First, modern LRT can carry more than 15,000 pphpd, in fact modern LRT can carry well over 20,000 pphpd. In Karlsruhe Germany, one tram line carried over 35,000 pphpd in the peak hour! Toronto’s old Bloor Danforth streetcar line, using coupled sets of PCC cars were known to move about 12,000 pphpd!
The 15,000 limit for LRT in Toronto, is probably a holdover from the old streetcar days and as Toronto is finding out, belatedly with King Street, transit priority on tram routes greatly improves productivity, which translates into higher ridership.
The big, bigAi?? problem is sticker shock for subway constriction. The same sticker shock is now echoing in TransLink’s ‘Ivory Towers”.
Council has never seen a comparison of the options when deciding how to spend $3.56 billion for Scarborough transit as critics decry a single-stop subway plan as a ai???white elephantai???
Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown, outgoing TTC CEO Andy Byford and transit activists sporting a ai???white elephantai??? costume and masks all had something in common this week.
All expressed support that council get a value-for-money analysis of the controversial Scarborough subway extension so it can be compared to the light-rail alternative.
Whether to request that study, will again be up for debate at council on Wednesday after it was deferred at a meeting last month.
ai???I think residents want council to be sure that they are providing as much transit to as many people as possible with every dollar that theyai??i??re entrusted with,ai??? said Councillor Josh Matlow, who will move a motion that his colleagues direct the cityai??i??s auditor general to do that work.
ai???And if council doesnai??i??t have that basic relevant information then theyai??i??re making decisions in the dark and thatai??i??s not responsible nor acceptable.ai???
On Monday, both Brown and Byford told the CBCai??i??s Matt Galloway they supported such a study.
ai???I support a value-for-money audit on every aspect, on everything the government spends taxpayer dollars on,ai??? Brown said when asked specifically about Scarborough transit on Metro Morning.
In a separate interview, outgoing TTC CEO Andy Byford said he has ai???no objectionai??? to that analysis being carried out.
As a debate, characterized by political rhetoric and often missing and misleading information, resumes hereai??i??s what you need to know:
What is the subway plan?
Council has endorsed a one-stop subway extension of the Bloor-Danforth line that currently ends at Kennedy Station to a new station adjacent to the Scarborough Town Centre. It will replace the existing and aging six-stop Scarborough RT that runs from Kennedy Station to McCowan Station.
Wait, I thought there were going to be three new stops?
An earlier plan replaced the existing SRT with a three-stop subway from Kennedy Station to Sheppard and McCowan Aves. But last year, city staff presented a plan to build more transit, they said, within the $3.56-billion envelope of available funding. City staff said that by removing two subway stops, a 17 to 18-stop LRT along Eglinton East could also be paid for. But as costs of the subway ballooned, that LRT line has been left largely unfunded. A cash-strapped city council would have to find hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for any addition subway stations.
What was the LRT plan?
LRT stands for ai???light-rail transitai??? which is different, more modern technology than is currently whatai??i??s used on the SRT line and what is used in many other North American and European cities. The city originally approved a seven-stop LRT in the same corridor as the SRT, separated from traffic, that would have run from Kennedy to Malvern at Sheppard Ave. and Markham Rd.
The plan had already been studied, was agreed to by the province and city, and was just three months away from going out for contractor bids to do the construction work when in October 2013, council, under former mayor Rob Ford, voted to scrap that plan in favour of a subway that was then estimated to cost $2 billion more.
How much does the current subway plan cost? Is that the final cost?
The one-stop subway extension is currently estimated to cost $3.35 billion, but since that figure is based on very preliminary design work, it could climb by as much as 50 per cent, city staff say, putting the upper end estimate at just over $5 billion. There are also significant and necessary costs not included in that figure, including the cost to finance construction of a project of that size, City Manager Peter Wallace told council in July 2016. The former chief financial officer said that financing could cost the city an additional $200 million for every $1 billion in project costs, or roughly $670 million for a $3.35 billion project.
What does the LRT plan cost?
The province, according to a still-signed master agreement, is committed to fund the entire project, what was estimated at $1.48 billion in 2010 dollars. Since then, the design of Kennedy Station has changed to accommodate other connections and would require redesign. Since staff stopped studying the LRT in 2013, that cost has not been estimated. Though a controversial briefing note produced by the TTC put the updated cost of the LRT on par with a subway, a recent investigation by the auditor general found that cost estimate could be off by at least $570 million.
Has council ever seen a comparison of those plans?
No. That kind of study has never been requested by council and therefore never produced. Matlow moved a motion in March 2017 to request that study, but the motion lost 17-27. A buried draft report from the provincial transit agency Metrolinx found the subway was ai???not a worthwhile use of moneyai??? when compared to the LRT.
Can the cityai??i??s auditor general perform a value-for-money audit of the two options?
Yes. The auditor general, Beverly Romeo-Beehler, in her recent investigation, said she was considering conducting such an analysis. She does not need council direction to do so. However, Romeo-Beehler later told the Star she has decided against doing such a study, saying it isnai??i??t her role to re-open council decisions. Requesting the auditor general to add that study to her 2018 work plan, as Matlow will attempt to do, requires a two-thirds majority of council to pass, or 30 votes.
Will I get where Iai??i??m going faster on the subway?
Not necessarily. The one-stop subway extension would improve the time it currently takes to get from Scarborough Centre to Kennedy Station on the SRT by five minutes, according to city staff. When considering the elimination of a transfer at Kennedy Station the time saved is eight minutes at most. But that time savings does not consider the extra time most Scarborough residents will spend on the bus getting to the one new subway station or that residents like those in Malvern would see their travel times cut in half by an LRT. An analysis by Ryerson University found most transit users would spend on average of 6.8 minutes more on the bus to get to the subway stop compared to the closest LRT station, and 3.6 minutes longer than they do now to get to the existing SRT.
Transit plan for Malvern residents does not improve travel times
*The original design for the Eglinton Crosstown East (then called the Scarborough-Malvern LRT) considered an extension terminating at Sheppard and Morningside Aves., not the Malvern Town Centre, so travel times would be longer
Wonai??i??t an LRT be crammed full of people? Isnai??i??t a subway needed?
Not according to city data. By 2031, the number of people expected to ride the subway in the busiest direction at the rush hour is 7,300 people. That is less than half the 15,000-person capacity of an LRT and would leave subway trains, which have a 25,000-person capacity, at least 70 per cent empty at rush hour. The LRT was earlier projected to carry 8,000 people at rush hour in the busiest direction in 2031, well within an LRTai??i??s capacity.
Isnai??i??t that still pretty busy for one stop?
When you factor in that this will be the longest single gap between stops in the TTCai??i??s entire system ai??i?? 6.2 kilometres of tunnel ai??i?? this subway stop does not rank anywhere near the busiest comparable stretches that exist today. While the extension would carry 64,000 passengers daily by 2031, the stretch between Museum and Bloor-Yonge stations sees station usage of 755,750. The Sheppard subway, which is almost six kilometres and has been considered to be a ai???white elephantai??? because it must be heavily subsidized by taxpayers to operate, has a daily ridership of 98,150.
How much would the LRT impact traffic?
Not at all. The LRT replacement for the SRT was planned to run in the same corridor, separated from all vehicular traffic.
Iai??i??ve heard LRTs donai??i??t work well in the winter. So, isnai??i??t it a bad idea to build an LRT in Toronto?
ai???LRT is a proven technology that is used around the world including extremely cold places such as Edmonton, Minneapolis, Stockholm and Bergen,ai??? a fact sheet from Metrolinx reads. The city is currently building a 19-kilometre LRT through the heart of midtown called the Eglinton Crosstown, and nine kilometres will run at street level.
Would I have to get off the LRT to transfer onto the Bloor-Danforth subway at Kennedy?
Yes. An LRT means riders would still have to transfer at Kennedy, but the station was originally designed to significantly improve that transfer ai??i?? just a single flight much like the transfers that already exist in the subway system such as at St. George, Bloor-Yonge and Sheppard-Yonge stations. That connection would have to be moved if council went back to the LRT. As part of a redesign of Kennedy Station, itai??i??s likely the LRT platform would be on the same level as the subway, requiring passengers to just walk across a platform.
But havenai??i??t they already agreed to build a subway?
Council still has to vote to approve construction for a subway once staff provide a more accurate cost figure, which is now not expected until 2019. Though Mayor John Tory and others have pointed out the number of votes the subway has already faced, most were part of the regular approvals process and the others were the result of the subway being modified from a three-stop plan to todayai??i??s single-stop proposal under Toryai??i??s administration.
In Metro Vancouver, local journalists remain largely ignorant of transit issues and believe, without reservation, what they are told by TransLink.
There is no investigative journalism with TransLink and its favourite, SkyTrain.
This “puff” piece is nothing more than softening up the public for both the Broadway subway and Road Pricing, which is needed to finance the subway.
Many of those 34,000 people a day claimed by TransLink using he Evergreen Line previously took the bus to Lougheed Mall and then transferred to metro. What is important is how many of those 34,000 a day are new to transit?
Silence.
It is also interesting that bare minimum customer flows for a modern LRT line to be built is about 30,000 persons a day. In the real world, but not TransLink’s world, LRT costs up to a quarter to build than light-metro. Thus the $1.5 billion Evergreen Line seems grossly overbuilt, to deal with such weak passenger flows.
TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond acts as a cheap carny huckster, desperately trying to sell one “puff” story after another, while at the same time ignores the truth.
The Evergreen Line, grossly overbuilt for what it does translates to higher subsidies for the mini-metro system and higher subsidies mean transit elsewhere suffers.
The Evergreen Line – Very expensive for what it does.
Average weekday ridership hits 34,000, a 13% increase over the early 2017 figures.
Tri-City NewsDecember 2, 2017
More than 8.6 million boardings have occurred since the Evergreen Extension opened and TransLink officials said the line is poised for further ridership increases.
On Friday, exactly one year since the opening, TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond said transit use in the northeast sector has seen significant growth over the last 12 months. He cited numbers released this week showing that average weekday boardings has hit 34,000, a 13% increase from early 2017.
“It’s clear that the Evergreen Extension has been a catalyst for a boost in transit use in the Tri-Cities,” Desmond said, adding that 51% of all transit journeys in the Tri-Cities begin on Evergreen. “The growth we’ve seen since the launch of Evergreen is nothing short of astounding, and demonstrates the kind of impact that this kind of transit infrastructure investment can have.”
Desmond said he believes there is significant ridership growth still to come, noting the pace of development that has been occurring around the Evergreen stations.
According to TransLink, there is currently $3.8 billion in real estate projects in development or under construction on land next to the rapid transit corridor between Lougheed and Lafarge Lake-Douglas stations. That includes approximately 9,800 future housing units.
With that growth in development, TransLink said it will move closer to its goal of 70,000 Evergreen riders per day.
“The heightened interest for commercial and residential development around the stations is an indication there is much more demand,” said Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay, adding: “With immediate accessibility to transit providing increased affordability and a major attractant for employers.”
It is sad that anti-tram journalist, Francis Bula, writes such tawdry articles about transit and by doing so, demonstrates that she does little or no research and repeats the anti-tram myth.
Citing Jarret Walker as a renowned transit expert is stretching it a bit, as he is a bloggist, catering to the anti-tram crowd. He is merely a planner and lacks that core knowledge which a European degree in Urban Transport would bring and offers yesterday’s solutions to try to solve today’s problems.
Zwei has never liked the term “streetcar” as it it brings visions of clanky and rattlely vehicles trundling down city streets, while trams give a vision of modern low-floor articulated vehicles, operating mostly on dedicated rights-of-ways.
The modern tram; designed to grow with ridership, giving affordable transit solutions to cities in the 21st century.
It is the modern tram that has rejuvenated transit planning in the past 30 years and bringing livability to the 21st century city.
As early as 1984, it was recognized that the simple and flexible tram was a good solution for congestion and pollution in major cities. Mature city planners opted for transit systems that had a good record of providing efficient servcie and rejected the expensive and gimmicky “gadgetbahnenn” style light-metros or monorails.
Vancouver’s SkyTrain is a good example. An over hyped proprietary mini-metro with limited capacity, extremely expensive to build, operate and maintain,Ai?? has bamboozled local politicians, planners,Ai?? and most journalistsAi??for almost 40 years and continues today!
The mythical “rapid transit’ again raises its ugly head from the swamps of ignorance, as the great solution for transit, but there is no definition of “rapid transit’ other than it is not light rail and that is good.
Really?
Mr. Bracewell, at the city engineering department, said
Ai?? “We see the need for rapid transit to UBC. A streetcar is not rapid transit.”
Sorry Mr. Bracewell, the modern streetcar or tram, operated as light rail has a greater capacity than our so called rapid transit and is far more user friendly than our Rapid Transit, which I guess is SkyTrain and costs a fraction to build. What don’t you get?
The modern tram on a dedicated R-o-W.
That our universities are turning out engineers and planners so ignorant about modern public transport is appalling, but the very same engineers and planners remain so ignorant about LRT is equally appalling.
Vancouver mulling streetcar network despite problems in some other cities
The City of Vancouver is studying ways to ensure it keeps its options open for a network of streetcars in the future, despite the irritation the vehicles have generated among travellers in some cities.
The transit vehicles operating on electricity have been maligned by some in Toronto for slowing traffic, but in Vancouver, the city is about to hire outside consultants to study what needs to be done to ensure that no new building projects or road changes shut the door to a future streetcar line.
The line would run down Arbutus Street and around False Creek to Yaletown, Chinatown, the central waterfront and Stanley Park. A streetcar line likely wouldn’t appear on Vancouver streets inside of a decade. The line would need to be approved by regional mayors in the next 10-year plan of the regional transportation authority.
“There are places in the city where something higher capacity than a bus would be good,” said Dale Bracewell, the city’s manager of transportation. Powered by electricity, streetcars are better for the environment and quieter than buses, he said.
Streetcar fans also argue that they are great additions to the city, because people like taking them and they tend to attract new development around them.
“Streetcars are place makers. They are an urban benefit,” said Anthony Perl, an urban-studies professor specializing in transportation at Simon Fraser University. They’re not the magic solution for all transit problems, Prof. Perl said, but they’re a part of a complete system in mature cities.
Streetcar systems, which were once common throughout North America, almost disappeared in the 1950s as cities chose to hand over road space to cars. Only a few cities, such as Toronto, New Orleans, La., Boston and San Francisco retained some lines.
But they’ve become popular again with civic authorities in the past two decades, with new lines being installed in places as diverse as Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Portland, Ore.
But those new lines have sparked some public backlash, as the ridership has not met expectations in many places, with Portland’s successful system being a notable exception.
Renowned U.S. transit expert Jarrett Walker has said that cities need to examine the case for streetcars more carefully. He argues that, even when streetcars attract more riders than the bus lines they replaced, it’s often because cities make huge improvements to the streets they’re on.
Toronto went through a debate earlier this year about its streetcar system, after a city hall committee suggested keeping the line on Queen Street closed for an extra two weeks beyond a planned shutdown for renovations to study whether buses would be more effective.
Drivers often gripe about being stuck behind the streetcars, while riders sometimes complain that the streetcars get so slowed down by traffic that walking is faster.
Toronto just started a pilot project with its King Street line that gives the streetcar priority and limits car drivers to being able to travel for one block on the street. That has significantly improved travel times.
In Vancouver, the proposed study for a future streetcar, whose bid deadline closes on Tuesday, is meant to update work that has been going on since the early 1990s in streetcar planning in the city. The city is asking for consultants doing the new study to look at a possible connection between the streetcar line and the planned Broadway subway.
It’s something that the city’s most ardent streetcar advocate welcomes. “This could be the beginning of a network,” said University of British Columbia professor Patrick Condon. “And to put this system in, which is greenhouse-gas-zero, is a good direction. It’s a promising direction.”
He said streetcars do much more than just transport local residents. “Studies show a million tourists a year are likely to use it.”
Prof. Condon hopes that Vancouver engineers will also study the feasibility of streetcar lines that have been suggested in the past. One is along the Fraser River from Arbutus to the city’s eastern boundary. The other is from Arbutus Street, where the first phase of the Broadway subway now being planned is scheduled to terminate, out to UBC.
But Mr. Bracewell, at the city engineering department, said neither of those is part of the current study. “We see the need for rapid transit to UBC. A streetcar is not rapid transit.”
The reason for ending 24 hour subway servcie in New York is……
Ai??that it would allow for longer windows to perform maintenance work needed to keep the system in good repair for daytime commutes.
….is the same as TransLink’s maintenance needs for its light-metro lines.
The real problem is that those who call for 24 hour servcie on subways or light-metro, haven’t a clue about the costs of metro operation, nor the time needed for proper maintenance.
Trains just don’t magically operate, yet many politicians and the public think they do.
Subways are just very expensive, any way you look at them.
Preventative maintenance is essential to prevent delays on transit.
A new, greatly expanded Penn Station complex. Linking Metro-North, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad into one regional commuter rail system. Ending overnight subway service. Moving Madison Square Garden.
These are just some of the radical infrastructure changes recommended in the influential Regional Plan Associationai??i??s long-ranging blueprint for the future of transportation in the tri-state area, released Thursday.
The recommendations, part of a nearly 400-page document called The Fourth Regional Plan, outline potential fixes for not only the cityai??i??s transit woes but everything from coping with climate change to increasing the quality of life and economic prowess of the region as it moves into the 21st century.
And these arenai??i??t necessarily pie-in-the-sky ideas: the Regional Plan Associationai??i??s previous three plans, released in 1929, 1960 and 1996, all included many recommendations that were later adopted by city, state and federal governments and bodies in the years that followed.
Hereai??i??s some of the biggest things to look out for in the transportation portion of the Fourth Regional Plan:
Ending overnight subway service, adding new subway lines and modernizing the mass-transit system under new management
For any New Yorker who has grabbed an early-morning train home from a late night at work or out on the town, this one could hurt: The Fourth Regional Plan calls for an end to 24-hour subway service, replacing overnight trains with bus service. The reasoning behind the move is that it would allow for longer windows to perform maintenance work needed to keep the system in good repair for daytime commutes.
News item: Just in time for Christmas, TransLink opens an online souvenir store.Ai??
Coffee mug, for that superior joe. (theBreaker)
Buy a wayfinding throw pillow ($59), SeaBus bottle ($25.95) or SkyTrain scale model ($20) to remind yourself of all the times the Metro Vancouver transit system has been out of service and the shock you get when that tax bill to pay for it comes.Ai??
theBreaker suggests TransLink offer even more designs, like the following.Ai??
The Bus Bridge T-shirt, when you really need it. (theBreaker)
Keep your spirits up. A flask, to hide your hooch from the Transit Police. (theBreaker)
A soft pillow, for the end of a long day of riding TransLink. (theBreaker)
Toronto’s King Street experiment, bringing 21st century tram philosophy to Toronto and has opened a great many eyes.
What has happened is simple, on portions of King Street, the streetcar has been turned into light rail at very little cost.
There is no war on the car, rather priority has been given to transit customers over the car. This is mature transit planning, something that is missing in Vancouver, where sometime ago a senior consultant of an overseas transportation company told me that; “Sadly, Vancouver was not mature enough to embrace light rail”.
What Vancouver has been doing is building obsolete metro systems and perverting statistics to show that light-metro really, really works because it is world class.
This is not world class, rather third world thinking.
Toronto’s King Street should be a template for Broadway, where on selected portions of route, priority is given to trams. Sadly, those in power prefer to play trains and build $3 billion plus subway to nowhere.
As much as the King St. pilot project will help bring Torontoai??i??s wholly inadequate transit system into the 21st century, more important, it will enable the city to establish contact with reality, albeit to a limited degree.
Since 1998, when the province forcibly amalgamated Toronto and its surrounding suburbs, the mega-city, as it was then known, has existed in an infantilized state. Rather than acknowledge the facts of life in a growing city, Toronto has buried its head in the sand and resorted to the tired rhetoric of the ai???War on the Car.ai???
Fueled by these nonsensical notions, Mayor John Tory has launched a series of minor traffic fixes. Some have promise ai??i?? why shouldnai??i??t deliveries be made before or after rush hour? ai??i?? others are more symbolic. Does anyone really believe we can eliminate illegal parking? Still, in a city that never lets reason get in the way of transit planning, these tweaks matter enormously.
But now, for the first time in living memory, the city has taken a step that prioritizes public transit over the private vehicle, streetcars over cars, truth over illusion. This represents a huge change, a paradigm shift of monumental proportions.
Of course, the stretch of King included in the pilot is too short. Toronto never does in full measure what it can do by half. The Bloor bike lanes are another example of a city trapped in its own timidity. The lanes are too short, but 2.4 kilometres was as far as council could see.
The real issue ai??i?? mobility ai??i?? has historically been equated with vehicular traffic. But the automobile is only one of many forms of mobility. This is a point that civic and provincial politicos have difficulty grasping. For them, getting around the city begins and ends with the car. Itai??i??s no surprise, then, that Toronto transit has fallen two or three decades behind much of the advanced world.
The King St. experiment accepts that transit isnai??i??t simply an alternative to the internal congestion machine, but is actually preferable. Accordingly, it gives streetcars precedence. Cars can still use King, but only a block at a time. Streetcars fly along the street. If the 504 route carried 65,000 passengers daily in the bad old days, how many will ride it now? The big problem remains lack of rolling stock.
The real test wonai??i??t come, however, until police arenai??i??t on the spot daily writing tickets. Just as Toronto drivers routinely ignore bus and bike lanes, police routinely ignore offending drivers. The story of the cityai??i??s favourite cop, Const. Kyle Ashley, is instructive: he came to prominence tweeting his struggles to keep bike lanes free of illegally parked vehicles only to be silenced, ominously, by police brass.
In its willingness to go against history, the King St. project is a reminder of how poor transit planning has become in these parts. Even the Vaughan subway extension that opens next month is fundamentally flawed. It will attract more riders, but without increasing the systemai??i??s capacity to handle them.
This and the failure to create network connectivity have been transitai??i??s tale since the Bloor line was built in the 1960s. The Sheppard line loses money with every ride. Toryai??i??s proposed Scarborough line is already recognized internationally as a white elephant of global proportions. The only exception to this record of failure, the Eglinton Crosstown, an underground LRT, should have been a subway. And letai??i??s not get into the lack of funding for the eastern portion of the line.
But now Torontonians have King St. as a reminder of what transit could be. It offers a glimpse of a different, smarter, more humane city. Of all the numerous problems the TTC faces, the most pressing is the need to be taken seriously, not treated as a goody handed out by vote-hungry politicians, municipal and provincial. For Tory, whose dismal transit record includes the Scarborough subway and SmartTrack, the pilot offers a desperately needed win. Most likely he will gain more votes in next yearai??i??s election by dealing with the reality of downtown transit than promising subways to nowhere.
Meanwhile, several weeks ago, the city quietly requested proposals for tunneling sections of the relief line. Though this marks another move in the right direction, construction isnai??i??t scheduled to start until 2025. Thatai??i??s a long time to hold your breath.
Zwei was not kidding about the issue of cleaning subway lines.
Due to the nature of train action in a subway, the piston like force of air that is in front of every train as it traverses the tunnel, creates a sandblasting effect on the electrics and signalling.
Then, the oily dirt and debris coming from the passengers themselves has now formed a dangerous coating on the electrical supply over time.
This combination may cause fires and fires in a subway tend to be extremely dangerous.
Many subway systems like London’s Tube, operate vacuum trains onAi?? a regular basis to help control dirt.
This adds to the already expensive nature of operating a subway and in Toronto Canada, the estimated cost to operate just 7 km of subway line is $40 million annually!
I wonder if TransLink is up to speed on the problems and costs of operating a subway?
Somehow I think not.
Hairy situation: DCai??i??s rail system may be taken down by human shedding
The fuzzy coating from riders’ heads could cause electrical sparks and fires.
For residents of our nationai??i??s capital, news of a fire on the cityai??i??s rapid transit systemai??i??the Washington Metroai??i??is not surprising. It catches fire and smokes quite regularly. At some points last year, there were reports of more than four fires per week (although thereai??i??s some dispute about that rate). Thereai??i??s even the handy siteai??i??IsMetroOnFire.comai??i??to check the current blaze status.
Yet, despite the common occurrence, residents may be surprised to learn a potential contributor to the system-wide sizzling: their own hair.
According to a safety specialist with the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), a thick, felt-like layer of human hair, skin, and other debris has collected on the aging tracks of the cityai??i??s rails. In particular, hair has built up on insulators supporting the transit systemai??i??s electrified third rails, which run cables carrying 750 Volts of electricity to power the trains. The hair coating delivers a real threat of electrical sparks and fire.
ai???I was flabbergastedai??? at the amount of hair in the Metro, ATU specialist Brian Sherlock told a local NBC news station. ai???The amount of debris is just beyond vulgar to think of.ai???Arcing and smoking insulators is a problem that has dogged Metro for years. In 2015, an arcing insulator was linked to a smoke incident that left one passenger dead and more than 80 others sickened by thick smog.
ai???A lot of the issues with the insulators is actually fiber and hair that literally comes off of people and clothing, and gets sucked upai??? and into the tunnels, Paul Wiedefeld, general manager of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, told NBC News.
However gross, the collection of hair from riders may not be that surprising. The system provided 97 million rides in 2016. A single healthy person sheds anywhere from 10 to 200 hairs per day. But those with health issues or hair loss can shed far more. Stressai??i??a common problem around DCai??i??can also up the head shedding.
In addition to hair, riders also let loose dead skin cells as they commute on the rails. A healthy person sheds about a thousand skin cells per centimeter squared of skin every hour. That works out to about 500 million cells a day. And each one of us sheds our entire outer layer of skin every two to four weeks.
Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel told NBC that Metro is working to boost track cleaning considering the hairy situation.
As our politicians, planners and selected academics, offer more and more studies, in an attempt of achieving nothing, by spending a great amount of time doing studies.
The railway fraternity in the UK, don’t study, they do!
The Lynton and Barnstaple Railway has reopened after being abandoned and scrapped over 80 years ago. The narrow gauge railway has now returned to her former glory after only 17 years of hard work!
Then think of the E&N Railway and the Rail for the Valley TramTrain scheme for the Fraser Valley; two railways in existence and yet the Provincial government ignores any attempt to restore any form of passenger servcie on the two lines connecting major town centres on their respective routes.
The lesson is simple, in the UK, they do and in BC, they don’t.
Baldwin 2-4-2T No. 762 Lyn at Woody Bay station on September 29. CHRIS LEIGH
I kept thinking I would wake up. After all, it must be a dream, surely? I was at Woody Bay station on the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway, on September 29 and there in front of me was a four-coach L&B train headed by the Baldwin 2-4-2T Lyn. But, I had come by VW Tiguan not Tardis, and if Iai??i??d gone back in time I would have surely travelled by the Southern from Waterloo…
September 29 is etched in the mind of any L&B enthusiast. On that day, the final Saturday of the 1935 summer timetable, the last L&B train ran. Yeo and Lew, the railwayai??i??s first and last locomotives, headed the final train on its return journey from Barnstaple Town to Lynton. The railwayai??i??s famous epitaph comes from a wreath placed on the Barnstaple stop block on the Monday: ai???Perchance it is not dead but sleepeth.ai???
In the subsequent weeks, North Devonai??i??s unique narrow gauge railway was reduced to scrap. Two carriages, a handful of bits of carriages and five habitable station buildings were about all that was left. Oh, and Lew escaped immediate destruction, having been exiled to a coffee plantation in Brazil, never to be seen or heard of again.
In 1982, as custodian of Ian Allanai??i??s photographic library, it was part of my role to buy negatives to expand the collection. One morning my post tray arrived and among the usual mail was a battered envelope containing an old-style negative wallet with 100 pockets, each containing a 31/2in by 21/4in negative of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway. Each negative was marked in the corner ai???FEBai??i??, which I recognised as the initials of Frank Box, a well-known 1930s railway photographer and fan of the L&BR. I had to request permission from above to spend money on these gems. The response was along the lines of: ai???If youai??i??re going to spend all of that money, youai??i??d better make a book out of them.ai???
And so followed some fascinating conversations with my IA Library colleague A B MacLeod who, as Locomotive Running Superintendent at Waterloo in the mid-1930s, had included the L&B in his area of responsibility. He had ridden on a couple of the locomotives and – judging by his comments about the position of the firehole ai??i?? had fired them too. I had already made a point of going to Clannaborough Rectory to photograph carriage No. 2 in the garden there, and I had taken holidays in the station buildings at Lynmouth (1972) and Bratton Fleming (1976).
Even as I was writing my text, there were stirrings of preservation down in North Devon. It was difficult to believe that any part of the L&B might be revived and I noted in the book my concern that a spluttering petrol tractor on a few yards of industrial track would not do the L&B justice. Thirty-five years on from that book, Iai??i??m delighted to admit that my fears were unfounded. The present Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Association may only have a short section of the railway restored to operation, but itai??i??s every inch pure L&B. Whatai??i??s more, at Snapper Halt and Chelfham they have made big strides in renovating the stations, and they are gathering more sections of original railway as it becomes available.
The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway is awakening and itai??i??s every bit as great as Iai??i??d always imagined!
As expected, the costs for the Scarborough subway, the subway that is replacing the Scarborough ICTS Rapid Transit line, is escalating. Toronto’s ICTSAi?? or locally called SRTAi?? is a very close cousin to Vancouver’s ALRT/ART system, which we collectively named SkyTrain.
What should interest Metro Vancouver residents is the final cost of the 6.4 km Scarborough subway in 2018 dollars, because the proposed Broadway SkyTrain subway is about the same length.
While TransLink has budgeted the subway at $2 billion in 2015 dollars ($2.1 billion in 2017 dollars), independent estimates for the subway project, put the cost in excess of $3 billion, with one estimate as high as $4 billion!
It is quite possible that civic politicians in Metro Vancouver, like their brethren in Toronto, will postpone the final cost estimates after the next round of civic elections.
Senior city officials will know the updated cost of the Scarborough subway in 2018.
Exactly when that estimate will be ready is still unclear. But the Star has confirmed the public wonai??i??t be told until the first quarter of 2019, when a staff report to council is expected ai??i?? well after the next municipal election.
ai???I donai??i??t see why the government of the City of Toronto would sit on information for three quarters of the year and not make it available to Torontonians as they go to polls,ai??? said Councillor Gord Perks, who has been critical of the subway plan.
With only very preliminary design done, the current estimate for a single-stop subway extension of the Bloor-Danforth line to the Scarborough Town Centre is $3.35 billion. That number comes with a very wide margin of error and does not include the costs necessary to finance a large infrastructure project.
The last time there was a cost update, the price of the subway increased by $1 billion.
As he announced his resignation Tuesday, outgoing TTC CEO Andy Byford said that if costs of the subway rise ai???way beyondai??? todayai??i??s estimate the project ai???will need to be revisited.ai???
The TTC earlier confirmed to the Star the subway will be at 30 per cent design by ai???mid-2018.ai???
But in email Wednesday, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross clarified that the work will happen in phases and that an actual cost estimate is not expected to be ready until ai???late 2018.ai???
Council was told in March that ai???city and TTC staff plan to report at the next key decision milestone for this project in late 2018ai??? with a cost update, once the subway has advanced to 30 per cent design, according to a staff report.
But a change in that reporting date is buried in an attachment to a new, unrelated report from staff released on Tuesday about the mayorai??i??s ai???SmartTrackai??? transit plan.
A letter from city manager Peter Wallace to the head of the provincial transit agency Metrolinx dated Nov. 20 outlines the cityai??i??s position on a regional transportation plan being drafted by the agency. At the end is a chart updating the status of the cityai??i??s priority transit projects.
The chart notes that the TTC is ai???currently advancing both tunnel and station design work from 10 per cent to 30 per centai??? with ai???expected completion end of 2018.ai??? It notes the ai???next milestoneai??? is a report to council on the updated cost estimates in ai???Q1 2019.ai???
City spokesperson Wynna Brown told the Star that while an updated cost estimate is expected ai???Q3/Q4 2018ai??? there is no council meeting until January 2019 ai???so the first opportunity to report out is Q1 2019.ai???
The last council meeting where city business can be dealt with next year is scheduled from July 23 to 25.
The nomination period for the election runs from May 1 to July 27 next year. Election day is Oct. 22.
Last month, council debated the schedule of meetings for 2018.
Though some councillors requested there be a meeting at the end of August in the election year, which is typical, others sided with the staff-recommended scheduling that ended all meetings in July.
ai???I donai??i??t think we should be meeting in the month of August while we are at the same time campaigning,ai??? said Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who moved to have no meetings after the summer break.
Perks, at the time, objected, telling his colleagues: ai???Weai??i??re elected for a four-year term, not a three-and-a-half year term.ai???
Council voted 22 to 17 to end meetings in July. Mayor John Tory was absent for the vote.
The Star asked Toryai??i??s office for comment on whether the mayor thought it was reasonable to not inform the public of the cost until after the election and if he would work to ensure that update was provided.
In a short statement, Toryai??i??s spokesperson Don Peat wrote: ai???The timing of the release of that information will be up to city staff.ai???
Council still has to vote on whether to proceed with construction of the subway once the costs are updated.
For those who think the driverless car will usher in the demise if “rail” transit, think again.
Quote: “A growing number of metro regions, including the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, and Toronto, have now reached the physical point where the car is no longer an effective technology for moving people long distances.”
There lays the problem for Vancouver, our roads have reached a saturation point for auto’s, yet politicians and city engineers have sneered at proven methods of reducing the dependency on cars, they have collectively sneered at the simple tram.
A modern tram, operating on a user friendly transit route (user friendly in that the route is so designed for the transit customer and not land developers), part of a user friendly tram network, has proven to make a modal shift (from car to tram) of up to 35%.
Such a modal shift can only be dreamed of by TransLink, where they cannot show much of, if any modal shift from car to SkyTrain.
It will not be driverless cars or SkyTrain that will curb congestion in Metro Vancouver, but the simple tram.
In fact, theyai??i??ll do the opposite of what techno-optimists hope, and worsenai??i??not easeai??i??inequality.
For a growing chorus of techno-optimists and even urbanists, driverless cars are the solution to everything from traffic congestion to high housing prices.
By providing an easy, flexible, hands-free commute, during which people can watch videos, talk, or get work done, they will stretch the current boundaries of our crowded metro areas, and enable more and more people, especially the affluent and the advantaged, to live in far-off suburbs and exurbs.
To this way of thinking, driverless cars are the most recent in a long line of technologiesai??i??from the horse-drawn carriage and the streetcar to subways, trains, and the automobile itselfai??i??that have allowed us to escape the clutches of geography and the constraints of distance.
But the reality of driverless cars is likely to be rather different.
The vision of millions of workers logging hours from their comfortable offices on wheels can be intoxicating.
And, yes, it is true that the desire to avoid long commutes is one of the things that has sent affluent Americans streaming back to cities over the past decade and a half.
But a driverless car is still a car.
A growing number of metro regions, including the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, and Toronto, have now reached the physical point where the car is no longer an effective technology for moving people long distances.
This is a limit that the new technology will not overcome.
The basic law of traffic congestion is that as more new roads get built, they quickly fill up with more cars, and congestion remains.
Although you wonai??i??t be driving them yourself, driverless cars wonai??i??t be able to overcome the reality of congested roads, occasional accidents, and unpredictable commutes.
Ai??Higher-income people who want to avoid such commutes will continue to use their money to avoid them by living closer to the urban center.
Weai??i??ve seen endless predictions about how new transportation technology would lead to the death of distance. Every one of them has been wrong.
While cutting down on long commutes has mattered to the back-to-the-city movement, this is not the only factorai??i??and not the most important oneai??i??that has shaped the return of advantaged people to the urban center.
Two other factors have mattered as much, or more.
For one, knowledge workers have flocked back to cities because that is where the best, highest-paying professional, tech, and creative jobs are, and where their dense professional networks occur.
On top of this, people have been drawn to the unique amenitiesai??i??museums, art galleries, restaurants, theaters, nightlife, and much, much moreai??i??that cities offer.
In fact, according to several econometricAi??studies, dense concentrations of these amenities are a motivating factor in the back-to-the-city movement of the affluent and the educated.
Driverless cars will do little to change either of these factors.
Truliaai??i??s chief economist Ralph McLaughlinAi??rightly arguesAi??that driverless cars will accentuate geographic inequality.
But he sees this happening as both affluent people and businesses are able to locate farther and farther out in the green exurban fringe, while urban centers lose their current value and allure, and once again become home to less advantaged groups.
I fully agree that driverless cars will exacerbate spatial inequality. But I see it occurring in almost exactly the opposite way.
Driverless cars will do little to alter the basic factors and forces that have brought affluent people back to cities.
What they will do instead is free up space on the urban periphery to house less advantaged groups and classes there.
Driverless cars will open up cheap outer-edge land for low-cost development and make todayai??i??s ai???drive ai??i??til you qualifyai??? commutes look like a breeze.
Rather than being used by a re-suburbanizing rich headed to far-flung luxury developments, driverless carsai??i??or more likely, driverless bussesai??i??will extend the commuting range of blue-collar workers, service workers, and the poor. Americaai??i??s metropolitan geography will come to look more like that of Europe or the developing world, with the rich clustered on the increasingly valuable land in and around the city center, and the low-income warehoused in the much cheaper land at the suburban and exurban fringe.
Over the past several decades, weai??i??ve seen endless predictions about how new transportation, information, or communications technology would lead to the death of distanceai??i??the end of geography and the flattening of the world.
And every one of them has been wrong. The world has become spikier. Superstar cities have become more prosperous.
And the affluent have used their resources to colonize the most economically functional and amenity-rich areas near the urban center.
Driverless cars will do nothing to change that. In fact, they are only likely to make our current geographic divides even worse.
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