China’s Loneliest Subway Station
Metro madness gone wild in China.
Looking like a set from a Sci-fi series, building a subway, for the sake of being a subway, has major financial consequences.
Let us not make the same mistake in Vancouver, where transit traffic flows along Broadway are less than a third that would justify a subway.
Take a look around China’s loneliest subway station
by Alex Linder in News on May 9, 2017 10:55 pm
Photos have gone viral on the Chinese internet showing a metro station in Chongqing that was apparently constructed in the middle of nowhere.
Located on Chongqing Metro’s Line 6, Caojiawan Station was finished back in 2015. Of its three planned exits, only one is currently is in use, the other two being overgrown with weeds and shubbery. Still, even that one exit might be overkill.
After leaving the metro station, passengers enter a barren wasteland. The station is not connected to any major roads, meaning that commuters have to rely on a van service to get the rest of the way home.
A worker at the station told the Chongqing Morning Post that often there are no passengers to be found inside the station at all.
Here’s a photo taken during rush hour.
It looks like this was a station that was designed around a massive real estate development that for some reason never occurred.
“Transit employees” in the picture resemble the “TransLink employees” killing time at the mostly vacant Cambie Street subway stations in Vancouver and Richmond. On a related topic of transit buffoonery, TransLink is testing “one” only BYD e-bus for three months in Vancouver.
At first I was impressed with TransLink’s commitment to saving the planet from climate change and the elimination of diesel buses whose toxic emissions are killing up to five people annually on just the 99 B-Line route in Vancouver (North America’s busiest diesel bus route which TransLink can also brag about having created the worst air quality by transit in North America but TransLink never mentions this which is bad for TransLink’s image which is always portrayed as good and never bad).
http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/translink-starts-three-month-trial-of-electric-battery-powered-bus
Incidentally, TransLink has just “one” severely over used bus route by design in Metro Vancouver (99 B-Line route with service every two minutes and three fragmented trolleybus routes running in parallel to the 99 B-Line route to make it nearly impossible to travel along Broadway without switching to the 99 B-Line route). It (99 B-Line route) coincidentally operates where the subway is planned. Aside from the single “over used” 99 B-Line route, the hundreds of other bus routes operated by TransLink are woefully underused – just a little juicy piece of information about TransLink which has the lowest “real” or revenue passenger transit use in Canada and the biggest annual operating budget ($2 billion) of any public transit agency in Canada. TransLink is a sham.
What’s the point of TransLink testing the e-bus? The BYD e-bus is fit for service and has been testing worldwide. It all comes down to whether or not TransLink wants to budget for e-buses. TransLink clearly doesn’t want to spend the money on e-buses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1NFNF5eTco
Testing of the BYD e-bus by TransLink fails to emulate the testing already performed under more severe conditions in Edmonton. I seriously doubt whether the glorified monkeys at TransLink are capable of doing anything more than racking up a few miles on the e-bus to spend the next 10 years on useless report writing on the testing whose technical analysis is beyond the capability of the glorified monkeys at TransLink.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_okiw9jezk
If CEO Desmond and Director Robertson of TransLink weren’t just putting on a show for the media to “portray” the fake image of transit by TransLink as Green (not having transit cuts carbon emissions in Vancouver owing to the large number of mostly empty diesel buses used to transfer passengers to the trains running on viaducts and in subways), they’d cancel the subway project in Vancouver and use the money to replace all the diesel buses which they are buying in anticipation of the subway on Broadway. Desmond and Robertson are buying 200 diesel and hybrid-diesel buses while they test the e-bus (hybrid diesel buses are 90% diesel and 10% electric and are basically diesel buses).
Would it not be prudent to wait for the test results (e-bus) to then decide whether to buy the diesel buses? Yes, but Desmond and Robertson are just putting on a show for the cameras and they’ve already paid for the diesel buses.
Just fire these idiots who say one thing and do the opposite; the sooner the better. They’ve lost their “leader”: Fassbender who was the slimiest politician in politics, and I predicted his demise after he took over TransLink which is the most corrupt transit agency in Canada (Todd Stone was too ethical to hang with TransLink as minister and the Liberals went to Fassbender, the logical deadbeat to lead TransLink). In Vancouver, the subway by “TransLink” results in the greatest social and environmental impacts of any public transit option (tram especially) and is at odds with the Paris Climate Accord. It won’t go ahead if the provincial vote stands and the Greens team up with either the NDP or Liberals.
http://www.railforthevalley.com/latest-news/zweisystem/a-subway-conversation-unheard-in-vancouver/
TransLink’s directors and “engineers” who flogged the fraudulent study claiming that the subway is socially and environmentally benign will lose their jobs. They might go to jail.
https://www.biv.com/article/2016/9/cone-silence-over-cost-estimates-broadway-subway-s/
Concrete for the subway requires cement produced from the calcination of limestone (CaCO3) heated from the combustion of carbon and air forming CO2 and water vapour causing climate change. It gets better: the calcination of limestone dissociates the limestone into CaO (quicklime used to make cement) and that pesky by-product, CO2 (CaCO3 + heat = CaO + CO2). Weaver who is a climate change activist will go berserk at the mention of TransLink planning the concrete subway for shareholders of Bombardier to earn dividends from sales of lousy short stator linear induction trains which nobody who Bombardier hasn’t bribed will buy.
https://www.thestar.com/business/2017/03/10/bombardier-employee-arrested-by-sweden-on-bribery-suspicion.html
It takes “donations” to crooked BC Liberals to make the sale of junk trains by Bombardier happen because other transit organizations employ competent and honest engineers keeping politicians from buying the junk trains produced by Bombardier and requiring concrete viaducts or subways. In BC, bottom feeders faking it as engineers rise to the top by telling crooked politicians what they want to hear. TransLink Director and Mayor of Vancouver, Robertson has decreed that the subway must go ahead. Guess what? By “fluke”, the engineer who got promoted to “top gun” engineer with the City of Vancouver supports the subway to slash CO2 emissions and meet “targets”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_kiln
Sand is mixed with the cement to make concrete for the subway. It isn’t any sand, it is sand mined from the oceans (destroying beaches and consuming islands in the Pacific). Pacific Islanders are losing homes for slimes at TransLink to build concrete subways and viaducts for transit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAPfwwb59uY
This won’t fly with Weaver having a strong social conscience. It won’t go over with Horgan who’s the leader of the NDP and who wants real CO2 reductions, not fake CO2 reductions claimed by Robertson and Desmond.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/05/11/green-election-surge-puts-bc-in-centre-of-climate-debate-walkom.html
http://commonground.ca/john-horgan/
TransLink will soon be consigned to the scrap heap of history. Electric cars have taken away the environmental and social imperatives from public transit. Public transit buses are 98% empty, 80% of the time, and not having public transit improves traffic to reduce road congestion. Yup.
“Let’s face it. When there are hundreds of buses stopping and starting every few hundred yards, there’s going to be an impact on traffic. When those buses aren’t there, space is freed up and the rest of the traffic doesn’t need to drive around them.”
http://www.trucknews.com/features/transit-strike-improves-traffic/
Public transit by TransLink is nothing more than a scam for the deadbeats at TransLink to “score” overpaid jobs which don’t require any work. TransLink has no future with transit “planners” buying diesel buses to lure e-vehicle users (e-jets, e-cars, e-cycles and e-bikes) onto carbon emitting diesel buses spewing toxic particulates killing people.
Adios TransLink dirt-bags; the future is now. It doesn’t include scum killing time at TransLink.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YeIvGbkxc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohig71bwRUE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxveY1R2pws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9fuZq6JzIs