Hutzpa!
What hutzpa!
The Broadway subway a transit project of national significance, really? I think Mayor Robinson thinks that the taxpayer are rubes.
According to our friend, Mr. Haveacow,Ai?? Broadway’s peak demand numbers on average of 2000-3700 passenger trips per hour per direction, which is barely enough to support light rail, let alone a subway.
What about SkyTrain’s lack of capacity and a $2 billion investment needed to increaseAi?? capacity on the SkyTrain ALRT/ART network? Are the SkyTrain and subway lobby’s waiting to drop that little bombshell later.
Sorry Mayor Robinson, one tires of Vancouver’s demands for billions of our tax dollars to build your fantasy subway, to keep up the image that Vancouver is a “world class city”. Your hutzpa is getting very stale.
Modern LRT could provide ample capacity for Broadway, if only TransLink and the city of Vancouver were honest with their transit planning. Sadly, the SkyTrain centric planning at TransLink and City Hall as precluded any viable LRT plan for Broadway and with Vancouver’s rejection of an elevated line along Broadway (SkyTrain was first devised to be elevated to mitigate the high cost of subway planning), leaves the subway option, the only option.
Vancouver mayor wants UBC subway line considered of ai???national significanceai??i??
Getting federal money for the $3-billion line unlikely without such a designation, Robertson says
OTTAWA ai??i?? The Harper government needs to be convinced that the proposed $3-billion Broadway subway line to the University of B.C. is a project of ai???national significance,ai??? Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday.Robertson, who was chairing a meeting of big-city mayors here, said a $14-billion, 10-year fund being promoted by the Conservative government is ai???woefully inadequateai??? to meet Canadaai??i??s infrastructure needs.
That program has only set aside $9 billion specifically for big cities, with $1 billion earmarked for smaller and typically more Tory-friendly municipalities.
Another $4 billion is targeted for projects of national strategic significance.
Asked if there is enough federal money on the table to get the Broadway project off the ground, Robertson replied: ai???That depends on whether the additional $4 billion of national infrastructure money is on the table.ai???
Cities, provincial governments and Ottawa typically cost-share major infrastructure projects.
Robertson said Vancouver will make the case to Ottawa that all Canadians would benefit from the subway.
Linking UBC to major health sciences institutions along the corridor, including the Vancouver General Hospital and the BC Centre for Disease Control, would advance Vancouverai??i??s ability to become a global research hub.
ai???We will see companies from all over the world coming to Vancouver if thereai??i??s good connectivity,ai??? he said in an interview. ai???The cities we compete with globally in technology are well-connected and are invested in rapid transit, and we need to keep pace. So it will have a nationally significant economic impact.ai???
A 2013 KPMG report commissioned by UBC and the city said the current bus system along the route is operating over capacity.
It also said there is little chance given constrains on the road to expand bus service to deal with an anticipated doubling of the population along the corridor over the next 30 years.
Cities like Toronto and New York have a ai???clear competitive advantage over Vancouver: they have a public transportation network that provides rail rapid transit between their major employment centres and their academic research facilities,ai??? the report noted.
Robertsonai??i??s comments came after one of the more controversial gatherings of big-city mayors because it included, for the first time, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
Ford, who has in the past dismissed the Federation of Canadian Municipalities as an organization of left-leaning politicians who waste tax dollars, arrived in Ottawa to push for Torontoai??i??s ai???fair shareai??? of transit funding.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre sneered at Fordai??i??s decision to attend, saying it would create a ai???circusai??? atmosphere. But Robertson said Ford, who spoke publicly to reporters Wednesday about his boozing and crack-smoking past, was a welcome addition to the lobby group.
ai???Itai??i??s important to have Toronto at the table,ai??? he said. ai???Itai??i??s been a distraction for some outside the room, but between mayors weai??i??re very focused on our priorities on housing and transit.ai???
First, lame brain Mayor Robertson of Vancouver is a complete fool for attempting to push the sky train line down Broadway to UBC. It costs far too much money and he is trying to ram it down the throats of unsympathetic taxpayers. Rail transit down Broadway does not necessarily mean very expensive sky train service and can mean very inexpensive trams service, having greater capacity than sky train, by the way. In fact, rail transit doesn’t even have to go down Broadway and can take easier and existing right of ways along grass down West 6th Avenue and West 16th Avenue to UBC.
Sky train has no track record of reducing vehicle use or road congestion, none. Drivers are not going to walk to sky train stations spaced 1,600 metres apart on average to take sky train going nowhere near their destination, then walk late at night or in awful weather to reach their destination. Forget it. Sky train is geared towards the minority of working commuters who are willing to make sacrifices in their lives to live far from work or school and then ride sky train for hours every day. These individuals need to have their heads examined, including rico who comments here so often. I cannot take sky train to Bellingham or Seattle where I occasionally work.
Sky train is a transportation blunder by out of touch politicians who saw sky train as a way to make money from the graft received from the companies lining up for a piece of the pie to build the billion dollar sky train projects under the guise that they are going to reduce road congestion and air pollution. Sky train has done the opposite to a significant degree. For most commuters, sky train and the rapid bus (99 B-Line service, in particular) are useless most of the day. Fire everyone connected with sky train and rapid bus and let’s find some competent people who can run transit for less money.
Forget any more funding to the swindlers at TransLink. Robertson can get lost.. This is what sky train has done after three decades:
http://ca.autoblog.com/2013/11/06/vancouver-named-worst-traffic-in-north-america-rush-hour-most-congested-city-beating-beats-LA-los-angeles-TomTom-index-rank-ranking-poll/