i??s public transit in 50 years. Projected to be completed within four years, the fully-automated light-rail system rivals the creation of the cityai??i??s subway, the MAi??tro, in both size and impact. It is among the largest public transit projects in Canadian history and is intended to demonstrate new alternative funding methods for infrastructural mega-projects ai??i?? in this instance, a ai???public-publicai??? partnership.
Once completed, the REM will ferry passengers between the cityai??i??s international airport and the train station located near the core of the central business district. It will carry commuters from rapidly growing off-island suburbs over the new Champlain Bridge ai??i?? designed with light rail in mind ai??i?? and connect new urban neighborhoods currently lacking in public transit access. Further still, the REM will reach into the cityai??i??s sprawling western suburbs to provide a long-awaited improvement to the current cumbersome and delay-prone commuter rail network.
When all is said and done, say its promoters, the REM promises to be the worldai??i??s fourth largest fully-automated light-rail system, offering competitive travel times, full integration with the cityai??i??s existing public transit systems, universal access and climate-controlled multi-modal transit stations. More than just a new railway network, it is being sold as a mechanism to shift the regionai??i??s transportation gestalt toward public transit and to foster new transit-oriented developments within Greater Montreal.
Why, then, are environmentalists, transit lobbyists, architects, urban planners, researchers and the public consultation office highly critical ai??i?? if not outright opposed ai??i?? to a project that has so much potential? Why is there strong opposition to a major investment in public transit in a city that regularly ranks third in North America, after New York City and Mexico City, for daily rapid transit ridership?
Critics charge that the REM is a backdoor to the privatization of public transit in its own right, and by privatizing key public transit infrastructure, in the long run it will limit the potential to expand other systems, such as the cityai??i??s MAi??tro or commuter rail. Moreover, the projectai??i??s developer has chosen a route design that would be highly favorable to its own real estate holdings and would further support suburban residential construction, in which it is a major investor. This has led some to condemn the project as a real estate venture masquerading as a public transit project. To top it all off, though a considerable amount of public money will be used as start-up capital, contractually obligated annual returns will essentially remain in private hands.
More broadly, whether the REM is even a good public transit system remains an open question ai??i?? the provincial environmental assessment board has indicated it isnai??i??t convinced that the REM would deliver on any of its promised benefits.
TransLink and the City of Vancouver have trundled out their end game for the Broadway subway and it is nothing more than a grifter’s delight of fake news and alternative facts.
To remind everyone, subways are only built on transit routes when passenger flows exceed 15,000 pphpd (20,000 pphpd in Europe).
Current traffic flows on Broadway are less than 4,000 pphpd.
So it is time for TransLink and the City of VancouverAi?? to sell the Subway lie.
“If you tell a subway lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The subway lie can be maintained only for such time as the City of Vancouver and TransLink can shield the people from the political, economic and/or tax consequences of the subway lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the City of Vancouver and TransLink to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the subway lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the City of Vancouver and TransLink.”
In the East London vernacular; “the porkies are flying”.
So let’s look at TransLink’s big selling points for the Broadway subway; the $3 billion plus option!
Claim #1
More Volume.
A tunneled SkyTrain extension allows for the highest number of travelers and ensures the system retains theAi?? capacity needed for the regions growing needs.
There is so much wrong and misleading with this statement that the only conclusion available is to mislead the public.
The SkyTrain Innovia Line’s Operating Certificate with Transport Canada limits capacity at 15,000 pphpd, unless an estimated $3 billion is spent to enlarge stations and station platforms to allow longer trains; renew the electrical system to operate more trains; a new automatic train control system; new switches to allow faster operation; the possible replacing some guideway beams on the Expo Line and more.
If subway stations are built with only 80 metre long platforms, maximum capacity will be restricted to 15,000 pphpd, close to what the mini-metro system is carrying at peak hours (according to TransLink claims).
It is interesting to note that coupled sets of PCC trams in Toronto were carrying 12,000 pphpd on the old Bloor/Danforth route and that modern LRT carries over 20,000 pphpd on on-street routes in many cities in Europe. Karlsruhe Germany recently operated coupled sets of trams, operating at 40 second headway’s, on one of the cities main thoroughfares, offering a capacity well in excess of 30,000 pphpd.! Karlsruhe is now building a subway on that route and gives good indication at the threshold considered to build a subway in Germany.
Claim #2
Less Transfers
A tunneled SkyTrain extension reduces the need for transfers at Commercial Broadway Station – the region’s biggest transit bottleneck.
This is so dishonest, it is more than laughable.
Question: “Did TransLink and CoV spin doctors sleep through their arithmetic classes?”
Present, Millennium Line and Expo Line customers need only to take one transfer from train to B-Line bus.
With the subway, Millennium Line and Expo Line customers will still only have to make one transfer, unless…
If the B-line bus service terminates at Arbutus, then Expo Line customers will have to make two transfers: to the Millennium Line then transfer again to a B-Line bus.
All the subway will do is move the bottleneck to the Arbutus terminus.
Claim #3
Lower Operating costs.
SkyTrain technology has the lowest operating costs per km. and per passenger than other technologies like light rail and bus rapid transit.
This is blatantly untrue and demonstrates how dishonest TransLink and the CoV are.
Just the Expo Line was found to cost 40% more to operate than Calgary’s C-Train (both lines, then, being about the same length), with the C-Train carrying more customers.
In 1992, the GVRD found that just SkyTrain Expo Line was subsidized by $157.63 million annually, more than bus and trolley bus systems combined!
SkyTrain has been on the market, under various names since the late 1970’s and only seven have been built. Not one Innovia SkyTrain system has been allowed to compete against LRT! No LIM powered Innovia SkyTrain system has been sold in the past decade.
The Toronto Transit Commission, estimates that 5 km of subway will add $40 million to operating costs!
Question: “If SkyTrain is so cheap to operate, why does no one want it?”
Claim #4 More flexible
Because SkyTrain technology is driverless, TransLink can easily add or remove cars to accommodate demand.
This old saw has been around so long, that I guess the CoV and TransLink spin doctors resurrected it, from the dead pile.
Light rail, can increase capacity on demand, by adding more vehicles to form coupled sets, without added staff.
Larger light rail vehicles, which today have a capacity three or four times as much as an Innovia SkyTrain cars, have ample spare capacity, that there is seldom any need to diagram more cars in operation.
Light rail can operate on-street in mixed traffic; on a reserved or dedicated rights-of-way; elevated, in a subway and can also track-share with mainline railways. It is LRT which is truly flexible, not SkyTrain which can only operate on its extremely expensive guide way.
Claim #5
More efficient goods movement
Underground transit will free up road space for more efficient goods movement and vehicle transportation.
Desperation is shown by this claim.
As subway stations will be inconveniently located and are generally user unfriendly, subways have proven poor in attracting new customers, thus car traffic on Broadway will not be reduced, but congestion, may increase, creating more, not less gridlock along Broadway.
Emergency vehicles operators like dedicated tram routes because they can use them in an emergency, navigating around traffic jams.
Several European cities now deliver freight by tram, as pioneered in Dresden and Amsterdam.
The epitome of modern light rail's flexibility and adaptability, a freight tram on lawned R-o-W.
Claim #6
Faster Commutes
The SkyTrain extension will cut travel time from Commercial Broadway to Arbutus by half. People commuting from Coquitlam Centre could reach central Broadway in 40 minutes – as fast as the car.
The benefits of faster commute times to central Broadway are overstated and in fact not relevant, as commute times for people other than Coquitlam will remain the same or increased.
One can lose upwards of 70% of potential customers per transfer.
It is longer to travel by subway if one’s trip is 7 km or less.
Question: “Is the expenditure of $3 billion or more for a SkyTrain subway to Arbutus worth a few minutes in time savings for so few people?”
Claim #7
Meets Regional Vision
The mayor’s Council vision for Transportation outlines the need for the Broadway subway to help meet our collective transportation needs.
The Mayor’s Council’s 10 year vision, was doing what Vancouver wanted, to build a subway to both make Vancouver a world Class city (all cities are world class if they have a subway, didn’t ya know) and to appease land speculators and land developers who donated big money to Vision Vancouver for wholesale destruction of affordable apartments and theAi?? construction of high rise condo’s for overseas money launderers and speculators.
The mayor’s Council on Transit, was once described as a bunch of children playing with their toy trains that Father Christmas left them on Christmas morning.
A $3 billion plus subway will rob much needed transit monies in other regions.
A $3 billion plus subway will not reduce congestion.
A $3 billion plus subway will increase transit costs and transit fares.
A $3 billion plus Broadway subway will benefit no one except land developers and land speculators.
It is clear that the proposed Broadway subway is all about moving money and not transit customers.
This is what should be happening in Metro Vancouver, but it’s not.
SkyTrain is elevated or put underground, to keep streets free for cars.
The cycle lobby is giving precedence over transit customers.
Cars remain the most viable transit mode in the region.
Our regional, provincial, and federal politicians only invest in transit to reward political friends with fat construction projects, such as light-metro.
TransLink remains largely incompetent, in designing an affordable and user-friendly transit service.
And in Munich, no gates or turnstiles; no expensive and complicated ticketing system to deter customers.
User-friendly transit, is just not in the lexicon of TransLink, The City of Vancouver, many universities,Ai?? the provincial government, and the federal government, where transit is designed to profit political friends and secure votes at election time.
Notice, most tram routes service the city centre, providing the all important seamless or no-transfer journey to the transit customer.
It seems that most transit decisions in North America are made with the goal of making life easier for people in cars.
In North America, transit planning is a mess. Decisions like building a hyperloop from Cleveland to Chicago or a one-stop subway extension in Toronto in the face of sound transit planning by experts that say these decisions are ridiculous. In New York City, they arrest people for fare-jumping but let them park cars for free for months; in Toronto again (my home is in the news a lot these days) they beat up kids over a two buck ticket.
Massive development at end of streetcar line/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
In Munich, you see what happens with sound planning and good transit. I am staying in the suburbs near a massive new residential and commercial development, with a lovely streetcar right outside the door of my hotel. It stops about six times on the way to the other end of the line at a subway stop.
I have been on this streetcar a number of times,looking out the window at the stores and buildings on either side. You can do that on a streetcar; you are on the surface, a step from grade, so if you want to get off and buy something you can. There are housing, offices and retail on either side; unlike subways with stations far apart, the development isn’t just at nodes but along the entire route.
As you get closer to downtown Munich, you switch to the subway. It isnai??i??t exactly strenuous, and there are lots of shops in the station. And there are no gates or turnstiles; it is all wide open, and works on the honour system. I bought a weekai??i??s pass and just treat it all as my personal transit system. Is there cheating? Sure, but those turnstiles and fare collectors and fancy card systems cost a lot of money.
In the subway, it feels like the cars are fifty years old, with wood and padded seats. Yet they are quiet, smooth and clearly well-maintained.
While I look out the window at the stores and restaurants, I think about the situation in North America. In New York, the subway never runs on time because they have to go slow because of signal problems and general lack of maintenance. The MTA is shutting down a main line for a while, but canai??i??t even agree on bus lanes that might slow cars down a bit.
In Toronto, the dead former mayor ordered a multibillion dollar single stop subway because he doesnai??i??t like getting stuck behind trolleys and the live mayor just panders to the car driving crowd and insists on driving this stupid train under single family houses, when one of the most important roles of transit is to promote development along its length.
In fact, it seems that most transit decisions in North America are made with the goal of making life easier for people in cars- Get those people who donai??i??t drive out of the way!
Really, they should all just come and spend a day in Munich, and see how transit can run smoothly, how it promotes housing and development. They should see how the world works when you donai??i??t pander to people in cars.
Not high speed rail, but TramTrain is an affordable rail option in lightly populated regions.
Vancouver’s mainstream newspapers have been famously ill informed on the subject of “rail”, whether be it, SkyTrain, light rail, or regular railways. I don’t even think there ever has been a honest story about light rail appearing in the Vancouver Sun, but………….
The Sun has completely out done itself on this story and poll.
Without any inkling as to the costs involved orAi?? even what high speed rail is, they offer a poll based on aAi?? transit mode with no definition, nor cost estimation.
It is like a poll asking:
Do you want a million dollars a year for life, no questions asked?
Of course the vast majority will vote yes. Stuff and nonsense.
There is a viable plan, it is called the Leewood Study and it is a very good plan; a foundation for a regional rail network for the Fraser Valley.
A much more honest poll would be:
Do you want:
1)Ai?? Large tax increases and user fees for a $12 billion or more high-speed rail line up the Fraser Valley , from Vancouver to Chilliwack or Hope.
or
2)Ai?? Modest tax increases for a regional rail network, with costs starting as low as $750 million for a Vancouver to Chilliwack route.
Now that is a poll worth asking or is the Vancouver Sun afraid to ask?
As Barnum observed, there is a sucker born every minute.
The Hyperloop is just another “better mousetrap scam” from the “anything is better than rail” crowd.
Hyperloop is just a 21t century version of the atmospheric railway con-game and a game well played to relieve ‘true believers’ of cash, like any other scam.
Very few atmospheric railways ever worked and when they did, it was for a very short while, as the mode extremely proved expensive to operate; more expensive than the railways they were to replace.
Sound familiar?
It should, because that is how are SkyTrain light-metros are built, supported by true believers, conned by very adept confidence tricksters. But, that is another story.
Hyperloop is just more of the same and it seems the the politicians in the American “Rust Belt” are playing the part of Barnum’s “suckers” as they are handing over millions of dollars to an untried, yet to be designed transportation system based on past atmospheric railway cons.
The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they donai??i??t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think theyai??i??re going to go home one night and have the girl theyai??i??ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever somethingai??i??s too good to be true, thatai??i??s because itai??i??s a con.
Holly Black
Cities and states are throwing money at a nonexistent mode of transportation.
By Henry Grabar
A Hyperloop capsule passenger car.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT).
Ai??For American lawmakers, funding public transit often feels like small ball. Politicians prefer to dream bigger. Earlier this month, transportation agencies in the Cleveland region and in Illinois announced they would co-sponsor a $1.2 million study of a ai???hyperloopai??? connecting Cleveland to Chicago, cutting a 350-mile journey to just half an hour. Itai??i??s the fourth public study of the nonexistent transportation mode to be undertaken in the past three months.
ai???Ohio is defined by its history of innovation and adventure,ai??? said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who once canceled a $400 million Obama-era grant for high-speed rail in the state. ai???A hyperloop in Ohio would build upon that heritage.ai??? In January, a bipartisan group of Rust Belt representatives wrote to President Trump to ask for $20 million in federal funding for a Hyperloop Transportation Initiative, a Department of Transportation division that would regulate and fund a travel mode with no proof of concept.
Itai??i??s hard to keep up: Last week, the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission announced feasibility and environmental-impact studies for a different hyperloop route, connecting Pittsburgh and Chicago through Columbus, Ohio, to be run by a different company, Virgin Hyperloop One. The companyai??i??which fired a pod through a tube at 240 mph in Decemberai??i??is also studying routes in Missouri and Colorado.* Meanwhile, Elon Muskai??i??who has obtained (contested) tunneling permission from Maryland Gov. Larry Hoganai??i??pulled a permit from the District of Columbia for a future hyperloop station.
But letai??i??s first look at the hyperloop that Grace Gallucci, the head of the Cleveland regional planning association the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), told local radio could be running to Chicago in three to five years, and to the study of which the NOACA contributed $600,000.
The company behind it, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, is one of a handful of U.S. entities that have emerged since Elon Musk first introduced the idea in 2012. In a promotional clip for the Great Lakes Hyperloop that plays like a sequel to Chryslerai??i??s Detroit Super Bowl commercial, a gravelly voice intones that this is not a dream, as b-roll footage of factories is cut with aerial footage of what can only be construction of an oil-and-gas pipeline. ai???Weai??i??ve already got a prototype,ai??? the narrator instructs.
They donai??i??t. Andrea La Mendola, the companyai??i??s chief global operations officer and chief engineering council member, told me there is no full-scale prototype just yet. The company says it is building one now in the southern French city of Toulouse. ai???In terms of full-scale, all-integration, it will [be the first prototype],ai??? he said. ai???We will start with 400 meters. Then we go up to 1 kilometer, and possibly 1.6 kilometersai??i??if we add a curve at the end.ai???
For those who believe that, what we call SkyTrain, is a great Canadian invention, will be sad to hear it is not, not even close; it is a mix and match transit system, using largely discarded 1960’s and 70’s technology.
Krauss-Maffei’s Transurban was a 12-passenger automated guideway transit (AGT) mass transit system based on a MAGLEV guideway. Development started in 1970 as one of the many AGT and PRT projects of the age. Its selection as the basis of the GO-Urban system in Toronto in 1973 made it well known in the industry; it would have been the basis of the first large-area AGT mass transit network in the world.
The suspension used attractive magnetic levitation, lifted on two upside-down T-shaped beams.
Technical problems cropped up during the construction of the test track, and the sudden removal of funding by the West German government led to the project’s cancellation in late 1974.
Given the technical problems including problems turning corners, the Ontario government decided to abandon the MAGLEV concept. Instead, they took the basic train design, linear motor, SEL (Standard Electric Lorenz) control system and other features of the Transurban, and redesigned it to run on conventional steel wheels. The result was the “ICTS” system. Announced in June 1975, the government formed the new Urban Transportation Development Corporation, in partnership with five industrial firms.
Today known as the Innovia Advanced Rapid Transit (ART), ICTSALRT/ART is the basis for only seven such systems built in the past 40 years, of which only three are seriously used for urban transit.
After listening to an very ill informed person on the radio, pontificating on all the ills of light rail, he made one last grand statement, about ” LRT would always get stuck in traffic”.
Of course the person in question was talking about streetcars, or trams that operate on-street in mixed traffic, but that is not light rail.
Light rail is a tram that operates on a dedicated rights-of-way, out of the way of auto traffic, thus not impeded by traffic.
This was realized back in the 1930’s and many tram operators were upgrading their tram lines with portions of ‘reserved R-o-W’s to increase the efficiency of their servcie, able to provide higher capacities and passenger comfort, without buying new trams.
WW 2 and the post war anti-tram movement all but halted upgrades to tram systems world wide and it was not until the resurgence of light rail in the 80’s, did the concept of the reserved R-o-W’s resurface.
Courtesy Tramway.com
A simple yet effective tram reservation in the city centre.
The tracks are slightly raised above the pavement, but still
can allow emergency vehicle access.
The success of the reserved R-o-W lead to dramatic decision, to lawn over the R-o-W, making a the tramway a “Green” linear park.
Courtesy Tramway. com
The lawned R-o-W, making tram routes linear parks.
It is the reserved or dedicated rights-of-way that has made LRT a powerful tool to ease congestion and pollution, by bring metro like service at a fraction of the cost.
Courtesy Tramway.com
A simple reserved rights-of-way, ensures unimpeded access at choke points, such as this bridge.
What is missing from Translink’s Surrey LRT debate, in fact all LRT debates in the region, is the importance of the reserved R-o-W, bringing a SkyTrain like servcie for a fraction of the cost.
The alluring high-speed underworld. Photo by Aaron Yeoman.
(Courtesy TransLink)
was subsidized by $157.63 million annually, more than bus and trolley bus systems combined!
Massive development at end of streetcar line/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Streetcar in Munich/CC BY 2.0
Subway coming into station/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Inside the old subway car/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Subway car/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Not high speed rail, but TramTrain is an affordable rail option in lightly populated regions.
OK children, a little history lesson, SkyTrain ancestor, The Krauss Maffei Transurban MAGLEV.
Courtesy Tramway.com
Courtesy Tramway. com
Courtesy Tramway.com
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