From The Heart Of The Evergreen Line
The Tri-City news is ground zero with the Evergreen Line projects, but news coming from Northeast sector of Metro Vancouver is not at all comforting, as it seems things are not what they seem. With TransLink, nothing is as it seems, as they have become circus conjurers, rather than transit planners.
Commissioner casts doubt on Evergreen Line ridership numbers
By Diane Strandberg – The Tri-City New
Published: October 07, 2011 11:00 AM
http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/tricitynews/news/131343183.html
As Metro Vancouver mayors get down to voting today on a plan to boost gas taxes and possibly bump property taxes to pay for transit improvements, a new report is suggesting Evergreen Line revenue projections may be overly optimistic.
The analysis by transportation commissioner Martin Crilly says ridership projections of increases between 65% and 70% in six years after opening are “somewhat optimistic,” although “not impossible.”
He says in the report (available at www.translinkcommission.org under What’s New) that he didn’t have enough data from TransLink to provide a thorough analysis but he’s doubtful such a ridership boost could be accomplished so soon along what he called a low-density corridor.
“This appears optimistic given that it is recognized that the primary role of the Evergreen Line is to shape land use in a relatively low-density sector of the region,” he wrote.
And if ridership numbers don’t meet projections, revenue could fall ai??i?? and even a 25% drop in projected “new” ridership could result in a loss of $28 million in fare revenue over six years.
Meanwhile, the city of Coquitlam is in negotiations with the province over a proposed Lincoln station near Town Centre that would have the desired effect of boosting density to support ridership.
“The whole idea is to densify the Tri-Cities and to build in the Tri-Cities so we increase the ridership,” said Maurice Gravelle, Coquitlam’s general manager of strategic initiatives. He said he couldn’t be more detailed about negotiations because they are confidential.
Current funding provides for six stations: Lougheed Town Centre in Burnaby(at the current Millennium Line SkyTrain station), Burquitlam in Coquitlam, the West Coast ExpressA?ai??i??ai??? and Ioco Road in Port Moody, Coquitlam Central station (the transit exchange near Barnet and Lougheed highways) and Douglas College (adjacent to the Evergreen Cultural Centre at the northwest corner of Guildford and Pinetree ways). All have been chosen because they are close to homes, workplaces and transit.
In addition to a station at Lincoln, two more stations have yet to be confirmed: West Port Moody and Falcon Drive in Coquitlam.
A letter in the same paper, underscores the desirability of modern LRT on the Evergreen line, but don’t hold your breathe, what is good for the transit customer or the taxpayer, is certainly not good for regional politicians and bureaucrats. Mediocrity reigns in Metro Vancouver.
SkyTrain is a bad choice for Evergreen Line
The Editor,
http://www.bclocalnews.com/tri_city_maple_ridge/tricitynews/opinion/letters/131290724.html
Re. “Mayors set to hike gas tax” (The Tri-City News, Oct. 5).
No one doubts sustainable mass transit is long overdue in the Lower Mainland but there’s something seriously wrong with the choice to use SkyTrain for the Evergreen Line, and never has it been more obvious than now, with funding becoming such an issue.
Up until 2008, the line was planned to be a light rail project. Since then, TransLink proposed using SkyTrain-type technology instead, hence the need for an additional $574 million. And we’ll need a lot more than the two-cent-a-litre gas tax increase to fund it. Besides, if you’ve been following the news, it’s clear the SkyTrain proposal was a boondoggle all along and that it wouldn’t benefit the communities here at all. Let’s look at the numbers:
ai??? TransLink’s proposed light rail project was set at $900 million ai??i?? $500 million less than SkyTrain, which means we wouldn’t have needed tax hikes of any kind.
ai??? With SkyTrain, there will be only six stations, as opposed to 11 with TransLink’s proposed light rail project.
ai??? We won’t be able to extend SkyTrain once it’s built. Light rail costs an average of about $30 million per kilometre, as opposed to SkyTrain’s $133 million per kilometre.
ai??? Light rail is used in hundreds of other cities around the world, SkyTrain only in a few, and those cities run much higher capacity than our SkyTrains do.
ai??? Environmental, financial, and social disruption is much less with light rail construction.
The proposed gas tax increase will net $40 million a year, which means that to fund the $574 million gap, without even more tax increases, it’ll take over 12 years. This gas tax is just the tip of the iceberg. We’re either going to have to pay way, way more taxes or we’re going to end up with defunct concrete pillars all over the place. Do you want to be taxed even more for a service that’ll do less and threaten the communities in the process?
